Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2017, Vision Science

Oyler School is located in one of the lowest socioeconomic areas in Cincinnati, Ohio. The OneSight Vision Center was established in 2012 to provide much needed eye care to children in Cincinnati. The purpose of this research study is to analyze the academic success of this group of inner-city students before and after receiving spectacle correction. In addition, the compliance rate of spectacle wear and a comparison of the IEP students to the non-IEP students from the Cincinnati school district are included. Eye examination records for 2,333 students were provided from 81 different schools in Cincinnati, which were all examined at the OneSight Vision Center during the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 academic years. Analysis of the various eye examination components was conducted, and the data showed that many children from the clinic sample had myopia (37.2%), hyperopia (7.7%), and astigmatism (36.9%). In addition, many children exhibited phorias greater than 5pd (0.9%), strabismus (2.7%), convergence insufficiency (0.8%), and accommodative insufficiency (3.0%). All of the Oyler School students who received spectacles increased their average GPA by 0.14 points (p=0.17) two quarters after receiving spectacle correction. Myopes saw an increase in average GPA by 0.08 (p=0.50), hyperopes saw the greatest increase in GPA by 0.37 (p=0.34), and astigmats increased by 0.13 (p=0.45). Although none of these increases were statistically significant, a 0.37 increase in GPA two quarters after receiving vision correction is very meaningful. All groups of refractive error saw an increase in math and reading GPA scores, but not writing; however none of the changes were statistically significant. Large variability in GPA change and small sample sizes resulted in poor power (generally less than 20%) to detect statistically significant changes in our GPA scores. Only 28.9% of children who received glasses during the 2012-2013 school year wore their glasses to their 2013-2014 vison exa (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jeffrey Walline (Advisor); Andrew Toole (Committee Member); Terri Gossard (Committee Member) Subjects: Health Sciences; Ophthalmology; Optics

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2016, American Culture Studies

While popular movies are often overlooked in film studies, the action-adventure genre in the 1980s has drawn considerable academic attention. The consensus among the literature is that a conservative backlash (spurred on by Ronald Reagan's two terms in office) against a resurgent equality movement gave rise to hypermasculine movies like First Blood and Predator and hypermasculine stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. While this still holds true, a closer look at the movies and the era reveals a much more nuanced picture. A thorough examination of the culture, the movies, and the male bodies on-screen in the 1980s—through the lens of affect theory, cinematography, and spectacle, among others—uncovers a number of significant cultural phenomena that have the potential to shape future academic work. This study not only elucidates and reconstructs the conception of filmic spectacle to include the male body on-screen, it also identifies two types of male bodies on-screen in the 1980s—the muscle-bound, aesthetically spectacular body and the lithe, kinesthetically spectacular body. Additionally, this study argues that filmic spectacle (as experienced by viewers) is actually made up of two discrete dimensions, a physical dimension composed of massive scale and explosions and a physiological one composed of affect and emotion. Unpacking spectacle in this way ultimately produces a number of new tools for film scholars while reimagining, in a significant way, American culture in the 1980s, the action-adventure movies of the decade, and the greater cultural currents in the Reagan era.

Committee: Theodore F. Rippey Ph.D. (Advisor); Thomas A. Mascaro Ph.D. (Other); Andrew E. Hershberger Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jeffrey A. Brown Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Aesthetics; American Studies; Cinematography; Comparative; Ethnic Studies; Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Mass Media; Motion Pictures

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2022, Political Science

In 1967, Guy Debord, the founder of the Situationist International, released his seminal work The Society of the Spectacle, a culminating theoretical critique of the social relations that emerged under capitalism in mid-twentieth century mass consumerism. In locating the origins of spectacle in a Marxist-Hegelian construction of Subject-Object orientations under capitalism, this thesis first looks to bring to light Debord's more sweeping critique that historical agency had been lost in favor of a more “contemplative” and passive spectatorship of images, underpinning the fabric of our social relationships. Beyond highlighting this critique, this thesis will attempt to trace spectacle as a constantly evolving feature of everyday life and articulate its continuing presence in social relationships. Considering how Situationists looked to the concept of play and the collapse of art into everyday life, this thesis will also attempt to articulate the continuing spatial and aesthetic potentials of Situationist practices of detournement and derive as subversive of spectacular logics of contemporary social relations and media landscapes.

Committee: Judith Grant (Advisor) Subjects: Art History; Mass Media; Political Science

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2021, Art History (Fine Arts)

Through the use of visual documentation, this thesis argues that the maintenance of the Ka'ba is a spectacle. Yearly, two ceremonial events for maintaining the Ka'ba are held at the Haram Mosque located in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. The two events are the ceremony of replacing the Kiswa and the ceremony of cleaning the Ka'ba. The events are integral to the care and appearance of the structure while fulfilling religious and historical requirements and traditions. A spectacle is an atypical event; it is performative and engages the viewer visually. Additionally, the spectacle makes the viewer feel interest, excitement, confusion, or marvel at what is occurring. The qualities of the ceremonies of maintaining the Ka'ba align with the spectacle. The ceremonies are peculiar, grand, visually disruptive, memorable, and eye-catching. Therefore, the ceremonies are a spectacle. However, the spectacle does not end with the completion of the ceremonies; instead, they live on and continue virtually through photos and videos of the events shared and circulated online. The content captured of the ceremonies creates a virtual afterlife prolonging the events while enabling access for the greater Muslim population. The Ka'ba's maintenance reaches a wider audience due to media attention. Traditional media notifies viewers when and how to watch the events, whereas social media enables users to participate in the ceremonies by sharing, re-sharing, voicing their thoughts and opinions, and even creating artwork inspired by the events. The theorist Guy Debord notes, the spectacle is not images, but it is the conversations through images. The availability of the ceremony's documentation on social media is an ideal platform for promoting dialogue and enabling viewers of the events to be part of the spectacle. Lastly, because the ceremonies of the Ka'ba are a spectacle, they push maintenance further by taking place in public and virtually; impacting the longevity of the events, allowing them to be (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Marion Lee (Advisor); Andrea Frohne (Committee Member); Steve Howard (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Fine Arts

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2021, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

The responsive nature of architectural storytelling has equipped the built environment to mesh with its surroundings and to serve the current socio-cultural needs of the community that it is a part of. However, the story being told through the architecture is often the same story already being told through the culture, making it redundant and deprived of the imaginative qualities that such a monumental art form should have. Architecture needs to fit into the community, so we assign it a style. Architecture needs to be green, so we put a green roof and some solar panels on it. Architecture should be safe and accessible, so we govern it with code books. Culture calls and architecture responds.

Committee: Joss Kiely Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Heather Bizon M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, German

This thesis highlights the ways in which Bertolt Brecht's concept of epic theatre pertains to video games, more particularly, visual novels. Digital drama and romance genres (aka “dating simulators”) are known for their “realism” for their ability to make the player feel as if they are interacting with real people. Yet, the deceptiveness is their apparent inability to replicate fully the kinds of social interactions a person can have. The plot structure oftentimes is also rather simplistic: the goal of these games is that the player gets the girl of their dreams, despite any hardships. The horror game Doki Doki Literature Club (2017) by game developer Dan Salvato challenges these genre shortcomings and aspire to make productive, I will argue, a Brechtian notion of epic theatre. Salvato had a love-hate relationship with visual novels. To him, visual novels were nothing more than “cute girls doing cute things” where any tragic backstory or character arc is just another objective the player must overcome to make the girl of their dreams fall in love with them. Like Brecht, Salvato wants to destroy the illusions created by visual novels and shock people into reflecting about such illusions. He created Doki Doki Literature Club, a horror game disguised as a dating simulator, which takes a critical look at issues such a mental health that visual novels often gloss over and treat as plot points in the story.

Committee: Edgar Landgraf Ph.D. (Advisor); Kristie Foell Ph.D. (Committee Member); Clayton Rosati Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Germanic Literature; Mass Communications; Mass Media

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2018, American Culture Studies

Existing cultural studies scholarship on New Orleans explores the city's exceptional popular identity, often focusing on the origins of that exceptionality in literature and the city's twentieth century tourism campaigns. This perceived exceptionality, though originating from literary sources, was perpetuated and popularized in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by film and television representations. As Hollywood's production standards evolved throughout the twentieth century, New Orleans' representation evolved with it. In each filmmaking era, representations of New Orleans reflected not only the production realities of that era, but also the political and cultural debates surrounding the city. In the past two decades, as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the passage of film tax credits by the Louisiana Legislature increased New Orleans' profile, these debates have been more present and driven by New Orleans' filmed representations. Using the theoretical framework of Guy Debord's spectacle and the methodology of New Film History and close "to the background" textual analysis, this study undertakes an historical overview of New Orleans' representation in film and television. This history starts in the era of Classical Hollywood (1928-1947) and continues through Transitional Hollywood (1948-1966), New Hollywood (1967-1975), and the current Age of the Blockbuster (1975-). Particular attention is given to developments in the twenty-first century, especially how the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the recent tax credit laws affected popular understandings of the city. Hollywood's representations have largely reinforced New Orleans' exceptional, "Big Easy" identity by presenting the city's unique cultural practices as every occurrences and realities for New Orleanians. While Hurricane Katrina exposed this popular identity as a facade, the lack of interest by Hollywood in meaningfully exploring Katrina, returning instead to the city's pre-Katrina identity (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Cynthia Baron (Advisor); Marlise Lonn (Other); Clayton Rosati (Committee Member); Andrew Schocket (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Film Studies; Geography; History; Mass Media

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

In recent years, the unchallenged process of growth and development has led China to an excessively overbuilt environment without any consideration of cultural and environmental impacts. The developed countries have been riddled with urban decay for decades. Given its current urban development trajectory, China seems to be destined to repeat the same mistakes as the Western countries. The industrial modernization has reorganized the urban fabric and large swaths of everyday life in the name of maximizing efficiency and profitability. In our globalized world, the circle of decay and renewal appears to be unbreakable as the image of a spectacle-obsessed society becomes the only model to follow. This thesis presents an alternative development model that provides for resilient strategies of the distribution of modern amenities for the Inner Mongolia nomadic population.

Committee: Mara Marcu M.Arch. (Committee Chair); Michael McInturf M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, Theatre

This is a study of theatrical advertising prints and the culture that produced them. The prints in question were first published as a catalog of woodcuts in facsimile by the Ledger Job Printing Office of Philadelphia in 1869, and distributed among theatrical agents on speculation. Their existence, subject matter, mode of production, and the period in which they were produced is significant. The shifts underway in the theatrical paradigm were emblematic of shifts affecting society at large. The railroad was aggressively transforming the structure of the American Theatre; touring productions were displacing and destabilizing the stock company system; and the stage was ceding its space to the spectacle-thrill moments of sensation melodrama. Similar changes were occurring throughout society for the benefit of a new commerce. Just as country life was becoming a relic of the past, so too were the remnants of pre-industrial business practices. The Ledger catalog stands at a critical juncture in this transformation.

Committee: Beth Kattelman PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

In Walter Benjamin's essay “The Task of the Translator,” the original translation is no longer as important as that of its afterlife – the afterlife in which the reproduction and reincarnation of the translation becomes all-encompassing. This translation of one medium to another symbolizes the transfer of meaning from one entity to another, ultimately creating a new identity of “the translated.” This thesis seeks to interrogate the intersection between architecture and choreography through translation in order to explore new interpretations and associations between the two disciplines. The site of the Queensgate Rail Yard in Cincinnati, Ohio becomes the mediating force of translation between these two entities, capturing the essence of the “afterlife” of a choreographed, industrial corridor of events that coalesces into a larger landscape of spectacle. Utilizing the methodology of mapping through collage and montage allows for a new perspective on site potential, excavating hidden meaning and moments throughout Queensgate. These mappings, in addition to methods of dance movement notation, begin to represent the dynamism inherently engrained within rail yard that become the catalyst for architectural interventions. By tracing the combinatory trajectories of architecture and choreography, a conceptual design for a series of dynamic structures, sited from the mappings, will engage with ideas of movement, sequence, and framing of the choreographed, spectacle landscape. In addition to these observation points, a series of nodal coordinate stations will be interspersed throughout the landscape to act as upper movement throughout the site that activates the larger context.

Committee: Aarati Kanekar Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Udo Greinacher M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2016, Musicology

The animated statue represented one of the central magical figures in French musical theater of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the period covered by this dissertation, 1661-1748, animated statues appeared in more than sixty works of musical theater of almost every available genre. This number does not include the many works containing statues that demonstrated magical or otherworldly properties through means other than movement or song. Some of the works of this period that feature living statues are well-known to musicologists—e.g. Moliere/Jean-Baptiste Lully's comedy-ballet Les Facheux (1661), Lully's opera Cadmus et Hermione (1673), and Jean-Philippe Rameau's one-act ballet Pigmalion (1748)—while others have received little recognition. This dissertation is the first study to consider the history of animated statues on the French stage during this period, and the first to reveal music as a defining feature of these statues. Over the course of nearly ninety years, music assumed an increasingly important role in the theatrical treatments of these figures that operated in the space between magic and mechanics. At the beginning of Louis XIV's reign, animated statues appeared with some frequency in both public and court spectacles. By the mid-eighteenth century, the animated statue had become the central focus of many works and had transformed into a potent symbol of, among other ideas, the power of music and dance, as most dramatically realized in Rameau's Pigmalion. This dissertation traces the history of this transformation.

Committee: Georgia Cowart (Committee Co-Chair); Francesca Brittan (Committee Co-Chair); Susan McClary (Committee Member); Elina Gertsman (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Dance; European History; Music; Theater

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2015, Theatre

Throughout the United States toward the end of the twentieth century, popular theatre proliferated on the nation's stages and in other entertainment venues: concert halls, comedy clubs, Broadway stages, and more. One of the notable offerings was (and still remains) Blue Man Group, a vaudevillesque performance troupe that plays music, performs scenes, and creates a sense of community amongst the attendees. Though now enjoying enormous mainstream success, Blue Man Group was once a fringe, avant-garde theatre, creating politically charged performances on the streets of New York City for free to those in close proximity. This study examines Blue Man Group's history, from its beginnings through 2001, by looking at how it transitioned from its avant-garde roots into a popular theatre appearing on national television and in front of thousands of spectators each night. Following Mike Sell's assertion that the thorny term "avant-garde" art is "premised on the notion that the modern world--its institutions, its social relations, its art, its cuisines, its economies--is terminally out of joint" (2011, 7), this study seeks to demonstrate that Blue Man Group's first public performances, in the experimental theatre spaces and on the streets of New York City, emerged from a frustration with American culture. I argue that after opening a long-running production in New York, the organization took steps away from its avant-garde roots through questionable business practices and widespread expansion. In turn, I consider the group's recording and releasing an album, which in effect turned its live event into an unchanging experience. I contend that by 2001, Blue Man Group had turned its back on its avant-garde outlook, as is evidenced by its opening of a production in Las Vegas and its appearing in nationally televised commercials for a computer company. In so doing, Blue Man Group eschewed its avant-garde roots while expanding its brand, thereby becoming part of American popular c (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jonathan Chambers Ph.D. (Advisor); Lesa Lockford Ph.D. (Committee Member); Marcus Sherrell M.F.A. (Committee Member); Andrew M. Schocket Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: Theater; Theater History

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2014, Popular Culture

Comics studies, as a relatively new field, is still building a canon. However, its criteria for canon-building has been modeled largely after modernist ideas about formal complexity and criteria for disinterested, detached, "objective" aesthetic judgment derived from one of the major philosophical debates in Western thought: the mind-body problem. This thesis analyzes two American independent comics in order to dissect the aspects of a comic work that allow it to be categorized as "art" in the canonical sense. Chris Ware's Building Stories is a sprawling, Byzantine comic that exhibits characteristically modernist ideas about the subordination of the body to the mind and art's relationship to mass culture. Rob Schrab's Scud: The Disposable Assassin provides a counterpoint to Building Stories in its action-heavy stylistic approach, developing ideas about the merging of the mind and the body and the artistic and the commercial. Ultimately, this thesis advocates for a re-evaluation of comics criticism that values the subjective, emotional, and the popular as much as the "objective" areas of formal complexity and logic.

Committee: Jeremy Wallach Ph.D (Advisor); Esther Clinton Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Gender Studies; Literature

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2013, Comparative Studies

In light of the global Occupy movements, whose ostensible lack of demands or a program of transformation have been praised for opening up new movements of radical political thought, this thesis examines the conceptual relationship between potentiality, profanation, and play in the thought of Giorgio Agamben in an attempt to contribute to what it means to think emancipatory politics within the contemporary biopolitical horizon. The argument suggests that Agamben's formulations of potentiality, profanation, and play reformulate precisely what it means to speak of a politics premised upon a genuine lack of program or demands today. In order to explicate this argument, the thesis considers potentiality, profanation, and play in concentric relation to each other, where each concept revolves around Agamben's resistance to an originary biopolitical structure, which he views as undergirding the entire legacy of Western thought. The argument suggests that these circles move from a broad ontological notion of potentiality to the praxis of play, where profanation serves as the conceptual circle mediating between the two. Accordingly, the thesis is divided into four sections. In the first section, the argument works to explicate Agamben's notion of the originary structure of biopolitics. In the second section, the argument turns to examine potentiality, which serves as Agamben's broadest ontological response to this biopolitical structure. The argument then turns toward Agamben's concept of profanation. In this section, the argument works to emphasize Agamben's critique of consumption in relation to his conceptualization of profanation. In the final section, the argument considers Agamben's notion of play, understood as a social praxis informed by the interrelated concepts of potentiality and profanation.

Committee: Philip Armstrong (Advisor); Shannon Winnubst (Committee Member); Thomas Davis (Committee Member) Subjects: Comparative; Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Comparative Studies

This work reimagines autonomy in the age of spatial enclosure. Rather than proposing a new version of the escapist running to the hills, "Escape" aligns the desire for disappearance, invisibility, and evasion with the contemporary politics of refusal, which poses no demands, resists representation, and refuses participation in already-existing politics. Such escape promises to break life out of a stifling perpetual present. The argument brings together culture, crisis, and conflict to outline the political potential of escape. It begins by reintroducing culture to theories of state power by highlighting complementary mixtures of authoritarian and liberal rule. The result is a typology of states that embody various aspects of conquest and contract: the Archaic State, the Priestly State, the Modern State, and the Social State. The argument then looks to the present, a time when the state exists in a permanent crisis provoked by global capitalist forces. Politics today is controlled by the incorporeal power of Empire and its lived reality, the Metropolis, which emerged as embodiments of this crisis and continue to further deepen exploitation and alienation through the dual power of Biopower and the Spectacle. Completing the argument, two examples are presented as crucial sites of political conflict. Negative affects and the urban guerrilla dramatize the conflicts over life and strategy that characterize daily existence in the Metropolis. Following a transdisciplinary concern for intensity, the work draws from a variety of historical, literary, cinematic, and philosophical examples that emphasize the cultural dimension of politics. The wide breadth of sources, which range from historical documents on the origins of the police, feminist literature on the politics of emotion, experimental punk film, and Deleuze and Guattari's nomadology, thus emulates the importance of force over appearance found in contemporary radical politics. Departing from many of the accounts (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Eugene W. Holland (Advisor); Philip Armstrong (Committee Member); Mathew Coleman (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Philosophy; Political Science

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2011, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

The tangible world is increasingly alienated by the accumulation of images that exist above it. That is, commodity signs and symbols have amassed beyond decorative add-ons to become substitutes for former urban vitality. Thus, updated appearances of commodity spectacle broadcast themselves, backgrounding architecture as an outdated underpinning. Highway intrusions exacerbate the situation by eroding the city into isolated segments and introducing a mass marketplace of highway consumers. In particular, this SIGN versus building predicament is dramatized in the postindustrial city where billboards often cover discarded factory buildings. These branded buildings exemplify Venturi and Brown's decorated shed, defined in "Learning from Las Vegas" as a conventional building that applies symbols (in this case, billboards). At these layered sites, which contain an industrial past, highway superimpositions, and billboard overlays, the projection of advertisement is the only spectacle, and the consumer is its passive spectator. As postindustrial consumption accelerates, it becomes imperative to establish an architectural response that re-casts passive consumers as actor and audience, generators of the spectacle. The methodology for designing at these complex sites includes negotiation between people's varying experiential narratives in and around the site, exploitation of the dynamic nature and spontaneity of their interactions, and maintained stringency to the site's physical context. The thesis project, located in Cincinnati, Ohio, asserts the significance of interface between spectacle and spectator at the site of an uninhabited factory building, branded in billboards, and tangled in a web of elevated highways and surface city streets. The design approach sets the stage for interactive event through circulatory movement and the interplay between visible public and unseen private functions. Recognizing the inevitability of branding at this highly visible site, the program ta (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Aarati Kanekar PhD (Committee Chair); Michael McInturf MARCH (Committee Chair) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2010, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Art museums in major metropolises are experiencing substantial growth in attendance and the “museumification” of art culture. In contrast art museums in the Midwest are struggling for attendance and to reach out to their general public. These contemporary places of “high-art” are not well connected to their vibrant local art communities. Similarly the art community is detached from the public at large. Thus, the propagation of local art and public appreciation and understanding of art is absent. Instead the culture of the Midwest is one that has become centered on events; e.g. sports, concerts, tours, religion, etc. These spectacles occur at a variety of scales, from the neighborhood to the state to the national level and provide an audience for engagement. This thesis uses a methodology linked to critical art movements that respond to the issues of spectacle culture and the everyday. It oscillates between the realms of art and architecture to facilitate new ways of visual interaction with the everyday environment. The specific site in Cincinnati becomes an armature for regional investigation into larger social questions of spectacle culture, interstitial urban spaces, curating the everyday, art and framing, and human engagement with architecture. Using this successful model for engagement, the local art community can weave together these separate entities: high-art, local art, and the general public, into a new museum typology that resonates more with Midwestern culture through a renewed understanding of art and the everyday environment.

Committee: George Bible MCiv.Eng (Committee Chair); Rebecca Williamson PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Architecture; Art History

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

The late-capitalist society is driven not by production but consumption,not the material but the digital, not services. Within this system, every aspect of culture is subjugated to capitalism's doctrine, even art. Of all of the arts, architecture is the most directly dependent upon these external forces. Many theorists and practitioners have addressed this obligatory relationship, forming two major camps: those that reject the external and those that willingly embrace it. However, both sides still conceive of architecture as an object, an image, or a spectacle, making the debate futile. Thus, the process of commodification continues to compromise architecture. In opposition to the monological force of commodification are “fields,” inclusive conditions capable of accommodating architecture's need for an “autonomous ideology,” as well as society's desire for a “cultural commodity,” compromising neither. Is it possible that in considering architecture as a “field condition,” this atrophied debate could be avoided, enabling a return to an architecture of performance rather than appearance? The most fertile ground in which to explore the deflection of market forces is America's greatest landmark, a capitalistic icon, The White House Complex.

Committee: George Thomas Bible (Committee Chair); Rebecca Williamson (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2007, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

In an era commodified by images and sounds throughout the global public landscape, architecture is not only being transformed by new technology, but by the mediated subject. Located within a technologically evolving and consumer driven culture, architects are redefining the future image of buildings that are intended to serve the regional community, but also the public global realm. This design project will provide an architectural deployment that suggests an occupation of critical consciousness in Detroit, Michigan. The initial temporary structures will house satellite black box studios for a period of ten years, which will then be followed by series of permanent archive structures to house the work from the studios. The results will illustrate that temporal spatial structures can enlarge the role of architecture and value of spatial engagements in the global public landscape.

Committee: Michael McInturf (Advisor) Subjects: Architecture

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2002, Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning : Art History

In a long, distinguished, and varied career, The Wizard of Scenic Creation,1 artist John Rettig (1858 1932) culturally stimulated and entertained the newly formed middle classes of the United States and, in particular, Cincinnati, Ohio with his grand multimedia exhibitions known as spectacles. These spectacles were similar in style to tableaux vivants with musical orchestration and dance, as well as sporting events and hand-to-hand combat. Rettig created these large-scale visual feasts for the eye in the 1880s and 1890s for, among others, the Order of Cincinnatus, a group dedicated to enhancing the stature of Cincinnati. This organization prided itself in producing entertainments that will be a credit to the city with the power to draw large numbers of visitors.2 Building on the tradition of pageantry in America in the nineteenth century, Rettig moved beyond his contemporaries in creating visual events on such a large scale that, when first shown in Cincinnati, newspapers from New York and Boston, among other cities, reported on having never experienced anything more grand or exciting. A case study of the 1889 spectacle produced for the Order of Cincinnatus, Montezuma or the Conquest of Mexico, provides insight into the achievements and career of a little known artist working in a relatively unexplored medium. This thesis on Rettig presents a study involving the artistic genre known as spectacle as well as the cultural climate of Cincinnati and the United States in general during the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Committee: Theresa Leininger-Miller (Advisor) Subjects: