Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Arts Administration, Education and Policy

Within the last 10 years, social media has become an increasingly prevalent component in the daily lives of students, including those in universities. Although many social media sites were developed and updated within this timeframe, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, research on how the latter can be implemented as a pedagogical tool is minimal, appearing only relatively recently in comparison to that of others. More specifically, little research has been done to address the potential uses for Instagram within the field of art and visual culture education, including university courses. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to address how a curriculum model in a university visual culture education course can incorporate platforms associated with Instagram and the ways in which this impacts student engagement while also supporting pedagogical development. Coming from a formal art history background, my understanding of how one teaches and learns about art conformed to stereotypical views of education, such as taking notes with pen and paper and memorizing the information provided. Specifically, because I was discouraged from using technology in fine arts classes, I viewed it as being incompatible with this particular learning environment. However, upon entering the field of art education, it became clear to me that a sense of discomfort was present in the classroom when I employed policies that did not allow for the use of technology. Recognizing this disconnect, I sought to discover the ways in which an intentional application of personal technology use could be implemented into a visual culture curriculum to promote student engagement. As such, utilizing the theoretical frameworks of intersectional feminism, connectivism, and pragmatism, I employed the use of pedagogical action research to design and implement a new curriculum component for an art education course that focuses on visual culture's relationship to social justice and diversity. The (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dana Kletchka (Committee Co-Chair); Jennifer Richardson (Committee Co-Chair); Christine Ballengee Morris (Committee Member); Joni Boyd Acuff (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education; Communication; Curriculum Development; Educational Technology; Literacy; Pedagogy; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2018, Curriculum and Instruction

This qualitative, phenomenological case study was designed to explore the experiences and perceptions of four studio art education faculty members in higher education related to the phenomena of, visual culture (VC), multicultural art education (MAE), and cultural awareness (CA) and their perception of impacts in students. Data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews in face-to-face settings addressing the three concepts, their descriptions, themes and variations, techniques, and strategies, and descriptions, the influence of VC, and the influence of MCAE on students' CA. The data analysis plan applied Moustakas's (1994) seven-step modified van Kaam method and was used in conjunction with NVivo8®, Speech Texter software, and Temi software, which aided in organizing and categorizing data. The findings of the study indicated that (a) art faculty member in higher education considered cultural awareness as a comprehensive concept and (b) there is a natural overlap in experiences with visual culture and multicultural art education in art programs. Art faculty members reported that visual culture is a way that support students' understanding of how to effectively apply visual communication concepts to their daily lives, art faculty members use visual culture different themes and variation/ strategies and techniques every day in their teaching practices. The findings also indicated that awareness of the diversity of cultures can be understood through the multicultural art education that involves different themes and variation/ strategies and techniques.

Committee: Victoria Stewart (Committee Chair) Subjects: Art Education; Curricula; Education

MA, Kent State University, 2014, College of the Arts / School of Art

Teaching socially transformative art lessons can instill positive social change in individual students, classroom environment, and the school setting. However, many art teachers do not attempt socially transformative art lessons at the risk of disciplinary action, termination, personal safety, and reputation. This single subject case-study examines a successful socially transformative art lesson executed in the classroom and reveals strategies that will assist other art educators.

Committee: Linda Hoeptner Poling PhD. (Advisor) Subjects: Art Education

MA, Kent State University, 2015, College of the Arts / School of Art

This research focuses on the motivation of adolescent students, including several with special needs, in an art classroom to create artworks through the use of digital and Visual Culture experiences. Action research was conducted in two different classroom settings over several months in a public school. Each class period was recorded with audio and video to analyze the students' responses to Visual Culture stimuli with structured discussion questions and relevant studio production. To blend this study with Narrative inquiry, other field texts collected as data included research notes, written and audio-recorded critical reflections on teaching, and photographs of students' artworks. Students involved in the study were part of inclusion classrooms including students with special needs, and students who are identified as gifted. All the students went through a unit of lessons that centered on artworks created as responses to Visual Culture experiences from the student's lives. Interpretations of student art production indicated that all of them were similarly motivated, though students had different responses to Visual Culture experiences that ranged from strong likes and dislikes of celebrity images and enjoyment of humorous personified animal images. Capitalizing on their fascinations with popular images such toys, video games, and animals, Visual Culture can serve as a bridge between students of varying cognitive and academic backgrounds, allowing them to create art as a community rather than as individuals. Research findings concurred with a pilot study which also found that students both collect Visual Culture as a way to construct their identity, and that Visual Culture can be a language through which students can communicate. Though in this study the Visual Culture studied was carefully curated to benefit the lessons taught, the students showed their interests in many other varied experiences that surfaced during the implementation of this pedagogy. One of the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Koon-Hwee Kan PhD (Advisor); Linda Hoeptner-Poling PhD (Committee Member); Juliann Dorff MAT (Committee Member); Jeanne Ruscoe-Smith PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Art Education

In an expanding technological ecology, the spaces of learning in art education require a new appraisal of the role that visual technologies serve to learners. Through intersections of actor-network theory and theories of visuality from visual culture studies, this research focuses on developing a social ontology to investigate the role that the visual technology Photoshop plays in collaborating with users within a human-technological hybrid. In a role reversal, for this research I become the instrument of research and Photoshop becomes the focus of a non-human ethnographic inquiry that utilizes an ontological framework to consider how technology performs with us and not on us. This symmetry between human and non-humans in a social ontology generates the complexity of Photoshop in a heterogeneous network formation of agencies, through more than its instrumentality, by seeing it working with me in the production of digital visual culture.

Committee: Kevin Tavin (Committee Chair); Sydney Walker (Committee Member); Jennifer Eisenhauer (Committee Member); Robert Sweeny (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Art Education

This qualitative, interpretive case study uses a psychoanalytically informed theory base to examine students' perceptions of television criticism essays and writing processes created in the undergraduate course Criticizing Television, which was developed and taught by the researcher from 2005—2009. The impetus for this research emerges from gaps in the art education literature on the issue of visual culture criticism writing pedagogies. In this case study, the focal concepts critical consciousness and subjectivity guide consideration of multiple data sources, including students' criticism essays, E-mail correspondence, online survey, researcher's teaching journal, and literature from art education, composition studies, and psychoanalytic studies in education. Resulting from this research of students' criticism writing is the development of an impasse methodology, a psychoanalytically informed perspective on reflexive readings of, and responses to, students' criticism writing. The case study conceptualizes the research results as consequences, within which are embedded suggestions for future research and practice. By problematizing visual culture criticism writing within existing, traditional art criticism paradigms, the research addresses a significant gap in art education theory and practice in regard to student writing and subjectivity in contemporary visual culture art education.

Committee: Candace Stout PhD (Advisor); Sydney Walker PhD (Committee Member); Jennifer Eisenhauer PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Criticism; Art Education; Curricula; Mass Media; Pedagogy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Art Education

This dissertation examines the identity construction of five manga fans by exploring their creation of comics and their cosplay. Certain identity themes emerged through a Lacanian interpretation using a qualitative/interpretivist paradigm. Data collection relied primarily on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with participants, and included their cosplay photos as well as their manga drawings and stories. Specifically, Lacan's concepts of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real were used to interpret these participants' identities. The study showed not only that identity is not always determined by the Symbolic (conscious act), but also that it is governed by unconscious desire and fantasy (of the Real). While unconscious desire (Real) continues to break the fixibility of identity, the Symbolic remains an oppressed ruling Other that determines which identity is positive and which negative. The Imaginary is a most important outlet in terms of identity building for the subject, the freedom to make changes, and the power to heal one's fixity against change (provide hope) in light of the Other's gaze. Some of Lacan's concepts – gaze, fantasy, desire/lack, camouflage – are also discussed by way of explaining identity-related themes.

Committee: Sydney Walker (Committee Chair); Maureen Donovan (Committee Member); Jennifer Eisenhauer (Committee Member); Patricia Stuhr (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, Art Education

There is a disconnection between the visual and visuality when it comes to the issues of representation and identity for a particular group of people. According to Sturken and Cartwright (2001) visuality can concern how we see everyday objects and people, not just those things we think of as visual texts (p. 370). The relationship between images and their visuality renders serious consequences when the group (i.e. Black women) in question is misrepresented. Images of misrepresentation are even more consequential when it occurs within the realms of mass media and popular visual culture because the viewing audience is pervasive. So then, the question that must be asked is how can marginalized groups that are misrepresented in a highly visual world take control of their images? How can they acquire the agency to construct self and group identity? These questions addressed in this research study where their answers can be cultivated and examined within the realm of contemporary art, mass media and popular visual culture. I use a mixed methods approach to collect data through the development of both a focus group and use of content analysis, rhetorical analysis and a quantitative survey (i.e., The Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale). A focus group is useful in gaining knowledge from disenfranchised or marginalized groups. Specifically, the goals of this study call for the use of Participatory Action Research (PAR) with a small population of Black women at The Ohio State University and the use of a survey and questionnaires that measure self-esteem and perception. The main goal for conducting a theoretical and participatory study of the images of Black women in visual art and popular visual culture is to develop pedagogical recommendations of how visual culture scholars can use narrative inquiry and counter-narrative to explore race and gender representation.

Committee: Vesta Daniel Ed.D (Committee Chair); Osei Appiah PhD (Committee Member); Karen Hutzel PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; American Studies; Art Education; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2010, Art Education

Two primary questions guide this research. The first is as follows: “What intersections exist between pedagogies of visual culture in art education and narrative epistemology?” The second is as follows: “What might the significance of locating and analyzing these intersections be to art education?” Dual literature reviews on pedagogies of visual culture in art education and narrative epistemology are first presented. In the first, broad patterns throughout research on pedagogies of visual culture in art education are analyzed. In the second on narrative epistemology, patterns in literature describing the constitution of knowledge through narrative thought and text are analyzed. Through conducting these dual literature reviews, two distinct intersections are located and described, thus answering the first research question. The first intersection described is the theoretical contexts of postmodernism, poststructuralism and constructivism. The second intersection described is representation, understood as socially constructed depiction of perceptions of reality. By locating these intersections, the interrelatedness of these two fields is proven. Being so compatible, significance for art education resides in the possible ways each field might impact the other. Possibilities of reconceptualizion for present and future forms of art education and research are considered. The significance for art education is demonstrated in possibilities that are specific and wide-reaching.

Committee: Candace Stout PhD (Advisor); Patricia Stuhr PhD (Other) Subjects: Art Education

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2008, Art Education

This qualitative study is designed as Africentric research to fill a gap in the historical narratives on African American art and visual culture. Specifically, it focuses on the historical and cultural significance of the art and visual culture of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These visual artifacts, known collectively as Black Art, are directly linked to the Black Power concept and the Black Liberation Struggle. Why Black Art has been overlooked in Art Education and how it can benefit the field as a site for enhancing racial literacy are the questions that drive this research. This study looks at this dilemma as indicative of reductive bias due to a lack of knowledge about Black Art and persisting racial discourses associated with Black Art and its time. And this study explores the epistemological base, i.e., the origin, nature and intent of Black Art, as well as the movement's influence on art-making, and arts influence on it. Considered an art form itself, the movement was at the epicenter of the historical and cultural nexus that birthed the Black Studies Movement, multiculturalism, identity politics, culturally-relevant education and Africentricity. The Black Arts Movement is one of the most productive and artistically inventive periods in American history. However despite this, Black Art is stilled maligned and misunderstood. Critical race theory breaks through the racialization and reductive bias blocking interest in Black Art; optimal theory weighs the efficacy of its visual codes. Black Art is thus reCognized by exploring the nexus between its historical and cultural content and intent.

Committee: Vesta Daniel PhD (Advisor); Christine Morris PhD (Committee Member); Horace Newsum PhD (Advisor); William Nelson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; Art Education; Art History; Black History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, Art Education

This study is an investigation of RastafarI culture primarily in Columbus, Ohio. It is a personal journey of places I have traveled and observed RastafarI culture including Jamaica, Ghana, and Brazil. This study speaks to the impact of RastafarI in those locations and questions how the appropriation and commodification of RastafarI culture affects the movements'authenticity. This research uses a reflexive autoethnographic approach to write the stories of the twelve people who were interviewed in the study. The first chapter, in this study, describes the events in my life that lead to the development of this research. It explains the purpose and significance of the study, as well as, defines the research questions. The first chapter also discusses the qualitative experimental writing techniques I chose to use in the research. Chapter two historicizes the African Diaspora making connections between Jamaican, Ethiopian, and Columbus's histories. It gives a brief overview of RastafarI history and culture in Jamaica and addresses the events and people who shaped Black Nationalistic thought regarding Ethiopianism in the United States. The chapter concludes by discussing RastafarI as part of the diverse artistic, musical, and cultural landscape of Columbus. The third chapter conceptualizes RastafarI through the theoretical lenses of critical theory and social movement theory. It presents the challenges inherent in prescribing theoretical constructs to a movement that has been defined and interpreted differently by scholars as well as by those who prescribe to the movements' philosophy. The qualitative ethnographic methodology employed in this study is discussed in chapter four. The location of the research is established, the method of data collection analysis, and limitations of the study are discussed. The participant's narratives are presented in this chapter. In the fifth chapter, I conclude the study by establishing pedagogical implications, revisiting my research (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Terry Barrett PhD (Advisor); Vesta Daniel PhD (Committee Member); Maurice Stevens PhD (Committee Member); Patricia Stuhr PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, Art Education

Over the last several decades numerous scholarly articles and books have been published on Moroccan art forms. Yet, these studies have consistently examined Morocco's traditional works or its older forms of artistic practices. Specifically, Morocco's ceramics objects and textiles are among the most commonly examined works. As a result of this emphasis, only a partial view of Morocco's rich artistic production has been presented. Currently, Moroccan Art is consistently viewed as static and the 19th century western Orientalist image of Morocco has more or less remained. Visual Culture within the country and beyond its border continues to reinforce these antiquated perceptions. To identify the range of works of art produced within Morocco, a multi-method ethnographic approach was utilized. Using information drawn from fieldwork conducted in Morocco in 2002, 2004, and 2006, contemporary artistic practices were examined and analyzed within a social and historical context. Personal narratives from my fieldwork in 2006 added layers of information to enrich my study of Moroccan art and culture. My findings revealed that Morocco's rich historical past includes a multiplicity of cultures and influences. As a result, the country's contemporary artistic production mirrors the complexity of this past. Additionally, works produced today address current social and political issues within a global environment. Moroccan Art is not static, but diverse and fluid. By studying a range of contemporary works of art and visual culture produced within the country, perceptions about Morocco's art forms and its people will be redefined.

Committee: Patricia Stuhr PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Art Education; Art History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2008, Art Education

Gender and technology scholarship demonstrates a longstanding, persistence gender gap reflecting the inequity between the large numbers of men and small numbers of women in technology educational courses and careers. What instructional and institutional changes can address and counteract the current gender inequity status quo? This dissertation presents a two-year critical case study of Digital Animation: A Technology Mentoring Program for Young Women, a pedagogical intervention that intends to increase the likelihood of young women participants pursuing future educational, personal, and professional technology opportunities. The program, situated at The Ohio State University's Advanced Computing Center for Art and Design, provides a group of 15 to 18 young women with an intensive two-week animation experience using Maya 3D animation software to produce short films on local environmental issues. The major program hypothesis is that women may be more likely to learn technology as embedded within an arts-centered curriculum, where arts function as the primary medium for learning and communication, as opposed to traditional computer technology instruction. Learning becomes co-constructed, collaborative, interdisciplinary, creative, and personal; learners become active. The aim is to provide participants with personal instructional support, a peer network, mentors, examples of successful women in technology, personal success, and exposure to a wide range of technology possibilities. I use gender and technology scholarship in conjunction with multiple critical theoretical perspectives, including feminist poststructuralist pedagogy and visual culture art education, to create a multi-faceted, complex framework for analyzing Digital Animation, its efforts, and its outcomes. This case study presents data highlighting ways a visual culture art education orientation can also utilize other critical theoretical perspectives, such as feminist poststructuralist pedagogy, to a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Candace Stout PhD (Committee Chair); Maria Palazzi MFA (Committee Member); Sydney Walker PhD (Committee Member); Jennifer Eisenhauer PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Education; Computer Science; Education; Gender; Technology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, Art Education

My dissertation, situated in a Foucauldian framework, begins with a view of visual culture as a discourse where knowledge, pleasure, and power of images intersect. This dissertation first argues that a depthless visual field is discursively formed in and through Japanese culture, which constitutes recurring themes and particularities of Japanese anime. Features of postmodernism, described by Jameson and Baudrillard, are significantly embodied in anime images. By examining three anime works, Cat Soup (2001), The Grave of Fireflies (1988), and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1996), my dissertation argues that anime demonstrates postmodern “depthlessness,” which questions former understandings of “representation." Second, my dissertation investigates how anime images generate a specific kind of pleasure, and how this pleasure offers anime otaku a chance to develop not an escape from ideological constructions, but new ways of creative production in the practitioners' own favor. By examining two anime works, Fooly Cooly (2005) and Revolutionary Girl Utena (1999-2001), I argue that anime images deliberately deploy (1) void signifiers, (2) bodily senses, (3) liminal conditions, and (4) taboos and prohibitive themes to generate visual pleasures that may function as resistance to regulatory power. Further, the pleasure of viewing anime empowers anime otaku to go beyond mere image consumption, to actively and constantly change, manipulate, and subvert anime images through practices. Anime otaku's pleasurable practices demonstrate de-assurance of their supposed identity and engender an imperceptible but playful politics that strays from the social orders in which they reside. The fundamental argument of my dissertation is that anime itself is a site of viewers' education about anime, and that anime as an alternative discourse empowers viewers, youth and adolescents in particular, to participate in creative practices that may generate an imperceptible politics in their own favor. Usin (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jennifer Eisenhauer (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Art

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2005, Art Education

This study explores how the way students learn through visual culture can inform the design of Web-based art education instruction. It focuses on four interrelated topics relevant to current art education curriculum and Web-based learning in higher education: technology and learning, constructivist theory, visual culture, and graphic design. A literature review of each topic in addition to undergraduate student interviews about their experiences contributes to discussing ways to improve Web-based instruction. This interdisciplinary case study presents a critique of the current usability guidelines and standards used for developing websites. The research places an emphasis on the visual interface that serves as the main form of communication between the function of the website and the student audience. The information provides a foundation for interactive design recommendations applicable to Web-based instruction. Recommendations made as a result of this research are applicable to improving constructive, inquiry-based teaching and learning environments in art education and related academic disciplines.

Committee: Robert Arnold (Advisor) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Art Education

Robert Frost once speculated on the relationship between poetry and thought, conjecturing that all thinking was grounded in metaphor. Many people never took him seriously. Now, thanks to the work of many theorists in a number of diverse fields, from linguistics to philosophy to cognitive science, we can say with some certainty that he was right. Sentences build themselves around analogies; thought creates visual pictures in our brains; metaphors shape our ways of seeing the world. All of this appears to be done mostly unconsciously, as we filter messages, both verbal and visual, from our environment and shape those signs and clues into world-responses. The work which hasnt been done thoroughly enough yet is how to apply this central understanding to education. That means investigating metaphor as a means of linking the whole of learning. As one step toward to such a curricular move, this study first traces some of the key theorists involved with what might be called the metaphor revolution and connects them to some related studies in the area of the physicality (the body and its contact with its surrounding world shapes our perception); playfulness (plays role in childhood, art, and society in general); and visuality (the role of visual imagery in the shaping of thought and consciousness). Secondly, I follow the progress of two high school classes as I introduce them to some of the key concepts in poetry, emphasizing the above concepts. Through writing poems about literature, about their home town environment, about sports activities, elemental memory, and visual images, I trace some ways the above concepts influence their writing, their thinking and their perception by means of my own analysis of the text of their poems and their own analysis of their responses via interviews. By the close of the study, I propose a kind of working generative cycle revolving between each of the four categories, so that metaphoric thought breaks down into a four-tiered process, drawi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sydney Walker (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, English

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2007, Art Education (Fine Arts)

The research question for this case study was based on how students in a beginning education class would respond to studying visual culture. In this study, participants were shown a film titled "Ethnic Notions." This film discussed racial visual culture and how it affected and still affects African Americans. The participants in this study answered questionnaires and participated in a critical discussion about visual culture and racist images. Many of the participants had a strong emotional response to the film. The participants stated that they understood the racist imagery better, as well as visual culture. Included in this study are recommendations for teaching topics using visual culture and how it could be incorporated into many educational topics.

Committee: James Schwieger (Advisor) Subjects: