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open access

A Somatic Mindfulness Project Exploring the Effects of Meditation on Art Appreciation in the Gallery Setting

Description: This dissertation describes the effects of a somatic mindfulness project on the way participants interact with and respond to works of art in a gallery setting. The study begins with a critique of Descartes' philosophy, Cartesianism, which emphasizes the role of the mind over that of the body and senses and argues that this thought continues to affect education even today. By contrast, phenomenology and mindfulness practices attempt to overcome Descartes' legacy by focusing on the importance of… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Bassi, Merfat Mohammed
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Creative Networks: Toward Mapping Creativity in a Design Classroom

Description: This study developed new mapping techniques and methodologies for understanding creativity in terms of connectivity and interaction between human and non-human actors in a design classroom. The researcher applied qualitative methods of data collection combining both observation of classroom activities and focus group interviews in order to map a creativity network. The findings indicate that creativity is a complex weather-like system (or what I call "creative climate") composed of many sub-net… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Harkan, Lama Abdulrahman
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Biopedagogy of Rumination and Regurgitation

Description: Regurgitating test answers, needing more time to digest a reading, or being spoon fed information are just a few of many digestive metaphors currently used in education. In taking seriously the use of these metaphors, I suggest that humans recognize a connection, on some level, between the mental act of taking in and processing knowledge and the physical act of digestion, yet in educational discourse, these processes are more often than not cast in a negative light. The following philosophical … more
Date: December 2019
Creator: McIntosh, Shoshana
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Artistic Learning in an MFA Community

Description: The purpose of this phenomenographical case study is to explore the ways in which a group of MFA students conceive of their learning as they are enmeshed within an MFA community. The research follows along two guiding research questions: 1) What does artistic learning involve for graduate students in an MFA community? 2) How is one's artistic practice shaped by one's active participation in an MFA community? The findings of this study have been presented as lines of artistic learning and help t… more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Jilka, Milan
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Building a Collaborative Smartphone Application for Blind and Low Vision Visitors at the Dallas Museum of Art

Description: The goal of my study is to develop a mobile application to enable all visitors, including blind and low-vision visitors, to autonomously gather and share information about interpretations of art and to have a fully independent museum-going experience. With an application, blind visitors have more access to opportunities and tools in the museum, which empowers their museum experience. My study used a qualitative, mixed-methods approach to research how blind and low vision museum visitors might i… more
Date: May 2019
Creator: Aljuidan, Hanan Abdulaziz M
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Creative Matter: Exploring the Co-Creative Nature of Things

Description: This dissertation is about new materialism as it relates to art education. It is a speculative inquiry that seeks to illuminate the interconnectivity of things by considering the ways in which things participate in generative practices of perceiving and making. To do so, the dissertation pioneers an arts-based methodology that allows for broad considerations about who and what can be considered an agent in the process of art making. In this inquiry, the researcher is an artist-participant wi… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Hood, Emily Jean
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Dis/Appearance, In/Visibility and the Transitioning Body on Social Media: A Post-Qualitative and Multimodal Inquiry

Description: Text component of a doctoral dissertation, which references the full dissertation content in a multi-media web-based format. It includes a background statement, acknowledgements section, printed navigation guide and site map for the website, and a full list of references.
Date: December 2018
Creator: Jenkins, Kevin
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Perceiving Indeterminacy: A Theoretical Framework of the Perceptual Rite of Passage for Preadolescents

Description: It is the fundamental insight of phenomenology that meaning is first and foremost - not something which we intellectually reflect on. It is not a product of the mind reworking raw, perceptual experiences. Rather meaning, and our connection to the world, are perceptual phenomena. Thus, to understand the ways in which children find meaning demands a turn toward perceptual experiences - how children see and feel. In this theoretical dissertation, I explore questions of perceptual experiences throu… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Herman, David
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Portraits of Young Artists: Artworlds, In/Equity, and Dis/Identification in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Description: Using portraiture methodology and social practice theory, this study examined the identity work of young people engaged in a teen arts internship program at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans. This research asked four interrelated questions. Through the lens of a teen arts internship at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans, 1) How do contextual figured worlds influence artist identity work? 2) How does artist identity work manifest through personal narrat… more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Travis, Sarah Teresa
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

How Does It Feel to be Creative? A Phenomenological Investigation of the Creative Experience in Kinetic Places

Description: How does it feel to be creative? Such a question, when approached from a phenomenological perspective, reveals new understandings about the embodied experience of creativity, and how it feels as it is being lived. This investigation begins with a provocative contrast of two environments where creativity is thought to manifest itself: school art classrooms, where creativity is often legislated from an authority figure, and New Orleans Second Line parades, where creativity is organically and kin… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Bartholomee, Lucy
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Examining the Influence of Visual Culture on a Saudi Arabian Child's Drawings

Description: This study examines the ways visual culture influences a child's drawings. The child is my 9-year-old daughter Nada, who was born in Saudi Arabia and is a fourth-grade student temporarily living in the United States. The study uses qualitative methods of data collection and exploratory case study research design as a methodology. The data were analyzed in light of Althusser's theory of ideology, specifically the notion of interpellation, along with visual culture theories. In addition, gend… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Alshaie, Fouzi Salem
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Exploring the Process of Developing a Glocally Focused Art Curriculum for Two Communities

Description: The world is becoming progressively interconnected through technology, politics, culture, economics, and education. As educators we strive to provide instruction that prepares students to become active members of both their local and global communities. This dissertation presents one possible avenue for engaging students with art and multifaceted ideas about culture, community, and politics as it explores the possibilities for creating a community-based, art education curriculum that seeks a … more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Hartman, Jennifer D
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Place-Based and Intergenerational Art Education

Description: This qualitative inquiry explored how art educators might broaden their views of place through critical encounters with art, local visual culture, and working with older artists. I combined place-based (PB) education and intergenerational (IG) learning as the focus of an art education curriculum writing initiative with in-service art educators within a museum setting to produce PBIG art education. This study engaged art educators in cooperative action research using a multi-modal approach, incl… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Langdon, Elizabeth Ann
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Museum is the Object: An Action Research Study in How Critical Theory Curriculum Influences Student Understanding of an Art Museum

Description: The purpose of this action research study was to determine how a critical theory curriculum implemented in a college-level art appreciation course impacted student understanding of an encyclopedic art museum. A critical theory-based curriculum unit was designed and implemented, and students were given assignments to assess their learning. The most significant assignment centered on a self-guided student visit to the art museum in which students made detailed observations of the museum spaces an… more
Date: December 2016
Creator: Elizondo, Kristina Kay
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

A Narrative Study about the Transformative Visual Cultural Dialogue beyond Women's Veils

Description: In this narrative study, I explore the transformative visual cultural dialogue behind the sight of the veil or veiled women in Denton, Texas as a Western culture. The narrative is constructed from the experiences of three Western non-Muslim women participants who wore the veil publicly in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, especially Denton, Texas, for about two weeks, in the spring of 2014. The main question for this study is: How do veiled Western women incite transformative visual cultural dialogue… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Aljebreen, Fahad Mohammad
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Art Education Policy: Interpretation and the Negotiation of Praxis

Description: This collective case study explores the confluence of educational policy and professional praxis by examining the ways art teachers in one public school district make decisions about creating and implementing curricula. Through various interpretations of one district's formal and informal expectations of art teachers, some of the complexities of standards, instruction, and assessment policies in public schools are described. The research shares how art teachers are influenced by local policy… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Garth, Timothy Brian
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Unpacking Self in Clutter and Cloth: Curator as Artist/Researcher/Teacher

Description: This a/r/tographic dissertation offers opportunities to interrogate curator identity and curator ways of being in both public and private spaces. Instead of an authoritative or prescriptive look at the curatorial, this dissertation as catalogue allows for uncertainty, for messiness, for vulnerable spaces where readers are invited into an exhibition of disorderly living. Stitched throughout the study are stories of mothering and the difficulties that accompanied the extremely early birth of my… more
Date: May 2016
Creator: McCartney, Laura Lee
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Animated Autoethnographies: Using Stop Motion Animation As a Catalyst for Self-acceptance in the Art Classroom

Description: As a doctoral student, I was asked to teach a course based on emerging technologies and postmodern methods of inquiry in the field of art education. The course was titled Issues and Applications of Technology in Art Education and I developed a method of inquiry called animated autoethnography for pre-service art educators while teaching this course. Through this dissertation, I describe, analyze, interrogate, value, contextualize, reflect on, and artistically react to the autoethnographic anima… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Blair, Jeremy Michael
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Interrelated Histories, Practices, and Forms of Communication: Using Arabic Calligraphy to Learn Arabic Typography

Description: In this self-study inquiry, I studied my graphic design practice in a professional setting, focusing on my Arabic typographic skills and knowledge. My roles as researcher and design educator indivisibly intertwined throughout this research. I worked to understand the value of calligraphy in art and design education, highlighting its power as an art form while also emphasizing its pedagogical potentials. I utilized two theoretical approaches suited to investigating and understanding the Arabi… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Al-Ansari, Banan Ahmed
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Disrupting the Discourse of the Other: a Transformative Learning Study of African Art

Description: The primary question of this study is: How does the disruption of African art discourse influence a group of university students’ perceptions of African aesthetics? This inquiry developed from previous studies on the exclusion of modern and contemporary African art in Western art museums. Through the theoretical lens of Postcolonial Theory and Critical Multiculturalism, this research conceptualizes the dominance of traditional African art in art museums, art history, and art education as a We… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Nangah, Mary Mbongo
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Enacting Community Through the Arts

Description: This study is concerned with the roles and relationships between artists-in-residence, community audiences, and program coordinators/art educators as they engage together in community arts programs. This study takes place at Project Row Houses (PRH), a community arts organization located in Houston, Texas and focuses on the artist-in-residence program, which commissions a group of national and international artists for a 6-month period to create art installations in relation to the community a… more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Keller, Sarita Talusani
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Sexual Orientation and the Advanced Placement Art History Survey

Description: This two-part study included a content analysis of an AP art history text and a survey together with interviews with AP art history teachers that embraced both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. The first phase of the study examined one of the more popular art history survey texts in the AP art history program, Gardner’s Art through the Ages, in terms of how inclusive it is in addressing issues of sexual orientation and, particularly, same-sex perspectives. In addition, the t… more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Bond, Richard P.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Engaging Lives: a Nomadic Inquiry Into the Spatial Assemblages and Ethico-aesthetic Practices of Three Makers

Description: This research is a nomadic inquiry into the ethics and aesthetics of three makers’ social and material practices. Deleuze’s concept of the nomad operated in multiple ways throughout the process, which was embedded in performative engagements that produced narratives of becoming. Over four months, I built relationships with three people as I learned about the ethico-aesthetic significance of their daily practices. The process started by interviewing participants in their homes and expanded ov… more
Date: May 2014
Creator: Coats, Cala R.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Creating a Heterotopic Space: Reflections on Pre-service Art Educators’ Narratives

Description: My autobiographical research focuses on creating digital heterotopias through social media platforms, providing safe spaces which allow art teacher candidates the opportunity to reflect upon their practicum experiences and question the status quo of institutional myths and inherited discourses in teacher fieldwork. Functions of heterotopic space link together and reflect other pedagogical sites, including institutional spaces. Heterotopias are often designed to be temporal and hidden from publi… more
Date: May 2014
Creator: Hyatt, Joana S.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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