Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Voice As Identity: How Opera Has Influenced Dubbing In Italy And The United States, Brynn Allison Staker

Theses and Dissertations

An enduring Italian tradition of celebrating the voice and the Italian language as seen by the Italian perception and interest in opera has created an environment of celebration for Italian dubbers. The long-established history of opera in Italy, as well as the modern reception of Italian opera, have effectively placed the voice at the forefront of the Italian entertainment industry. This can be seen through an examination of the careers of Italian dubbers and the success that they saw in their industry. The United States did not have a longstanding operatic tradition, and when opera was introduced it was under …

The J In Danger, Zachary Delamater

Theses and Dissertations

“The J in Danger” merges autobiographic and formal concerns in sculpture and installation to describe the existential hazards contemporary life poses to Queer and Disabled individuals. The paper utilizes silent letters as thematic device to connect notions of precarity to a broader sense of contemporary “doomerism.”

Container Film, Dena Kopolovich

Theses and Dissertations

Container Film is an experimental nonfiction short film that explores the theme of carrying. Drawing inspiration from a blend of anthropological, religious, and artistic sources, the film is guided by an unknown narrator who contemplates the origins of humanity. Unlike conventional storytelling, the narrator’s uncertainty and inner dialogue punctuate the narrative, challenging a traditional linear structure. Jumping between diverse thoughts, she resists depicting human history with a singular hero or linear trajectory. Visually, the film unfolds through vivid tableaux vivants, dance sequences, and curious object arrangements, illustrating the subtle relationship between human cognition and materiality. Through its nuanced, tactile approach, …

Arrival Of Spring, Ryan Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Ryan Johnson’s plein air paintings address a season of personal longing by relying on the empathetic power of observational painting. His current series of oil on linen panels, painted on site, track the transition from winter to spring in and around New York City. In “Arrival of Spring”, he reflects on the decisions made on site, art historical influences, and the hope of anticipation.

Reflections Of Little Red Dot: An Interactive Mixed Reality Archival Experience, Chloé Lee

Theses and Dissertations

It has been nearly a decade since I last visited Singapore, a place I am connected to yet an outsider. Reflections of Little Red Dot is a mixed-reality experience that animates my archive of drawings, videos, and 3D imagery from everyday Singaporeans in 2015, the year their country celebrated its 50th birthday.

Walking through this liminal mixed reality space, we hear how citizens are personally affected by the rapidly developing landscape and erasure of personal and historical sites of significance while reflecting on our collective agency to shape the future of our environments. We are invited into homes where loved …

The Fuller The Bucket Is, The Harder It Is To Fly, Jacob Littlejohn

Theses and Dissertations

My abstract paintings are informed by the momentary sublime rooted in the vastness of the natural world. Based on imagined and real landscapes, the work evokes minutia and phenomena that affect our perceptions of reality, and signifies a longing to reconnect with the natural world.

The Set Falls Apart, Thomas F. Tait

Theses and Dissertations

Using systems, puppets, and reappropriated technologies as central features of my practice, in my work I explore allegorical connections and cross-affiliations between otherwise separate ontological categories. In this text, I draw on sources such as affect theory, science fiction, theater, and the uncanny, to consider our affectual relationship to the nonhuman.

Aguaaaa!!!, Cory Villegas

Theses and Dissertations

“AGUA” is a call for new models of learning and sharing, celebrating the diasporic as a place of global revolution. Salsa, rooted in Latin American and Afro-Caribbean histories, is choreographer Cory Villegas’s expression of cultural legacy. As an Afro-diasporic dance, Salsa carries the wealth and variety of African and Indigenous roots. Villegas contextualizes her thesis event “Las Leyendas: An Afro Cuban Suite,” presenting herself and her troupe Soul Dance Co. as evidence that contradicts the erasure of Latin & Caribbean Culture in US dance history. The paper uses English and Spanish, written, visual, and oral materials with an accompanying webpage.

Welcome To The Apocalypse, Demetrius E. Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

DW’s abstract, vibrant, and bipolar paintings stem from a place of personal biography and collectively shared experience. In this paper, he examines the apocalypse, human nature, tragedy, and the demise of adolescence in our era in the face of increasing technological advances.

“Liberté, Égalité, Sororité”: The Revolutionary All-Female Studio Of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Julia Oxman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers the first in-depth exploration of French portraitist Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s all-female studio. It argues that her efforts toward expanding access to women’s arts education played a key role in the foundation of a larger movement for gender equality in the wake of the French Revolution.

Past And Future Winds, Alicia Ehni

Theses and Dissertations

Ehni’s thesis reflects on the role of wind to connect and transform. Looking at science and invisible forces like Earth’s magnetic field, her "Oculus" sculptures evoke old tools for orientation & migration. Birds, insects, plants, roads and sand, appear in a video and an experimental 16mm pinhole film of her bike journey along the Hudson River, NY. “Coordinates”, a magnetic drawing installation, addresses impermanence, attraction to land and fragility. Tracing memories of the Paracas desert in Peru, this thesis follows her interest in alchemy, ecology and the cosmos.

Manuel Ponce: Father Of Mexican Nationalistic Music, Guillermo Sanchez Gutierrez

Theses and Dissertations

The influence of Manuel Ponce (1882-1948) in early 20th-century Mexico serves as a precursor to the emerging nationalistic sounds sought after the 1910 revolution. Despite the challenges posed by Mexico's music education system, Ponce's private tutelage enabled him to achieve European standards, marking a significant progress in the broader efforts of 19th-century Mexican musicians to attain proper musical training. Ponce's method of creating an authentic Mexican sound involved reconstructing folklore music, blending it with European styles, and aligning himself with the Indigenismo movement. His compositional trajectory, marked by trips to Europe and distinct musical periods such as Romanticism, Nationalism, and …

A Study Of Art Education Strategies For Remote Learning During The Pandemic, Stephanie Cook

Theses and Dissertations

In the wake of COVID-19, educators had to adjust their curriculum and pedagogies to create an environment of learning while their students couldn't come into the classroom. As teachers and students alike adapted to this new distance learning, they encountered many obstacles which made it difficult to teach and to learn compared to what they were used to in a traditional in-person classroom setting. This thesis document compiles my research about the advantages and disadvantages of remote learning before, during, and post-pandemic. The research component of this project consists of the commentary of four art educators who share what they …

Sometimes Windows Break, Samantha Snyder

Theses and Dissertations

The sensation of detachment and reclusion frequently gives rise to an uncanny and dreamlike space. Enveloped within this dimension, the quirks of memory become a fragile lifeline to bygone, intangible ideas of reality. Fixated on this threshold, my artistic explorations in print, collage, and assemblage navigates these elusive realms, rendering fragmented and distant shapes and figures in stark contrast to elements that evoke an eerie sense of familiarity. In this manner, my work invites viewers to embrace the disconcerting and unsettling aspects of the in-between, all the while establishing an unsettling connection to reality through the lens of nostalgic objects …

Hózhó + Art Heals, Eugene Tapahe

Theses and Dissertations

The land where I grew up gives me a sense of purpose and belonging. It embodies the Navajo concept of hózhó, which represents harmony, beauty, and balance. Being in tune with this spiritual connection inspires me to bring people together through art and healing. I use natural materials like sand, sage, cedar, tree twigs, and yellow and blue cornmeal to create my art. To maintain the spirituality of my work, I employ traditional and ritualistic harvesting methods passed down from generation to generation. These techniques are deeply connected to the land and are essential to my identity as an artist …

Studio As Laboratory: Prioritizing Artistic Fluency Through The Morphogenesis Of Paper, Jeannette Lina Neal

Theses and Dissertations

This paper describes a curriculum designed to examine relationships between artistic fluency in middle school art classrooms, and a robust year-long paper curriculum. A sustained focus with one material, such as paper, combined with relevant artists and investigative skills activities was designed to increase artistic fluency during a time when students often experience a decline in identity and confidence. Concerns with the U-curve theory suggest that many factors affect the continuity of art during these crucial years of school. Educational standards of the Reggio Emilia Approach can be applied to secondary education, encouraging both students and educator to create dynamic …

Developing An Artistic Self In Preservice Elementary Teachers: A Studio Art Curriculum To Promote Art Integration, Karilee D. Park

Theses and Dissertations

With the continual use of standardized testing, teaching art in schools, particularly elementary schools, often falls to generalist teachers with little to no experience in art. While art can be integrated into daily curriculum for deeper and lasting learning, without the proper training or support, generalist teachers are left to implement art as they encountered it in the past, if at all. Artistic anxiety and culturally misappropriated artistic experiences result in the arts being used inefficiently or avoided completely. Creating a curriculum for preservice elementary generalist teachers, I explored art integration through developing artistic confidence, skill, and identity for 16 …

As If It Were One Day, Megan Rowley Stern

Theses and Dissertations

As If It Were One Day is a multimedia art installation that chronicles patterns of light, movement, and sound, channeling the fluidity of time within the newborn phase of familial living. After giving birth to my daughter, I spent the next seven weeks observing these elements and recording them via video. The resulting art installation acknowledges my efforts to navigate my current life as an artist and a mother, my past battle with postpartum depression, and my consequent gravitation toward light.

Validating Boyness: How Art Education Allows Male Adolescent Students A Space For Authenticity, Vulnerability, Empathy, And Connection, Stephanie Behlke-Mcfarland

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines societal norms and unwritten rules for boys as they mature. It is hypothesized that most boys deal with emotional suppression or dissociation in varying degrees of severity due to traumas during their developmental years. This dissociation creates an inability to express their own emotions adequately and therefore affects their ability to empathize with others. A lack of vulnerability may also be a common challenge among boys society still considers vulnerability weakness. This pattern continues into adulthood and is then perpetuated through posterity and future generations. This thesis explores through a qualitative case study how using art integration …

Still Life Happens, Mary Ann Crabtree

Theses and Dissertations

After dedicating over two years to pursuing an MFA degree focused on ceramics and sculpture, I find myself transported back to a familiar setting from my past: a tableau reminiscent of what remained in the dining space after four young children finished a meal and exited the room. Revisiting the scene recalls happy times despite the disorder. What helped maintain my sanity during the relentless repetition of the every-day-long task was the realization that every day, innocents are learning to become aware of the world around them. For my thesis exhibition, I created a tableau as a loud reminder of …

Pan Shot!, Samuel Robert Gaston Mattax

Theses and Dissertations

Sam Mattax's practice is aimed at working through what he has lived and what he is living. They are self-involved diaristic building blocks of marking time and release. The layered drawings negotiate Sam's history and his day to day, distorting one another into a place of unrecognizable space and condensed energy. It is a process of attaining a loose understanding of his life and forgetting it all at once. Sam's work is survival.

Where The Under And The Over Meet And Disappear, Louisa Owen

Theses and Dissertations

Vignettes of light: light disappearing, light contrasting, light directing, light wandering, and light uncovering.

A Grid And A Shadow, Henry Glavin

Theses and Dissertations

Henry Glavin's acrylic paintings on panel of architectural interiors and facades use repetition, contrived light, unreliable shadows, photographic posture, and compressed detail to create uncanny spaces that generate an air of silence.

Points Of Contact, Giancarlo Venturini

Theses and Dissertations

The work in Points of Contact arises from engaging love as it relates to distance, desire, and longing. This paper will analyze my painting practice and its evolution from the explicit to implicit. Specifically I am going to talk about my utilization of landscape painting to consider another way of expressing sexuality and queerness. I will explain how objects and landscapes are conduits for feelings that can intrinsically hold allegorical representations. This show is about searching through vast spaces to find points of connection in the natural world. I will talk about portals and the varied degrees of accessible windows …

Preexisting Conditionings: Painting, Gaming And Narrative Play, Pia Bakala

Theses and Dissertations

My work incorporates play, fantasy, and self-actualization through painting, sculpture, and video. In this essay, I will explore the ways in which my studio practice intersects with topics across fields of visual arts and in conjunction their theoretical frameworks. I will discuss the culminating body of work, tentatively titled Preexisting Conditionings, that my academic experience at VCU has fostered and trace its development across specific precursive works, as well as the cultural and intellectual touchstones influencing its creative impetus. In Preexisting Conditionings, I work primarily use oil painting, creating mostly representational figurative tableaus that correspond to narratives and characters I’m …

How To Forget, Jesse D. Hoyle

Theses and Dissertations

How To Forget was born from a need to give tangible form to the psychic residue left behind by a life lived. Through the use of silk-screening of red clay mud onto ink-jet photographs, archival textiles, and site-specific installations, I attempt to tie and/or divorce myself from my own and my family's extended history and examine the function of memory within the dynamics of the archive. How To Forget takes a non-linear, non-chronological approach to this examination, compressing decades of time and space through the manipulation of the archive and my own self-portraiture, designed specifically to deny myself from its …

Politics Of Being A Lover: In Art, (Space) And Kink, Rabeeha Adnan

Theses and Dissertations

Politics of being a lover: in art, (space) and kink explores my relationship with my practice through observations and stories that draw parallels with romance and kink. Narrated as love affairs turned into complex commitment, it shuffles through logics of structural power, control, and communication in the context of praxis and art institutions.

Harnessing The Power Of Student Voice: A Case Study Of Hybrid Proficiency-Based And Co-Created Curriculum And Assessment, Kaitlyn A. Seamons

Theses and Dissertations

Assessment has become a dirty word in arts education, because art is notoriously difficult to assess. Assessment, which is often disliked or even disavowed by arts educators, due to its history of incompatibility with the idiosyncratic nature of arts learning, should ideally be utilized as a means of measuring student progress and help teachers understand how to help students succeed. While assessment can also be used to evaluate programs and teachers and to compare student successes relative to those of other students, I will be focusing on measuring individual student progress for my thesis and building a curriculum to support …

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Attempt It, Is To Save The Mona Lisa! Gamification As A Method For Teaching Art, Caleb Ovard

Theses and Dissertations

To increase student engagement in their classroom, the author created an art curriculum using gamification methods that incorporates elements of tabletop role-playing games. The Role-playing Art Curriculum is a key element of this thesis. Possible research approaches involving game-based learning and gamification were examined to point toward future research and reflection regarding games and game-like content into an art curriculum. Action research methods were used to create and run the Role-playing Art Curriculum. The author concludes that the gamified curriculum took extra preparation and required more management to run then other traditional art curriculums.

Rhythmic Ritual: Hand Papermaking As A Transformative Process, Keatan Mckeever

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an exploration of the transformative processes of hand papermaking, both personally and materially, through various artworks situated between two- and three-dimensional forms. The conceptual motivations supporting my practice are informed by intuition, locally sourced materials, human connection, material structure, and low-tech approaches to the papermaking process. In the first portion of this thesis, I discuss how I chose paper as my artistic medium, and the transformational process of hand papermaking through a historical lens. The second half follows the experimentation and limitations that informed my practice, the content of my work regarding material and structural qualities, and …