Thesis (M.S.)--Central Connecticut State University, 2000. / Thesis advisor: Margaret Ferrara. " ... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science [in Teacher Education]." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-153).

No description available.

<p> People retain objects that bear emotional significance; this is, essentially, the fetishization of an object; an attachment to, or a desire for something inanimate. The names for these objects include heirloom, memento, souvenir, antique and relic. These objects bear the burden of nostalgia for the past; they represent a moment that is no longer the present.</p><p> I used the printmaking process of etching to make line-based drawings of objects that reflected or conjured the ideas of longing and desire. After printing the image multiple times, I waxed, cut and sewed together the many forms to create larger works. While I found the concept of nostalgia and longing to be romanticized, I found that I could overcome my attachment to certain items I own. It was through my art making process that I explore the connections between objects, narrative, nostalgia and desire.</p>

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

<p> This study involves conducting a rhetorically configurative analysis of an architectural interior, where `configurative' is defined as a set of visual/spatial interrelations perceived within a given context or framework. Specifically, the purpose of this project is to re-animate not only awareness of context, but also the imagination in its role in the creation of human significance in designing spaces.</p><p> Technological changes in communication directly affect the relevance of rhetoric to the development and continuation of culture. Shifts in rhetorical modalities, therefore, may eventually constitute cross-cultural transitions in sharing experiences. Thus, to maintain continuity of meaning, it becomes incumbent on professional communicators to develop a working familiarity with contemporary socio-cultural changes, particularly those changes that involve a transition from one form of communicative form to another.</p><p> According to rhetorician Ernest Grassi (1980, 1994) culture itself is rhetorical, i.e., a by-product of the human need for the psyche to achieve and, more importantly, to <i>share</i> meaning. For Grassi, this adaptation of nature involves a metaphoric transfer of meaning from inner understanding onto the physical world. To do this, however, there must be some means, some venue, available to create a common connection between the two realms.</p><p> Language has been such a venue, and, print, until recently in the West, has been the predominant communicative modality for the maintenance and transmission of culture. One cultural consequence of this adaptation is that written/printed communications deliberately hold form constant so as not to interfere with the transparent dissemination of information, as content. Electronic modalities, however, complicate this cultural communicative assumption in that: (1) virtual form can no longer be routinely subordinated to content, and (2) `knowledge' when experienced as simultaneous pattern need not be distanced and `provable' to be valid,</p><p> Grassi's understanding of metaphor as the link between rhetoric and culture (1980, 1994), in effect, characterizes metaphor as a hybrid communicative form that bridges the gap between rational/linguistic and aesthetic/configurative forms via human ingenuity. This approach has been explored on the linguistic/rhetorical side as generative criticism (Foss, 2004) where the researcher must create and/or design/construct a singular critical framework through which to interpret an unusual artifact. On the aesthetic/rhetorical side, however, Bauhaus artist Wassily Kandinsky's analytical drawing process and correspondence color theory practicably elucidate design as a communicative system (Poling 1986). </p><p> This proposed visual/spatial analysis of the interior the lobby of the rotunda of Skeen hall is intended to depict an architectural interior as schematized space that will illustrate the processing inherent to Grassi's imagistic first principles, i.e., the <i>archai</i>, remnants of a primordial language (Grassi, 1994) where deductive reasoning fords its source, but that cannot, in and of themselves, be discovered via deduction (Grassi, 1980). In this view, the <i>archai</i> represent the collective sources of <i> ingenium</i> which allow humans to overcome their alienation from nature through the figurative development of human meaning that the rawness of the natural world alone cannot provide.</p>

Thesis (D. Min.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 2000. / Includes vita. There are 2 computer optical disks (4 3/4 in.) included with the paper copy. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-134).

<p> This study seeks to understand the larger cultural context that gave rise to what is referred to as "non-design," a term designated to denote a particular aesthetic that is characterized by a suspicion of, and/or rejection of, "conscious" design, while embracing various phenomenon that emerge without "intention" or "deliberate human design." The study traces the phenomenon of "non-design" in British and American design culture of the postwar period. The author argues that following Friedrich von Hayek's theories of the "undesigned" nature of social institutions and his concept of a "spontaneous order" of the 1940s, non-design first emerged in design discourse and practice in the early 1950s in England, particularly in the work of certain members of the Independent Group, and by the mid-1960s it gained currency in the United States in the architectural and urban theories of Charles Moore, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and particularly in Reyner Banham's writing on American urbanism. While rarely made explicit, this dissertation argues that the concept of non-design played an important role in design and urban debates of the postwar period.</p>

In 1995 an Aesthetics and Arts Criticism substrand was included in The Arts Curriculum and Standards Framework document for schools in Victoria, Australia. The researcher believed that in order to implement the new curriculum requirements and cope with the complexities that accompanied the emergence of postmodern art, teachers would need to alter their practice and find strategies for encouraging greater student participation and critical thinking in art room discussions. (For complete abstract open document)

This dissertation is a cultural analysis of Piolín por la Mañana, a Spanish-language radio talk show conducted by Eduardo Piolín Sotelo and broadcast from Los Angeles. The program expands the boundaries of the performing arts as well as the reach and elasticity of literary tropes and study. It connects often geographically disparate "imagined communities" of working class Latino/as by revisiting traditional Mexican theater, joke delivery style, literary genre (e.g., magical realism and the picaresque), and taxonomies of everyday personalities. Central to my discussion of Piolín is listener participation, which stages community formation within the radio-text. The introduction and the first chapter present the trope of the Mojarra, a person that crossed the U.S. border as a mojado/a (an undocumented immigrant), usually swimming or forging a river. Mojarras suffer el Síndrome de la Mojarra, the condition of feeling persecuted, believing that their freedom depends on the ability to evade capture. Mojarra Aesthetics revolves around the representational needs of the persecuted immigrant community; this aesthetic is comprised of artistic techniques that use humor and in particular explosive laughter and mitote. The second chapter explores how Piolín is a medium that connects, as well as creates, Latino communities through radio; it maps "nonce taxonomies" of recognizable immigrant personalities. What follows, explores how Piolín encourages new ways of making and analyzing art, including the use of cantinfleadas and albures as central elements of oral folklore, comprising connections to traditional Mexican joke delivery (e.g., colmos, parecidos, que le dijo, telones, and bombas). The program, via this tradition, includes cultural tropes such as the mojarra, tlacuaches, nopales, nacos, nacas, among others. At the center of this dissertation is the carnival and, relatively new on the scene, the radio carnival. The radio program produces a Mojarra Difrasismo, deconstructing entrenched binaries and creating a new reality, forcing new critical thinking about what reality is or could be in relation to the immigrant experience and the immigrant body.

This thesis deals with advertising and its specifics characteristic for contemporary media environment. Research is realized on the example of five visual adverts which are parts of Absolut vodka advertising campaign. Absolut London, Absolut Brussels, Absolut Barcelona, Absolut Bangkok and Absolut Prague were chosen and conquered in the semiotics and visual analysis. The main part of the thesis is focused on character of adverts. The attention is also drawn to Mukařovský's aesthetics, Peirce's icon-index-symbol, Barthes's denotation, conotation, myth or theory of photography. There are mentioned not only qualities of imaging of objects but also its anchoring in the media environment. The results of the analysis are connected with processes of globalization. The principles of Ulrich Beck are applied to visual adverts of Absolut vodka. The main question is if and how the globalization influences the adverts and their visual form. It is shown at the example of internet and television media. One part of thesis is also devoted to phenomenon of glocalization and its influence on advertising.