Even though disciplines that are not traditionally affiliated with design have started to show interest in design thinking such as business, education, healthcare, engineering, and IT (Clark and Smith, 2008; Cross, 2007, 2011; Dorst, 2011; Finn Connell, 2013; Lawson, 2004, 2006; Owen, 2007; Razzouk and Shute, 2012) design thinking studies has tended to focus on limited design disciplines such as architecture, engineering design, and industrial design and there are not enough studies to prove that designers in different design fields perform design processes as design thinking literature proposed (Kimbell, 2011). This qualitative study explores the design process of professionals from different design disciplines, in order to understand the similarities and differences between their process and the design activities proposed by the design thinking literature. Design strategies of experts from different design disciplines were studied and compared, in relation to the activities proposed by the design thinking literature. This basic qualitative study was designed to use semi-structured interviews as the qualitative method of inquiry. This study employed purposeful sampling, specifically criterion sampling and snowball sampling methods. The researcher interviewed nine designers from instructional design, fashion design, and game design fields. A semi-structured interview protocol was developed and participants were asked demographic questions, opinion and values questions, and ideal position questions. Demographic questions provided background information such as education and number of years of design experience for the participants. Opinion and value questions were asked to learn what participants think about the research questions. Ideal position questions let participants describe what good design would be. The researcher analyzed the interview data and the results were reported in a way to demonstrate the differences and similarities within and across disciplines. / Ph. D.

The oeuvre of the Belgian painter James Ensor was populated with grotesque imagery and charged with an intense personal vision. In light of these aspects of his style, Ensor's best known paintings, created during the 1880's, are cited as seminal examples of modern Expressionism popularized in the early decades of the twentieth century. However, Ensor's art also exists within a specific cultural context that adds meaning and further significance to the work. Renowned early Flemish painters Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516) and Pieter Bruegel (1529-1569) created works that share points of form and content with Ensor. Recognizing the relationship of Ensor to his precursors is crucial to understanding his works, many of which relate to regional, national, and political identity. A detailed analysis of how the Flemish art of the past informs Ensor will form a foundation from which I will then proceed to provide a full view of the intellectual intent and personal experiences that underlie his unique style. A crucial point of reference for this study is the concept of the carnivalesque articulated by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin's (1895-1975) in his important work, Rabelais and His World (I 965). This concept serves as a bridge connecting the earlier Renaissance painters Bosch and Bruegel to Ensor.

Considering the extent of process in the following bodies of work is one way to approach its evaluation. Putting forth a well-rounded discussion that accurately accounts for its intention and coinciding successful effort asks that the set up of defense not be merely argumentative. The diversity of size, media and inspiration have created several, still ongoing, bodies of work that reflect each other in motivation, but whose outcome speak to a progressive clarity

African objects first appeared in Western collections in "cabinets of curiosities" in the sixteenth century. Following their "discovery" by modem European artists in the early twentieth century, African artifacts began their journey from ethnographic museums to major art museums. My study will explore the dramatic shift of Western attitudes towards African art through a critical overview and summary of selected scholarship on the subject and related exhibition catalogues. My thesis will show that the controversy generated by "Primitivism" in Twentieth Century Art, an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984, helped forge a new direction in the display of African art based on agreement that greater emphasis must be placed on the diversity of African cultural traditions in addition to Western aesthetics. Exhibitions and related critical scholarship of the last century have shown that African art can be appreciated both for its inherent aesthetic qualities and as a part of the culture from which it arose. This thesis will also connect a contemporary exhibition of African art in a Florida museum with international developments in the field. My study will further emphasize that future exhibitions of African art should recognize African contributions to world cultural traditions.

I am interested in the ways that one remembers, what triggers the retrieval of a memory and the associations made throughout that process. Using photography, I explore my personal memory and the connections that are made with certain objects. By constructing environments specific to each object, I attempt to create a narrative of the life and significance of them. Using a dollhouse as a stage, a dialogue is created between the objects and the place in which they reside. The images heighten the relevance a home and the longing for a consistent environment have played throughout my life.

The term modern is associated with the twentieth century, especially in the first fifty years. However, by the century's close a rise is seen in the term postmodern which, like modern, is also used to describe the overall social condition. There are many factors that contribute to the character of an epoch. The factors that shape this character begin with, but are not limited to, our cultural concept of time and how we respond to it. The characteristics that are associated with an epoch can be found in complex arrangements within a chronology, sometimes clustered, sometimes isolated, often with varying points of origin. These complex patterns can be as random and misleading as they are organized and defining. Using a cross-disciplinary approach this thesis will provide an analysis of characteristics of modernism and postmodernism as they are manifest in areas such as art, science, and politics. It will also locate points in time where the concentration of markers suggests that modernism is dwindling and the postmodern paradigm is taking hold. While some critics have advocated that single moments in time mark the end of modernism and the beginning of postmodernism, a series of events or moments in time may actually be more practical for the study of epochal convergence. The time period that may be most accurate in marking that shift is 1968-1973 when the frequency of postmodern markers increases to the point that they can no longer be considered incidental.

Since the beginning of time, men have dominated the creation, theorization, and evaluation of art. And though women have also been creating art throughout the centuries, they have typically been relegated to the realm of decorative and applied arts, and therefore their work has largely been ignored and overlooked. It is true that women would occasionally be successful at breaking into the male-dominated art world and achieving some measure of recognition and even fame, but these success stories are few and far between. Fortunately, this begins to change in the twentieth century; women finally have a slightly better chance at eking out a name for themselves and making a substantial contribution to the art world. But the gender-related obstacles female artists faced were compounded when they were married to male artists. It is only natural that two artists involved in a day-to-day relationship have mutual influence on one another's artistic ideologies and styles, but the female is often accused of copying her husband and producing a pale imitation of his work. The marriage between Abstract Expressionist painters Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock serves as a prime example of this additional discrimination. Ignoring the volumes of gossip and myth that surround the highly publicized marriage of Krasner and Pollock, and instead focusing solely on their development as artists and the work that they produced, I sought to discover for myself whether Krasner deserved her reputation as a second-rate artist. After careful research and analysis I determined that neither artist was superior, but rather each was vitally important to the development, success, and impact that Abstract Expressionism had on the rest of the art world.

Hildegard von Bingen was a nun in the twelfth century who, despite extraordinarily severe circumstances, grew to be one of the most influential and respected people that we still know today. At the age of eight, she was dedicated, by her parents, to a monastery where she became an 'anchoress,' or person consigned to one of the harshest forms of religious purification. She lived in a small, isolated cell, void of human interaction, save for another anchoress who was her tutor. Hildegard remained imprisoned in this state until she was about fifteen or sixteen years of age. Hildegard wrote in her autobiography that she was extremely frail in health and that she experienced spiritual visions from about the age of three. Today these visions are medically recognized to have been migraine headaches. I agree with this, but I also think that Hildegard, in addition to the migraines, had a compulsive condition known as Hypergraphia, which fiercely influenced her character and motivation. Although the migraines may have been pre-existent at the time of her dedication into the monastery, I believe that the Hypergraphia stemmed from her experiences there. This study will examine Hildegard' s life during and after her confinement and the repercussions, such as the evolving migraine auras and Hypergraphia. The migraine auras are found symbolically within the imagery of her illuminated manuscripts. I have compared the characteristics of migraine auras with the imagery found in Hildegard' s illuminations. I have also examined the similarities between Hildegard's philosophy and her high amount of productivity with characteristics of Hypergraphia.

For the purposes of this thesis, an operational definition of totem is explored to reflect totem structures in the traditional sense, as compared to totem sculpture as portrayed in the television show Northern Exposure. Totem: A totem is a memorial, identifying, or ceremonial sculpture made of any materials, in any shape, and of any size. It may be commissioned by someone and made by an artist or the artist could create it for him/herself. It is introduced into the community with ceremony that gives it power and life. This power could be supplied by a formal or informal dedication in a spiritual sense or by turning on a switch in a literal sense. Based on this definition four artworks are compared and contrasted in the television series Northern Exposure and various types of Northwest Coast Native American totem poles. I chose the Northwest Coast Native American totem poles for the comparison and contrast because Northern Exposure is set and filmed in the Northwest Coast region. In order to make these relationships with Northern Exposure, I researched the totem poles of the Northwest Coast Native Americans. The following groups are emphasized because of.their contribution to totem poles carving: Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Coast Salish. Each group has a different style of carving totem poles as well as creating different types of poles for varying purposes. The ritual of the potlatch, or give-away, where the totems are introduced and unveiled, is also described as are the totem poles and totem pole carvers today. This brings the Northwest Coast totem art to the same time period as Northern Exposure. Northern Exposure is a Universal Studios television series shown on CBS from 1990-1995. Many artworks are created on the show by different characters. Four artworks, considered totems by my definition, are compared and contrasted with. traditional totem poles of the Northwest Coast. This evaluation is made after the plot, characters, and each of the episodes containing the artworks were summarized. The examples of totemic artwork in Northern Exposure are as varied as the purposes of the Northwest Coast Native American totem poles. In many ways, the totemic sculpture of Northern Exposure is like the traditional totem poles of the Northwest Coast. The purposes for the sculptures are inherently similar. The differences lie in the appearance of the sculpture and the degree of elaboration and presentation in the pot latches or dedication ceremonies for the sculptures. The totem art, in both cases, celebrates individuals, connects families, tells stories, records histories, and communicates ideas. The unifying trait between the totem poles of the Northwest Coast, traditional and contemporary, and the totem sculptures in Northern Exposure is the apparent need for people to create art that identifies, memorializes, or commemorates people, events, concepts, and achievements.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide insight, from an art historical perspective, into the complexity of Pre-Columbian beliefs and aesthetics by discussing the masking traditions of the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec. This thesis also explores the iconography of ancient masking among the Olmec, Mayan, and Aztec civilizations. A focus will be on the shamanism associated with the masking traditions.