This thesis explores the development in the pictorial representation of four important French royal mistresses. It looks at works depicting Agnès Sorel, mistress to Charles VII; Diane de Poitiers, mistress to Henri II; Gabrielle dEstrées, mistress to Henri IV; and Madame de Pompadour, mistress to Louis XV. By placing the portrayals of these women within a historical context, it becomes apparent that there are links between the strength of the crown and the depictions of the mistresses. This thesis traces the development of the imagery associated with these women and demonstrates that as the crown became more and more powerful, the portraits of the kings mistresses became bolder and less disguised.

All individuals have an innate need to create and explore. They explore creativity through free and spontaneous play. This free play is essential in cognitive development. In organized youth sports children no longer have this opportunity to freely play. Athletics are regimented and restricted in ways that do not allow children to personally experience the sport at an intrinsic level. Young athletes are taught at an early age the significance of extrinsic rewards and motivators. Because of these extrinsic rewards young athletes lose their desire to explore the sport on a more intimate level. They perform robotically the skills and tasks set before for them. All individuality is lost in a world commanding conformity. In this process there are three stages that young athletes go through in losing their desire to play: deprival of pleasure, denial of inquiry, and deprivation of self. These stages are detrimental to the childs ability to deeply connect with athletics. The Loss of Play in Organized Youth Sports is increasing in a world filled with meticulous coaching methods. If we do not change the way childrens athletics are conducted, future generations will lose the personal relationship with sports in the future. The solution is to stop making sports focused on adults, and change them to be child-centered. Allow the children to compete in a world where they are free to explore and learn.

My initial focus as a final project in the Creative Pulse was to begin to sing again. Singing fulfilled the three requirements of choice in a project: risk, rigor, and the requirement of having to do it. I had sung as a young man, and stopped as the result of listening to an adult tell me that I could not sing. During the following 23 years, I used percussion and became a dancer in order to express myself. The art forms of percussion and dance I was drawn to like a man is drawn to a woman that he must have. What about being drawn to an art form in order to continue existing? An artistic pursuit whose means of expression are a salvation? One can read about many artists who came into an art form out of necessity. Their life outside of expressing themselves was bleak and the art form became their cry. I by no means wish to place myself at the level of expertise of such artists that came to their art to survive, or to imply that I paid my dues to the extent that certain artists have (artists such as Hank Williams, or the Blues artist Robert Johnson, for example). I do mean to express through this paper my experience of the catharsis in singing country music and the Blues. My beginning singing came at a time when I really needed it; the music helped me through a difficult time. The title of the paper is Fall and Redemption: the Essence of Country Music for this reason. It is in Narrative form, foot printing my process and discovery of the music. I attempted to combine lifes experiences with the discovery of the music. The experiences were the inspiration behind playing the music. The essence of country music and the Blues is its sincerity, and I hope that I have combined my lifes narrative with the artistic process effectively, as the time period (December 2005 to June 2007) was a time in which art was defined by life, and life was defined by art.

In this project my primary goal was to expose the public to the artistic self that I was so sure of in high school, but had lost in the years following. I was so sure of myself and art while in the confines of middle school and high school. Once I got into college I found myself lacking that confidence, due to the fact that I was surrounded by many great artists and I felt as though I was not so great anymore. I lost sense of who I am as an artist, and put that talent on a back burner in my life. Since I began the creative pulse, I began regaining a sense of who I am, and realized that I had lost something I truly love. In my field project the first year in the creative pulse, I worked at creating a mural for my unborn child. After realizing that I could do that, I gained some lost confidence and decided to do the stage design, lighting, and artwork for a school play and as my final creative project. I would be working with a colleague and friend in this endeavor, which made it seem a little more doable. After tackling the personal task of doing art again, I felt that the next step in reclaiming myself as an artist was to go big. By going big I mean involving everything I am surrounded by on a daily basis: colleagues, students, family, public, radio, news, and newspaper. I felt that by doing this, my artistic self would have no choice but to be shown; it could no longer hide.

Using Scandinavian immigrant culture as a backdrop, this project presents an integrated multiple intelligences approach to teaching Kindergarten and elementary school students about their music, history, and cultural inheritance. The paper describes eight themes that formed the framework of the eight-week music curriculum used in the project. Examples of the childrens artwork and creative writing are included in the work. The author concludes that raising childrens awareness of a single specific culture through their music, dance, art, and food preferences stimulates the childrens curiosity about their own heritage resulting in increased communication with their family members and greater self-knowledge. The project also created a more positive and productive teaching/learning relationship between the instructor and the various class members and gave the students an opportunity to share their discoveries with the rest of the schools population.

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Jam, Burke, M.F.A Spring 2013 The Shadow of Polaris: Understanding Sound and Place Chairperson: Associate Professor Brad Allen The Shadow of Polaris examines perception, perspective, and place. My research investigates a critical theory of sound as phenomenon and art object. The phenomenon of sound informs our perception and perspective of place. It articulates questions about how we experience and interact with the physical world. My intention is to create an experiential understanding of the physical and, more specifically, the natural world. Natures ephemeral cycles are symbiotic with the human experience of life. Examining this relationship illuminates how we perceive, experience, and interact with the world. With human population close to seven billion, the natural world is at a critical point, socially and ecologically. My questions are further explored by examining the ideas of biophilia, technophilia, and sonification. The relationship between these ideas is synchronous with the idea of intimacy with place in todays world. If we listen, our pre-existing ideas of what we know about our world, and our place in it, begin to shift. Polaris, the historical visual beacon of location, becomes a new point of reference. Our ability to interweave information about perception, perspective and place into clear points of connection, allows us greater understanding of our world and the vital relationship we each have with place.

Giving the Ghost is the written masters thesis that accompanies the exhibition of the same title by the artist Will Hutchinson.

UNAPOLOGETIC is the culmination of my research concerning issues of gender, sexuality and identity and how these issues concern public vs. private lives.

i. A Synthetic Spring will be to serve the public as an encounter rather than an art object. ii. The actual event will be free and open to the public, and will only last two hours. iii. The aim is to create something precious and rare. This exclusiveness is a reaction to the twenty-first centurys fascination with identity through the online appearance, the viral video, the text message, the twitter posting, the sound byte, the Internet meme, binge online shopping, etc. iv. In the greater scope, the event will technically begin with the use of promotion several months before the actual event. The promotion will take all shapes and forms, both digitally and physically. We will lure spectators visually, sonically, socially, and psychologically, by creating hype, mystery, anticipation, and curiosity. v. A Synthetic Spring will be a mixture of everything we have seen before, and nothing we have seen before. vi. A Synthetic Spring will be a constructed situation and outcomes will vary. vii. A Synthetic Spring will be experimental and challenging by necessity. viii. A Synthetic Spring offers a dichotomous contribution; through the celebration of the artificial, the genuine will surface. A significant amount of the participants will not fully acknowledge this experience. ix. The art of composing comedy is the same sort of thing as the art of composing tragedy. x. A Synthetic Spring takes shape when we are all becoming its actors.