The study explores the motivational role of the personal constructions of Italian identity (Italianità) of five learners of Italian descent studying their heritage language by means of traditional foreign language courses in Wellington, New Zealand. By adopting a social constructivist perspective on both language learning and the motivational processes underlying it, and by applying such concepts as investment (Norton, 2000), ideal L2 self (Dörnyei, 2009) and language learning as identity reconstruction (Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000), the study aims to further our understanding of heritage language learning motivation as a socially mediated process (Ushioda, 2003). Qualitative data was collected through waves of semi-structured interviews from five case-study participants over the course of several months of learning. Responses were used to map the influence that the participants’ constructions of their own Italianità exerted on three aspects of their language learning motivation: their reasons for learning the language, the decision to embark on the study of it, and the maintenance of their interest and learning efforts throughout the learning process. Detailed observations of learning sites, classes and materials, and interviews with teachers provided rich contextual data concerning key episodes identified by the students as relating to different aspects of motivation. The findings suggest that Italianità is heavily implicated in the initial stages of motivation, but that its influence is mediated by the learners’ personal constructions of a multitude of internal and external factors, through which they come to personalise and prioritise their own objectives and identity ambitions in ways that guide their motivational arousal, their decision to pursue the language and their creation and visualisation of learning goals. Italianità is also found to have an influence on the maintenance and shifts in the participants’ motivational states throughout their learning, supporting a socially mediated view of L2 motivation in which motivational fluctuations are explained as the result of the learners’ own processing of and reaction to elements of their context, including critical events inside and outside the classroom, exchanges with teachers, peers and speakers of Italian, and ongoing developments of opportunities and challenges for the achievement of the personal goals and identity ambitions driving their learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Texas at Austin, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 680-718).

Thesis--Indiana University, 2007. / Computer printout. Adviser: Massimo Ossi. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 298-308), abstract, and vita.

Thesis (doctoral)--Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität zu München, 1978. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 214-219).

Thesis (Revise). / Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-255) and index.

Thesis (Revise). / Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-255) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 391-402).

Thesis (M.W.S.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2003. / Bibliography: leaves 134-142.

This thesis examines how making extends artists' thoughts beyond their conceptions. Central to this is consideration of how an artist's statements and their work relate: this thesis argues that the relationship is neither of identity nor contradiction, but of a productive tension from which emerges a richer understanding of thought. A similar approach underscores this doctorate's relationship of studio and written components, both of which desire self-sufficiency. The studio work consists of discrete yet mutually informing series, all engaged with the specificity of a moment of exposure, whether here and now or recording a past moment. The notion of 'documentation' underscores these works, which include large chemical photographs, high-definition video, cyanotypes and extensive exploration of casting to reveal latent images. The written component is a thorough study of the various instances of Medardo Rosso's sculpture Ecce Puer, offering art-historical and theoretical grounding of hands-on making as a way pressing cultural issues inhere in a work at a more fundamental level than understood by its contemporaries or maker. The first chapter locates Rosso in his historical milieu. Chapter 2 assesses the elements constituting Ecce Puer; it argues that no definitions of a 'work' adequately encompass these, and coins the term 'complex work' to designate artworks indivisibly singular and plural, concrete and abstract. Chapter 3 offers phenomenological interpretation of Rosso's confused writings, illuminating them through Maurice Merleau-Ponty's late philosophy but understanding Rosso's thought as inadequate to the complexity of his work. Chapter 4 examines Rosso's photography, specifically his photography of photographs, connecting what this achieves to his phenomenology. Chapter 5 introduces a key notion of 'friendship' to understand how the connections between instances of Ecce Puer became 'meaningful'. Having offered a fundamentally new interpretation of Rosso's project, chapter 6 extends Michael Fried's history of French painting to relocate Rosso within early twentieth-century art.

Between 1911 and 1913, two Italian brothers named Anton Giulio Bragaglia and Arturo Bragaglia produced Futurist photography which they termed "photodynamism." These images, together with the theoretical manifesto Fotodinamismo futurista, represent a remarkable effort in avant-garde photography and theory in the early 20th century. The Bragaglias' intent in making these photographs was to produce deeply emotional images of modern dynamic motion which convey the spiritual essence of human beings that becomes exteriorized in the process of physical movement. Through a short, intense campaign in 1913, Umberto Boccioni succeeded in expelling the Bragaglias from the Futurist movement. Because of this, the importance of their photography has often been neglected, underrepresented or misrepresented in scholarship. This thesis offers an alternative reading of the photodynamic project based on its occult foundation and a better sense of how to understand photodynamism within the context of the movement and the broader history of photography.