This research project investigates the pedagogy of Tom Hudson and his vision for art education. A critical overview of the relationship between Hudson’s pedagogical theory and practice is made, as well as a review of the influences and contexts that shaped the development of his ideas. Having played a significant role in the formation and progress of the Basic Design Movement, Hudson’s practice and ideas are considered and compared with respect to this period and the work of other protagonists, namely Harry Thubron, Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton. Hudson’s development of what essentially emerged from this has been investigated, providing an extensive review of what became known as the Foundation course through to Hudson’s retirement in 1987. Contemporary practices have also been considered and observed in order to gain an understanding of current debates and the place of Hudson’s pedagogical views within these. Familiar elements in his writing show that his ideas have relevance to current concerns and practices. Twenty-five years later we are still working to prove that ‘creative activity is more than a mere cultural frill’ (Hudson, 1979, BH/TH/PL/196, p. 2). The study includes a consideration of the archive as a theoretical framework for the artist educator’s research. A substantial amount of primary material for this research has been found within the National Arts Education Archive (NAEA@ysp), a valuable resource with much to offer the art and design educationalist, student or researcher.

This thesis represents an original contribution to art historical scholarship in its investigation of the overlaps between the art of the Catalan artist Joan Miró and the writings of French philosopher Georges Bataille in the period 1930–1939. I examine three series of intimate, private works undertaken by Miró in 1930, 1935-1936, and 1938-1939 through the lens of contemporary Bataillean texts in order to identify corresponding themes, imagery, and operations. I argue that not only does Bataillean thought represent a direct source of influence on Miró’s work of this time, but also that the artist deliberately turns to this more violent, un-idealised aesthetic in order to visually confront his own professional crisis, the rise of fascism in his homeland, and the Spanish Civil War and start of the Second World War. My research has uncovered that Miró and Bataille share an interest in the anti-retinal. Miró demonstrates this interest through his ‘assassination of painting’ and attacks on bodily representation, and Bataille in his obsession with blindness—which Miró references in 1930 in his use of imagery from Bataille’s Story of the Eye and through his employment of the informe. Bataille and Miró both use parody in advancing their aesthetic and political missions. Bataille parodies the transpositional nature of Surrealist image-making, while Miró mocks his own earlier artistic output. To this end, both employ ‘parodic landscapes’ that use the image of the volcano as a metaphor for political upheaval and to celebrate ‘real,’ non-transpositional base matter. I argue that the work of both figures exhibit qualities of the carnivalesque, in their interest in parody, ‘sacred’ (liberating) laughter, and excremental imagery. A further, significant, consideration in this thesis is the transgressing of taboos in Bataillean eroticism (and the overlaps between eroticism and war), of which I have identified parallels in Miró’s work. By considering Miró’s use of Bataillean themes in tandem with the artist’s passionate Catalan nationalism, I argue that the influence of Bataille’s parody, eroticism, and violence provided Miró with the tools to personally respond to the Civil War. This thesis opens a new line of inquiry into Miró in the 1930s, and invites future considerations on Bataille’s influence on Miró’s oeuvre.

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Tate Modern has attracted significant academic interest aimed at analysing its cultural and urban regeneration impact. Yet there exists no research which provides an in-depth and contextual framework examining how Tate Modern was established, nor is there a study which assesses critically the development of Tate’s collection of international modern and contemporary art. Why is this important? It is relevant because a historic conflict of interests developed within the Tate’s founding organisation which was reluctant to host it. The outcome was that gaps were created in the original National Modern Foreign Collection, which had to be later compensated for within the spaces of Tate Modern. Furthermore, Tate Modern was established by the Tate, in place of a London or national government. Manoeuvring to the position of civic patron was a long process for the Tate, which had been affected by changing political and cultural circumstances. From the organisation’s inception, a complex model of public and private vision and patronage emerged, which was impeded by conflicting national and international agendas. Modernisation and modernity impacted on the organisation through political and cultural necessity, forcing it to adjust to the new social climate. However, the underlying theme in the Tate’s development has been the relationship between culture and commerce. These are the reasons why this thesis examines how Tate Modern was established in the particular way that it was, and why it was re-imagined as a distinct kind of museum of modern art in London, and one that was relevant for the new millennium.

This thesis examines the present practice of Odissi, the classical dance form of Orissa in Eastern India, with the view to identifying its strengths as a performing art and building on them. The objectives were to share this dance tradition both on stage and in the studio, not just as a stylised Indian movement form of limited interest, but as an integrating dance experience of relevance to today's multicultural world. The primary concern has been determining parallels with yoga and ritual and addressing the question of transcendence through dance, as understood in the Indian tradition. A choreological perspective has been adopted for this study and Odissi viewed from the position of the student, performer, choreographer, teacher and audience member, all roles which this researcher has performed personally. The basic parameters of Odissi's movement and dance techniques have been analysed informed by this discipline. Odissi has been reviewed historically, both when it was a medieval temple ritual and more recently when it was reconstructed as a classical Indian art after the country's Independence. The hypothesis that the practice of this dance was unconsciously governed by a bedrock of tantric thought forming its covert structures has been explored. Choreographic works have been created in collaboration with traditional musicians using established forms of composition to explain working methods within the tradition and experience its limitations. An alternate way of embodying Odissi based on tantric practices has been outlined. Works that explore this and that stretch the traditional sound-movement nexus of this dance form in the process, have also been created. The results of this research project hence fall broadly into the following inter-related areas: an understanding of Odissi dance and movement in relation to its culture and society; a hypothesis about the phenomenological nature of the medieval Orissan temple dance ritual; an outline of an alternate way of practicing Odissi based on tantric principles; and a choreological documentation of compositions created that make the practice of dance a form of yoga as defined by the Indian tradition.

Black and Asians occupy an increasingly prominent position within British society today and London is considered central to the multicultural imagination of Britain. This thesis leans away from the established Londoncentric discourses and shifts spotlight specifically to the Midlands, which occupies an equivalent, if differently significant status, in terms of its multicultural status. Hegemonic notions of the dominant status of London are thus contested through the peripheral focus. The project analyses some of the regional expressions of ‘Britishness’ by women in this region as articulated in literature, film and performing arts. Interdisciplinarity is at the core of this project as it not only engages in a fusion of various disciplines within the Arts, but also invokes disciplinary boundary crossing by forging links with the Social Sciences, Anthropology in particular. In the thesis, I have introduced the concept of the ‘Liminal Briton’, using the anthropological concept of ‘liminality’ to characterise the positioning of new generation multi-ethnic Britons in contemporary British society. I argue that the postcolonial critic Homi Bhabha’s much celebrated notion of ‘hybridity’ is not adequate in capturing the heterogeneity of new generation multi-ethnic Britons. I therefore propose a perspectival shift to ‘liminality’ as a more encompassing term to define the condition of these new generation black and Asian individuals, specifically women writers and artists in the Midlands. Informed by a discussion of migration into the Midlands and analysis of some of the dominant critical discourses in post 1980s Britain in the Introduction, each of the three main chapters focus on a specific genre. Chapter 1 explores how Asian women’s agency has been represented in literature and construction of the British Asian subject is manifested in the novels of Ravinder Randhawa and Meera Syal. The ‘liminal’ spectrum has been used to identify the multiple positioning of the women protagonists in the chosen novels. The focus of Chapter 2 is the genre of short stories where a selection of short stories are analysed from the anthologies Whispers in the Walls and Her Majesty. All of these stories are literary expressions of new generation black and Asian women in the Midlands and the landscape of the region features strongly in the stories. The chapter also involves a discussion of the crucial role played by regional presses with particular emphasis on Tindal Street Press, an independent regional publisher based in the Midlands. Chapter 3 entails an exploration of artistic expressions of women, focusing on film and performing arts. In this chapter I trace the development of black British film-making in the post 1980s before moving on to a discussion of Gurinder Chadha’s film Bhaji on the Beach where ‘liminal’ Britons recognize their ‘liminality’. The ‘liminal’ space of the theatre is also examined in this chapter along with the development black and Asian women’s theatre movements in Britain. The politics of regional artistic productions is investigated through the role of regional playhouses along with the debate on the furore surrounding the staging of Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti. The important and enduring outcome of this regional production is highlighted in this section. The final section of this thesis is the Conclusion which draws together and reinforces the key arguments.

Anna Matilda Whistler (1804-1881) is now best known as the sitter for perhaps the most famous painting of an artist’s mother in the world, by James McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. My thesis is an annotated edition of Anna Whistler’s extent correspondence, comprising 267 letters and six essays. I have annotated the letters with respect to chronological, geographical, social, political and artistic references, documenting life and culture in the mid-19th century in America, Britain and Russia. Anna Whistler was a prolific letter writer who knew how to shape her epistolary style to suit the person in question. Her commentary ranged from the evolution of travel to Imperialist Russia. Her changing social status - from that of a wealthy housewife in Russia to a bankrupt widow - and her constant search for new homes and horizons for her children, take the reader on a social and geographical journey from the antebellum South to New England, and Europe. It is from these places that Anna Whistler introduced her correspondents and now us, today’s readers, to the personal stories of hundreds of individuals including the leading professionals of the time. These range from manufacturers and railroad engineers to religious leaders, slave owners, army officers and artists. A North Carolinian by birth, Anna Whistler experienced a lifestyle that was rich both in material and spiritual terms. She was brought up in a nineteenth century context, where white middle-class women were confined in most cases to the private domain of the home. Although Anna Whistler believed in traditional domestic roles for women, her circumstances actually led her to more beyond these boundaries.

Melodrama does not only point to a type of aesthetic practice but also to a way of viewing the world. This thesis is inspired by the idea proposed by Christine Gledhill (1988) that at the core of cultural negotiation in melodrama is gender representation which is the cultural product resulting from the linking of textual and social subjects. Central to this negotiation is the figure of the woman which has long functioned as a powerful and ambivalent expression of the male psyche. In the context of Malaysian cinema, film critics and reviewers tend to use the term ‘melodrama’ in the pejorative sense, usually referring to female-centred films. What is significantly comparable between Western and non-Western perceptions, however, is that melodrama is examined in terms of gender, class, and more recently, race and ethnicity. This thesis examines the construction of female protagonists, within the backdrop of both urban and rural settings, through the use of melodrama as an aesthetic mode in selected Malaysian-Malay films from the early 1990s to 2009. The general approach is the employment of textual analysis based on concepts of film melodrama and informed by contextual information and social history. Thematically, Malaysian-Malay films of the period between the early 1990s and 2009 that focus on female protagonists largely depict the woman in the capacity of independent-minded personas negotiating patriarchal rules in the pursuit of vocational, romantic, and sexual emancipation. This typology of female protagonists comprises the urban, the romantic and the sexual woman. The problematisation of the female protagonist in this manner reveals the dimensions of social change and defines the new role of women in Malaysia’s market economy from the 1990s to the new millennium.

This dissertation aims to explore the extent to which what has been termed „the civilising mission‟ has been a central rationale behind Norwegian cultural policy. In order to contextualise the research the German term Bildung, which refers to human growth processes, is used as a conceptual framework. Bildung can be achieved in two different, albeit related, ways: firstly, through an object approach, which takes great works of arts as its point of departure and where personal growth can be achieved through exposure to these and which endorses clear cultural hierarchies, and secondly, through a subject approach, which emphasises each individual‟s own preferences and desires and where a much greater range of cultural activities can facilitate personal growth. In addition to an historical analysis of the ideas that have informed Norwegian cultural policies dating back to 1814, this project draws upon „green papers‟ published by the Norwegian government through its Ministry of Culture. This is supplemented by a more detailed analysis of a key cultural policy initiative of the 2000s: den kulturelle skolesekken (DKS)1, which is a major programme initiated to enable children in primary school to be exposed to art-works produced by professional artists. The project concludes that although a subject and an object approach to Bildung have co-existed throughout the period charted here there has since the 90s been an increased focus on the object oriented approach. This appears evident both in the general cultural policy discourse but articularly through the disciplining aspect of DKS and its strong focus on, what is being referred to as, the „professional arts‟ as a vehicle for Bildung.

As part of the quality process and to assure that the product meets all geometric requirements, the produced part is measured and compared to the nominal geometry definition. If the part deviates outside given tolerances, there is a need to understand the effect on aero performance and mechanical function. Hence, a new analysis model must be created that reflects the produced shape and form of the product. The current procedure for measuring the part is to use white light scanning equipment to analyze the deviation with the scanning software GOM™. The analysis model is then created using Space claim™ and is meshed and analyzed using Ansys™ software. The objective with this thesis is to investigate the capabilities within Siemens NX™ to automate the procedure as there is a need to be more efficient and reduce lead-time.The Design Research Method is used to develop the automated procedure. This is a systematic method that identifies the task, presents possible solutions to that task and then evaluates those solutions. That workflow is repeated until a satisfying solution is found.It is found that it is possible to create an automated procedure in Siemens NX. This automated procedure requires no user interaction while running, so the lead-time is drastically reduced. The automated procedure morphs the nominal geometry to create a new surface with better resemblance to the scanned geometry. About 90% of the original surface area is outside a tolerance of 0.1mm, after the automated procedure the new surface has about 90% of the surface area inside a tolerance of 0.1mm.The limiting factor for the procedure is the skill of the developer and not the capability of the software. Therefore it is thought that the procedure could be improved to create a surface completely inside the specified tolerance, given that a more skilled developer refines the procedure.