The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences and perceptions of third grade students with high-stakes testing. The study was designed to address this issue from the perspective of the third grade student's experience and offer a venue for them to share their stories. The following research question guides this study: What are the socio-emotional experiences and perceptions of third grade students with high-stakes testing? Data analysis employed here falls under the rubric of qualitative approaches of symbolic interaction and phenomenology written in a narrative format with the provisions of portraiture. This study uses the analytical procedures set out by Marshall and Rossman (1989) to give meaning to the data. The analytical procedures include: organization, synthesis, analysis, and presentation of the data. To ensure that the data remained in purest form for the development of student portraitures, the resulting themes and patterns were then reviewed under five strategies proposed by Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis (1997). These five strategies are: repetitive refrains, resonant metaphors, institutional and cultural rituals, triangulation and revealing patterns. There were 51 participants in this study. Twelve were primary participants and 39 were support participants. The 12 primary participants were students who voluntarily took part in in-depth interviews and focus groups and provided written reflections and drawings. The 39 support participants joined the 12 primary participants by providing written reflections and drawings. Themes that emerged are: (1) Self-Test, (2) Attribution, (3) Prevalent Influences, and (4) Emotions. These themes are analyzed and the results discussed. Then, the analysis turns to the development of portraitures. Three portraitures are revealed to provide the perceived experiences of the participants. A discussion of the findings, along with recommendations for practice and research conclude the study.

The Storytellers' Journeys: A Study Using Portraiture Method is an in-depth study of three highly recognized storytellers, Michael Lacapa, Patricia Preciado Martin, and Joe Hayes. These artists were studied using a qualitative research method developed by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot called portraiture. Portraitists study individuals to record their experiences and to interpret their perspectives. The main purpose of the study was to determine the extent to which professional struggles were considered barriers, preventing access to a career or to career goals. I developed questions that allowed me to gather information concerning the storytellers' professional struggles and their style of dealing with those struggles. I also probed for their individual definition of success, the measuring stick they use as a determination of their success, and if they relied on perseverance to reach their level of success. I tape-recorded interviews with the storytellers in order to transcribe them. I acquired supplemental data by attending the storytellers' public performances and by referring to published information about them. After critically reviewing the data I organized it into thematic areas. Each of the storytellers was treated individually. Lawrence-Lightfoot says, "The development of emergent themes reflects the portraitist's first efforts to bring interpretive insight, analytic scrutiny, and aesthetic order to the collection of data" (1997c, pg. 185). Initially, the three artists said that they did not have to contend with professional obstacles to reach their level of success. However, the analysis of the in-depth interviews showed that all the storytellers dealt with professional complications, but they did not allow those complications to interfere with their goals. In fact, one of the artists merely cited those situations as "dues that needed to be paid." Because the portraiture method encourages researchers to include themselves in their studies, I became the fourth storyteller in the project. I did the same introspective process about my careers that I asked of the other storytellers. My self-analysis supported some of the results I obtained from the other artists but it also showed some differences. These differences are explored in the dissertation.

This research project investigates how estrangement is manifested within the photographic image, and how levels of estrangement establish conditions for the relationships between the subject, viewer and artist. Since the medium's inception the photographic process has involved encountering and negotiating otherness and the place of strangers. Over time a consistent photographic power dynamic has been established, and this project examines to what extent participants in this dynamic can escape or yield to the historically sedimented structures in which they find themselves participating. The images in this body of work tread the line between typological portraits and tentative encounters with strangers. These encounters/images do not suggest personal identity but question what it is to be a photographic subject. Rather than offer psychological insight into the subject, they attempt to foreground the signifying systems and process of photographic "representation". The project explores estrangement through physical and conceptual distance, negotiating photography's relationship to the real as a process, an image and an object.

According to the Mirriam-Webster online dictionary, “grotesque” is defined as “a style of decorative art characterized by fanciful or fantastic human and animal forms often interwoven with foliage or similar figures that may distort the natural into absurdity, ugliness, or caricature.” Originating from the Old Italian grottesca, cave painting, feminine of grottesco of a cave, from the time of its conception, the grotesque has been inexorably linked to art and the female. The work of other female artists that explore themes of the feminine grotesque are discussed, including Katheryn Wakeman, Jenny Saville, and Maria Lassnig. In my current work, I have been creating oil paintings of macro images of my own body to construct a fragmented and magnified, borderless, grotesque view of the body. The images focus on the mouth, due to its complicated nature as both internal and external, hidden and in plain sight, as well as due to connotations with speech, ingestion, and sexuality. The work walks a fine line between aesthetically pleasing while also commanding an uncomfortably visceral, fleshy quality. While the works are somewhat ambiguous and allow for various readings, they also allude to larger issues of sexism. The use of magnification and fragmentation references the insufficient representation of the female body both art historically —with the beautiful female nude painted by the male artist—as well as contemporarily in an overly-Photoshopped society. The visceral feeling of disgust should allow viewers to commune with their own bodies’ psychophysiological reactions and question the politics of how beauty standards are established as well as whether beauty is a valuable concept when judging the female form.

abstract: Multi-media votive sculpture, made from wax, papier-mâché, wood, terra cotta and textiles, is a long-neglected subject of study in early modern Italian art history. This dissertation focuses on an unparalleled seventeenth-century manuscript, the Libro dei miracoli, which reproduces in watercolor a number of the lost multi-media votive statues that once populated the church of S. Maria della Quercia in Viterbo. The names of votaries, along with a description of their miracles, accompany the watercolors and present an invaluable source of information that allows for this first comprehensive study of votary identity. Abundant archival material maintained by S. Maria della Quercia, situated within larger historical events and cultural trends, informs this dissertation which explores the democratic nature behind votive statuary effigies. The offerings granted male and female members of most socio-economic classes in early modern Italy the extraordinary opportunity to act as patrons of art. Moreover, the sculptures, and watercolors after them, were individualized representations of votaries that can be considered a form of portraiture available to rich and poor alike. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Art History 2012

The growing population of Latino students in the United States requires a focus on culturally relevant practices for teaching Latino students. The purpose of this study was to investigate music educators’ Latino cultural knowledge and their use of that knowledge for teaching Latino students. Ladson-Billings’ (1995b) theory of culturally relevant pedagogy frames this study. Three questions guided this study. First, what cultural knowledge do music educators hold about Latino students and the communities in which they teach? Second, how do music educators use cultural knowledge to inform their pedagogical practice with Latino students? Finally, what specific culturally relevant pedagogical practices are enacted by music educators for teaching Latino students? To address the research questions, I interviewed three music teachers and observed their teaching practices. Interviews with a sample of the teachers’ Latino students also informed the study. I utilized elements of portraiture to present the data through vignettes followed by discussions and personal reflections. An analysis of the data through the lens of culturally relevant pedagogy revealed numerous methods that music educators frequently used when teaching Latino students. After I categorized those methods and aligned them with current research on core instructional practices, a list emerged of 12 culturally relevant core instructional practices that facilitate learning for Latino students. Based on the findings of this study, I recommend that teachers take an asset-based approach when working with Latino students and families, understand and make distinctions between Latino cultures, find ways to communicate effectively with Latino students and families, implement Latino language and culture into class curriculum, and enact characteristics of caring for Latino students. In addition, teacher education programs may benefit from developing courses in culturally relevant pedagogy specifically for working with Latino students.

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The Roman Empress Sabina is a pivotal figure in the representation of imperial women. She appears with more portrait types and on a higher proportion of the coinage produced both at Rome and in the provinces than any of her predecessors. While her sculpted likenesses do not compare in number to Livia’s, they do exceed those of most of the intervening women. This variety and quantity of representation created a new paradigm that was followed in subsequent reigns. All of this is contrasted with the lack of attention paid to Sabina in ancient historical writing, making the portraits of Sabina the best source on her life. My study differs from previous examinations of Sabina’s portraits in its methodological approach. I begin with a study of the coinage produced at Rome. I establish a concrete chronology of these coins through the use of die studies of both the aurei and dupondii/asses in order to resolve unanswered questions about the sequence and dating of Sabina’s portrait types. Through this new chronology, I interpret the significance of each portrait type. I then conduct the first detailed study of the provincial coin portraits of Sabina. The differences between the distribution of portrait types in quantity, chronology, and geography between the imperial and provincial coins reveals some of the mechanisms behind the two media and the reception of Sabina throughout the Empire. Comparing these data with the sculpture helps illuminate the distinctions in production and dissemination between media. Through this study, I create the most complete picture of Sabina’s portraiture to date and challenge previously held assumptions concerning the mechanisms of portrait creation. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The Empress Sabina was married to the Emperor Hadrian for his entire reign of over twenty years (117-138). Although she is almost completely absent from the ancient historical record, her portraits are more plentiful and varied than those of any imperial woman before her, making these our best source of information about her. This study covers the portraits of Sabina which appear on coins produced in Rome, coins produced in the Roman provinces, and sculpture produced throughout the Empire. The analysis of the coins produced at Rome establishes the chronology of the different representations of Sabina. This chronology facilitates the interpretation of why these changes in the Empress’s appearance were made. Comparison between the portraits in different media and from different areas of the Empire reveals the impact of context on the production, dissemination, and style of imperial portraits.

Rhetoric is analyzed primarily through lenses that seek to understand and acknowledge the identities, ideologies, and practices present within a given situation—otherwise understood as the available means of persuasion. Instead, I argue that rhetorical critics should engage in praxis-oriented rhetorical criticism where the critic foregrounds their lived experience as part of their analysis. Utilizing methods advanced by autoethnographers and performance studies scholars, I posit that the praxeological critic manifest the relevant, critical positionalities that inform their analysis through critical dialogic reflexivity, the consensual-conflictual emplotment and theorization of self, and the use of criticism as critical-self-portraiture. As such, rhetoric and rhetorical criticism exist not only as a method of being, but as a way of becoming.

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