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The art and art history of the American West has long been uncritically accepted as embodying positive nationalistic values that include courage, optimism, democracy, and individualism. In 1991, William Truettner's The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920 (1991) became one of the most politically charged western art exhibitions in American history to question and criticize these values and to underscore the ideological content of western art. The exhibition with its accompanying catalogue reinterpreted nineteenth-century images of the American West as expansionist propaganda. In spite of this groundbreaking and controversial exhibition and catalogue, exhibitions continue to promote largely romanticized and idyllic images of pristine landscapes with American Indians living in a harmonious world. The scholarly essay and museum exhibition entitled Lone Wolf (Hart M. Schultz): Cowboy, Actor and Artist, focuses on the artwork and life of Blackfeet artist Lone Wolf, (aka Hart Merriam Schultz, 1882-1970), who was active from 1915 to 1960, painting in Montana at Glacier National Park in the summertime, and wintering in Tucson, Arizona. As a little known and understudied American Indian artist, this exhibition and essay serve to expand awareness of the significant contributions by marginalized artists who successfully negotiated the terrain of the mainstream art world. Lone Wolf exemplifies a unique case study as an artist with American Indian heritage, who actively participated in the creation of stereotypical and romantic images about the American West, while he maintained that his first-hand experience and indigenous knowledge helped him to accurately depict what was considered the authentic American West. The exhibition and essay adds to the growing scholarly interest in the art of the American West and incorporates contemporary theories and scholarship that recognizes the American West and the art devoted to it as distinctly heterogeneous and embedded in a number of discourses that are overshadowed by the lingering romanticism and nostalgia that clings to much art of the American West.

This dissertation covers the emergence of a tradition of the fine arts in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century and its relationship to discourses of nationalism. Taking as a starting point the canon of the ‘pioneer’ generation as it is defined in the historiography, I follow the careers of the sculptor Mahmud Mukhtar and the painters Ragheb ‘Ayyad, Muhammad Nagi, and Mahmud Sa‘id, each of whom is treated in a full chapter. Narratives surrounding the life and work of these artists have tended to emphasize the ways in which the images they created participated in the definition of a single cohesive nation – through the use of Pharaonic imagery, which anchors the nation in a distant past, through rural symbolism, which ties the nation to the land and the Nile, and through a female iconography that links the nation to ideas of virtue and purity – what I term here, following Timothy Mitchell and Homi Bhabha, a pedagogical narrative of the nation. However, I suggest that the process of imagining the nation as a unified whole necessarily involves a negotiation of difference, sometimes that of the peasant or the woman who pose a challenge to the assumption of an unproblematic national collectivity, sometimes that of the artists themselves, who, for reasons of foreign education, religion, or social identity, are unable to fully identify with definitions of the nation that were themselves constantly contested. This negotiation of difference – what Mitchell has termed the performative - and how it appears within works of visual art, constitutes the main subject of this dissertation.

Graduate

abstract: ABSTRACT Improvisation, or extemporization, has always played an important role in all genres of music across the globe. In Western art music alone, improvisation has been used in many settings throughout history, such as composition, public extemporization, and ornamenting existing notated music. Why is it then, that improvisation is not an important part in the education of the Western Art Music tradition? Introducing improvisation to music education develops a more well-rounded musical ability, a firmer understanding of musical concepts, and a clearer insight to the composition of music. To examine this issue, I discuss a number of scientific explorations into the use of improvisation. First, new technology in the study of the brain gives insight into how the brain functions during improvisation. Adding to this evidence, I contextualize the use of improvisation into four scientifically developed educational scenarios based on how humans most effectively learn information and skills. To conclude, the discussion then shifts to simple exercises designed to assist musicians and teachers of any skill level in utilizing improvisation in practicing, lessons, and performance. To prevent students of music from reaffirming a continuously narrowing viewpoint of music’s creation, cultural implications, and performance, educational systems should make an effort to teach more than just the preparation of increasingly complex scores. Improvisation is not only a solid foundation for understanding the roots of western music’s own musical traditions, but also a gateway to understanding the musical traditions of the world. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Performance 2015

High school general music classes often primarily consist of lectures about the Western art canon, despite repeated calls for a popular music focus (Deal, 1984; Miceli, 1998; Snell, 2007; Thompson, 1979; Woody, 2007). It is argued that the latter approach can alleviate student apathy toward class content and boredom, provide more meaningful learning experiences for the students, and create a more positive experience for the teacher. The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences of students and teachers in both a traditional general music class and a popular music-focused general music class. In this qualitative comparative study, I studied two high school general music classes in Tennessee and investigated the experiences of the students and teachers with respect to subject matter, teaching techniques, and meaningful learning. My data sources were interviews with teachers and students, classroom observations, and classroom archival documents. I analyzed the data using interpretive coding guided by a constant comparative approach. Cross-case emergent themes involving meaningful learning included students' preference for music studied at the end of the semester and a high level of student-teacher interaction and engagement when studying popular styles of music. Regarding curricula and teaching methods, cross-case themes showed similar attitudes and frustrations for teachers and students in both classes. Within-case themes in the Music for Listeners class included an expressed student desire to learn popular music, student lack of understanding of the Western art canon, and student ability to connect class topics to outside of school activities. Within-case themes in the Development of Rock 'n' Roll class illustrated the importance of delivery style and technology in the general music classroom. I concluded that a combination of curriculum and teaching style produced differing experiences for the students and teachers. Based on the results of this study, suggestions for education profession include employing a genre of music that is meaningful to the students in their daily lives; engaging students in conversations about the music they enjoy; avoiding "busy work" and ensuring that assignments are relevant; and providing ample music listening opportunities.

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This thesis discusses the recent construction and anthropological collaboration of the Paris museum: Musée du quai Branly (MQB), an art museum dedicated to showcasing art collections specific to aboriginal and indigenous cultures in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania. The opening of MQB in June 2006 raised a plethora of controversial questions concerning the museum’s methods of curatorial display of the art it has made its primary focus. One of the major issues discussed examines the Quai Branly’s authentic, or inauthentic, representation of certain artworks displayed throughout the museum. Thus, the essay raises the questions: does a non-Western object remain authentic once it is exhibited in a Western society’s art museum? To answer this question, the essay explores the various explanations of art and authenticity in order to reach an understandable conclusion of what constitutes an authentic display of non-Western objects in a Western art museum.

Denna självstudie undersöker en lärprocess i improvisation med avstamp i historisk västerländsk konstmusikalisk repertoar och två sonater av Domenico Scarlatti. Syftet med projektet var att se hur min förmåga att improvisera påverkades av övning och att studera historisk improvisation. Under studiens övningsperiod utforskades improvisation med utgångspunkt i historiska improvisationstekniker och nutida forskning. Utforskningen ägde rum under tio veckor och dokumenterades med videoobservation och loggbok som sedan transkriberades och analyserades utifrån tematisk analys. I resultatet beskriver jag designen av min improvisationsövning och konsekvenserna av den designen. Utforskningen av improvisation gick från fri utforskning mot att begränsningar lades till under övningstidens gång. I resultatet kunde ett antal tecken på utveckling av improvisationsförmåga ses. Det framkom också att mina improvisationer blev mer stringenta, med stabilare flöde och med fler musikaliska idéer under projektets gång. I diskussionen diskuteras olika perspektiv på improvisation i relation till resultatet. / This study examines a learning process in improvisation based on historical western art music repertoire and two sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. The purpose of this project was to see how my ability to improvise was affected by practice and study of historical improvisation. Improvisation was explored on basis of historical improvisation techniques and contemporary research during the practice period of this study. The practice period took place over ten weeks and was documented with video observation and a logbook, which then was transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. In the result section I describe my design of my improvisation practice and the consequences of that design. The exploration of improvisation went from free to exploration to a more restricted exploration by the end of the practice period. A number of signs of development of my ability to improvise could be observed by the end of the practice period. I also found that my improvisations became more stringent, with a more stable flow and with more musical ideas during the project. The discussion section discusses different perspectives of improvisation in relation to the result.

Rather than being located in a field of art that addresses genocide through assumptions connected with identity issues or activism, this thesis of an artist’s exploration of artistic response to genocide in post World War II art practice, is informed by the emerging field of genocide scholarship. Seeing a parallelism between the concerns of genocide scholars and artists who respond to genocide, this thesis is an interdisciplinary study of art positioned alongside the field of genocide scholarship, as theorised by scholars such as Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses. In addressing genocide through broader historical trends, periods and structures, it assumes that artists who respond to genocide share with genocide scholars a concern about genocide at a secondary level and share the potential to create illumination in the field. This thesis explores art practices that address genocide conceptually through structure and material. The central claim of this thesis is that recent and contemporary art practices, here discussed, show a concern to respond to genocide as an ethical response, and that they do so by engaging with the complexity of abstract issues such as complicity and agency. The initial analysis of Adorno’s discourse on ethics, as it relates to response in art, sets up a level of complexity for two further investigations that interrogate the discourses of victim representation and lens-based documents of genocide through ethics and agency. Together these provide an analytical framework for the project. Close readings informed by genocide scholarship, of art practices including those of Jimmie Durham and Francis Alÿs, take forward notions in the existing critical field. These readings yield not only the evidence that demonstrates a commitment to creating ethically based art through conceptually informed practice, in artists responding to genocide, but also the value of a cultural critique that is informed by genocide scholarship.