Suiting the Modern Woman documented the evolution of women's power dressing in the 20th century by featuring four major components: thirteen period suit silhouettes, the power suits of twenty-eight influential and successful high profile Texas women, a look at the career and creations of Dallas designer, Richard Brooks, who created the professional wardrobe for former Texas Governor Ann Richards, and a media room which showcased images of working women in television and movie clips, advertisements, cartoons, and fashion guidebooks. The exhibition served as an application for contemporary museum education theory. Acting as both the exhibition coordinator and educator provided an opportunity to develop interpretative strategies and create a meaningful visitor experience.

This a/r/tographic dissertation offers opportunities to interrogate curator identity and curator ways of being in both public and private spaces. Instead of an authoritative or prescriptive look at the curatorial, this dissertation as catalogue allows for uncertainty, for messiness, for vulnerable spaces where readers are invited into an exhibition of disorderly living. Stitched throughout the study are stories of mothering and the difficulties that accompanied the extremely early birth of my daughter. Becoming a mother provoked my curating in unexpected ways and allowed me to reconsider the reasons I collect, display, and perform as a curator. It was through the actual curating of familial material artifacts in the exhibition Dress Stories, I was able to map the journey of my curatorial turns. My engagement with clothing in the inquiry was informed by the work of Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, where dress as a methodology allows for spaces to consider autobiography, identity, and practice. It was not until the exhibition was over, I was able to discover new ways to thread caring, collecting, and cataloging ourselves as curators, artists, researchers, teachers, and mothers. It prompts curators and teachers to consider possibilities for failure, releasing excess, and uncaring as a way …

I have always believed the design of clothes should not try to conceal the naked body but should act as a catalyst that reveals the existence and strength of the individual. Spring Message includes three phases, Spring Message, Mystification, and My Paradise to reflect my three life experiences. Spring Message is an attempt to express my thoughts and ideas though designs in fashion, which were derived from the ancient beliefs, traditions, and western influence I have experienced. Through my individual pieces and creations I hope the viewer will be able to see who I am, where I came from, and understand the happiness and changes in my life.

Blogs serve multiple purposes, resulting in several types of blogs that vary greatly in terms of quality and content. It is important to evaluate the quality of blogs, which requires appropriate evaluation criteria. Unfortunately, there are minimal studies on framework and the specific criteria and indicators for evaluating the quality of blogs. Moreover, quality is related to user perception, and should therefore be evaluated by the receivers. This dissertation examines the criteria and indicators that blog users consider important for evaluating the quality of blogs, and develops a user-centered framework for evaluating quality by conducting user surveys and post-survey email interviews. The personal characteristics that affect the users’ choices of criteria to evaluate the quality of blogs are examined as well. The study’s findings include 1) the criteria that users consider important when evaluating the quality of blogs are content quality, usability, authority, and blog credibility; 2) the indicators that blog users consider most important for evaluating the quality of blogs are understandability, accuracy, believability, currency, ease of use, and navigation; and 3) gender, education level, age, profession, purpose of use, and specific interests affect the user’s choices of criteria for evaluating the quality of blogs. Future research may involve …