Despite having produced an impressive body of work and having been well-received in his lifetime, the career of nineteenth-century American expatriate artist Walter MacEwen has received virtually no scholarly attention. Assimilating primary-source materials, this thesis provides the first serious examination of MacEwen's life and career, thereby providing insight into a forgotten episode in American art.

This research examines the personal narratives of two contemporary non-native artists living and working on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Issues related to narratives, power structures, artistic processes, insider/outsider dynamics, Hawaiian culture, island life, surfing, and the researcher's own experiences are woven together to formulate realizations surrounding alternative knowledge systems and the power of multiple or hidden narratives to the practice of art education.

By engaging in collaborative arts-based and arts-informed narrative inquiry with my six-year-old daughter, we explored self-guided materials in art museums in the North Texas area. Though the field of art museum education is becoming increasingly participatory, most academic research related to self-guided materials has fallen short of exploring visitors' experiences with these materials. Furthermore, the perspectives of children have been long overlooked in academic and, at times, institutional research about family experiences in museums. Over the course of nine months, my daughter and I visited art museums and engaged with their self-guided materials, ranging from audio tours to interactive galleries. During this time we created collaborative works of art based on our experiences, which acted as both data collection and analysis in preparation for writing narratives. Our narrative explorations allowed us each to better understand our collective experiences. Though this research specifically targets self-guided materials in art museums, any educator interested in intergenerational or collaborative family learning may find both our methodologies and our conclusions to be helpful in better understanding how narratives are essential to this type of learning.

This descriptive study uses a qualitative, content analysis to examine the middle school visual arts and core Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) to determine the potential common learning activities that can be aligned between the two. By performing an alignment of the potential common learning activities present in the middle school visual art TEKS and the middle school core TEKS, I demonstrate that there is a foundation for curriculum integration in the Texas middle school visual arts classroom.

Regurgitating test answers, needing more time to digest a reading, or being spoon fed information are just a few of many digestive metaphors currently used in education. In taking seriously the use of these metaphors, I suggest that humans recognize a connection, on some level, between the mental act of taking in and processing knowledge and the physical act of digestion, yet in educational discourse, these processes are more often than not cast in a negative light. The following philosophical exploration begins with a close look at two digestive practices, rumination and regurgitation, in non-human animals such as ruminants, seed-eating birds, and honey bees. By looking to these animals, it becomes possible to rehabilitate an affirmative human version of rumination and regurgitation in which our physical and mental selves are intrinsically intertwined in and through bodily education. The works of Giorgio Agamben, Tyson E. Lewis, Nathan Snaza, and Vinciane Despret support a theoretical framework which moves beyond human-centered education towards the development of an inhuman biopedagogy that embraces digestion rather than discriminates against it. I offer practical applications of rumination and regurgitation, shedding light on moments when rumination and regurgitation are already present in education, and introduces slight adjustments to …

American artist James Rosenquist is best known for his Pop Art paintings, which existing scholarship has studied in regard to its formal features and social and cultural significance. Rosenquist's manner of working, specifically his process, remains understudied. Focusing on three paintings and three corresponding collages, President Elect (1960-61, 1964), Star Thief (1980), and The Stowaway Peers Out at the Speed of Light (2000), this thesis considers features of Rosenquist's studio practice to propose a new interpretation involving the representational status and significance of the artist's collages and paintings that is elucidated by French theorist Jean Baudrillard's concept of the simulacrum. Additionally, the thesis addresses the treatment of Rosenquist's collages and paintings in publications and exhibitions since 1992 by suggesting how Baudrillard's ideas about the simulacrum clarify the museological narrativizing and consumption of the artist's work.

Learning relationships between intergenerational students in an after school art program provided mutual benefits for participants in Denton, Texas. This qualitative case study of older, active adults and elementary students involved in visual art experiences gives insight to a contextual learning environment that fosters lifelong learning and addresses the interpersonal issues of an aging society.

As a museum educator who embraces social education and reflects on the postmodern condition, I found working within a traditional museum context to present challenges. As a result, I conducted an action research project focusing on ways to improve my own practice and affect change based on my engagement with visual culture discourse and the docents I teach. Having chosen action research, I implemented various teaching approaches and collected data over the course of several months. These data collection methods included interviews, museum documents, observational notes, recorded teaching practice, and daily journal entries. Narrative analysis was then used to interpret the collected data, specifically focusing how participants, including myself, make sense out of our experiences and how we value them.