Sacred Lucidity: Embodied Identity Through the Lens of Poetry

Social location and personal identity must be explored through the art of poetry, in conjunction with academic analysis. In a 28-page poetry chapbook and nine-page analytical essay, Sacred Lucidity provides a deep examination of social justice and radical personal healing. The introductory essay takes a close look at Mirror by Sylvia Plath, in salem by Lucille Clifton, and two poems from milk and honey by Rupi Kaur, all in relation to their societal impact in demographic identification and harsh truths of trauma in personal histories. This thesis explores the human condition and specifics of self, while taking on philosophical themes, including spiritual interpretation of individual experiential learning of selfhood. In further illuminating our raw human truths, poetry is the perfect medium for this discovery process. Storytelling and perspective-taking both contribute to community improvement and compassion cultivation, overall. By addressing questions of race, class, gender, disability and mental illness, body positivity and eating disorders, the writer creates a flawed and empowered poetic self-portrait. In doing so, this thesis puts forth a framework for social change by way of feminine vulnerability in the written word. Sacred Lucidity: Embodied Identity Through the Lens of Poetry adds to our understanding of the empowering practice of writing and reading detailed, identity-oriented poetry

Moralizing the Mass in the Butler Hours

This essay analyzes a group of prefatory pictures and texts in the English Butler Hours (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum MS W. 105), a richly illuminated, now fragmentary manuscript originally made c. 1340-50 for the Butler family of Wem and Oversley, Shropshire. Focusing first on the Tree of Vices, this essay elucidates that picture\u27s apparent breadth of pictorial reference and offers the first transcriptions and translations of some of the Anglo-Norman French moralizing couplets that enrich its visual program. The essay then widens its focus, examining the visual-verbal operations of the Tree of Vices, its semantic relationships with other pictures and texts in the preface, including miniatures of the Crucifixion, Holy Face, Tree of Life, and Butler family at Mass, as well as the remnants of the Office of the Holy Face. This group of pictures and texts are shown to function as an intricately interconnected, deftly personalized devotional tool and vehicle for penitent self-scrutiny

Eco-visualisation: Combining art and technology to reduce energy consumption

Artworks that display the real time usage of key resources such as electricity offer new strategies to conserve energy. These eco-visualisations-or artworks that creatively visualise ecologically significant data in real time-represent a substantial contribution to new knowledge about dynamic feedback as a tool to promote energy conservation and environmental site-based learning in this interdisciplinary project that expands and builds on prior findings from the fields of art, design, environmental psychology, and human computer interaction (HCI). The aims of this research endeavor were to locate answers to the following questions related to energy conservation in various public contexts. Might dynamic feedback from data-driven artwork create a better understanding of resource consumption patterns? Which environments are best for promoting eco-visualisation: borne, workplace, or alternative spaces? What kinds of visualisation tactics are most effective in communicating energy consumption data? These initial questions generated a four-year research project that involved an extensive literature review in both environmental psychology and art history that culminated in three different case studies, which targeted the effectiveness of eco-visualisation as an innovative conservation strategy. The three primary claims to be proven with supporting evidence from the literature reviews and case studies are: (1) eco-visualisation offers novel visual ways of making invisible energy data comprehensible, and encourages site-based learning; (2) eco-visualisation that provides real time visual feedback can increase environmental awareness and possibly increase the conservation behaviour in the viewing population; (3) eco-visualisation encourages new perceptions of linkages between the single individual and a larger community via site-based dialogue and conversation. Although the results of the three case studies are generally positive and prove the claims, there are larger social and environmental questions that will be addressed. How can eco-visualisation be productively integrated into the home or workplace without becoming a disposable gadget that represents a passing fad or fancy? Most importantly, how can energy conservation interventions be conceived to be as sustainable as possible, and non-threatening from a privacy perspective? These questions and more contribute to the discussion and analysis of the results of the three case studies that constitute the primary source of new knowledge asserted here in this dissertation