Dissertation as Contemporary Art

Kimberley D’Adamo, EdD, is a contemporary artist, researcher, and teacher-educator whose work uses arts-based and studio research to examine how schools shape voice, belonging, and agency. She teaches emerging media and arts-based inquiry at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.Guy Trainin, PhD, is a professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln whose research focuses on literacy, learning, and the design of equitable educational environments. He has extensive experience advising doctoral students and helping committees evaluate innovative, unconventional, practice-based dissertations.

At once intellectually rigorous and refreshingly candid, D'Adamo demonstrates how contemporary art can generate knowledge in ways that challenge and enrich educational research. By weaving together her own artistic journey with insightful reflections on mentorship, trust, and translation across practices, The Dissertation as Contemporary Art provides an accessible field guide for graduate students and advisors wanting to imagine and create new possibilities for research. - Adam J. Greteman, PhD. Professor, Art Education, School of the Art Institute of ChicagoThe Dissertation as Contemporary Art: How Academic Research Becomes Artistic Practice offers an important addition to the literature on arts-based education research. The always clear, and often punchy, writing makes for engaging and practical reading on how to make the arts-based dissertation legible to a dissertation committee accustomed to traditional dissertation processes and elements. This work is unique regarding precision of method and balance between expertise in visual art and academic research. Helpfully, the book includes exercises for the reader to try-on approaches and methods. Visuals of processes and artworks offer concrete examples of the rigor and sophistication of the arts-based dissertation. Advisor Field Notes offer perspective and advice from the dissertation advisor. The book demonstrates and supports healthy relationships between doctoral student and committee while simultaneously allowing for transformation of the academy.- Rhianna Thomas, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education, New Mexico State UniversityFor artists, educators, doctoral students, and advisors whose practice unfolds at the intersection of artistic practice, pedagogy, and scholarship, Dissertation as Contemporary Art, How Academic Research Becomes Artistic Practice offers a remarkably generous and intellectually honest framework for reimagining these inseparable forms of inquiry. While grounded in doctoral research, its insights resonate with anyone committed to understanding artistic practice as a rigorous mode of inquiry. Kimberley D'Adamo demonstrates how transparency, vulnerability, and the practice of making thinking visible enrich analysis, inviting us to rethink research through the dispositions of the studio. The result is a compelling reminder that our lives are both texts worthy of study and the material through which meaning is co-constructed."- Kevin M. Townsend, Artist and Educator, Faculty, Kansas City Art InstituteImagine a dissertation as a work of art. Kimberly D’Adamo is a contemporary artist and educator who embraced her artistic processes to undertake her doctoral research in education. In this book she traces her recursive artistic processes as she moved between narrative, reflection, image creation, and dialogue, in her companion dissertation text. What she shared in this book is absolutely unique in its sharing of the behind-the-scenes decision making, reflections, and deliberations for her emerging inquiry. It not only reveals the work of the doctoral student, it shares the reflections and shifting understanding of the doctoral advisor Guy Trainin. These complementary narratives create a strong modeling for how university researchers can rethink the role of the institution and those in the institution in revisioning what could be possible in doctoral research, particularly in art education. This is an absolutely necessary text for all arts-based researchers eager to create dissertations as a work of art!- Rita L. Irwin, Ed.D., Professor Emerita, Art Education, The University of British ColumbiaAt the annual AERA conference in 1998, Elliot Eisner and Howard Gardner debated whether a work of fiction could serve as a dissertation. Gardner argued against it, Eisner for. At the time, struggling to master the processes of social science research, I agreed with Gardner. Fast-forward nearly 30 years, and Dissertation as Contemporary Art has changed my mind. D'Adamo has helped me to "understand more imaginatively and emotionally the issues and practices that need attention in our schools. (Visit Anna Koh's blog10-5-2023). Also, importantly, she used rigorous methodology, explicitly documented, to build her case. By combining the two approaches, she manages, in my mind, to settle the debate between these two eminent scholars. How satisfying.- Lois Hetland, EdD, Professor Emerita, Massachusetts College of Art and Design

• Foreword: by Jorge Lucero, Prologue: Lived Research, Introduction: The Dissertation as Contemporary Art Part I: Method and Structure Chapter 1: The Studio as Method Chapter 2: Currere as Engine Chapter 3: Lineage and Permission Part II: Advising, Institutions, and the Work Chapter 4: Adviser and Candidate Chapter 5: The Artworks as Research Sites Chapter 6: Artworks as Interpretive Instruments Chapter 7: Place as Pedagogy Chapter 8: Institutional Legibility and Academic Rigor Part III: Authorship, Survival, and Continuation Chapter 9: Authorship as Accounting (Working With AI) Chapter 10: Working the Institution: A Test Case in Transforming School from Within Epilogue: School Re-Form As Contemporary Art