Curating a dissertation

Graeme Sullivan's framing of a meta-analytic reflexive methodology approach as a curatorial practice has become a metaphor/anthem for my continuing dissertation work. Though I have never curated a visual art exhibition, I have had experience in curating performance series. When I selected seasons of youth performances for a performing arts center, it was always my dream to be able to consciously curate the season: develop a theme or in the vocabulary of education, an essential understanding, that each show would somehow address. But the selection process had too many moving parts, too many stakeholders, to be able to curate from the front end. Instead, I "backed into" a curatorial process. After all of the shows were booked, I would take a look at the shows, try to find some common themes, and then use those themes in our marketing and resource materials, and in our fundraising activities. It was pseudo-curating.

I have the opportunity now to curate from the front end with my dissertation. Through my literature review I have established three lenses of interpretation through which to approach the "lived life" in Maxine Greene's texts: situatedness, embodiment, and aesthetics. These lenses also shaped my methodology helping me to arrive at a practice that is curatorial in nature and uses reflexive writing in an existential hermeneutic tradition.

When thinking about curating a dissertation, I am reminded of a wonderful exhibition I attended at the Walker Art Center nearly 30 years ago. It was "Hockney Paints the Stage." This was in the early 1980s and I was just then coming into contact with the avant-garde and performance art as an undergrad at NYU. The wonder of the Hockney exhibition was that it was multi-dimensional. The galleries embodied the sets designed by David Hockney. The sensation was to walk into an environment that was wholly distinct from the one you just exited. There were backdrops and set pieces, there was lighting and music; it was fully sensual. The viewer entered Hockney's world.

I want to be able to achieve something similar in my dissertation, but with the limitations of two dimensions. And the primary means of expression is language/text. I am not sure what this will look like. But it is important for the reader/viewer to be able to enter the world of Greene's texts through the interpretation of Shawn's lived life.

A side note. I once traveled to Paris on my own following my cousin's wedding in Zurich. I took the train up to France and spent about four or five days on my own. I met up with friends from time to time, but was on my own for most of the trip. I made sure to visit many of the museums that Paris has to offer, though I avoided the Louvre as it was too big to try attempt in a single day or trip (and I had visited it earlier in my life). In the end, I suffered from a bout of Stendahl's syndrome. I became overwhelmed by the amount of art I was encountering. The bout of Stendahl's syndrome was exacerbated by the fact that I had no one nearby to share in these encounters, a means of processing the aesthetic.

On my final day in Paris I was visiting the Pompidou Centre, one of my favorite institutions in Paris. As I was feeling anxious among the two-dimensional canvases on an upper floor, I remembered the Walker exhibition from ten years earlier. I descended onto another floor that was comprised of sculpture and installations. The works were three-dimensional and I could move around them and through them. The anxiety passed. I found my breath again.

I need many dimensions in my dissertation. I want my readers to be able to move through and around the text.