master thesis state of the art

How to write a good state of the art: should it be the first step of your thesis?

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Why and how to write the state-of-the-art.

State-of-the-art (SoTA) is a step to demonstrate the novelty of your research results. The importance of being the first to demonstrate research results is a cornerstone of the research business. You cannot get a Nobel prize (anymore) by learning Einstein ‘s law of photoelectric effect by heart and presenting it as your own. Einstein did it before you, and everyone knows it because he published it. When Einstein published his theory the theory had novelty. Einstein could demonstrate his theory’s novelty by presenting a SoTA and showing that no other researcher had ever presented such results. That’s why he got a Nobel prize and you will not.

Besides demonstrating the novelty of your research results, a SoTA has other important properties:

• It teaches you a lot about your research problem. By reading literature related to your research problem you will learn from other researchers and it will be easier for you to understand and analyze your problem.
• It proves that your research problem has relevance. If many people are trying to solve the same research problem as you, and if you can demonstrate this in your SoTA, then no one can tell you the problem you are trying to solve is not important.
• It shows different approaches to a solution. By seeing many different approaches taken by other researchers, you can evaluate your own approach and realize its novelty (or lack of it) easily. You can also see which approaches are the most popular and which are dead ends.
• It shows what you can reuse from what others have done. Especially when doing research on new software, it is amazing how many people have made the exact software you are planning to make. Just do a search on sourceforge and github .

So how to write a good SoTA? Writing a good SoTA is 110% dependent on having a clear problem definition . If you have failed in defining your problem clearly, you will fail in writing a good SoTA. The reason is that you will not know what related research you should investigate. So if you have problems with your SoTA, please go back and work on your problem definition! Here are some steps/hints on starting to write:

• SoTA is not a one-way road. You will not sit down one evening and write your SoTA. You will do it all the time while writing your paper/report. Knowing what other researchers are doing should be a part of your life for all the duration of your research. So an important step is to create a system of registering and summarizing what you read. Use some bibliography software such as Mendeley , BibTeX or EndNode or Zotero , register everything you read, and register your understanding of what you read, in your own words.
• Be critical when choosing your literature. Don’t read everything. There is a LOT of garbage out there on the web, and you don’t want to waste your time on garbage. One important criteria for choosing your literature is to make sure that it is peer-reviewed and is already presented/published in well-known conferences/journals. In case of technical IT-related stuff, ACM and IEEE are good places to start (do searches in Engineering Village ). It is also a good idea to set up an initial SoTA literature list together with your supervisor.
• Stop reading! Make an initial selection of literature (10-20 papers, depending on research problem) and stick to these for a while. Don’t go on finding new papers all the time, or you will never finish your thesis!
• Spend time on analysis and not on making summaries! A mere summary of 10-20 papers is not a SoTA. There is software out there that can summarize any paper for you, automatically and much faster than you ever will be able to. Your summaries become a SoTA only when you relate the SoTA papers to your own problem analysis.
• Always give credit! Not giving credit for others’ research is also called plagiarism .
• For more advanced writers: It is always a good practice to document your methodology for doing state-of-the-art survey. This means you should document how you searched for literature, what literature you included and what you excluded, how you did your analysis and so forth. This is called systematic review, and a de facto guide for doing systematic reviews in the field of software engineering is available here . You can also find many useful links on wikipedia .

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• v.14(6); 2022 Dec

How to Conduct a State-of-the-Art Literature Review

Erin s. barry.

Erin S. Barry, MS, is Assistant Professor, Department of Military & Emergency Medicine and Department of Anesthesiology, F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and Doctoral Candidate, School of Health Professions Education, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands

Jerusalem Merkebu

Jerusalem Merkebu, PhD, is Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Lara Varpio

Lara Varpio, PhD, is Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

This article provides a brief introduction to critical steps needed for conducting a high-quality State-of-the-Art (SotA) literature review , one that will add to our understanding of the phenomenon under study. This introduction complements another article in this issue, which discusses the purposes, underlying foundations, strengths, and weakness of SotA reviews in more detail. 1

The fundamental purpose of SotA literature reviews is to create a 3-part argument about the state of knowledge for a specific phenomenon: This is where we are now. This is how we got here. This is where we could go next ( Table 1 ). Below is a 6-stage process for conducting a SotA literature review. 2 To support this process, questions for guiding each of the 6 stages are provided in Table 2 .

Example of a Medical Education State-of-the-Art (SotA) Literature Review

Six-Stage Approach to Conducting a State-of-the-Art Review With Guiding Questions

Before Starting: Build Your Team

It is important to identify individuals who will be a part of the research team. While a SotA review can be conducted by a single author, most SotA reviews harness the perspectives of an interdisciplinary team to generate rich interpretations of the literature. The team should also include a medical librarian to help with developing the search strategy.

Stage 1: Determine Initial Research Question and Field of Inquiry

In Stage 1, the research team determines the initial research question that incorporates the phenomenon to be addressed in the SotA literature review. It is important to clearly define the field of knowledge and/or practice that will be targeted.

Stage 2: Determine Time Frame

Stage 2 determines the time frame that will define “state-of-the-art” for the research question defined in Stage 1. In Stage 2, the research team should engage in a broad overview of the literature to develop an understanding of the phenomenon's historical development (ie, seminal articles). This process will shape the research team's focus vis-à-vis the pivotal moments in history when the thinking about the phenomenon changed and the time frame for contemporary thinking (ie, the date marking the beginning of this is where we are now thinking). At the end of Stage 2, the research team should be able to justify why a specific year (ie, turning point in history) is chosen to mark the beginning of state-of-the-art thinking around the phenomenon.

Stage 3: Finalize Research Question(s) to Reflect Time Frame

Based on the developments from Stages 1 and 2, the research team will revise and finalize the research question(s) to determine what needs to be included in the search strategy and analyses. The revised research question(s) and justification for the timeline must be reported in the article.

Stage 4: Develop Search Strategy to Find Relevant Articles

Next, a search strategy is developed, enabling the research team to construct the corpus of literature to be included in the SotA review. This involves determining which database(s) to search and when to set the start date for the review. Since the review needs to describe this is how we got here , it must include literature that predates the this is where we are now time frame determined in Stage 2. Stage 4 is an iterative process of testing and revising the search strategy to capture pertinent literature required to meet the purpose of the SotA review. It is important to note that the search goal is not to review all pertinent literature in the SotA review; instead, the goal is to include relevant literature to describe a historical evolution in the field's thinking about a topic. The final search strategy must be included in the manuscript. If possible, a librarian should be consulted when developing the search strategy. A software program such as Covidence may be useful to help organize and share all articles with the research team.

Stage 5: Analyses

Analysis of the included literature is an inductive process where the research team reads and reflects on the articles and constructs an interpretation of the historical development of how the specific phenomenon is understood in the field. The research team should begin by reading each included article to become familiar with this literature and be able to identify similarities among the articles, ways of thinking that have shaped current understandings, assumptions underpinning changes in understandings over time, and gaps and assumptions in the current knowledge.

Next, the research team can generate the premises that fit the purpose of a SotA review (ie, creating an understanding of the topic, constructing a history of knowledge development that gave rise to this modern thinking, and developing suggestions for future research). In this stage, the research team should highlight specific articles that either support or contradict its premises.

The final step in Stage 5 is to verify the thoroughness and strength of the research team's interpretations. This can be done by selecting different articles and examining if they are congruent with the team's interpretations. The research team may also seek out additional literature that offers alternative interpretations to convey that their summary successfully refutes conflicting interpretations. The goal of this verification work is not to engage in a triangulation process for objectivity or for external confirmation; instead, this process is to help the research team ensure that they have successfully explained their interpretations in a way that supports or refutes the interpretations offered by others.

Stage 6: Reflexivity

The SotA manuscript should offer insights into the subjectivity of the research team by describing members who comprise the team, applications of their expertise, and how these informed their interpretations of the data. This reflexivity description will help readers understand the perspectives that informed the interpretation offered by the research team.

Disclaimer: The opinions and assertions contained herein are those of the authors and are not to be construed as reflecting the views of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences or the US Department of Defense.

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What is a "State of the art" /Litterature review

Most likely, you have been told that you are expected to write a "state of the art" passage or a literature review as the introductory chapter to your assignment, but what is, in fact, a "state of the art"?

At this point in your studies, you have probably read a fair number of research articles in either Danish or English. You may have noticed that several of them start with a few pages that outline the field of research, making many citations. Various perspectives may be listed and described one by one, or interesting research questions related to the article’s topic may be mentioned. This part of the article often narrows its focus and ends up zooming in on the topic of the article excluding other topics or questions. It can be heavy reading for some, but it is important for defining the “State of the art” of the question that the article deals with.

If you are familiar with sections like these, you are not far from understanding what a “State of the art” section is. You might also recognize this as a “Literature review”. In DRM, a Design Research Methodology, the authors Blessing & Chakrabarti (2009) define it as follows:

Literature Review or State-of-the-Art

The literature review provides a review of the relevant contributions from the existing body of the literature. The literature review should identify the theoretical foundation for the research, identify the level of novelty and relevance of the research described in the thesis, and help to clarify and refine the focus, research questions and hypotheses to be addressed. The literature review should also provide the justification for the research focus. […] Note that depending on the stages covered by the thesis, a second literature review chapter or section may be required in another part of the thesis. Usually, however, the literature review is the second chapter of the thesis (p. 217).

So in your State of the art" you should ...

• identify the theoretical foundation for your discussion.
• define the relevance of the question you are going to analyze.
• clarify and define your focus, problems and/or hypotheses.
• justify the relevance or importance of the problem you have chosen to focus on.

You have to show your readers that you are aware of the (recent) relevant research within your field, and ideally your research overview should highlight that there is a missing piece in the exact area where your problem formulation is proposing to investigate. In some papers this overview is placed in the introduction, which then leads on to the problem formulation. Others make the overview a separate chapter of the paper and call it “State of art” or “Literature review”. Some also add a chapter with key terms definitions. Here a great part of references also can appear, but this concept-clarifying section cannot constitute the "State of the art" alone.

A "State of the art" can be a very blurry size, and what is expected from it differs from one field of study to the next. Supervisors may also have different opinions. Often the difference is related to your field of study, research question, and what is common on your education. Expectations for section length also vary greatly, anything from half a page to ten can be realistic. A rule of thumb is that the longer the section is expected to be the more you are expected to describe systematically how you did your literature search, which databases you have searched in, search terms, demarcation criteria, documentation in annex, etc.

However, it is imperative that a “State of the art” in no way should be equated with a systematic review. Your approach to your search may well be systematic (and should be, to some extent), but doing a genuine systematic review is a comprehensive task in itself, which can take months to complete, and it usually ends up as a standalone article. Maybe you have come across articles called something like "Review". If an article is a review, it consists solely of a literature study based on a systematic search. It's probably a systematic review, but there are other sub-genres as well.

If you would like to read more about State of the art / Literature Review, you can find the following chapters via the Library Catalogue:

• Blessing, L. T. M., & Chakrabarti, A. (2009). Writing Up: Publishing Results. In DRM, a Design Research Methodology (s. 215-230). London: Springer. https://doi-org.proxy1-bib.sdu.dk/10.1007/978-1-84882-587-1
• Furseth, I. & Everett, E. L. (2013).  A guide for searching the literature. In Doing your Masters’ dissertation, (kap. 5). London: SAGE.
• Furseth, I. & Everett, E. L. (2013).  Reviewing research literature. In Doing your Masters’ dissertation, (kap. 6). London: SAGE.
• Oliver, P. (2013). The literature review. In Writing your Thesis , (kap. 9) London: SAGE.

Last Updated 28.05.2022

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Preparing and writing a State of The Art review

Presentation giving guidelines and suggesting resources to elaborate the literature review specially focused for students in the UPF Master in Sound and Music Computing

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Art History MA Thesis: Thesis

View examples of in-progress and completed theses from School students and alumni.

Before beginning work on a master’s thesis, the student must receive the Supervisory Committee's approval of a written proposal. The thesis may be an extension of a seminar paper, and it must demonstrate the student's ability to conduct rigorous research, indicate familiarity with bibliographical and reference materials, and show a capacity for the synthesis and critical evaluation of the material under consideration. A complete draft of the thesis approved by the Chair of the Supervisory Committee must be delivered to each member of the committee at least 30 days before the date of the Final Examination.

Supervisory Committees

Students should consult with the Graduate Program Coordinator and the faculty member of the field in which the student wishes to write a thesis to determine the appropriate chair of the Supervisory Committee. In consultation with the committee chair, the student forms a Supervisory Committee consisting of three faculty members, two of whom must be current members of the Art History faculty, including the committee chair. Adjunct or Emeritus faculty may serve on committees if the committee also includes two regular members of the Art History faculty. One or more members of the committee may be selected from a field other than art history if appropriate to the subject. The Supervisory Committee will be available for consultation with the student and will be responsible for final evaluation of the thesis. The Graduate School does not require notification of the membership of this committee. The committee chair shall keep written records concerning any formal agreements or stipulations regarding the student’s program of study and thesis.

Final Examination

The final examination is an oral defense of the candidate's thesis conducted by the Supervisory Committee. The Supervisory Committee must certify the results of the final examination. At the final examination, the graduate student and at least one Art History faculty member from their committee (or a substitute from the Art History faculty, if necessary) should be physically present when any members participate through audio or electronic conferencing.

Degree Application

Students must apply online to the Graduate School for a master’s degree in the quarter in which they expect to graduate; check the Graduate School website for deadlines . The filing of the online application (warrant) is the responsibility solely of the student, who must be registered for the quarter in which the degree is expected. Master's degree applications are valid for one quarter only; if requirements for the degree are not completed during this quarter the student must file a new application. The thesis must be submitted electronically to the Graduate School by the last day of final examinations of the quarter in which degree requirements are completed. Students will need to apply online in MyGrad for their degree updates and forms and to schedule their defense date. The application for graduation must be completed at least three weeks prior to the defense. The Master’s Supervisory Committee Approval Form and the warrant, generated by the online application, need to be submitted with original ink signatures of all committee members; when this is not possible, email approvals are permitted by the Graduate School. For further instructions, see the Graduate School website .

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Arts and Society

Master's thesis.

You complete the Master's programme by writing a Master's thesis (15 EC). 

The MA thesis is a scholarly text in which you are expected to contribute, on the basis of independent research, to a debate within the field of arts and society. It should be structured around a central research question which is clearly formulated in the introductory chapter and has a strong relevance to active scholarly discussions. The body of the text should show the methodology you employed to answer this question, the theoretical considerations you have made, and what your findings were. In your conclusion you should analyze your findings in the light of your original question and explain the broader implications of your conclusions.

The thesis will showcase your ability to (largely) independently report on research findings, a professional skill that is highly valued within the working field. 

Possible topics 

In the past thesis topics for our MA have included:

• Contemporary European Art Images of Asylum Seekers: From Case Studies to Issues of Representation
• The Conceptual Notion of “The Streets” in Graffiti and Street Art: A Search for its Role, Meaning and Characteristics in the City of Utrecht.
• Give Me A Brain: Deleuze and the Ethics of Thinking in the Essay Film and Believing in This World
• Colonial Re-enactment?: Questioning Renzo Martens’ Empowerment Project Through the Arts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• The New Creative Class Crisis: A Critical Review of Creative Class Theory
• Arts and Society: An Alternative Option from the Periphery (Investigation of the role of the arts in opening up room for alternative ways of constructing identity and memory drawing on the work of Castrum Peregrini as a case study)
• From the Interstices: Performative Instances of Productive Liminality (Drawing on theoretical work from Turner, Bhabha and others to analyse subversive potential in the work of British theatre companies Forced Entertainment and Complicité)
• A Change Society: A Collaborative Research into the Possibilities of Changing the Society through Participatory Theatre
• “Listen to Us! Love Us!”: Issues of (Self-)Representation and the Asylum Seeker/Refugee Artists of Fada Theatre’s Talent on the Run

Thesis requirements

The thesis should be written in correct and clear English; it has a length of about 15.000 words  and should not exceed 20.000 words (including notes and bibliography). The individual thesis trajectory is supervised by a staff member of the program. The thesis will be evaluated by the supervisor and a second assessor appointed by the programme coordinator.

One of the possibilities is to combine your  internship (15 EC) with your Master's thesis. 

Submitting your proposal

Submitting your thesis proposal.

Do your supervisor and second reviewer approve your thesis proposal? Then submit your proposal in Osiris Student  > Cases > My cases > Start a new case by using the plus icon in the bottom right corner. A new window will open. Make sure your pop-up blocker is turned off for the new window to open.  Choose HUM: Thesis proposal.  Your supervisor and second assessor will then officially confirm that you can start your writing process. You will be notified of this by e-mail.

Submitting your thesis

Handing in your thesis

Once you have completed your thesis, you must submit it in Osiris (and not via an email to your supervisor). Osiris provides you with an evaluation progress as well as your final grade. 

If your supervisor has indicated that your final paper is ready for assessment, proceed as follows:

• You can upload your thesis in Osiris via Cases  > My Cases .
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If you have received a satisfactory grade, you will need to upload your thesis' final version in Utrecht University's thesis archive. This is mandatory.

• Go to  Osiris Student  > Cases
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Your Master's thesis will be assessed following specific evaluation procedures. You can prepare for this by reading the following documents and explanations prior to starting your thesis.

All theses will be evaluated by two separate evaluators. If your supervisor is a professor connected to your Master's programme, he/she will also be the first evaluator. 

Your Master's thesis will be evaluated using a standardised  assessment form (word). In some cases a third evaluator will be asked to assess your paper. This third evaluator will use another form (word) to evaluate your thesis.

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Utrecht University takes any form of academic dishonesty very seriously. We expect each student to know and observe the norms and values that ensure academic integrity. Make sure you are aware of our rules regarding fraud and plagiarism . Note that although self-plagiarism is not allowed according to these rules, you are permitted to build upon research done in earlier courses in the programme, as long as you clearly reference your own work.

If your lecturer or supervisor suspects fraud or plagiarism, they will notify the board of examiners.

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In case you are doing research that involves interviewing people, submitting questionnaires or involving people in any other way, you are probably doing human-subject related research . If so, please review the  checklist  and discuss it with your supervisor. The checklist contains information on privacy, ethics and data management.

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An example of state-of-the-art using Open Innovation

How to achieve a state of the art?

How to realize a state-of-the-art? How can Open Innovation help? Some simple answers below.

State-of-the-art : definition

A state of the art is the identification of previous knowledge to avoid reinventing. Making a state-of-the-art makes it possible to verify or justify that one produces new knowledge, for a thesis of doctorate or the filing of a patent, for example. The state-of-the-art often also includes the identification of actors – academic or industrial – who are at the origin of knowledge : the “ecosystem”. Better, this ecosystem can be questioned to complete and strengthen the state-of-the-art. This is where Open Innovation comes in. Especially since the algorithms of data mining and classification of Open Innovation platforms allow an acceleration of the research tasks for publications and actors which are often tedious. Let’s have a deeper look to a state-of-the-art example.

State-of-the-art example: dead leaves

For this state-of-the-art example, let’s take a real case treated by an industrial company we know: the problem of fallen leaves on train tracks in autumn . The dead leaves cause a loss of adhesion between the rails and the wheels of the trains, in particular because of the transformation of the leaves at the passage of the trains. The transformed material causes a loss of adhesion between the wheel and the rail which requires lengthening braking distances, and hence disrupts the timing of the trains.

Start with scientific publications

The state-of-the-art will consist of multiple queries using a search engine. We recommend starting with an investigation of scientific publications (which are often richer and more explicit than patent sources). In our example, this exploration begins with a combination of keywords such as “wheel”, “rail”, “leaves”,”adhesion”, which will return publications on these topics.The interesting publications are saved.

• >>Read also: Better, Faster, Harder – SME Open Innovation

Identify keywords & draw a mindmap

Find interesting patents.

In a second step, the most interesting queries are exploited with patent data sources. In addition to identifying interesting patents in the field, they help better understand the ecosystem. In our case, a very rich university ecosystem (and, to a lesser extent, industrial) has appeared in Europe (Great Britain, Germany, Ukraine, Netherlands, Italy, …), in Asia (China, South Korea, Japan) and in North America (United States, Canada).

Contacting experts: a specific approach to Open Innovation

Finally, to complete the state-of-the-art, the industrial company decided to contact a number of university groups. This step, which is optional, is also specific to an Open Innovation approach. It has the advantage of giving the possibility to talk to specialists in the field who can update the state-of-the-art with the latest and even unpublished research data. Even through a conversation lasting less than an hour, it is possible to identify the important points or to project oneself in the future, which a purely bibliographic search allows only in a very limited way . It’s like going to an annual conference and interviewing the world’s most famous experts !

Contacting experts: asking the right questions

A final remark. In any case, before contacting an expert to refine a state-of-the-art, one must ask himself “why would he/she spend time on my subject ?”. In our case on dead leaves, a large corporation was at the origin of the question and many experts are interested in a dialogue that can lead to collaboration. But other options are possible : a simple exchange of information, the possibility of setting up a joint project, remuneration, etc.

A fair / balanced relationship is one of the keys to succeed in Open Innovation projects.

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Department of the History of Art

You are here, dissertations, completed dissertations.

1942-present

DISSERTATIONS IN PROGRESS

As of July 2023

Bartunkova, Barbora , “Sites of Resistance: Antifascism and the Czechoslovak Avant-garde” (C. Armstrong)

Betik, Blair Katherine , “Alternate Experiences: Evaluating Lived Religious Life in the Roman Provinces in the 1st Through 4th Centuries CE” (M. Gaifman)

Boyd, Nicole , “Science, Craft, Art, Theater: Four ‘Perspectives’ on the Painted Architecture of Angelo Michele Colonna and Agostino Mitelli” (N. Suthor). 

Brown, Justin , “Afro-Surinamese Calabash Art in the Era of Slavery and Emancipation” (C. Fromont)

Burke, Harry , “The Islands Between: Art, Animism, and Anticolonial Worldmaking in Archipelagic Southeast Asia” (P. Lee)

Chakravorty, Swagato , “Displaced Cinema: Moving Images and the Politics of Location in Contemporary Art” (C. Buckley, F. Casetti)

Chau, Tung , “Strange New Worlds: Interfaces in the Work of Cao Fei” (P. Lee)

Cox, Emily , “Perverse Modernism, 1884-1990” (C. Armstrong, T. Barringer)

Coyle, Alexander , “Frame and Format between Byzantium and Central Italy, 1200-1300” (R. Nelson)

Datta, Yagnaseni , “Materialising Illusions: Visual Translation in the Mughal Jug Basisht, c. 1602.” (K. Rizvi)

de Luca, Theo , “Nicolas Poussin’s Chronotopes” (N. Suthor)

Dechant, D. Lyle . ” ‘daz wir ein ander vinden fro’: Readers and Performers of the Codex Manesse” (J. Jung)

Del Bonis-O’Donnell, Asia, “Trees and the Visualization of kosmos in Archaic and Classical Athenian Art” (M. Gaifman)

Demby, Nicole, “The Diplomatic Image: Framing Art and Internationalism, 1945-1960” (K. Mercer)

Donnelly, Michelle , “Spatialized Impressions: American Printmaking Outside the Workshop, 1935–1975” (J. Raab)

Epifano, Angie , “Building the Samorian State: Material Culture, Architecture, and Cities across West Africa” (C. Fromont)

Fialho, Alex , “Apertures onto AIDS: African American Photography and the Art History of the Storage Unit” (P. Lee, T Nyong’o)

Foo, Adela , “Crafting the Aq Qoyuniu Court (1475-1490) (E. Cooke, Jr.)

Franciosi, Caterina , “Latent Light: Energy and Nineteenth-Century British Art” (T. Barringer)

Frier, Sara , “Unbearable Witness: The Disfigured Body in the Northern European Brief (1500-1620)” (N. Suthor)

Gambert-Jouan, Anabelle , “Sculpture in Place: Medieval Wood Depositions and Their Environments” (J. Jung)

Gass, Izabel, “Painted Thanatologies: Théodore Géricault Against the Aesthetics of Life” (C. Armstrong)

Gaudet, Manon , “Property and the Contested Ground of North American Visual Culture, 1900-1945” (E. Cooke, Jr.)  

Haffner, Michaela , “Nature Cure: ”White Wellness” and the Visual Culture of Natural Health, 1870-1930” (J. Raab)

Hepburn, Victoria , “William Bell Scott’s Progress” (T. Barringer)

Herrmann, Mitchell, “The Art of the Living: Biological Life and Aesthetic Experience in the 21st Century” (P. Lee)

Higgins, Lily , “Reading into Things: Articulate Objects in Colonial North America, 1650-1783” (E. Cooke, Jr.)

Hodson, Josie , “Something in Common: Black Art under Austerity in New York City, 1975-1990” (Yale University, P. Lee)

Hong, Kevin , “Plasticity, Fungibility, Toxicity: Photography’s Ecological Entanglements in the Mid-Twentieth-Century United States” (C. Armstrong, J Raab)

Kang, Mia , “Art, Race, Representation: The Rise of Multiculturalism in the Visual Arts” (K. Mercer)

Keto, Elizabeth , “Remaking the World: United States Art in the Reconstruction Era, 1861-1900.” (J. Raab)

Kim, Adela , “Beyond Institutional Critique: Tearing Up in the Work of Andrea Fraser” (P. Lee)

Koposova, Ekaterina , “Triumph and Terror in the Arts of the Franco-Dutch War” (M. Bass)

Lee, Key Jo , “Melancholic Materiality: History and the Unhealable Wound in African American Photographic Portraits, 1850-1877” (K. Mercer)

Levy Haskell, Gavriella , “The Imaginative Painter”: Visual Narrative and the Interactive Painting in Britain, 1851-1914” (T. Barringer, E. Cooke Jr)

Marquardt, Savannah, “Becoming a Body: Lucanian Painted Vases and Grave Assemblages in Southern Italy” (M. Gaifman)

Miraval, Nathalie , “The Art of Magic: Afro-Catholic Visual Culture in the Early Modern Spanish Empire” (C. Fromont)

Mizbani, Sharon , Water and Memory: Fountains, Heritage, and Infrastructure in Istanbul and Tehran (1839-1950) (K. Rizvi)

Molarsky-Beck, Marina, “Seeing the Unseen: Queer Artistic Subjectivity in Interwar Photography” (C. Armstrong)

Nagy, Renata , “Bookish Art: Natural Historical Learning Across Media in Seventeenth-century Northern Europe” (Bass, M)

Olson, Christine , “Owen Jones and the Epistemologies of Nineteenth-Century Design” (T. Barringer)

Petrilli-Jones, Sara , “Drafting the Canon: Legal Histories of Art in Florence and Rome, 1600-1800” (N. Suthor)

Phillips, Kate , “American Ephemera” (J. Raab)

Potuckova, Kristina , “The Arts of Women’s Monastic Liturgy, Holy Roman Empire, 1000-1200” (J. Jung)

Quack, Gregor , “The Social Fabric: Franz Erhard Walther’s Art in Postwar Germany” (P. Lee)

Rahimi-Golkhandan, Shabnam , “The Photograph’s Shabih-Kashi (Verisimilitude) – The Liminal Visualities of Late Qajar Art (1853-1911)” (K. Rizvi)

Rapoport, Sarah , “James Jacques Joseph Tissot in the Interstices of Modernity” (T. Barringer, C. Armstrong)

Riordan, Lindsay , “Beuys, Terror, Value: 1967-1979” (S. Zeidler)

Robbins, Isabella , “Relationality and Being: Indigeneity, Space and Transit in Global Contemporary Art” (P. Lee, N. Blackhawk)

Sen, Pooja , “The World Builders ” (J. Peters)

Sellati, Lillian , “When is Herakles Not Himself? Mediating Cultural Plurality in Greater Central Asia, 330 BCE – 365 CE” (M. Gaifman)

Tang, Jenny , “Genealogies of Confinement: Carceral Logics of Visuality in Atlantic Modernism 1930 – 1945” (K. Mercer)

Thomas, Alexandra , “Afrekete’s Touch: Black Queer Feminist Errantry and Global African Art”  (P. Lee)

Valladares, Carlos , “Jacques Demy” (P. Lee)

Verrot, Trevor , “Sculpted Lamentation Groups in the Late Medieval Veneto” (J. Jung)

Von-Ow, Pierre , Visual Tactics: Histories of Perspective in Britain and its Empire, 1670-1768.”  (T. Barringer)

Wang, Xueli , “Performing Disappearance: Maggie Cheung and the Off-Screen” (Q. Ngan)

Webley, John , “Ink, Paint, and Blood: India and the Great Game in Russian Culture” (T. Barringer, M. Brunson)

Werwie, Katherine , “Visions Across the Gates: Materiality, Symbolism, and Communication in the Historiated Wooden Doors of Medieval European Churches” (J. Jung)

Wisowaty, Stephanie , “Painted Processional Crosses in Central Italy, 1250-1400: Movement, Mediation and Multisensory Effects” (J. Jung)

Young, Colin , “Desert Places: The Visual Culture of the Prairies and the Pampas across the Nineteenth Century” (J. Raab)

Zhou, Joyce Yusi, “Objects by Her Hand: Art and Material Culture of Women in Early Modern Batavia (1619-1799) (M. Bass, E. Cooke, Jr.)

Sayako Hiroi has this advice for artists: ‘Be patient. Trust yourself. Don’t tell a lie.’

Hiroi will receive her master of fine arts from the school of the museum of fine arts at tufts university this month. her paintings are now on view at tufts university art galleries..

W hen Sayako Hiroi moved to Boston from Tokyo in 2022, strangers made assumptions about her based on her race and gender. She felt boxed in.

“I’m sick of thinking of myself as a Japanese female. Sometimes I want to get out of that image,” she said, allowing that Japanese people often pigeonhole Westerners, too. In her abstract paintings, she employs color, gestures, and composition to express her subjective experience as a person within a matrix of stereotypes.

Hiroi will receive her Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University this month. Her paintings are on view at Tufts University Art Galleries.

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Where to find her : www.instagram.com/shanarine.3850

Making a living: Hiroi, a full-time student, works as a teaching assistant.

Originally from : Tokyo

Lives in : Boston

Studio : The SMFA/Tufts studios are open spaces with curtains for doors in a Mission Hill building that was originally a taxi garage. Last year, Hiroi’s studio was half the size of the one she’s in now. “Definitely it’s encouraging me to paint bigger scale,” she said.

Why paint : “It can tell everything. Speed, rhythm, contrast. Anger, sorrow.”

How she started : In Tokyo, Hiroi worked in sales and marketing for a manufacturing company.

“I found myself sick of pursuing only numbers in a capitalist society,” she said. “Also, I thought if I would not chase my dream — the big dream, becoming an artist — I would regret it.”

During the pandemic, she said, “I had a lot of time to think. I quit my job. I applied for some schools in the United States. And I’m here right now.”

What she makes: The artist’s color-rich, gestural abstract paintings “try to create a new image based on my life,” she said. “Not category, not nationality, not status.”

How she works : Hiroi begins with source images: Japanese woodblock prints; her own drawings or photographs. She memorizes them. Then she turns on music and funnels the memory through her imagination to convey her personal experience on canvas.

“This year I found I’m so excited to use my body with big gestures. This is like figure painting even though it does not look like a figure in the painting, because it reflects my body language,” she said.

She crafted handmade paper combining traditionally Japanese and American materials. In an April performance piece, she laid it on the floor and drew on it — visual art made with improvisational dance.

Advice for artists : “Last year I was struggling with my painting style. Even though people gave me compliments, I could not love my artwork. So I tried not to tell a lie to myself. Now, finally, I am about to find my own language,” Hiroi said. “Be patient. Trust yourself. Don’t tell a lie.”

MFA THESIS EXHIBITION: PULLING TEETH AND JUMPING ROPE

At Tufts University Art Galleries, 40 Talbot Ave., Medford, through May 19. https://smfa.tufts.edu/calendar/mfa-thesis-exhibition-pulling-teeth-and-jumping-rope

Cate McQuaid can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her on Instagram @cate.mcquaid .

What Creative Arts Therapies Teach Us About DBT Skills Training

Bridging dbt with the arts for deeper understanding..

Posted April 15, 2024 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

• What Is Therapy?
• Find a therapist near me
• Research supports the effectiveness of combining DBT with creative arts to improve outcomes.
• Facilitators can teach wise-mind skills through drama therapy techniques.
• Action-based DBT utilizes storytelling and role-play to make skill learning more accessible and impactful.

In the ever-evolving realm of mental health, therapists are always exploring new and innovative methods to enhance traditional treatments. Creative arts therapists have led the way in utilizing art-based interventions to teach DBT skills.

Creative arts therapy combines visual arts, movement, drama, music, writing, and other creative processes to support clients in their healing process. Many mental health clinicians have embraced creative arts therapy interventions to improve their clients' health and wellness.

There is a growing body of research that indicates that therapists can utilize creative interventions to help clients learn and generalize DBT skills. In this post, I will provide a brief literature review of therapists who have been doing this integrative work and provide an example of how drama therapy can be utilized to teach the DBT skill of wise mind.

DBT and Art Therapy

Research indicates that integrating art therapy into established psychotherapy forms, such as cognitive-behavioral therapies, can have significant positive effects on client well-being. For example, a study by Monti et al. (2012) demonstrated the potential of mindfulness -based art therapy (MBAT) in alleviating emotional distress, highlighting the power of combining art therapy with the core feature of mindfulness in DBT. Though this study did not specifically discuss DBT, it demonstrated that implementing mindfulness, a core component of DBT, can assist individuals who are facing significant physical and emotional stressors.

Building on research that examined mindfulness and art therapy, several practitioners have contributed articles that specifically address the integration of DBT and art therapy within clinical populations. For example, researchers Huckvale and Learmonth (2009) led the charge by developing a new and innovative art therapy approach grounded in DBT for patients facing mental health challenges. Furthermore, Heckwolf, Bergland, and Mouratidis (2014) demonstrated how visual art and integrative treatments could help clients access DBT, resulting in stronger generalization and implementation of these skills outside of the session. The clinicians concluded that this integrative approach to treatment could reinforce skills, contribute to interdisciplinary team synergy, and enact bilateral integration.

Other notable examples from art therapists include Susan Clark’s (2017) DBT-informed art therapy, a strategic approach to treatment that incorporates creative visual exercises to explore, practice, and generalize DBT concepts and skills.

Expanding Beyond Visual Art Therapy

DBT has now been integrated with other expressive art therapies, including drama and music. Art therapists Karin von Daler and Lori Schwanbeck (2014) were instrumental in this expansion when they developed Creative Mindfulness, an approach to therapy integrating various expressive arts therapies with DBT. Creative Mindfulness “suggests a way of working therapeutically that is as containing and structured as DBT and as creative, embodied, and multi-sensory as expressive arts” (p. 235). These clinicians incorporated improvisation into their work, a tool that can be simultaneously playful, experiential, and grounding, ultimately producing substantial new insights for clients.

Moreover, music and drama therapists have recognized the benefits of multisensory skill teaching, expanding the creative techniques used to teach DBT skills ( Deborah Spiegel, 2020 ; Nicky Morris, 2018 , and Roohan and Trottier, 2021 ).

My Own Experience Integrating Drama Therapy and DBT

Personally, I am a big advocate of both dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and drama therapy. In fact, I love these modalities so much that I dedicated not only my master's thesis but also my dissertation to better understanding how to reinforce DBT skills through dramatic techniques. In the process, I developed a new approach called Action-Based DBT that uses dramatic interventions like storytelling, embodiment, and role-playing to create a supportive environment for participants to learn skills in a more personalized and embodied way. An expert panel review demonstrated that this format can effectively support skill learning, especially for clients who struggle with the standard format of DBT skills training. Additionally, mental health clinicians found the program easily adaptable across populations in both individual and group settings.

Embodying the Mind States

To illustrate this approach and its effectiveness, the following is an example of how drama therapy methods can teach the DBT skill of wise mind within the context of an action-based DBT group.

The facilitator begins the group session by reviewing general guidelines and introducing the targeted DBT skill for the day: wise mind. The group then participates in improvisational warm-up activities to promote creativity , positive social interaction, and group connectivity. Following the warm-up, the facilitator distributes the DBT mind states handout (Linehan, 2015) and provides brief psychoeducation on this skill. Three chairs are placed in the front of the group room, facing the semi-circle of clients. Each chair had a piece of colored construction paper taped to the front, reading as Reasonable, Wise and Emotion . The facilitator explains that each chair represents one of the three mind states: reasonable mind, emotion mind and wise mind. To encourage exploration of the mind states, the facilitator can assign a more specific role to each state of mind. For example, the reasonable mind is The Computer, the emotion mind is The Tornado, and the wise mind is The Sage. Group members are invited to think of a scenario in which they felt they had difficulty accessing their wise mind. Clients then take turns embodying each mind state by sitting in the chair and speaking from the respective role. When a client first sits in a chair, the facilitator aids in enrolling the individual by asking questions about the role (i.e. The Computer, The Tornado, The Sage). For example, the facilitator may ask about the posture, tone of voice, or a “catchphrase” for this role. The client then embodies the role and responds to questions from the group as the specific mind state. After the embodiment, clients engage in verbal processing. The wise mind directive supports clients in developing kinaesthetic awareness of the three mind states. Embodying these mind states within the context of a supportive group and engaging in verbal processing around the experience can increase awareness of the mind states, which is helpful for clients who are trying to understand their emotional response to lived events outside of the group setting.

The creative arts therapies offer a dynamic pathway to teaching and reinforcing DBT skills. Incorporating visual art, drama, or music in the process of learning DBT skills allows clients to engage with these concepts in a multisensory and embodied way.

In my personal experience, weaving drama therapy techniques into DBT skills training has proven to be profoundly impactful. The Action-Based DBT approach, with its emphasis on storytelling and embodiment, offers an immersive and experiential learning environment that can be especially beneficial for those who find traditional methods challenging.

Looking ahead, my next post will delve into how storytelling can be harnessed to teach DBT skills in a way that is both engaging and memorable.

To find a therapist, please visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory .

Clark, S. M. (2017). DBT-informed art therapy: Mindfulness, cognitive behavior therapy, and the creative process. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Heckwolf, J. I., Bergland, M. C., & Mouratidis, M. (2014). Coordinating principles of art therapy and DBT. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 41(4), 329-335.

Huckvale, K., & Learmonth, M. (2009). A case example of art therapy in relation to dialectical behaviour therapy. International Journal of Art Therapy, 14(2), 52-63.

Monti, D. A., Kash, K. M., Kunkel, E. J., Brainard, G., Wintering, N., Moss, A. S., Rao, H., Zhu, S., & Newberg, A. B. (2012). Changes in cerebral blood flow and anxiety associated with an 8-week mindfulness programme in women with breast cancer. Stress and Health, 28(5), 397-407.

Morris, N. (2018). Dramatherapy for borderline personality disorder: Empowering and nurturing people through creativity. Routledge.

Roohan Mary Kate, Trottier Dana George. (2021) Action-based DBT: Integrating drama therapy to access wise mind. Drama Therapy Review, 7 (2), 193 https://doi.org/10.1386/dtr_00073_1

Spiegel, D., Makary, S., & Bonavitacola, L. (2020). Creative DBT activities using music: Interventions for enhancing engagement and effectiveness in therapy. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Von Daler, K., and Schwanbeck, L. (2014). Creative mindfulness: Dialectical behavior therapy and expressive arts therapy. In L. Rappaport (Ed.), Mindfulness and the arts therapies: Theory and practice (pp. 107-116). Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Mary Kate Roohan, Psy.D., is a licensed psychologist and drama therapist and the founder of Thrive and Feel, a therapy practice that supports clients in managing emotional sensitivity.

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May 15, 2024

Class of 2024: Master of Fine Arts student explores the intersection of voice and gender identity

Multisensory thesis exhibition by artist-designer taehee incorporates sound and sight for an experience with personal resonance.

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By Dina Weinstein

Giving voice to … voice,  taehee  used their Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition to create an immersive experience that connects gender, anatomy, memory and sound.

The Virginia Commonwealth University  School of the Arts  graduate student was featured at the school’s Anderson Gallery recently. Their digital media installation featured two audio-visual elements in adjoining dark rooms.

“For both pieces, I thought about how much of gender perception or identity people assign on the voice, but it’s also not something you immediately think of as a gender representation,” taehee said.

Both dark rooms had wall-size projections. In one, an audio visualizer projected images as it responded to narration or reacted to environmental sounds. In the other, guests could sit on a mirror on the floor to watch a projection of words rising like in karaoke, with the shiny reflection creating a perfect circle. The words were from a conversation with a friend on past experiences and voice changes connected to gender fluidity for those on hormone therapy.

“I used a lot of technologies like speech-to-text function. I wanted to have like a reverse karaoke,” taehee said. “So much of my thesis research has been about queer and transgender community and their relationship with voice – and how gender-affirming care and medical care also dissects voice.”

Inspiration for the project, which also featured a model of a larynx, included their experiences with a voice coach, readings on opera and homosexuality, and reflections on Korean history and identity – and relating those elements to trans and queer experiences and culture, taehee said.

Born in Korea, taehee spent some of their childhood in California and later moved with their family to Columbia, Missouri, in junior high school. They earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design but developed a strong interest in video and storytelling.

“Even though painting can be so beautiful in itself, you can only see one moment, like a photo,” taehee said.

They moved to New York City to work in graphic design and got immersed in zine and artist book-making. They ran a zine collective called Hyperlink Press, which focused on the queer Korean diaspora and online community.

For graduate school, taehee wanted to study digital media, including virtual reality, augmented reality and kinetic imaging. Through zine and book fairs, they had met associate professor  Nicole Killian , VCU’s  graphic design program  graduate director, which drew them to Richmond.

Last summer, taehee accomplished a goal to pursue corporate graphic design work along with academic research and their personal projects. They interned at  Forbes  business magazine, creating graphics to accompany articles.

“I love paper publications, but with digital publication, it is something that needs human interaction in a different format than a book, which is why it aligned with my interest to make weird or very alternative reading experiences,” taehee said.

They also turned introspective, investigating and creating personal stories – about being “assigned female at birth, nonbinary person, and my body and medical system that I encounter in my personal life.” The resulting book focused on their ovarian cyst rupturing.

“I wrote about it in a perspective like, I didn’t know this thing was growing, but it felt like I was almost like an oyster that was growing this pearl. And then my body was generating that, latching on to some idea of femininity, conjuring the idea of how my mom is also trying to understand my queerness,” taehee said.

Their time in Richmond featured an array of other experiences. This year, through an internship, taehee created graphics  to accompany exhibits at VCU’s Institute for Contemporary Art . And throughout their degree program, they conducted research on 3D web coding and digital fabrication – taehee relished having access to tools and machinery that allowed them to create a variety of media and work. Academic highlights included classes on computational media and the politics and theory around extended reality.

After graduation, taehee expects to return to New York City, but they said their professional and artistic passions now have more potential outlets, thanks to the foundation they deepened in their VCU studies.

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Bor-Luh Lin Thesis Award  

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2023-24 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards:

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Fall 23 Ballad and Seashore Dissertation Fellowship

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Spring 24 Ballad and Seashore Dissertation Fellowship

• Niki Amaraweera Kalutotage

Fall 23 Graduate College Post-Comprehensive Research Fellowship

• Juan Felipe Ariza Mejia

Casey Anna Stone

Spring 24 Graduate College Post-Comprehensive Research Fellowship

• Michele Capovilla-Searle

2024 CLAS Dissertation Writing Fellowship

Community Engagement Graduate Assistantship for Iowa Sciences Academy  

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Elektrostal

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Alice Munro, Nobel literature winner revered as short story master, dead at 92

FILE - Canadian author Alice Munro poses for a photograph at the Canadian Consulate’s residence in New York on Oct. 28, 2002. Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92. (AP Photo/Paul Hawthorne, File)

FILE - Canadian author Alice Munro is photographed during an interview in Victoria, B.C. Tuesday, Dec.10, 2013. Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92. (Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

FILE - Nobel Prize-winning Canadian author Alice Munro attends a ceremony held by the Royal Canadian Mint where they unveiled a 99.99% pure silver five-dollar coin in Victoria, B.C., on March 24, 2014. Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92. (Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

FILE - Writer Alice Munro attends the opening night of the International Festival of Authors in Toronto on Wednesday Oct. 21, 2009. Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

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Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history’s most honored short story writers, has died at age 92.

A spokesperson for publisher Penguin Random House Canada said Munro, winner of the Nobel literary prize in 2013, died Monday at home in Port Hope, Ontario. Munro had been in frail health for years and often spoke of retirement, a decision that proved final after the author’s 2012 collection, “Dear Life.”

Often ranked with Anton Chekhov, John Cheever and a handful of other short story writers, Munro achieved stature rare for an art form traditionally placed beneath the novel. She was the first lifelong Canadian to win the Nobel and the first recipient cited exclusively for short fiction. Echoing the judgment of so many before, the Swedish academy pronounced her a “master of the contemporary short story” who could “accommodate the entire epic complexity of the novel in just a few short pages.”

Munro, little known beyond Canada until her late 30s, also became one of the few short story writers to enjoy ongoing commercial success. Sales in North America alone exceeded 1 million copies and the Nobel announcement raised “Dear Life” to the high end of The New York Times’ bestseller list for paperback fiction. Other popular books included “Too Much Happiness,” “The View from Castle Rock” and “The Love of a Good Woman.”

Over a half century of writing, Munro perfected one of the greatest tricks of any art form: illuminating the universal through the particular, creating stories set around Canada that appealed to readers far away. She produced no single definitive work, but dozens of classics that were showcases of wisdom, technique and talent — her inspired plot twists and artful shifts of time and perspective; her subtle, sometimes cutting humor; her summation of lives in broad dimension and fine detail; her insights into people across age or background, her genius for sketching a character, like the adulterous woman introduced as “short, cushiony, dark-eyed, effusive. A stranger to irony.”

Her best known fiction included “The Beggar Maid,” a courtship between an insecure young woman and an officious rich boy who becomes her husband; “Corrie,” in which a wealthy young woman has an affair with an architect “equipped with a wife and young family"; and “The Moons of Jupiter,” about a middle-aged writer who visits her ailing father in a Toronto hospital and shares memories of different parts of their lives.

“I think any life can be interesting,” Munro said during a 2013 post-prize interview for the Nobel Foundation. “I think any surroundings can be interesting.”

Disliking Munro, as a writer or as a person, seemed almost heretical. The wide and welcoming smile captured in her author photographs was complemented by a down-to-earth manner and eyes of acute alertness, fitting for a woman who seemed to pull stories out of the air the way songwriters discovered melodies. She was admired without apparent envy, placed by the likes of Jonathan Franzen, John Updike and Cynthia Ozick at the very top of the pantheon. Munro’s daughter, Sheila Munro, wrote a memoir in which she confided that “so unassailable is the truth of her fiction that sometimes I even feel as though I’m living inside an Alice Munro story.” Fellow Canadian author Margaret Atwood called her a pioneer for women, and for Canadians.

“Back in the 1950s and 60s, when Munro began, there was a feeling that not only female writers but Canadians were thought to be both trespassing and transgressing,” Atwood wrote in a 2013 tribute published in the Guardian after Munro won the Nobel. “The road to the Nobel wasn’t an easy one for Munro: the odds that a literary star would emerge from her time and place would once have been zero.”

Although not overtly political, Munro witnessed and participated in the cultural revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s and permitted her characters to do the same. She was a farmer’s daughter who married young, then left her husband in the 1970s and took to “wearing miniskirts and prancing around,” as she recalled during a 2003 interview with The Associated Press. Many of her stories contrasted the generation of Munro’s parents with the more open-ended lives of their children, departing from the years when housewives daydreamed “between the walls that the husband was paying for.”

Moviegoers would become familiar with “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” the improbably seamless tale of a married woman with memory loss who has an affair with a fellow nursing home patient, a story further complicated by her husband’s many past infidelities. “The Bear” was adapted by Sarah Polley into the 2006 feature film “Away from Her,” which brought an Academy Award nomination for Julie Christie. In 2014, Kristen Wiig starred in “Hateship, Loveship,” an adaptation of the story “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage,” in which a housekeeper leaves her job and travels to a distant rural town to meet up with a man she believes is in love with her — unaware the romantic letters she has received were concocted by his daughter and a friend.

Even before the Nobel, Munro received honors from around the English-language world, including Britain’s Man Booker International Prize and the National Book Critics Circle award in the U.S., where the American Academy of Arts and Letters voted her in as an honorary member. In Canada, she was a three-time winner of the Governor’s General Award and a two-time winner of the Giller Prize.

Munro was a short story writer by choice, and, apparently, by design. Judith Jones, an editor at Alfred A. Knopf who worked with Updike and Anne Tyler, did not want to publish “Lives of Girls & Women,” her only novel, writing in an internal memo that “there’s no question the lady can write but it’s also clear she is primarily a short story writer.”

Munro would acknowledge that she didn’t think like a novelist.

“I have all these disconnected realities in my own life, and I see them in other people’s lives,” she told the AP. “That was one of the problems, why I couldn’t write novels. I never saw things hanging together too well.”

Alice Ann Laidlaw was born in Wingham, Ontario, in 1931, and spent much of her childhood there, a time and place she often used in her fiction, including the four autobiographical pieces that concluded “Dear Life.” Her father was a fox farmer, her mother a teacher and the family’s fortunes shifted between middle class and working poor, giving the future author a special sensitivity to money and class. Young Alice was often absorbed in literature, starting with the first time she was read Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” She was a compulsive inventor of stories and the “sort of child who reads walking upstairs and props a book in front of her when she does the dishes.”

A top student in high school, she received a scholarship to study at the University of Western Ontario, majoring in journalism as a “cover-up” for her pursuit of literature. She was still an undergraduate when she sold a story about a lonely teacher, “The Dimensions of a Shadow,” to CBC Radio. She was also publishing work in her school’s literary journal.

One fellow student read “Dimensions” and wrote to the then-Laidlaw, telling her the story reminded him of Chekhov. The student, Gerald Fremlin, would become her second husband. Another fellow student, James Munro, was her first husband. They married in 1951, when she was only 20, and had four children, one of whom died soon after birth.

Settling with her family in British Columbia, Alice Munro wrote between trips to school, housework and helping her husband at the bookstore that they co-owned and would turn up in some of her stories. She wrote one book in the laundry room of her house, her typewriter placed near the washer and dryer. Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers and other writers from the American South inspired her, through their sense of place and their understanding of the strange and absurd.

Isolated from the literary center of Toronto, she did manage to get published in several literary magazines and to attract the attention of an editor at Ryerson Press (later bought out by McGraw Hill). Her debut collection, “Dance of the Happy Shades,” was released in 1968 with a first printing of just under 2,700 copies. A year later it won the Governor’s General Award and made Munro a national celebrity — and curiosity. “Literary Fame Catches City Mother Unprepared,” read one newspaper headline.

“When the book first came they sent me a half dozen copies. I put them in the closet. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t tell my husband they had come, because I couldn’t bear it. I was afraid it was terrible,” Munro told the AP. “And one night, he was away, and I forced myself to sit down and read it all the way through, and I didn’t think it was too bad. And I felt I could acknowledge it and it would be OK.”

By the early ’70s, she had left her husband, later observing that she was not “prepared to be a submissive wife.” Her changing life was best illustrated by her response to the annual Canadian census. For years, she had written down her occupation as “housewife.” In 1971, she switched to “writer.”

Over the next 40 years, her reputation and readership only grew, with many of her stories first appearing in The New Yorker. Her prose style was straightforward, her tone matter of fact, but her plots revealed unending disruption and disappointments: broken marriages, violent deaths, madness and dreams unfulfilled, or never even attempted. “Canadian Gothic” was one way she described the community of her childhood, a world she returned to when, in middle age, she and her second husband relocated to nearby Clinton.

“Shame and embarrassment are driving forces for Munro’s characters,” Atwood wrote, “just as perfectionism in the writing has been a driving force for her: getting it down, getting it right, but also the impossibility of that.”

She had the kind of curiosity that would have made her an ideal companion on a long train ride, imagining the lives of the other passengers. Munro wrote the story “Friend of My Youth,” in which a man has an affair with his fiancee’s sister and ends up living with both women, after an acquaintance told her about some neighbors who belonged to a religion that forbade card games. The author wanted to know more — about the religion, about the neighbors.

Even as a child, Munro had regarded the world as an adventure and mystery and herself as an observer, walking around Wingham and taking in the homes as if she were a tourist. In “The Peace of Utrecht,” an autobiographical story written in the late 1960s, a woman discovers an old high school notebook and remembers a dance she once attended with an intensity that would envelop her whole existence.

“And now an experience which seemed not at all memorable at the time,” Munro wrote, “had been transformed into something curiously meaningful for me, and complete; it took in more than the girls dancing and the single street, it spread over the whole town, its rudimentary pattern of streets and its bare trees and muddy yards just free of the snow, over the dirt roads where the lights of cars appeared, jolting toward the town, under an immense pale wash of sky.”

This story has been updated to correct the title of “The Beggar Maid.”