American flat-picking guitarist, singer and songwriter Norman Blake holds legendary status among guitar players, bluegrass, and folk musicians. The aim of this research is to analyze the interaction of sense of place in Norman Blake’s songwriting. This research will explore the techniques Blake uses to create that acute sense of place. Elements of literary criticism, cultural geography, ethnomusicology, and sense of place studies, as well as historical background information on Northern Alabama and North Georgia will be employed to show how this particular region of Southeastern Appalachia has informed Blake’s songwriting. The research questions that I aim to answer are how a sense of place has influenced Norman Blake’s songwriting, how his writing has influenced other songwriters in the field of 20th century folk music, bluegrass, Americana, and country music, and what songwriting techniques Blake has employed to create an acute sense of place.

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<p>Sense of place (SoP) at the neighbourhood scale is one phenomenon that can bring to light the forces that shape residents’ experiences of living in urban neighbourhoods, and play a role in shaping their identity. At an even smaller scale are the gathering places of everyday life, where people can come together and spend time on a regular basis. This research is about single women’s experiences of local gathering places and their neighbourhood SoP in Hamilton, Ontario, from a feminist perspective. Feminist research values the knowledge and experiences of research participants and has the goal of understanding the world in order to build a more just society. A qualitative case study was employed, with face-to-face interviews (n=15) being the primary method of data collection. Participants were single mothers and single older women living in a neighbourhood in central-east, lower city Hamilton. This thesis explores the themes resulting from the interviews, including: factors influencing neighbourhood SoP; types of gathering places; social and emotional qualities of gathering places; physical/spatial qualities of gathering places, and; the relationship between gathering places and neighbourhood sense of place. These themes highlight the importance of gathering places to neighbourhood SoP, and the potential for the perspectives and recommendations of the participants to be included in current efforts around neighbourhood development in Hamilton. The results also point to areas for further research around SoP, and next steps for Hamilton in terms of creating a safe and age-friendly city, and engaging in critical community development.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>In the first paper, s<em>ense of place</em> (SoP) is used to evaluate immigrant experiences in three small to medium-sized Canadian cites: Hamilton, ON; Saskatoon, SK; and, Charlottetown, PEI. First, quantitative analysis is used to compare <em>SoP</em> amongst immigrant and Canadian-born respondents in the three cities. Ordered logistic regression determined four significant predictors of <em>SoP</em>: income; age; neighbourhood length of residence and, city of residence. Despite an observed difference in evaluations of <em>SoP</em> between immigrants and Canadian-born individuals, regression analysis did not identify immigrant status as a significant predictor of <em>SoP</em>.</p> <p>The second paper employs a mixed-methods strategy to examine individual perceptions of air quality and sense of place amongst Canadian-born and immigrant women in Northeast Hamilton. Furthermore, the study aims to determine the influence of sense of place on local environmental perceptions. Qualitative focus group discussions suggest that Canadian-born women may be more aware, knowledgeable and concerned about large-scale air quality issues; however, the tension between economic and environmental needs hinders their sense of control. Quantitative survey results suggest that Canadian-born residents have a higher absolute value of sense of place than immigrants. Bringing together the qualitative and quantitative data suggests that sense of place may inform environmental perceptions.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)