Contemporary Italian philosopher, Gianni Vattimo (1991), has described ‘the end of history’ as a motif of our times. While neo-liberal conservatives such as Francis Fukuyama (1992) celebrated triumphantly, and perhaps rather prematurely after the fall of the Berlin Wall, ‘the end of history’ in the ‘inevitable’ global acceptance of the ideologies of free market capitalism and liberal democracy, methodological postmodernists (including Barthes, Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, and Foucault), mobilised ‘the end of history’ throughout the later half of the twentieth century as a symbol of a crisis of confidence in the discourse of modernity, and its realist epistemologies. This loss of faith in the adequacy of representation has been seen by many positivist and empiricist historians as a threat to the discipline of history, with its desire to recover and reconstruct ����the truth���� of the past. It is argued by defenders of ‘traditional’ history (from Appleby, Hunt, & Jacob, 1994; R. J. Evans, 1997; Marwick, 2001; and Windschuttle, 1996; to Zagorin, 1999), and some postmodernists (most notably, Jenkins, 1999), that if we accept postmodern social theory, historical research and writing will become untenable. This study re-examines the nature of the alleged ‘threat’ to history posed by postmodernism, and explores the implications of postmodern social theory for History as curriculum. Situated within a broadly-conceived critical-reconceptualist trend in curriculum inquiry, and deploying a form of historically and philosophically oriented ‘deconstructive hermeneutics’, the study explores past attempts to mount, and future possibilities for, a curricular response to the problem of historical representation. The analysis begins with an investigation of ‘end of history’ discourse in contemporary theory. It then proceeds through a critical exploration of the social meliorist changes to, and cultural politics surrounding, the History curriculum in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, from the Bicentennial to the Millennium (1988-2000), a period that marked curriculum as a site of contestation in a series of highly public ‘history wars’ over representations of the nation’s past (Macintyre & Clark, 2003). It concludes with a discussion of the missed opportunities for ‘critical practice’ within the NSW History curriculum. Synthesising insights into the ‘nature of history’ derived from contemporary academic debate, it is argued that what has remained uncontested in the struggle for ‘critical histories’ during the period under study, are the representational practices of history itself. The study closes with an assessment of the (im)possibility of History curriculum after ‘the end of history’. I argue that if History curriculum is to be a critical/transformative enterprise, then it must attend to the problem of historical representation. / PhD Doctorate

This study looks at the degree to which Emile Galle's theories of symbolic ornamentation are observed in contemporary landscape architecture design. Galle's theories consist of three components: the first relates to the functional aspects of design, and the last two relate to the aesthetic aspects. These three components are used to evaluate three case studies. In the case studies, Bicentennial Commons in Cincinnati and Canal Walk in Indianapolis show a partial though apparent utilization of Galle's theories, while Riverwalk in Milwaukee comes closest of the three to demonstrating the application of Galle's theories in Landscape Architecture. However, none fully exhibit Galle's theories. Nonetheless, the case studies, and in particular Riverwalk, exhibit the initial stages of a renewed interest in ornamentation in which culture is symbolically represented through nature. Landscape Architects, more than ever, are being called upon to embody the meaning of the land through a cultural synthesis in an expression of past/present and man/nature. / Department of Landscape Architecture