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This thesis is a proposed house located at Smithfield, a property that has been in the Smith family for over two centuries. Located in Russell County, Virginia, the land has a rich history, and the design of the house addresses the historical significance of the site. The house reflects both the past and the present. While the house is rooted in early regional building traditions, the proposed house is modern in the use of materials and details. The final design reflects the historical context of the site and region while incorporating modern concepts of how we live today. / Master of Architecture / This thesis is a proposed house located at Smithfield, a property that has been in my family for over two centuries. It is based on the regional architecture of Southwest Virginia and our family's history and ties to the land. While the house is rooted in early regional building traditions, the proposed house is modern in the use of materials and details. Like what has come and gone before us, the house is not meant to stand forever, but become a living memory to our family.

Using the vehicle of hand drawn animation, this is an ongoing reflection of instances that repeat themselves to a point beyond the humorous and back. The Myth of Sisyphus 'The Gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back on its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there was no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labour.' Albert Camus- The Myth of Sisyphus By observing and illustrating assiduous daily gestures and events our absurd hero is revealed: this protagonist, be it object or human consciously and often unconsciously lives within a relentless finite experience. As the same moment is duplicated, the

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incongruent ilk is a thesis exhibition of formally and conceptually linked situations that by their distilled nature initiate deeper contemplation of topics that are often just examined superficially. For my thesis exhibition I set out to produce curated arrangements of objects and materials because I believe something important is revealed about ourselves when we engage with common and banal objects in the material world. The exchange between the human experience and the unique nature of specific objects can connect us to each other by highlighting shared, yet subjectively interpreted experiences. The linear connections in this body of work give way to incongruent and contradictory contexts. incongruent ilk has undertones and overtones of leisure, travel, and warning that are delivered by humor, subversion, and the formal arrangements of materials. There is an intersection between objects and images that drips with subjective judgment; this subjectivity is crucial to incongruent ilk. The audience excavates the depth of potential metaphor, analogy, or concept naturally and artificially existing in the work by how deeply they are willing to consider what is presented visually.

The last three decades have seen the Southern Mexican city of Oaxaca evolve to become an autonomous centre for the creation and promotion of contemporary art on state, national and international levels. The present research's original contribution to knowledge is the analytical investigation of an art movement's response to the political and technological effects characteristic of postmodernity and effected through globalisation. The research uses a hybrid theoretical framework that includes the work of: Fredric Jameson to discuss postmodernism; Nelly Richard to characterise a postmodern Latin America; Homi K. Bhabha to analyse the postcolonial context and the creation of agency; and, inherent to this structure and the context, the work of Néstor García Canclini. The theoretical investigation is supported by ethnography that ascertains how hybrid political thought and community altruism characterise the Oaxacan art community and the aesthetic expression practised by a new generation of its members. Oaxacan contemporary art is based on the success of the post-Rupture primitivist magical realism practised originally by important Oaxacan artists living and travelling in other locations. The most recent generation of contemporary artists in Oaxaca integrates with, upholds and promotes the model of cultural production that is now inextricably intertwined with the local and wider communities. Participant observation and the analysis of the behaviour of the artists studied, focused the investigation on the efficient interaction between artists and collective action as an integrated sector of civil society. The research determines how the artists studied and the wider Oaxacan art community applies their knowledge of global communications and information technology to create and market a cultural product and promote a postmodern social and political perspective. Regarded as a solid sector of the local and regional community due to its national and international standing, the Oaxacan art community constructs political power from significant, direct involvement with micro-projects to engaging in partnerships with state and federal stakeholders in large-scale cultural endeavours. The research discusses projects instigated and undertaken by the artists studied, including the call for a pacifistic solution to the Oaxaca Conflict of 2006, a six-month socio-political uprising caused by actual and historic conditions in the national and regional Left-Right political duel. The strength of the art community is founded on necessary and reinforcing collective action in both artistic and altruistic projects; often combined through the direct use of art in the creation of funds and media-empowered support towards achieving a perceived common good that centres on the protection of identity and the political defence of diversity.

The purpose of this study is to serve as an introduction of the work of the contemporary Japanese author, Furukawa Hideo (b. 1966), to the Anglophone audience. I consider Furukawa to be a member of the 'post-Murakami' generation, not only in terms of chronology but also in terms of influence. Murakami Haruki (b. 1949) left an identifiable impact on Furukawa's fiction, however it would be erroneous to consider Furukawa a Murakami imitator. In this study, I attempt to highlight the elements that make Furukawa unique as an author; specifically his careful manipulation of the theme-space matrix, and his fast-paced style influenced by Furukawa's performances of his own literary works, and collaboration with musicians, which reflects Furukawa's position in the center of the contemporary cultural trend towards multimedia integration.

"Las practicas cotidianas castellanas: hacia el imaginario cartografico de Miguel Delibes" offers a reevaluation of the image of Castilla that informs much of Miguel Delibes's novelistic work. Numerous scholars have examined the fundamental role the author's native region has in developing the thematics of his extensive narrative corpus. What has been missing in these studies is a broadly interdisciplinary optic through which to study the formation and evolution of Delibes's cartographic imaginary--to borrow a term from David Harvey. Applying the ground-breaking work of critical geographers including Harvey, Henry Lefevbre, Michel de Certeau and Sallie Marston to an analysis of the Spanish novelist's production allows for a calibration of his novelistic evolution against the mediating factors of the extensive and fundamental real spatial transformations that Castilla undergoes from the time Delibes started to write in the 1940s to the present. The key element in making this connection is a study of how the practices of everyday life take form in his imaginary. Employing de Certeau's explanation of the ways in which these practices coalesce into tactics and strategies is especially useful in charting the evolution of the author's cartographic imaginary and how it documents, confronts and resists fundamental alterations in the nature of Castillian spaces, both rural and urban.Chapter one of my study lays out the methodology for defining the cartographic imaginary, especially its portrayal of the practices of everyday life, and considers how to connect the study of real spaces and their conceptual articulation by cultural creators. Chapters two and three discuss, in turn, the portrayal of urban and rural spaces in Delibes's fiction, most importantly in Mi idolatrado hijo Sisi­, Cinco horas con Mario, Diario de un jubilado, El camino, Las ratas, and Viejas historias de Castilla la Vieja. My final chapter (four) examines those texts in which Delibes plays rural against urban space--Diario de un cazador, El disputado voto del senor Cayo and Los santos inocentes. My investigation leads me to conclude that while deeply rooted in his own region of Spain, Delibes's work transcends local concerns.

Renowned Spanish author, Ana Mari­a Matute, lived through the violent and uncertain years of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975) that followed. Her writing is a reflection of the dysfunctional society that was left in the wake of decades of social upheaval and it serves as a greater metaphor for the national identity crisis Spain experienced in the 20th Century. The intent of this study is to demonstrate how trauma and memory influence individual and national identity formation in selected short stories by Matute. Little study has been done on the role of trauma and memory in this type of narrative despite the frequent presence of trauma in Spanish literature. Further, insufficient academic attention has been given to Matute's short fiction relative to her novels.The characters in Matute's short fiction are dominated by violent and antisocial behavior that results from living in severely fragmented environments where both physical and mental cruelty and the absence of the nuclear family are commonplace. Matute's characters that suffer from traumatic events frequently fail to recover their former identity and remain in posttraumatic states, inhibiting healthy personal development and involvement with others in society. The memory of traumatic events dominates their persona and the characters are unable to distinguish the past from the present, causing a crisis of identity. In addition, Matute's characters can rarely rely on the community at large or family for support; this further propels them into isolation and negatively impacts their sense of self. Although Matute's literature is fictional, one can infer the toll of the Civil War and the dictatorship on the Spanish nation and its identity.