Thesis (M.A.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 1997. / "May 1, 1997." Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet.

"Sisson's Kingdom" uses a community study paradigm to offer an interpretation of the Confederate homefront collapse of Floyd County, Virginia. The study focuses primarily on residents' conflicting loyalty choices during the war, and attempts to explain the myriad of ways that their discord operated to remove Floyd County as a positive portion of the Confederate homefront. The study separates the "active Confederate disloyalty" of Floyd County's Unionist inhabitants from the "passive Confederate disloyalty" of relatives or friends of local Confederate deserters. It then explores the conflicting loyalties of the county's pro-Confederates, Unionists, and passive disloyalists, seeking to understand better the wide variety of loyalty choices available to residents as well as the consequences of their choices. To determine some of the significant factors contributing to the Floyd County community's response to the Confederacy and Civil War, this thesis documents the various ways residents' reactions took shape. Chapter One examines the roots of these decisions, exploring briefly Floyd County's entrance into Virginia's market economy during the 1850s and its residents' conflicting choices during Virginia's secession crisis. In the aftermath of secession, many Floyd residents embraced their new Confederate government and enlisted by the hundreds in its military units. The decision by some county soldiers to desert their units and return to Floyd caused loyalty conflicts between their supporters and the county's pro-Confederates. This conflict, and the effects of deserters living in the Floyd community, are both explored in Chapter Two. Floyd's Unionist population and its loyal Confederate residents clashed violently throughout much of the war, hastening the disintegration of the Floyd homefront. Their discord is examined in Chapter Three. / Master of Arts

Architecture can facilitate the learning process. This book outlines a design exploration of this fundamental premise. The architectural platform for this exploration is a music conservatory dedicated to teaching the traditional mountain music of Appalachia. The rich history of mountain music and its centuries-old conversational method of conveyance remain the underlying premise of this thesis. A successful bluegrass conservatory must provide places for its students to engage in three occasions: Discovery, Revelation, and Education. Architectural form is significant to these occasions in that it not only allows, but promotes their occurrence. The discovery of inspirational material can occur in a formal stage-and-seat configuration as in the auditorium, or in an informal environment such as the street. The moment in which a musician reveals or explores this inspirational material can be a private one, most likely to take place in the individual rooms of the residential buildings. The most important occasion, education, takes place as it has for centuries - within conversation. Learning the language of bluegrass music is most likely when two or more students sit together to play, share their knowledge, and build on it. These conversations are key to the learning process and can take place on the benches lining the streets, in the indoor gathering rooms, on balconies and porches overlooking the streets, etc. The discovery, revelational, and educational processes are not chronological and must all happen coincidentally within the school grounds. I have set out to build an architectural language whose meaning is derived by conventional pragmatic parameters. This system of rules or notions governs all aspects of this school's design from stair to stage. The parameters are set according to the intrinsic requirements of placing a building on the land that must promote the occurrence of discovery, revelation, and education. / Master of Architecture