From the arrival of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVMs) in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1843 through the death of their foundress in 1887, the BVMs created a group identity that they spread through the dispersion of their schools and that they maintained through regular written and personal contact. The identity they maintained was definitely religious in nature, but it was also equally secular. The BVMs provided a type of teaching that historians and geographers of U.S. education have not yet fully investigated, namely Catholic education. These women regularly taught and administered for lifelong careers; interactions among the women teachers and administrators were both deeply personal and pointedly professional; and these U.S. teachers actively supported and benefited from centralization. The research explores the dispersion pattern of the BVM school system, the nature of the institution through the experiences of BVM teachers and administrators, and the importance of recognizing the intertwining secular and sacred aspects of the congregation and its schools. Rather than reducing U.S. education to public education, the findings in this dissertation about BVM teachers and their schools call for a more nuanced understanding of U.S. education in general, one that includes Catholic education as a part of the whole.

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Between 1813 and 1825 the Boston Manufacturing Company built a textile factory in Waltham, Massachusetts. Their factory is known for many important firsts in American industry, including the first commercially viable power loom, one of the first vertically integrated factories, and one of the first join stock financed manufacturing concerns. This successful factory became the direct model for the large textile mills built along the Merrimack River and elsewhere, iconic locations of American post-colonial industrialization. This dissertation looks at the early development and success of the Boston Manufacturing Company from a geographical perspective. It argues that in order build a successful factory, the company, its managers, and its workers, had to transform their "place": a notion that I investigate from an economic-geographical and anthropological point of view, moving from site, to landscape, to geographic networks. On these grounds, I show how the logic of the factory's development was both embedded in and shaping the emerging structures surrounding it, and how, in turn, the company’s later move to Lowell as one of the iconic industrial sites depended on its having successfully learned the business of "place-making" in its foundational Waltham decade. / History of Science

Little information beyond generalities exists regarding the cultural landscape of the Chickasaw Indians in their ancestral homelands prior to Removal in the late 1830s. This dissertation evaluates one possible archival source for specifics of Chickasaw land use, the field notes and survey plats compiled as part of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). The process of original survey following land cession treaty divided the ceded area up into the familiar square-mile rectangular system of townships and ranges that extends from the Mississippi Territory westwards, in the so-called public land states. The research compiles all cultural observations made by the surveyors within a fourteen township area (totaling 504 square miles). This study area, generally located on the west bank of Town Creek between present-day Tupelo and Pontotoc MS, was chosen to cover the traditional center of Chickasaw settlement and elements of important roads such as the Natchez Trace. The resulting catalog of observations was compared to similar features on the township plats and to other cultural resource inventories to identify patterns of inscription and possible erasure of Native American cultural activities. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology was used to consolidate and compare these data resources. The PLSS survey documents provide a useful but not complete resource for identifying Chickasaw cultural presence within the study area. No consistent pattern of omission or erasure of Chickasaw activities was identified. The analysis identifies several opportunities and caveats for future researchers who might extend this analysis, including technical challenges in applying GIS technology to this data.

The concept of the croft (Sw. torp) is complex. From the 17th century crofts were small tenant holdings on a farm or estate. Along with changes in society since c. 1850, they were converted into freehold farms, second homes or left to ruins. They acquired new functional, social and symbolic values and today the croft is mostly associated with a rural idyll. The aim of the thesis is to study the transformations of the croft since1850 in order to understand how and why it has survived as a place and acquired the meanings it has. Thus the construction of place is in centre of attention. This process is approached from three angles: the materiality of the croft, ideas and representations of it and various practices relating to it. This is studied through historical documents and maps, text analysis and interviews, in part through three case studies in Uppland, Småland and Värmland. The main conclusions are that great changes notwithstanding, there are continuities in all three dimensions of the croft. This combination of inertia and change is central to how and why the croft has survived. The study also shows the importance of timing between available rural dwellings and a demand for such dwellings. Another conclusion is that the idealisation of the croft is old and not only a present day phenomena. Further, the different dimensions of the croft and the relations which can be found between them have been important for the transformation and survival of the croft. The materiality, immateriality and practices of the croft in the past remain parts of what constitutes it today, together with those dimensions in the present. The study shows the possibilities inherent in focusing on the intertwining of various dimensions and periods of time for the understanding of the processes of place construction.

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While the Shakers are associated in North American with simplicity and communalism, an examination of Shaker history reveals a dynamic and complex society. Shaker life was structured by a powerful metanarrative: the Shakers were the ‘Chosen People of God,’ who lived in ‘His Promised Land.’ This narrative, which is profoundly geographical due to its intertwining of people with place, was not static in its interpretation. Nevertheless, it served as the basis for the discourses concerning the most appropriate means to live in the World, but not be of it. Few geographers have examined religiosity and spirituality systematically. This research highlights the interaction between religiosity, identity, place, and narrative as an essential element of the human condition. Religiosity is expressed through narratives and rituals and buttresses a sense of identity and belonging in place. Particular expressions of the Shaker covenantal narrative were shaped by the places in which the Shakers existed. This work examines the Shaker experience at New Lebanon Shaker Village (New York) focusing on the antebellum period. It examines the context in which the Shakers existed, the shifts in the interpretations of the Shaker covenantal narratives, and the means by which the Shaker leadership disseminated their ideas. / Thesis (Ph.D, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2009-05-21 09:32:07.477

Most work on old maps has been to explain the forms of representation, its various uses and applications. At mid-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries it has developed historical cartography, means by which maps were made with old information or data mapping planes. In this paper the goal is to use the current mapping methods to reconstruct maps, based on the platform of geographic information systems (GIS); international conventional symbols; physical-geographical context ofthe time and current reference system for mapping and as a tool for spatial analysis. / La mayoría de los trabajos de cartografía antigua han sido sobre la explicación de las formas de representación, sus diversos usos y aplicaciones. A mediados del siglo XX y principios del XXI se ha desarrollado la cartografía histórica, medio por el cual se han realizado mapas con información antigua de datos o planos. En este trabajo el objetivo es emplear los métodos de representación cartográfica actuales, para reconstruir mapas, con base en las plataformas de los sistemas de información geográfica (SIG); la simbología convencional internacional; el contexto físico-geográfico de la época y un sistema de referencia actual, para generar cartografía y sea una herramienta para el análisis espacial.

This dissertation is an examination of the validity and potential of a series of documents known as feet of fines. It represents the analysis of data gathered from over 5000 original, medieval fines at the Public Record Office in Kew. Computer technology, notably Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and databases, has been utilized in the analysis. This has led to the production of a series of tables, graphs and maps for the chosen study area: the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Gloucestershire. The research has enabled a comparative study of land use and settlement patterns and has revealed that fines are an excellent source for the study of certain themes, such as the period of the "crisis" of the early fourteenth century and the plotting of the course of the advance of pasture in the later medieval period. The origins of feet of fines are examined along with their development, their structure and content. Their value as a source for the historian and the historical-geographer has been assessed and the data has been used for the study of the three counties in question. A regional study of each county has been undertaken along with a general examination of land use and settlement patterns. This is followed by an assessment of how feet of fines can be used to enhance this pattern for the period 1196-1509. All three county studies include a series of tables and graphs produced from the database of fines and maps produced from Unking these databases to a GIS digital mapping system. The conclusion highlights the differences in land use and settlement patterns in the three counties and includes comparisons between the three studies.

A tese de doutorado intitulada 360° O PÉRIPLO DO AÇÚCAR EM DIREÇÃO À MACRORREGIÃO CANAVIEIRA DO CENTRO-SUL DO BRASIL tem como objeto de análise o açúcar e sua espacialização sobre o globo terrestre. A pesquisa trata o tema por meio de uma proposta de regionalização da atividade açucareira, distinguindo nove macrorregiões de amplitude mundial. São estas o Subcontinente Indiano, o Mundo Árabe, a Europa, o Gran-Caribe, os Estados Unidos, o Sudeste Asiático, a Australásia, o Sudeste Africano e a Macrorregião Canavieira do Centro-Sul do Brasil. A análise é feita com base no estudo da geografia histórica e da história contemporânea de cada uma dessas áreas, para nas conclusões se estabelecer um panorama da produção mundial de açúcar no momento presente. Conclui-se que no atual período da globalização, a Macrorregião Canavieira do Centro-Sul do Brasil desempenha papel hegemônico no Mercado Mundial de Açúcar. / The thesis entitled 360° THE SUGAR PERIPLUS TOWARDS THE SUGARCANE MACROREGION OF SOUTH-CENTRAL BRAZIL has sugar as object of analysis and its spatial distribution over the globe. The research approaches its subject through a proposal for a regionalization of the sugar industry, distinguishing nine global macroregions. Those are the Indian Subcontinent, the Arab World, the Europe, the Gran-Caribe, the United States of America, the Southeast of Asia, the Australasia, the Southeast of Africa and the Sugarcane Macroregion of South-Central Brazil. The analysis is based on the study of the historic geography and the contemporary history of each of those areas, to reach the conclusions of establishing an overview of world sugar production in the present moment. The conclusion is that in the current period of globalization, the Sugarcane Macroregion of South-Central Brazil played an hegemonic role in the World Sugar Market.