The author argues that the Berlin Wall was more than merely a political construction. Demonstrating the powerful language of architecture, its form was psychologically driven and grounded in historical tradition and culture. Furthermore, it exemplified how architectural constructs are not static but acquire opposing and fluctuating meanings and symbolisms. The wall was, and is, a dynamic condition. More than an object, it was a modern procedure. Not only was it affected by its cultural and socio-political context, but it, in turn, affected its context--space, the pace of time, history, cultural thought and expression. It was an analogue of politics and a palimpsest of culture. Among other modes of expression (such as film, literature and visual art, including graffiti), architecture has been used as a tool to address political agendas connected to the wall. Examination of this architecture divulges a gulf--with notable bridges--between the nature of theoretical and of built projects; and similarly, between projects proposed for a hypothetically projected post-wall situation and those proposed after the wall actually came down.

In 1940, Houston was a town of less than 400,000 inhabitants reliant on trade and the petroleum industry. Today, it ranks as the nation's fourth largest city with a diverse economy. Key to this transformation was the five-year period of World War II. While the city's leaders had learned valuable lessons in dealing with the federal government during the Great Depression, it was not until the new era of federal spending occasioned by US involvement in a world war that their savvy truly flowered. Through the work of aggressive business leaders including George Brown, James Elkins, James Abercrombie, Houston landed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal wartime investment. With enormous federal investment in technologically complex facilities, Houston oil companies moved from being mere refiners of crude and became sophisticated producers of petrochemicals. Wartime needs, including synthetic rubber and high octane fuel, caused petroleum concerns to diversify and create products that would be enormously profitable after the war. Similarly, the conflict virtually created the natural gas industry. Long considered a waste product, gas gained acceptance during the war and when a Houston company purchased the federally-financed Inch pipelines the city became the new industry's hub. Other industries that were attracted to the city during the war included steel, munitions, and shipbuilding. Industry needed labor and to meet that demand thousands of new residents streamed into Houston in the war years, straining the city's housing supply and the local government's ability to deliver services. Among those who gained employment in war industries were a large number of women, African Americans and Mexicans, all of whom had been barred from many such high paying jobs in peacetime. The city's African American community, emboldened by their newfound prosperity, became a hotbed of civil rights agitation; the Smith v. Allwright decision was backed and funded by local blacks in this period. Industrially, economically, and socially, Houston emerged from World War II primed for postwar growth and has, indeed, been the quintessential boomtown ever since.

No description available.

The thesis is a political history and a history of ideas. It is an account of social feminism in the early twentieth century as it sought to extend the ideal of equality to the family and social citizenshp to women in their family roles. Although first-wave feminism has been seen as predominantlv concerned with equality in public life. I argue that women's position in the farmly especially as mothers raised questions for the women's movement whch were addressed in a number of ways. At a time when state solutions to social problems seemed increasingly convincing this contributed to a shift in the relationshp between families and the state and suggests that organised women's advocacy may have played a greater part in creatlng a political consensus for state welfare provision than has been recognised. Ths forms the context for social-liberal feminism after 1918, exemplified by the Edinburgh Women Citizens' Association. The papers of the EWCA add a new dimension to knowledge of the women's movement in the inter-war period. They show an ambitious autonomous women's organisabon active at a time when feminism is believed to have been in almost terminal decline. They gave a strong sense of what citizenshp meant to newly enfranchsed women and the purposes to whch thev wished to put their new rights: their view of a distinctive women's citizenship drew on both a Victorian tradition of women's activism and on ideas wbch had been developed in pre-war socialist feminism. As a claim to influence in previously wholly male fora it was embedded within the discursive strengths and limitatlons of women's traditional arenas of power/knowledge, family and morality. My approach to these issues is through an analysis of primary texts including The Economic Foundations of the Women's Movement (1914) by Mabel Atkinson and Women: An Inquiry (1925) by Willa Muir, and secondary sources, mainly from recent feminist scholarship. My discussion of the interwar women's movement in Scotland is based on the papers of the EWCA (1918-1939). The thesis reflects on approaches to political theory and to history and argues that categorisations of the political and of feminism create problems of analysis. Ths calls for a theoretical framework whch situates political ideas and strategy within the disourses of gender of the time rather than in a privileged position outside and counter to it: I draw on aspects of cultural theory to develop this argument. A problematic relationshp between familv interests and women's equality runs through, and is made visible through women's movement history. This opposition is formed by the dichotomous positioning of private and public and of difference and equality and hence of the categories family and state. Atkinson's articulation of the demand bv women for love (sexual relationships and children) and work (economic and personal independence) names a refusal to resolve tlus opposition through a separation between those women who marry and have children and those who have public careers. Attempts to renegotiate the gender settlement as it affects private and family life have proved to be a great deal more difficult to carry through than is creatng a greater role for women in the public sphere, hard though that also may be. The repeated identfication of feminism with equality as access to public life is a consequence of the relative success of arguments from equality, but questions about how a 'male standard' creates difficulties for women in public life continue to be relevant. Redrawing the conceptual boundaries whch form ths tension calls for not a reassertion of difference or equality- but a parallel assertion of both: that equality is brought to the family and that at the same time the differences associated with family and caring roles are insistently brought into public life. In conclusion I comment on how the opposition between family responsibilities and gender equality has become one of the 'self-evidences' of our age and that it poses one of the most central questions for philosophy and politics: how to reconcile social and indvidual interests.

<p> In this thesis, I use the cities of Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and Montreal, Canada as case studies to analyze the connection between architecture, nationalism, and the influence of colonialism. Each of these cities was directly influenced by French urban development as these cities were reshaped in order to change the people, history, or culture of specific geographies. As these countries gained independence from France they used architecture as a way to express national identity to local populations in order to collectivize them, as well as a way to express this "unified" identity to the international community. This is rooted in the urban policies of the European colonizers which focused on teaching indigenous populations European morality, aesthetics, and rational use of space, but also in the creation of maps, drawings, and other material to express the colonial identity of these territories.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

"Tesis de incorporación a la Academia de Geografía e Historia de Costa Rica."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2707. Adviser: Mark D. Steinberg. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 176-193) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

This paper adopts a political and class-based approach to examine three different British newspapers, The Times of London, The Manchester Guardian, and The Daily Herald in terms of their treatment of Austria-Hungary and Serbia in the month prior to the First World War. It questions how a newspaper's particular bias affects the way it discusses a topic, disseminates news, and relates with its audience. It examines the influence a newspaper has on shaping public opinion concerning friendly and enemy nations in the lead up to a war. At the same time this paper also examines how a newspaper's class and political background determines the level of support the paper demonstrates for war or for pacifism.

acase@tulane.edu