The presented thesis aims to approach the development of sawmills and mills in the political district of Čadca in the period between 1918 (the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic) and 1950 (the closure of most companies). The object of the research is primary water-powered devices, but in a broader context also companies with other forms of propulsion. The work describes their technical development, the process of their modernization, technology transfer. At the same time, it examines the impact of natural and economic conditions on these forms of business in the period under review. Finally, it also aims to map the objects of former sawmills and mills. The information obtained in this way is intended to supplement the inputs from archival research, especially in the issue of the technical equipment of individual plants. Source work draws on map materials I. II. and III. military survey and documents stored in the Čadca archive, a branch of the State Archives in Žilina.

Louisiana developed an extensive system of levees throughout the Atchafalaya Basin and along its territorial Mississippi River. This system reached its zenith on the eve of the American Civil War. It went into dramatic decline following the conflict due to the confluence of military activity, protracted irregular warfare, and neglect stemming from labor and capital revolution. These shifts intensified with the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and finally consolidated after the ratification of Louisiana’s Constitution of 1879. The shift of responsibility for the construction and maintenance of levees during the Reconstruction Era led to many significant changes in the character and function of many of the State’s institutions as it struggled to adapt to the postwar order it confronted.

In my master thesis I deal with the issue of the identity of 19th century Russian society and the role of the Volga River in it. I focus on the characterization of Russian identity in the broadest sense, on the relationship of human society to nature, and on two case studies from the Upper Volga region. In the theory of Russian identity I consider four of its characteristic features - ambivalence, patriotism, spirituality and sentimentalism - to be crucial. The analysis of the relationship between human society and nature includes a section devoted to the reasons for human attachment to landscape, discusses the concept of national landscapes, and presents the dominant idea of the Russian landscape at the end of the 19th century. The last section is devoted to research on the role of the Volga River in the self-identification of the inhabitants of the Upper Volga region. In a study of the worship of the source of the Volga and in research on folklore, I note the attitude of various influences towards this river and, on this basis, define the place of the Volga River in the life of different social classes. The conclusion of my study is that the role of the Volga River in the life of the Upper Volga inhabitants was in many ways the same as its role in the national social discourse, but quite out of...

"Undercurrents of Urban Modernism: Water, Architecture, and Landscape in California and the American West" conducts an art-historical analysis of historic waterworks buildings in order to examine cultural values pertinent to aesthetiteics in relationships between water, architecture and landscape in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Visual study of architectural style, ornamental iconography, and landscape features reveals cultural values related to water, water systems, landscape/land use, and urban development. Part 1 introduces a historiography of ideas of "West" and "landscape" to provide a context for defining ways in which water and landscape were conceived in the United States during turn-of-the-century urban development in the American West. Part 2 provides a historical context for California waterworks with a discussion of major U.S. city waterworks from 1799 to 1893 in Philadelphia, Louisville, New York, and New Orleans. Primary architectural styles discussed are Greek Revival, Egyptian Revival, and Roman Revival. Part 3 presents the dissertation's central object of study: waterworks and hydropower architecture for the greater San Francisco Bay Area between 1860 and 1939. From substations to dams, architects who designed waterworks structures drew from historical revival, academic eclecticism, and structural design traditions. The specific waterworks structures anchoring inquiry in this chapter are two round, peripteral, neoclassical water temples built for San Francisco's water supply to mark key underground aqueduct features. I analyze these two temples--the Sunol Water Temple from 1910 and the Pulgas Water Temple from 1939--in formal terms as well as from within broader urban and historical contexts. Part 4 culminates the dissertation with a case study of two dams whose aesthetic features were obscured by unneeded buttresssing when concerns for dam safety arose after a Southern California dam failure had killed several hundred people in 1928. I inquire into a cultural ambivalence stemming that seems to stem from historical conflicts determining the relative aesthetics of "use" and "beauty" in utilitarian waterworks structures. The overall questions in this dissertation inquire into ways in which aesthetic aspects of architectural design of waterworks structures expressed cultural values regarding water, architecture, and landscape in California between 1860 and 1939. / text