Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Greg Smith, committee chair; Angelo Restivo, Gayle Austin, Shirlene Holmes, Thomas Flynn, Raphael Miller, committee members. Electronic text (252 p. : ill. (some col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Oct. 12, 2007. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, 2005. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-151).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Paul Schmidt, committee chair; LeeAnne Richardson, Murray Brown, committee members. Electronic text (203 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Oct. 18, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-203).

This study investigated former students' historical imaginations and recollections emanating from a visit to an historic site as an extension of the curriculum in social studies in grade five a decade ago. Historical imagination was defined as placing children within past "actions" or experiences of history through heritage to discern for themselves the thoughts and experiences of people of the past. The following question guided this study: What was the nature of historical imagination constructed from participants' recollections through "action" and "artifact within action" based on an extended field trip to an historic site in the recent past? "Action" was defined as vigorous activity of children involved in learning through experience, such as panning for gold. "Artifact within action" referred to objects illustrative of human workmanship, such as those found in historic sites. Ten years ago, ten and eleven year old students participated in historic site ‘interpretation’ programs including a court trial, school house activities, gold panning, graveyard exploration, household chores and carpentry tasks. They explored the reconstructed townsite of Barkerville where these activities occurred. The investigation of historical imagination was not intended as an evaluation of the educational programs offered at Barkerville, nor was it intended to generalize these findings to other historical sites. The author involved young adults to construct memories of shared events from their experiences of a field trip to Barkerville. In spite of efforts to determine efficacy of education through field trips, little has been written about the stimulation of historical imagination through this process. The author’s definition of historical imagination formed the foundation for this study. In addition, the concept of shared voice or the interactive memory of former students and their teacher through conversation was developed for use through the methodology of oral history. Hermeneutics provided the interpretive instrument for constructing and understanding the narrative expressed through participants' conversation. The interview lent itself to the expression of former students' stories recollecting "action" and "artifact within action." Thematic analysis was used to interpret the conversational data. Three main themes emerged from the data: recollecting feelings, creating images and pictures and experiencing the past. Within the theme recollecting feelings, three references emerged: feelings of emotional involvement, "the actual feeling" and feeling closeness with the group. A salient conclusion of this study is that participants' historical response was evident over time, expressed as the "actual feeling" and utilized in the active construction of meaning through vivid recollections, which employed historical imagination to explain and extend historical understandings. The constructs most evident underlying historical imagination were interaction, free play, provocation, the supernatural and engagement. Furthermore, gender recollection was a significant construct and, as a result, woman's past emerged as a reference within the theme experiencing the past. / Graduate

The primary objective of this thesis is to provide an account of productive imagination in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason using Heidegger's interpretation in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Kant's account of productive imagination largely remains in the context of his own project to establish the conditions for the possibility of experience which can ground a theory of knowledge. Thus, Kant's project can largely be read as a work of epistemology leaving an account of experience that is limited to knowledge of empirical objects. Therefore, in turning to Heidegger, I seek to provide an account of experience in the Critique that is not merely epistemic. Rather, in focusing on productive imagination in the Critique, as Heidegger has, one can obtain an account of experience that is revelatory of human finitude. Therefore, the thesis proceeds as follows. First, I offer an introduction providing proper context for the project. In Chapter 1, I offer a reading of both the A and B deductions from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in order to establish the role and limits of productive imagination. Chapters 2 and 3 follow Heidegger through a large section of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics in order to highlight the role of productive imagination and to move beyond the limits present in Kant's account. Lastly, I offer a conclusion.

Our contemporary culture is the product of enlightenment movements that have produced a discursive mode that favors skepticism, abstraction, and a mistrust of the body. This crisis of meaning has produced subjects that have lost the capacity for convincing symbolic exchanges. This project aims to reveal the vital importance of the imaginary for our possibilities of community, culture, and connectedness. I will use the work of Julia Kristeva to explain how we benefit from a symbolic that is supported by a robust and dynamic imaginary that springs from our embodied life. My thesis is that the foundation of the imaginary is best conceived as acoustical rather than visual. The contemporary experience that best recovers these representational capacities is found in our making, hearing, and sharing music. The current crisis of meaning can be ameliorated and subjectivity can be restored when aesthetic experiences and artistic practices rehabilitate the semiotic body as a source of meaning.

abstract: Chris Miller's Souvenirs of Sleep is as serious as it is whimsical, if this is a possibility. The "Museum of the Zoo-real" may be an equally appropriate title as animals are often in performance. In this visual and spiritual investigation, childhood, dream, and the loss of a mother to suicide are the currents. Miller's work is informed by the cinema of Werner Herzog, Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Bresson and beyond. Miller believes in the power of implication. The poems begin with intense focus, but are often in the business of expansion. Souvenirs of Sleep is a journey toward sense-making, a search for language that might allow it. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.F.A. Creative Writing 2013

This thesis is centred on the question of the effect security technologies, and the imaginaries associated with them, have on the formation of the present security doxa. With a more nuanced understanding of technology as process, and the role of imagination reintroduced into the nexus, this thesis aims to enable an understanding of how technological security solutions are deployed in everyday life and how this contributes to a reformulating of politics in a world gripped by anxiety about an uncertain future. Of primary interest is the way in which seemingly mundane technologies can enter the dominant security narrative and achieve deployment in everyday life, not only as the prime solution to concerns of risk, but as something to actively be desired in themselves. A vital and understudied arena for the dissemination of specific imaginaries of mundane security tools as the ultimate solution to a risky future – as an end in and of themselves – are the spaces of promotion for such technologies. The centrepiece of promotion is found at the trade fairs and exhibitions where one can witness the marketing and sale of the ‘latest and greatest’ tech fixes from an ever increasing range of private sector security entrepreneurs whose living is made from promoting security. By offering both a mapping of the wider expansion and logic of the security fair world, and an ethnographic study of interactions within the exhibition walls of the International Fire and Security Exhibition and Conference (IFSEC) over the course of three years, this thesis makes it possible to develop a better understanding of both the makeup and relations between these elements, and expose these gatherings as more than just sites of commerce and consumption, and much more than simply a metaphor for the wider security world. Instead, they can be thought of as hotspots of intensive exchange of knowledge, new ideas and network building. Thus, this thesis aims to demonstrate how international trade fairs and exhibitions are more than just an ever more important means of distributing security technologies. It is not a question of the relationship between visitors and exhibitors, or the particular effectiveness of marketing strategies deployed by individual firms. It is about the underpinning logic of a particular mind-set regarding what it means to consume security as a commodity, and a specific imagining of a secured future with such solutions as the ultimate end-in-themselves and how these spaces are pivotal in the dissemination, propagation and reformulation of changing attitudes towards security.

Much of consumer behavior research focuses on how consumers process and evaluate information to make current decision. In contrast, many consumer choices ares are underpinned by the need to make choices that incorporate the past or future, other places, other people and other situations that are seemingly hypothetical. The imagination provides the chief means by which consumers are able to traverse this psychological distance. Construal Level Theory (CLT) explains how individuals are able to plan for the future, consider the perspective of another individual and even consider situations that are counter to reality. Construal mindsets are enacted when people form mental representations of distant objects, people, or places. In abstract construal mindsets, individuals think generally, in terms of global features of an object, person, or situation. On the other hand, concrete construal mindsets center around the detailed aspects of an object, person, or situation. These two different construal mindsets serve to help people cope with the uncertainty of the future. This is because abstract cosntruals are more likely than concrete construals to remain unchanged as distance from a future object, person, or place reduces. A number of consumer behavior settings require the use of the imagination. Sticking to a weight loss and or fitness plan, planning a vacation trip, saving for retirement and imagining what birthday gift a friend will enjoy all require imagining a psychologically distant state. Marketers generally seek to stimulate consumption by requiring consumers to imagine a consumption setting. This dissertation uses CLT to guide the hypotheses, as CLT explains how individuals deal with psychological distance by adopting a construal mindset. CLT explains differences in information processing associated with adopting a specific construal mindset and suggests how construal mindsets impact consumer information elaboration processes. This study will contribute to CLT by addressing an understudied be related area: the consumer imagination. Furthermore, this dissertation helps uncover the mechanism that demonstrates the role of psychological distance on construal mindsets. The study will employ three experiments that identify the effect of psychologically distant consumption scenarios on elaborative thought processes in consumption settings.

Outdoor green spaces are necessary for cognitive development. Many mentally challenged children in South Africa lack proper treatment and access to green spaces, as well as basic social interaction. This dissertation investigates why play in outdoor spaces is beneficial and how this can be achieved through the basis of a playscape focusing on development and therapy for mentally challenged and abled-bodied children. The design solution also aims to uplift the community and create safe spaces. The main research question asks how a playscape can transform the segregated, derelict areas in Westbury into spaces that encourage child development. The hypothesis states that activity-orientated playground design that recognizes the abilities of mentally challenged and abled-bodied children, and provokes imagination, can create platforms that remove social boundaries and aid in development. Furthermore, naturalistic playground design can aid in solving the issue of boundary within Westbury, while effectively defining open space and creating a sense of place. In order to test the hypothesis, pragmatic requirements for child development were obtained through a literature review and by conducting interviews with therapists dealing with mentally challenged children. Case studies were consulted to understand the application in design. In conclusion, it is confirmed that naturalistic, activity-orientated playground design can create platforms that remove social boundaries and aid in development and therapy. By using archetypical landscape elements that provoke the imagination, a multifaceted playscape can be created. This dissertation in its design application demonstrates that it is possible to use boundary to create safer, integrated spaces, while effectively defining an open space. By this example a playscape and its surrounding spaces can offer platforms for economic, social, communal and environmental upliftment within Westbury. / Mini Dissertation ML(Prof)--University of Pretoria,2018. / Architecture / ML(Prof) / Unrestricted