The purpose of this study was to explore what exactly bound post-Second World War American conservatives together. Since modern conservatism's recent birth in the United States in the last half century or more, many historians have claimed that both anti-communism and capitalism kept conservatives working in cooperation. My contention was that the intellectual founder of postwar conservatism, Russell Kirk, made imagination, and not anti-communism or capitalism, the thrust behind that movement in his seminal work The Conservative Mind. In The Conservative Mind, published in 1953, Russell Kirk created a conservative genealogy that began with English parliamentarian Edmund Burke. Using Burke and his dislike for the modern revolutionary spirit, Kirk uncovered a supposedly conservative seed that began in late eighteenth-century England, and traced it through various interlocutors into the United States that culminated in the writings of American expatriate poet T.S. Eliot. What Kirk really did was to create a counter-narrative to the American liberal tradition that usually began with the French Revolution and revolutionary figures such as English-American revolutionary Thomas Paine. One of my goals was to demystify the fusionist thesis, which states that conservatism is a monolithic entity of shared qualities. I demonstrated that major differences existed from conservatism's postwar origins in 1953. I do this by using the concept of textual communities. A textual community is a group of people led by a privileged interpreter—someone such as Russell Kirk—who translates a text, for example Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, for followers. What happens in a textual community is that the privileged interpreter explains to followers how to read a text and then forms boundaries around a particular rendering of a book. I argue that conservatism was full of these textual communities and privileged interpreters. Therefore, in consecutive chapters, I look at the careers of Russell Kirk, John Lukacs, Christopher Lasch, and Paul Gottfried to demonstrate how this concept fleshed out from 1953 and well into the first decade of the new millennium. / Ph. D.

The way in which environmental designers design neighborhood spaces has a role to play in the quality of outdoor spaces that shapes and directs daily outdoor social activities as well as creates a bridge between individuals and the local community. The high quality design of outdoor spaces is fundamental in fostering social cohesion among users/residents in order to produce a healthy social atmosphere, whereas a decline in the quality of outdoor spaces can contribute to antisocial behavior. Today, In Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia, in many cases of new neighborhoods, the outdoor space has become abandoned, and empty, or is avoided. Within this setting, these spaces do not provide opportunities for families with their children to gather and play, to sit and socialize with neighbors, to gather in outdoor activities, to walk to the mosque or school, or to do their daily grocery shopping without being threatened by dangerous car traffic. Moreover, even if users and residents experience problems in their neighborhood, and have their own needs and visions to solve the problem, they do not have the experience to mentally visualize and resolve these problems. Through this qualitative research, the researcher proposes a new approach in incorporating users' imagination in the ideation process of design in order to examine to extend the current normative theory through the development of a more "collaborative ideation process."In this new collaborative process, the representation of ideas becomes more iterative and knowledge exchange between researcher and users becomes more seamless. Through incorporating the researcher's sketching skills as a process of "collaborative-sketching," possible ideas and solutions are explored that are responsive to the needs and desires of users. Using a number of photographs of an outdoor residential space as an example, the objective of this study is to examine the use of collaborative sketching as a way of taping into users' imagination as a rich source of their needs and desires to empower the design process. The findings showed that applying a collaborative sketching process in the early ideation stage of design can result in a rich exchange between designers and user, enabling the designer to have a better and more realistic understanding of needs and desires from the perspective of the user. Through this collaborative-sketching process, the users were continuously, iteratively, and instantly stimulated to not only to narrate their needs and desires, but to visually provide realistic and specific details about the social activities and physical elements including their affordance, rationale of using, value of use, and how social interactions might occur within the different settings. / Ph. D.

To inhabit a space is to be within that space. The interiority of a room places emphasis on inhabitation. By inhabiting a room, one perceives the phenomenal qualities of that room. To inhabit a drawing is to do so imaginatively rather than perceptively. Perspective drawings can shape imagination by defining form, light, and context. They capture and frame an instant in space and time. The presence of light in a drawing creates an awareness of the outside. These qualities of drawings allow the viewer to imagine a room through inhabitation. A series of nine rooms were developed in perspective with elements articulated through tracing, translation, rotation, and refection. Three of these nine rooms were chosen for further investigation through drawing. Drawings were then tested against formal models. / Master of Architecture

A series of chance encounters with the city of Cleveland leads to a non-objective reading of this place. It is an intuitive approach, an attempt to understand the complexity of a city in fragments and to change the city's perception of itself. This thesis is a reciprocal play between conceiving and creating, revealing their close interrelation. It is an inquiry into how our imagination transforms our built and not-built environment. To be an architect is to dwell at the interface between the imaginary and the real, to draw from both worlds. / Master of Architecture

Our current times are marked by the unprecedented challenges of environmental and social crisis. Transformative changes need to take place and in this study, we explore the role of Gotlandic citizens engaged in sustainability in creating a sustainable future. We follow a recent scholarship focusing on the power of imagination in the context of shaping sustainable futures. Through the theory lens of spaces, we map Gotlandic citizens’ individual experiences of context where they engage with sustainability in different forms of rational and imaginative reflection, alone or together. We conduct qualitative interviews to investigate existing spaces combined with action research where we create a new space of shared imagination in the form of a workshop. An in-depth understanding is gained of the reactions and emotions that our study participants express towards all of these spaces. Going beyond the (k)now, both in the meaning of going beyond traditional forms of knowledge but also in the sense of going into an uncertain future, allowed us to investigate the role of arts-based imagination in the context of an island community. Our findings suggest that spaces for practicing imagination are lacking, but are highly valued when experienced. They provide an alert hopefulness and a gentle way for ordinary citizens to engage with the complex topic of sustainable futures. Another key result of our study is that communities are important spaces where collective visions can grow.

A study of the relationship between playfulness and creativity was conducted with a sample of Japanese children who attended a preschool that emphasized whole-group orientation. Playfulness was assessed using The Child Behaviors Inventory, teacher interviews, and observations. Creativity was measured using The Creativity Thinking-Drawing Production Test (Jellen & Urban, 1986), The Drawing Test (Acharyulu & Yasodhara, 1984), teacher interviews, and observations. Although the statistical data analysis indicated no significant relationship between playfulness and creativity, the qualitative data analysis indicated that such a relationship may exist. However, conclusions must be qualified because analysis of the qualitative data revealed confounding factors in the concepts of playfulness and creativity. Some children who were rated by their teachers as non playful were described as internally playful and this internal playfulness was more evident in a one-to-one interaction and was manifest as joy, sense of humor, and active involvement. The internally playful child was described by the teachers as the child who possesses a lot of imagination inside but may not be able to express it externally in a group situation. Although the study focused on artistic creativity, the teachers in this study discussed a global view of creativity rather than artistic creativity. Thus, the results of qualitative data analysis appeared to contradict those of quantitative analysis. Further research on the relationship between playfulness and creativity is needed to understand such a relationship. / Ph. D.

It began with the question, "What if the Modern Man was successful in his dominion over nature?" By means of Architecture this thesis became a speculation and commentary on the human condition. But, more than that, this is a story that tells the evolution and outcome of a series of questions and inquiries into the relationship between Architecture, art and the mythopoetic-narrative realm. / Master of Architecture

《自由談》是戰後台灣第一本暢銷國內外的民間雜誌，發行時間從1950年4月到1987年11月為止，沒有官方撐腰而能歷經整個戒嚴時期，並取得巨大成功，是來自於雜誌背後所擁有的海派文化資本、商業手腕，以及因地制宜的在地轉化。本論文以《自由談》為中心，首先比較民國上海《旅行雜誌》，踏察海派文學／文化與台灣當代文學／文化的關聯。其次藉由觀光客凝視（The Tourist Gaze）、世界主義（Cosmopolitanism）和美學世界主義（Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism）等理論，分析《自由談》裡最大宗的國內外遊記，說明藏匿在官方論述保護色之下的「世界想像」，有意無意溢出戒嚴臺灣所限制的禁忌究竟為何。最後集中關注《自由談》的小說，一樣先分析海派小說的在地化轉變，說明如何可能成為台派鴛鴦蝴蝶小說；之後再聚焦以國外為主要敘述空間的嚴肅小說，討論這些小說如何區分自我與他者、確認差異（difference）和認同（identity），進而隔海回望，漸漸打造出不同於官方主導文化、嶄新的「台灣想像」。 / The Rambler（《自由談》） was the first private magazine in post-war Taiwan that sold well domestically and internationally. Published from April 1950 to November 1987 without government support, the magazine thrived throughout the entire martial law period because of the combination of the cultural capital of the Shanghai School, effective business tactics, and a local transformation that underpinned its operation. In this study, The Rambler and its predecessor, China Traveler（《旅行雜誌》）, were compared to investigate the relationship between the Shanghai School literature and contemporary Taiwanese literature. Travelogues collected in The Rambler were subsequently analyzed through the perspectives of tourist gaze, cosmopolitanism, and aesthetic cosmopolitanism to illustrate how the world imagination was influenced by the ruling Nationalist Party, which, wittingly or unwittingly, revealed officially stated taboos in Taiwan under martial law. The local transformations in the Shanghai School fiction reflected in The Rambler were also discussed in this study. Finally, fiction in The Rambler with settings that occurred beyond the borders of Taiwan were examined to discuss how characters in these fictions distinguish between the self and the others, perceived their difference, and identified with their identity to create a different imagination of Taiwan from the officially created one.

Le traité De l’âme (DA) et les traités connexes (Parva Naturalia) contiennent les éléments d’une théorie de la phantasia, souvent nommée « imagination », ou « représentation ». Dans ce texte, Aristote affirme à plusieurs reprises qu’il est impossible de penser quoi que ce soit sans phantasia. Le DA contient toutefois peu de précisions quant à la portée de cette affirmation. Ce que cela signifie trouve cependant une élucidation si l’on transfert la théorie de la phantasia à un autre texte, les Seconds Analytiques II, 19, portant sur l’acquisition du premier savoir universel à partir de la perception, et des premiers principes intelligibles. Cette étude se propose d’abord de montrer en quoi la théorie de la phantasia s’applique aux SA, et comment ce texte, lu en regard de la phantasia, peut répondre à la question de savoir ce que cela signifie que l’intellect doit nécessairement s’appuyer sur la phantasia pour penser. / The treaty On the Soul (DA) and the connex treaties (Parva Naturalia) expose a theory of phantasia, often translated as « imagination » or « representation ». In the DA, Aristotle maintains that it is impossible to think without phantasia, yet this text offers little precision on the exact signification of his affirmation. An elucidation may however be found in another text, the Posterior Analytics II, 19, which focuses on the acquisition of knowledge, that is, the first universals implanted by perception and the first intelligible principles. This text, as we will firstly demonstrate, has to be read in the frame of the theory of phantasia, which will show that the acquisition of klowledge depends on phantasia. Thus and secondly, it will be clearer what it means that it is impossible for the intellect to think without phantasia.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.