Every year the United States corrections system costs tax payers $52 billion. The failures of the prison system are both tangible and intangible. This Thesis research builds on existing literature to seek out a solution to the high rate of recidivism post release. Can design be employed as a tool with the potential to reduce rates of recidivism in the prison population? The City of Springfield, in Western Massachusetts, acts as a test case to examine the inter-relationships of social science, neuroscience, and architecture. Initial research identified the primary obstacles individuals face after prison that contribute to keeping recidivism rates high. This is not intended to oversimplify the issues or suggest there is an easy solution, but to provide a starting point to try something new. Ultimately, this thesis deals with how architecture can provide a concrete solution to the deep set, less tangible roadblocks to successful reintegration. Residents often lack a sense of self-worth, personal responsibility and stable social ties. In addition to designing a building to provide the physical support system that released prisoners often lack, such as housing, access to transportation, and access to services, the project will explore techniques to serve a much greater purpose and provide a model for a re-imagined process of incarceration, release, healing and growth.

This thesis examines the formation of spatial theory and the linkage between space and place and their relationship with historic preservation and heritage tourism. First, this thesis analyzes the terms space and place, and how scholars define each term. Second, this thesis focuses on the concept of placelessness. Third, this thesis examines historic preservation as a strategy to help alleviate placelessness and as a crucial link to heritage tourism. This thesis also will use regional examples of preservation and tourism as exemplified by the preservation efforts of private organizations, citizens, and government officials in Jonesborough,Johnson City, and Washington County,Tennessee. This thesis provides some ideas for the creation of a possible heritage tourism program within Washington County,Tennessee.

Professional interactions that are both functional and mutually beneficial are rare. The purpose of this study is to explore an application of a Third Culture Building (TCB) approach, a mutually constructed interpersonal process between two individuals, for Black American professionals (with advanced knowledge acquired from institutions of higher learning), to generate a new space in Predominantly White Institutions (PWis). These institutions include settings where the racial composition is becoming consistently more diverse (through past desegregation efforts). Although the U.S. has moved beyond integration and the monumental Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, racism and intercultural barriers that prevent functional cross-cultural communication still exist in these settings. This research is directed toward answering the question: How might Black American professionals generate a Third Culture space in PWis through cross-cultural social exchange? The research builds on my previous study where the TCB approach was found to be conducive for the intercultural barriers faced by Black Americans in PWis. The research emphasizes the perspective of Black Americans and de-emphasizes the perspective of White Americans, given the body of literature that points to their adaptation and intercultural interactions in the U.S. and in international contexts. A sample of six Black American professionals (ages 30 to 72; 4 men and 4 women) from my baseline study was invited to take part in this study. Respondents were chosen based on their backgrounds and similarity of race, to learn about their perspectives of the intercultural interactions in PWis. Participants live in the Midwest region of the U.S. Using interpretive, critical theory, and other qualitative approaches, the discussions from a focus group and interviews were transcribed and combined with the interviewer's notes. The participants' responses were organized around TCB frameworks and the interview questions, and then reduced to codes. Two evaluators reviewed the interview data, codes, and themes.

The goal of this dissertation was to explore aging lesbian and gay individuals living in rural communities, in terms of their social networks and the relationships between these networks, identity, health, and quality of life. Guiding the study were three overarching questions. Using a multi-method design, the research was grounded within a socio-ecological context and focused on how structural systems create pathways for health and are affected by social position (intersectionality). Participants (n=25) were recruited from Kentucky (n=20), West Virginia (n=3), and Tennessee (n=2). Thirteen participants self-identified as gay and twelve as lesbian. Findings highlight the complexity of the aging experience and the difficulty in parsing out the influence of a rural location, the aging process, and being a lesbian or gay male, on social network development, identity, health, and quality of life. Findings indicate that rural gay and lesbian individuals develop networks based on need with limited consideration for network members’ acceptance of their identity. The findings also indicate that networks are primarily composed of heterosexual members. Social isolation and loneliness remain a pervasive issue in the rural gay and lesbian aging community. Finally, network size does not affect the overall health and quality of life for rural aging lesbian and gay individuals, but identity congruence does. Conclusions point to the greater need for research to understand the factors affecting aging lesbian and gay individuals in rural environments. Opportunities abound for developing further research addressing social isolation among this population and exploring the positive relationship between identity congruence and quality of life. The findings highlight the collective need to continue research into sexual minority aging and rural sexual minority aging.

This thesis explores patterns of environmental inequality in Portland, Oregon; both the existence of spatial environmental inequalities and the structural and local forces which contribute to them. Research on environmental inequality, or inequitable exposure to toxins, has shown that minority and low-income populations experience the bulk of the exposure to environmental hazards. Although Portland is often cited as the archetype of a sustainable city, environmental inequality is a pervasive issue. This thesis examines the health inequalities that characterize underserved communities in Portland. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, the researcher uses 1) logistic regression to statistically assess the relationship between race, poverty, and Superfund site locations, and 2) in-depth interviews with members of Oregon's environmental justice movement to help understand the historical, social, political, and economic conditions of Portland and their subsequent influence on environmental inequalities. Quantitative data is pooled from 2000 census and 2011 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sources. The quantitative findings demonstrate that environmental inequality is present in Portland, with African Americans being particularly overrepresented in tracts with Superfund sites. The quantitative analyses ultimately suggest that minimally populated, highly impoverished tracts with approximately 11% African American residents are most likely to house a Superfund site. The qualitative findings show that a variety of structural and local forces play prominent roles in the formation of Portland's environmental inequalities. The qualitative analyses reveal this to be a multifaceted and complex process that is indicative of Portland's history of racial inequality, contemporary free market and business forces, and governmental interests which culminate in trends of inequitable development.

This thesis examines the changing perceptions of Vietnam’s landscape and the Vietnamese in the eyes of American troops throughout the Vietnam War. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Vietnamese were depicted as a people misguided by the French and in need of political mobilization by the American media and government. Following heavy investment and a rigged election in 1956, South Vietnam was painted as a beacon of democracy in Southeast Asia and an example of what American aid is capable of. As an increasing American military presence was being established in South Vietnam in the early 1960s, American troops were reminded by pocket books and other forms of American propaganda that South Vietnam was a land of dignity and respect. At first, troops were shocked by the beauty of the landscape and recalled that Vietnam did not look like a war-torn country at all. Yet as the land became increasingly devastated due to defoliant and numerous bombings, the perceptions of the Vietnamese took a turn for the worst; eventually being subhuman and deceptive. Vietnam’s landscape became perceived as a land of death where youth was expendable. However, less than a decade after the United States had pulled out of Vietnam, veterans and those affected by the war begin to return in mass numbers constituting the largest population of Americans in Vietnam. This resulted in Vietnam’s landscape, which was seen as a land trap-laden wasteland, being seen a place of healing with a beautiful people that Americans helped save.

Sweat Stones is a story collection and a novel excerpt. All of its parts are set in the American South, and are concerned with the intersection between class and geography. The majority of the characters are a part of underrepresented portions of their local population—they are trapped within cycles of poverty, in turns longing for escape and wearing their mixed brands of anguish like badges. The longer stories have firm roots in Realism, while the shorter ones, which serve as breaks between the collection’s major sections, are tinged with degrees of Absurdism or Magical Realism. Through these stories I hope to have translated what can be translated about a place—its rhythms and personalities, the images and logics that distinguish it from anywhere else. It’s a kind of language-made hallucination. As the characters buckle under the weight of their rigors, their stories push against the limits of plausibility. Most share these stylistic concerns, especially those written in first-person. But even when the voice and tone shift into what seems like a different narrative realm, what holds them together are the dire situations of the characters. A poor family suffers the death of a child and the father has to leave them for work. A marginalized group of stage riggers use up all of their energy for nothing. A man feeds into his self-loathing as a series of capricious relationships unravel. Sweat Stones, which takes its name from the flat slates that heat the contemplative atmosphere of a sweat lodge, is a reflection on the mutual burdens borne of laborious life. It’s a gesture of solidarity for a particular kind of struggle, in which I have participated in one form or another. Along the way I met the people, grew up around the places that would become the subjects of this fiction.

In response to climate change, economic instability, and rapid urbanization, the notion of urban resilience has gained prominence in city planning and governance. Urban resilience is the ability of a system to adapt to new baseline conditions developing as a result of disturbances. This study is focused on one of urban resilience’s sub-tenets, ecological resilience. Ecological resilience is the ability of a system to sustain ecosystem services following a disturbance (i.e. droughts, flooding, heat waves). The health of the environment prior to a disturbance informs post-disturbance ecological resilience. An already stressed and unbalanced system, or an ecosystem with degraded health, is predisposed to vulnerabilities and exposure to disturbances. Environmental injustice is a significant gauge of latent environmental harm, and subsequently degraded ecosystem functionality. This study explores the spatial distribution and correlation between socioeconomic and environmental burdens in the largest majority Black neighborhood in the City of Orlando, Parramore. Through a lens of environmental justice, identifying where environmental, social, and economic harm is amplified and who is affected provides greater contextual information for the focus of future resilience strategies, the process through which they are devised and implemented, and their connection to land use planning and policy.

Historically, Appalachia has been stereotyped as being a culture bred in poverty and ignorance. Much research has shown that stereotyping reveals a pattern of behavioral change and an impact on psychological well-being for the stereotyped (e.g., Pinel, 1999; Woodcock, Jernandez, Estrada, & Schultz, 2012), and has largely been centered on race and gender (e.g., Byrnes, 2008; Tuckman & Monetti, 2011). Less is known about the development of culture-specific stereotypes such as those related to Appalachians – a highly stigmatized group (Daniels, 2014; Otto, 2002). The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of how adolescents in rural Appalachia develop awareness of stereotypes about Appalachia. Stratified random sampling was used to select twelve students (Grades 6-12) belonging to a small school district located in the Appalachian region of eastern Kentucky who were invited to participate in individual interviews. Eight of the participants self-identified as Appalachian, but for distinct reasons. Students characterized Appalachia for its strong sense of community, accessibility to nature, and lack of opportunities. All students readily identified negative Appalachian stereotypes, but most, particularly older students, were quick to defend the integrity of their culture and community. When discussing cultural stereotypes, the richness of student responses varied by grade-level.

My formal hypothesis for this study is that shift rotation among correctional officers has an effect on correctional officer stress. Although there are many definitions of stress, for the purpose of this study stress is defined as conscious nervous tension. Many authors believe that stress develops from a person's reactions to certain situations that are threatening or exert pressure on them. It is felt that whatever the cause, stress depends not on the outside event but on how one reacts to it. For the purpose of this study, stress was not formally defined to the correctional officers because I was looking for perceptions of stress, or how an officer reacts to certain situations.