In this project I explore the environment that surrounds and frames my life experiences. Interests in form, architecture, vernacular typographyand community blend into a photographic documentation—communicating my perceptual experience of Richmond barbershops through public exhibition.

I work in the medium of song. A multidisciplinary artist and composer, I make work that is immersive, time-based and often participatory. I interact with landscape and the complexities of American history, bringing into focus local ecologies through the lens of song. This document accompanies my thesis performance The Sound of a Stone, an immersive exploration of song, language, ecology and locational listening performed in a 4-channel surround format. In the semi-improvised composition, I sample live vocals, mandolin and found natural objects in a combination of roots music traditions and experimental techniques. Utilizing the software Ableton Live to process and layer the samples in real time, I build a series of "songscapes" which connect to a specific site: the fall line of the James River. The Sound of a Stone premiered April 8, 2019 at Sonia Vlahcevic Concert Hall, W. E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia.

Voter turnout in the United States began to decline at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, and since then, turnout has not returned to the high percentages that were commonplace in the 1860s and 1870s. Numerous scholars point to the late 1800s and early 1900s as the era when significant changes in voting, turnout, and political party competition took place. Many of these same scholars contend that the consequences of these changes, such as continuing low voter turnout, can be seen today. Yet, scholars have made very few efforts to connect what happened in the past to what is happening today. In this thesis I attempt to examine the root causes of declining voter turnout in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. The significance of this examination rests with the thought that if we can understand why voter turnout began to fall we may then have a clearer sense of why low voter turnout persists today. Specifically, this study tests two competing theoretical models, one by V.O. Key and Walter Dean Burnham and the other by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, that claim to explain how and why turnout began to fall in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Both models use the same variables -- voting statutes, political party competition, and voter turnout -- to explain this fall, but the models place these variables in different time sequences.. This thesis tests the models by examining dynamics found in a single city -- Richmond, Virginia. Richmond affords an opportunity to inspect dynamics of voter turnout at the turn of the 20th century in a geographic area of the country that neither model used as a basis for its theoretical propositions. / Master of Arts

Neither the Union nor the Confederacy was prepared to care for the massive numbers of sick and wounded which occurred at the onset of the Civil War. While their surgeons benefited from the knowledge gained during the Crimean War regarding the cleanliness of military hospitals, the isolation of infection, and the use of the new general anesthetics, no facilities for their use existed in America. The Confederate Chief Surgeon, Samuel Preston Moore, had no entrenched medical bureaucracy to battle. By early 1862 he had formed a well-organized medical department and had many hospitals operational. His surgeons shared the problems of their northern colleagues: ignorance of the cause of infection, inadequate training, and untrained hospital personnel to care for the sick and wounded. What the South did not share with the North was alack of resources which was intensified by a naval blockade. This narrative thesis uses records from three Richmond hospitals of 1862-1865 to reveal the problems faced by all hospital personnel, and to address the question of responsibility for the high rates of hospital morbidity and mortality which occurred. It is technically oriented to give both physicians and laymen insight into the day to day triumphs and tragedies of these men and women who worked under nearly impossible conditions. / Master of Arts