This thesis is a study of the changing model of the local history museum in Ontario, Canada and the consequential changing interpretations of the past in these institutions. <br /><br /> Beginning in 1879, local history museums in Ontario developed largely from the energies of local historical societies bent on collecting the past. While science museums used taxonomy and classification to mirror the natural state of the world, history museums had no equivalent framework for organizing collections as real-world referents. Often organized without apparent design, by the early 20th century a deductive method was used to categorize and display history collections into functional groups based on manufacture and use. <br /><br /> By the mid-twentieth century an inductive approach for interpreting collections in exhibits was promoted to make these objects more meaningful and interesting to museum visitors, and to justify their collection. This approach relied on the recontextualization of the object through two methods: text-based, narrative exhibits; and verisimilitude, the recreation of the historical environment in which the artifact would have been originally used. These exhibit practices became part of the syllabus of history museum work as it professionalized during the mid-twentieth century, almost a full century after the science museum. In Ontario, recontextualizing artifacts eventually dominated the process of recreating the past at museums. Objects were consigned to placement within textual storylines in order to impart accurate meaning. At its most elaborate, artifacts were recontextualized into houses, and buildings into villages, wherein the public could fully immerse themselves in a tableau of the past. Throughout this process, the dynamic of recontextualization to enhance visitor experience subtlety shifted the historical artifact from its previous position in the museum as an autonomous relic of the past, to one subordinate to context. <br /><br /> Although presented as absolute, the narratives and reconstructions formed by these collecting and exhibiting practices were contingent on a multitude of shifting factors, such as accepted museum practice, physical, economic and human resources available to the museum operation, and prevailing beliefs about the past and community identity. This thesis exposes the wider field of museum practice in Ontario community history museums over a century while the case study of Doon Pioneer Village shows in detail the conditional qualities of historical reconstruction in museum exhibits and historical restoration.

This thesis is a study of the changing model of the local history museum in Ontario, Canada and the consequential changing interpretations of the past in these institutions. <br /><br /> Beginning in 1879, local history museums in Ontario developed largely from the energies of local historical societies bent on collecting the past. While science museums used taxonomy and classification to mirror the natural state of the world, history museums had no equivalent framework for organizing collections as real-world referents. Often organized without apparent design, by the early 20th century a deductive method was used to categorize and display history collections into functional groups based on manufacture and use. <br /><br /> By the mid-twentieth century an inductive approach for interpreting collections in exhibits was promoted to make these objects more meaningful and interesting to museum visitors, and to justify their collection. This approach relied on the recontextualization of the object through two methods: text-based, narrative exhibits; and verisimilitude, the recreation of the historical environment in which the artifact would have been originally used. These exhibit practices became part of the syllabus of history museum work as it professionalized during the mid-twentieth century, almost a full century after the science museum. In Ontario, recontextualizing artifacts eventually dominated the process of recreating the past at museums. Objects were consigned to placement within textual storylines in order to impart accurate meaning. At its most elaborate, artifacts were recontextualized into houses, and buildings into villages, wherein the public could fully immerse themselves in a tableau of the past. Throughout this process, the dynamic of recontextualization to enhance visitor experience subtlety shifted the historical artifact from its previous position in the museum as an autonomous relic of the past, to one subordinate to context. <br /><br /> Although presented as absolute, the narratives and reconstructions formed by these collecting and exhibiting practices were contingent on a multitude of shifting factors, such as accepted museum practice, physical, economic and human resources available to the museum operation, and prevailing beliefs about the past and community identity. This thesis exposes the wider field of museum practice in Ontario community history museums over a century while the case study of Doon Pioneer Village shows in detail the conditional qualities of historical reconstruction in museum exhibits and historical restoration.

No description available.

This thesis explores how the landscape, or the physical environment in general, can play a more active, meaningful role in historical site interpretation for the public. It asserts that the landscape can serve not merely as a passive backdrop or stage set for interpretation but as an active tool for communicating important understandings about history. To accomplish this, a constructivist approach to design—one that emphasizes the direct interaction between the individual visitor and the physical site as the origin of meaning—is presented. The Constructivist Design Approach (CDA) emphasizes the manipulation of form, scale, materials, and path to facilitate visitors' physical, psychological, and emotional immersion in their environment. The CDA was developed from three research areas: an epistemological grounding in constructivism, ritual theory, and case studies of built works that promote the interaction of visitor and site. Application of the CDA to historical site interpretation is explored through a conceptual design proposal for an Appalachian slavery interpretive complex in Southwestern Virginia, which interprets mountain slavery from the slaves' perspective. Through direct interaction with the landscape of the participatory living history complex, visitors deepen their understanding of how mountain slaves perceived, moved through, and appropriated the landscape for their survival. The design project indicates that the CDA can enhance the effectiveness of interpretive programs. It also reveals the importance of ongoing collaboration between landscape architects and historians throughout project development in order to achieve a physical site design that effectively incorporates and reflects interpretive content and objectives. / Master of Landscape Architecture

This thesis provides an analysis of Shirley Plantation’s operation as a historic house museum from 1894 to the present period, and the Carter family’s dedication to keeping the estate within the family. The first chapter examines Shirley Plantation’s beginnings as a historic house museum as operated by two Carter women, Alice Carter Bransford and Marion Carter Oliver, who inherited the property in the late nineteenth century. The second chapter explores Shirley Plantation’s development as a popular historic site during the mid-twentieth century to the early part of the twenty-first century, and compares the site’s development to the interpretative changes that had been occurring at Colonial Williamsburg. The third chapter analyzes and critiques Shirley Plantation’s present interpretative focus as a historic site, with the fourth chapter offering suggestions for developing an exhibition that interprets the history of slavery at the plantation.

This thesis examines the trends in historical interpretation concerning the coming of the American Civil War. The main body of works examined were written between 1950 and 1976, beginning with Allan Nevins' Ordeal of the Union and concluding with David M. Potter's The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861. It also includes a brief survey of some works written after 1976. The main source for discovering the materials included were the bibliographies of both monographs and general histories published during and after the period 1950-1976. Also, perusal of the contents and book review sections of scholarly journals, in particular the Journal of Southern History and Civil War History, was helpful in discovering sources and placing works in a time chronology for the thesis narrative.

This diploma thesis describes historical evolution of calculation of sphere's volume and surface and provides an analysis of textbooks for secondary and primary schools. It is made with the intention to inspire high school teachers with various approaches of teaching the volume and surface of solid bodies. It can help teachers with motivation of students as well as with selection of textbook and teaching methods for the issue. This thesis is meant to inspire high school students interested in history of mathematics, too. It includes analysis of preserved exercises on the topic from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia as well as findings from Archimedes' works, which were devoted to this topic. Moreover it describes contribution of enlighteners on the subject and shows exact procedures of derivation of formulas using integral calculus.

This thesis seeks to explicate, and develop an appropriate method for the elucidation of, the antecedents to the theology of William Blake in the writings of the seventeenth-century divine, Peter Sterry (1613-1672). While the radical religious scene of the English Revolution has long been recognised as offering important antecedents to Blake's thought, Sterry is a figure who has largely been overlooked. The exception to this is an essay, published in 1929, in which Vivian de Sola Pinto asserted the existence of 'startling affinities' between their ideas. Pinto's study was, however, limited by its failure to consider, firstly, the implications of its findings for our general understanding of the antecedents to Blake's thought in the seventeenth century and, secondly, the insight Sterry's writings may be able to offer into Blake's theological vision. These are the very questions at the heart of this dissertation. By addressing them, it seeks to shed new light on the nature of Blake's theology and its anticipations in earlier English thought. Given the lack of evidence that Blake read Sterry, and the limited effectiveness of the 'genealogical' method when it comes to Blake, it pioneers a bespoke 'analogical' method for the exploration of these issues. It proposes that Sterry is actually closer to the intellectual milieu of Commonwealth radicalism than one might expect and that his writings function effectively as a lens through which it is possible to discern how Blake consistently uses 'dualistic' language and imagery in an ethical and epistemological sense. The first finding suggests that the established view of the radical religious environment in Blake studies needs to be extended; the second challenges the widespread perception that Blake's thought is ultimately dualistic in an ontological sense, thus contributing to the elucidation of a perennial problem for Blake scholarship. Together, they underline Sterry's importance as a neglected theological precursor to the thought of William Blake.

This dissertation examines the process of using oral history and digital video to revise interpretation and represent more inclusive histories at three rural Texas historic sites—-Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site, the Lyndon Baines Johnson State Park, and Varner-Hogg Plantation—-21st century sites that, to varying degrees, have persisted to interpret a Texas master narrative that is no longer socially tolerable in its silencing of marginalized Texas voices. In particular, the dissertation focuses on complicated and rarely discussed ethical issues that surfaced during my work from 2001 to 2006 shooting, editing, and situating interpretive documentary videos at the each of the three sites. Historic sites in Texas, like others across the United States and worldwide, have been receiving increasing pressure from scholars and community groups to represent women, racial minorities, and other marginalized groups more prominently in the narratives they interpret. Oral history and digital media have played key roles in this ongoing movement. Oral history has widely been touted as a tool to democratize history, and advocates of digital video interpretation cite its affordability, relative ease of use, and its ability to “say so much in so little time.” These factors are all the more compelling for local, regional, and state-wide historic sites that are chronically under-funded, under-staffed, and that must often interpret multiple, complicated narratives with very little time or space in which to present them. However, little has been done to explore the unique and complicated ethical issues that arise from using oral history and digital video at historic sites. This dissertation takes a case study approach and uses as its intellectual framework ideas of reflective practice, part of the contemporary discourse among public history practitioners. Each case study introduces the site through a critical analysis of the images and texts produced by the site; presents the central historical silence at each site; describes the solution that oral history and digital video interpretation was expected to provide; and then uses the project’s process-generated video footage and records to examine key situations that led me to raise ethical questions about the individual projects and the overall enterprise. / text

L'interprétation constitutionnelle est une question récurrente dans le monde moderne. Le droit étant sujet à interprétation de la part de tout un chacun (juges, doctrine, simples citoyens), au point que «Juristes et simples citoyens acceptent et affirment (ou mettent en doute et refusent) des propositions sur ce que «dit le droit» de leur nation ou de leur État» (Ronald Dworkin). La question se pose de savoir qui, parmi ces différents acteurs, est le plus légitime pour affirmer une interprétation finaliste du droit s'imposant à tous. Au centre de cette interrogation, se trouve le juge constitutionnel, interprète habilité, ses jugements et les critiques visant ceux-ci. Mais l'interprétation prononcée par ce juge est parfois, voire souvent, mal acceptée, ce qui participe à l'affaiblissement de son autorité dans un système juridique concurrentiel marqué par le pluralisme tant au stade de la procédure de production qu'à celui de l'application du droit. Ainsi, si le juge a le privilège du rôle de juger, il a aussi la nécessaire vocation à être à son tour jugé. Cette nécessité s'explique par le fait que«Tout pouvoir est méchant dès qu'on le laisse faire [mais devient] sage dès qu'il se sent jugé.» (Alain). Dans ce contexte, la question de méthodes et outils utilisés par le juge-interprète devient elle aussi centrale car ceux-ci sont scrutés par tous, souvent au détriment d travail interprétatif complexe de ce juge. Parmi les outils et méthodes d'interprétation utilisés par celui-ci, se trouve l'usage des travaux préparatoires. En tant que supports d'une méthode d'interprétation juridique, ceux-ci posent problème. Au-delà de la question de la définition de la notion de travaux préparatoires, il convient de s'interroger sur le rôle, la force et la valeur de ces derniers dans l'interprétation constitutionnelle. Ainsi, cette thèse se donne pour objectif de tenter, du moins, d'apporter un début de réponse à ce questions, à travers une réflexion d'ensemble sur cette méthode d'interprétation dont le débat remonte, du moins, au Moyen Age. / Constitutional interpretation has become a recurrent issue in modern world. Since the law is subject to interpretation by anyone (judges, doctrine. ordinary citizens), so that "jurists and ordinary citizens accept and affirm (or doubt and refuse) proposals on what the 'law says' of their nation or their state" (Ronald Dworkin), the question is who, among these various actors, is the most legitimate to affirm a finalist interpretation of the law imposing itself on everyone. At the center of this question is the constitutional judge, the empowered interpreter, his judgments and the criticisms raised by the latter. But the judge's interpretation is sometimes. even often, poorly accepte1 which contributes to the weakening of his authority in a competitive legal system marked by pluralism, bath at the stage of the production procedure and al that of the application of the law. Thus, if the judge has the privilege to judge, he also has the necessary vocation to b in turn judged. This necessity is explained by the fact that "Ali power is wicked as long as it can, [but becomes] wise when it feels judged (Alain). In such a context, the question of methods and tools used by the interpreting judge also becomes central because the latter are scrutinized by everyone, often at the expense of the complex interpretative work of the judge. Among these tools and methods c interpretation used by the judge is the use of preparatory work (Hansard). As the basis of a legal interpretation method, the latter become problematic. Beyond the question of the definition of the concept of preparatory work, it should be raised the questions of the role, fore and value of the latter in constitutional interpretation. Thus, this paper aims to try to give an initial answer to these questions, through general reflection on this interpretation method that has been debated, at least, from the Middle Ages.