Within the framework of urban communication, this thesis attempts to "read" the urban space of West Kabul in Afghanistan, as a social and cultural text in order to understand the social exclusion of the Hazara people, a socially and politically disenfranchised ethnic group who predominantly inhabit that area. Based on data gathered through documentary research and non-participant field observations, this thesis argues that the urban space of West Kabul is the spatial manifestation of a systematic exclusionary process, through which, the Hazara people have been deprived from access to political, economic and cultural resources, services and opportunities. It interprets the city planning, distribution of resources, urbicide, streetscape, architecture and the body as the main sites where the social exclusion of the Hazaras in West Kabul is exercised. This study also provides a discussion about the historical evolution of West Kabul as an ethnic ghetto, as well as the various forms of conflict which led to spatial and social division in Kabul city.

Within the framework of urban communication, this thesis attempts to "read" the urban space of West Kabul in Afghanistan, as a social and cultural text in order to understand the social exclusion of the Hazara people, a socially and politically disenfranchised ethnic group who predominantly inhabit that area. Based on data gathered through documentary research and non-participant field observations, this thesis argues that the urban space of West Kabul is the spatial manifestation of a systematic exclusionary process, through which, the Hazara people have been deprived from access to political, economic and cultural resources, services and opportunities. It interprets the city planning, distribution of resources, urbicide, streetscape, architecture and the body as the main sites where the social exclusion of the Hazaras in West Kabul is exercised. This study also provides a discussion about the historical evolution of West Kabul as an ethnic ghetto, as well as the various forms of conflict which led to spatial and social division in Kabul city.

Master of Science / Department of Architecture / Donald J. Watts / This thesis assesses concepts of architectural education both globally and regionally but ultimately presents a pedagogy aimed at the special needs of Afghan architectural education that will serve the needs of Afghan society. It is the author’s hope that this thesis may aptly establish the first steps for a renewed architectural education at Kabul University, Kabul, Afghanistan. The essence of this thesis presents a carefully reasoned and detailed educational strategy for teaching beginning architectural design. The new curriculum in the Department of Architecture at Kabul University requires new syllabi to achieve higher academic standards. The new design course syllabus should address the existing problems of Afghan society. This thesis begins by understanding the context and the current problems confronting the Kabul University Department of Architecture. It is by understanding these problems that I can begin to identify a solution. Understanding the Kabul Municipality rules and regulations, familiarity with beginning design terminology, a carefully stated and sequenced course description promoting gradual student improvement, understanding interrelationships between the interior spaces, environmental sustainable design, and finally introducing a new generation of conscientious architects to Afghan society are some of the main objectives for designing this course. Identifying the best strategy for teaching this course was a primary research question. Christopher Alexander’s great work, A Pattern Language inspired me to select it as the best methodology for my research. My early research focused upon the creation of a new syllabus for the first semester of architectural design at Kabul University. This new syllabus was launched during the first semester of 2009 in Kabul where I taught the new course alongside a junior Afghan faculty member. Establishing the new course materials for the first semester set the stage for my primary focus of this thesis. That is the creation of the second semester architectural design course using pattern language as my pedagogical framework. This pedagogy is fundamental for establishing architectural studies focused upon meaningful new academic criteria. The ultimate aim of my thesis is to lay the foundation stone for the reincarnation of Afghan architectural identity.

This dissertation combines performance analysis, rhetorical criticism, and psychoanalytical theory to analyze three performance “texts” as sites of haunting in post-9/11 America: Tony Kushner’s 2001 U.S. debut of Homebody/Kabul, the Broadway musical Wicked, and ABC’s television drama Lost. It contributes a nuanced, theorized reading of the civil implications of post-9/11 popular American culture as “more than memory” by demonstrating how these performances suggested “what might be” in ways that subverted Bush’s responses to the attacks. The first chapter reads Homebody/Kabul against the national addresses delivered by Bush in the first weeks after the attacks and argue that the 2001 New York Theatre Workshop performance created a space for audiences to reconsider the version of “mourning” encouraged by the Bush administration. The type of mourning modeled/enabled by Homebody/Kabul, I assert, is different from that against which Derrida warns. Rather than “silencing ghosts” (Gunn 82) through the integration of loss, Homebody/Kabul makes a space for conversing with, and models living with, ghosts. The second chapter argues that the Wicked’s Ozians are stuck in a state of melancholia, refusing to speak to/with the ghost of Elphaba. Because they refuse to reckon with Elphaba, they literally finish exactly where they began—with “No One Mourn[ing] the Wicked.” By reading Wicked against the celebratory rhetoric of the Bush administration after declaring “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq, we can understand the way the United States as a nation was (and may still be, in 2010) haunted by the Bush administration's failure to lead the nation in mourning effectively and ethically and by its incessant rhetoric of evil. The third chapter advocates for Lost as a hauntological reckoning with 9/11 that models ethical witnessing as a potentially generative meeting of human beings across cultures at the site of trauma. An alternative to the fear that the Bush administration encouraged leading up to Lost’s premiere and through its final season, ethical witnessing as modeled on Lost suggests that civilization stands to thrive where difference is honored—and risks toppling into chaos where the alternative “us against them” mentality (Other anxiety) prevails. / text

L'Afghanistan est un pays semi-aride et montagneux qui a fait face à trois décennies de conflit. C'est l'un des pays les plus vulnérables au changement climatique car il a une capacité très limitée à faire face aux impacts du changement climatique. Il a également été considéré comme une région qui manque de données à la fois temporellement et spatialement avec une capacité limitée à mesurer les paramètres hydrométéorologiques avec des jauges in situ. L'étude actuelle se concentre sur le bassin de Kaboul qui se trouve dans le quart nord-est de l'Afghanistan. Il représente trente-cinq pour cent de l'approvisionnement en eau de la population et a le taux de croissance de la population le plus rapide du pays. L'objectif principal de cette étude est de comprendre les impacts du changement climatique sur les ressources en eau et l'agriculture. Pour comprendre l'impact sur les ressources en eau, l'évaluation des performances des ensembles de données mondiales / produits télédétectés est étudiée afin de générer des ensembles de données sur les précipitations et la température pour la période de référence des études sur les changements climatiques et le développement du modèle hydrologique. Ensuite, un modèle hydrologique est sélectionné pour comprendre la réponse hydrologique du bassin de Kaboul et les projections futures de la disponibilité de l'eau en utilisant les projections climatiques futures. Pour comprendre l'impact sur l'agriculture, une étude sur la perception des agriculteurs sur le changement climatique et ses impacts sur leur agriculture est entreprise. Deuxièmement, un modèle de culture est utilisé pour évaluer les impacts du changement climatique sur le rendement du blé. / Afghanistan is a semi-arid and mountainous country which faced three decades of conflict. It is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change as it has very limited capacity to address the impacts of climate change. It has been also considered as a data-scarce region both temporally and spatially with limited capability to measure hydro-meteorological parameters with in situ gauges. The current study focuses on Kabul basin which lies in the northeast quarter of Afghanistan. It accounts for thirty-five percent of the population’s water supply, and has the fastest population growth rate in the country. The main objective of this study is to understand the impacts of climate change on water resources and agriculture. To understand the impact on water resource, first of all, the performance evaluation of global datasets/remote sensed products is investigated in order to generate precipitation and temperature datasets for baseline period of climate change studies and developing hydrological model. Then a hydrological model is selected to understand hydrologic response of the Kabul basin and future projections of water availability using future climate projections. To understand the impact on agriculture, a study on farmers’ perception about climate change and its impacts on their agriculture is undertaken. Secondly, a crop model is used to evaluate the impacts of climate change on wheat yield.

The growing accessibility of quantum mechanics and chaos theory over the past eighty years has opened a new mode of world-creating for dramatists. An increasingly large collection of plays organize their fictional worlds around such scientific concepts as quantum uncertainty and chaotic determinism. This trend is especially noticeable within dramatic texts that emphasize a fictional, not material or metafictional, engagement. These plays construct fictional worlds that reflect the increasingly strange actual world. The dominant theoretical approaches to fictional worlds unfairly treat these plays as primarily metafictional texts, when these texts construct fictional experiences to speculate about everyday ramifications of living in a post-quantum mechanics world. This thesis argues that these texts are best understood as examples of speculative fiction drama, and they speculate about the changes to our understanding of reality implied by contemporary scientific discoveries. Looking at three plays as exemplary case studies—John Mighton’s Possible Worlds (1990), Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (1993), and Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul (2001)—this thesis demonstrates that speculative fiction theories can be adapted into fictional worlds analysis, allowing us to analyze these plays as fiction-making texts that offer nonclassical aesthetic experiences. In doing so, this thesis contributes to speculative fiction studies, fictional worlds studies, and the dynamic interdisciplinary dialogue between aesthetic and scientific discourses.

This dissertation focuses on the active tectonics of Afghanistan|slip-rate estimation of the Chaman fault and assessing seismic hazard in the Kabul basin. Afghanistan is a tectonically complex zone developed as a result of the collision between the Eurasian plate and the Indian plate to the southeast and the Arabian plate to the south. For seismic hazard mitigation, there is no large-scale active fault map in Afghanistan. I, therefore, mapped active and presumed active faults mainly based on interpretation of 1-arcsecond SRTM anaglyph images, and calculate the slip rate of the Chaman fautl based on 10Be TCN dating. / 博士(理学) / Doctor of Philosophy in Science / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University