A pause on the bridge, a river-powered love song to liminal space, a memory that rolls forward as its surface is blown backward by the wind.

This thesis explores the idea of a liminal space, as being dreamlike, suspended in time and physically unlocatable. It questions and exploits the boundary between abstraction and figuration in painting. This investigation has been considered from a subjective viewpoint allowing a distancing of space to illuminate new perceptions and experiences through the language of painting. The project has sought to explore the relationship between the natural world and seeing, to deepen and emphasize the other worldliness of an in-between space. This third space has been evoked by a process of abstracting pictorial content, juxtaposition of elements, colour and composition. The thesis is constituted of practice-based 80%, accompanied by an exegesis 20%.

This thesis follows solo women hikers as they embark upon walking either the Pacific Crest Trail or the Appalachian Trail from beginning to end. By witnessing the ways in which the women hikers navigate the counter-culture of the trails, a critique of American society is revealed. This paper focuses on the differences between trail culture and normative culture, the transformations the hikers undergo, and how the hikes have affected the women’s lives.

This thesis follows solo women hikers as they embark upon walking either the Pacific Crest Trail or the Appalachian Trail from beginning to end. By witnessing the ways in which the women hikers navigate the counter-culture of the trails, a critique of American society is revealed. This paper focuses on the differences between trail culture and normative culture, the transformations the hikers undergo, and how the hikes have affected the women’s lives.

A corridor is a passage between two places, an empty space, that is neither here nor there. My exhibition, Corridor, is such a passage, a liminal space that plays with the boundaries of memory and perception. This immersive environment evolved through thinking about lightness; light as illumination and as the sensation of weightlessness.

A corridor is a passage between two places, an empty space, that is neither here nor there. My exhibition, Corridor, is such a passage, a liminal space that plays with the boundaries of memory and perception. This immersive environment evolved through thinking about lightness; light as illumination and as the sensation of weightlessness.

Junior-freshmen weddings were all-female mock weddings that were performed as annual traditions on college campuses throughout the U.S. in the early part of the twentieth-century. In the weddings, college women played both the men's and women's roles, and were joined as husband and wife by their college administration. This thesis focuses on the junior-freshman weddings of Florida State College for Women during the years 1909-1925 and argues that the weddings expressed the conflicted cultural contexts that college women in the Progressive Era confronted, but that, significantly, this expression was done through passing performances of gender. The women's choice of passing performances in the junior-freshman weddings allowed them to appropriate metaphors of masculinity as their own, thereby challenging a dominant gender ideology that limited their roles within society and their relationship with structures of power. In their performances of gender, play is the language they used to express this challenge. Because there were no existing scholarly studies of junior-freshmen weddings, it was necessary to comparatively examine analyses of other types of mock weddings. Through this examination it was possible to elucidate a working definition of what mock weddings are, which helps to understand not only junior-freshmen weddings, but also provides a framework from which to investigate the many other types of mock weddings that are as of yet unstudied.

This thesis examines Dickens's uses of images of the river throughout his fiction, and also in the early sketches, the reprinted pieces from Household Words and The Uncommercial Traveller. The river concerned is usually but not exclusively the Thames, usually but not exclusively in London. The thesis offers some practical evidence to account for the powerful influence of the Thames upon Dickens's imagination and shows how he conceives of it both within existing frames of reference and in some distinctively Dickensian ways. It considers how Dickens's representations of the river play into the cult of the picturesque which emerged at the end of the eighteenth century, and into the tradition which sees it as a symbolic conduit of the empire. It goes on to consider his use of the river as a boundary, the consequent importance of river crossings in his work, and his conception of the riparian space as a liminal one. It then explores a distinctive scheme of discourse which uses the river to represent rebellious forces beyond the control of human agency and shows how this reflects the sense of spiritual threat which is to be found in some of the other, albeit rare, depictions of nature to be found in his writing. It then shows how Dickens uses the river symbolically to express ideas about death and rebirth, together with the loss of and changes in identity, and how he draws on a scheme of distinctively Christian iconography to do so. Finally it shows how he uses it to create and represent an underworld for London, using tropes of epic founded on classical models. The thesis concludes that, in its use of natural forces to signify social ones, Dickens's writing about the river serves to amplify his conception of stratification in Victorian society and adds weight to the socially conservative political stance which is known to be present in his world view.

This visual ethnography is an interactive, online, multimedia project that explores female funeral celebrant perspectives on communicating with members of the general public who are immersed in liminal states of consciousness during the process of bereavement. Non-representational theory is incorporated to afford better understanding of female funeral celebrant communication practices. The multimedia project is made up of select video and audio clips taken from in-depth interviews completed with four female funeral celebrants in British Columbia, Canada about their specialized communication work. Favourite poetry and quotes from celebrants are included. Three main themes emerge as central to funeral celebrant work: witnessing, following and engaging with the process; the limen as creative source --- companioning mourners at the threshold; and the art of (irretrievable) performance through facilitating affective, participatory ritual. These same themes are reflected in the interactive, multimedia visual ethnography, which may be engaged with here: http://prezi.com/w85_hps4acf1/between-worlds-communication-perspectives-of-female-funeral-celebrants-in-british-columbia/?auth_key=7536c83649629fcf0547168f04462c8f089a6179

Within the European Union, policies promoting integration and transnationalization have raised questions about the nature of borders and boundaries. With these shifts in conception emerge an opportunity to re-imagine how borders might be urbanized and developed. The Dreiländerecke (the Three Countries Corner between Switzerland, France, and Germany in Metrobasel) is one instance of this phenomenon, standing at the threshold of change towards increased transborder cooperation and a loosening of political boundaries. However, this process is hindered by residual urban barriers. This thesis investigates the liminal space of borders which provides a rich basis for forming a multi-scalar approach towards infrastructural, architectural, and programmatic strategies for cross-border development. Although connectivity is sought, it is not the ultimate aim, for unfettered integration risks a globalizing homogenization. Instead, this thesis investigates an architecture that facilitates the liminal process as core identities become translated at the meeting point of national cultures.