This examination looks at the contextual and cultural implications of learning, using sources from story-telling traditions. The thesis proposes that perceptions of reality are manipulable fictions. It uses the teachings of the American visionary writer, Lynn Andrews, to illustrate how a person's perceptions can be altered to his or her advantage, and how, when not properly attended to, perceptions can manipulate the person. Andrews' work is compared to that of Carlos Castaneda and other contemporary visionary writers, as well as to very old teachings from an oral tradition. I have set the study of Andrews' insights in the social, environmental and educational contexts of North America in the final years of the 20th century, as I experience those contexts in my private and professional academic life. I conclude that including knowledge such as that which Andrews offers, in the menu of teachings available to and tolerated by North Americans, is essential. / The thesis details a set of extra-ordinary teachings proffered by Lynn Andrews, purportedly of native origin. Attention is given both to the techniques used to teach and to the exceptional knowledge imparted. In Part I, I speak of the distinct culture of learning which I come from, and reply to detractors of cross-cultural teaching. I outline the general purposes which I believe these teachings can serve in any culture, and most particularly in the global culture of life on earth. Part II is a detailed exposition of the teachings in the first two books by Lynn Andrews. Part III addresses some of the challenges confronting those who wish to take her teachings to heart and pass them on to others. This section makes it clear that such teachings are not appropriate for everyone, and are not to be instituted in a systemic context.

The aim of this study is to determine the objectivity of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War (2017) 10-parter series in comparison to past Vietnam documentaries such as Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pig (1968) and Peter Davis’ Hearts and Minds (1974). In doing so, this study observes Burns and Novick’s approaches in stylistic editing and the omission of certain narratives of the war, along with what such choices suggest of the political stances assumed by the series and its predecessors. Through each chapter, the study observes: the caustic portrayal of leaders, from their decisions to enter into and prosecute war and the effects of these decisions that remain after their leadership has ended; the way the series empathizes with first-hand veteran accounts through visual reconstruction; and the acknowledgement of the media as ever-present in the representation of the public and the war. The relation between each chapter’s focus is related to the way audiences connect with the war, whether through documented history, public opinion, and/or personal experiences. The study concludes that while the series maintains its objectivity to an extent, it gives a decidedly American perspective of the war.

This thesis considers three British novels of the 1880s that imagined a range of middle-class domestic configurations that deviated in new ways from the long-contested fiction of the British household as a patriarchal stronghold. Although mid-Victorian novels very often featured narratives of domestic upheaval, they did so in a way that sensationalized and emphasized the rarity of middle-class familial deviance. In contrast, the fin-de-siècle domestic novel brought a greater range of idiosyncratic families and households under a newly sociological lens and explored them as part of the reality of modern British family life. The persistent attention to alternative domesticities by novelists writing in the fin-de-siècle period suggests that the social problems of the day required new novelistic genres and formal strategies beyond those favoured by writers of sensation fiction and sentimental domestic novels in the earlier part of the century. Through readings of late-career novels by the popular Victorian sensationalist Wilkie Collins and a New Woman novel by the anti-feminist editorialist Eliza Lynn Linton, this thesis argues that the generic hybridity of such fin-de-siècle British novels resulted in a capacious domestic narrative that often looked beyond the fraught unit of the biological family to posit an unprecedented range of new family configurations.

No description available.

No description available.

Det har blivit allt vanligare att tala om miljöfrågor som en av vår tids stora ödesfrågor. Kopplingar mellan religiositet och miljöengagemang är många och i vårt aktuella samhällsklimat kan det vara lämpligt att undersöka ifall det föreligger signifikanta samband dem emellan. Hittills har den empirin som undersökt frågan gett mycket delade och omdebatterade meningar. Den här uppsatsen använder Durkheims definition av religion som en universell företeelse för att bidra med ytterligare ett intressant perspektiv. Sociologisk teori om hur individen beter sig på ett visst sätt enskilt och på ett annat i stunder av intensiv kollektiv gemenskap leder även till antagandet att religiositet kan påverka individuellt och kollektivt miljöengagemang på olika sätt.  Av den anledningen testas hypoteserna att religiositet har en positiv effekt på en individs nivå av miljövänligt beteende medan det har en negativ effekt på en individs benägenhet att delta i en kollektiv miljöaktion. Resultatet visar att det föreligger ett positivt samband mellan religiositet, mätt i frekvens av gudstjänstdeltagande, och miljövänligt beteende i vardagen, men inget signifikant samband med benägenhet att delta i en kollektiv miljöaktion. Studiens resultat tyder även på att kontrollvariablerna utbildningsnivå, kontinent och kön har ett bättre prediktionsvärde för miljöengagemang än religiositet har. Slutsatsen är emellertid att religiositet kan ha olika effekter på individuellt och kollektivt miljöengagemang.

Principles of design composition are commonly understood to pertain to geometrical systems for arranging parts in assembling a formal whole. Connection to socio-cultural 'meaning' and relevance arguably occurs primarily via the assumed divinity or universality of these systems. In the contemporary architectural world, where explicitly held beliefs in fundamental, geometrically defined principles or values have dissipated, guiding principles of composition appear to be obsolete. This seems particularly true in relation to work that highlights process - or change, responsiveness, interactivity and adaptability - since this implies that the composition remains in flux and unable to be grounded in the composition of form. While processually inflected architecture (referred to here as 'processual architecture'), has been an active field since at least the 1960s, it has been significantly developed since design experiments involving digital computation intensified in t he 1990s. For this field of work, both highly celebrated and criticised as superficial or unethical, any connection to 'meaning' or value that might be offered by principles of composition would appear especially lost. This thesis reviews, counterpoises and reorients these assumptions, arguing a case for the value of processual architectural that has not been previously articulated. After the last 10 to 15 years of digital experimentation, it is clear that digital technology in itself is not the primary issue, but simply part of a complex equation. The thesis articulates this 'equation' through the model of emergence, which has been used in the field with increasing prominence in recent years. Through both practice-based research and theoretical development, a processually inflected theory of composition is proposed. This offers pathways through which the potential of processual architecture might be productively developed, aiming to open this field of work into a deeper engagement with pressing contemporary socio-political issues. The thesis demonstrates how the cultivation of particular modes of attention and engagement, found to hold an implicit but nevertheless amplified significance within processual architecture, make it possible to develop an embodied awareness pertaining to an 'ethico-aesthetic know-how'. This know-how is acquired and matured through attention to the affective dimensions that arise through design activity. The thesis highlight aspects of design process and products that are routinely suppressed in architectural discourse, generating new insights into the importance of affect for design process, design products and the relations between them. The ethical dimensions of such an approach become especially poignant through the explicit connection made between design activity and the practices of everyday life. Relationships between architecture and the social become re-energised, in a radically alternative manner to the social agendas of modernism or the more literary critiques of post-modernism. Through detailed discussions of the specific, local conditions with a series of design projects I have undertaken, I argue how and why close attention to the affective dimensions of design process offers new and productive ways to approach research through design practice. This offers a response to the calls for new 'post-critical' forms of research through empowering both sides of a previously held divide: theory and practice.

This creative project has provided an example of a community participatory planning process in a small town setting. In this study the process specified by The Small Town Planning Handbook by Daniels, Keller And Lapping (1988) was compared to and supplemented by other contemporary small town and general planning literature. The specified process was designed to be a self help means for a small town to plan and subsequently compile an abbreviated town plan ("Miniplan"). The process was then applied to the Town of Lynn, Indiana as a case study. This study includes discussion and analysis of the study process as it occurred and resulted in several lessons learned. The most significant conclusion is that small towns cannot entirely plan on a self help basis. A visiting planner (eg. circuit rider or consultant) or a trained facilitator is necessary to guide the process. The resulting town planning study document (plan) is appended to this study for reference. / Department of Urban Planning

Thesis (D. Min.)--Harding Graduate School of Religion, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-185).

Thesis (M. Div.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, 1993. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 109).