Although the wilderness preservation movement has emerged as a political force relatively recently, man's desire for retreat and renewal in untamed wilderness environments has a rich history in North America. Using contemporary guidetooks, diaries and journals, this study examines the early nineteenth century "Fashionable Tour" from New York City to Niagara Falls and combines description of the most important "natural wonders" en route with an analysis of their cultural meaning and value. There are two major themes. (1) Although pompous religiousness of language suggests conventional religiosity, pilgrims were overwhelmed with feelings of reverence, awe and wonder when face to face with natural wonders. (2) The extravagance of the New World's natural wonders influenced American and European images of the American experiment. Romanticism and Scottish Common Sense Realism are the intellectual and aesthetic background for this study. After some preliminary observations and definitions, I review the widespread importance of these two movements in early America and their points of contact with American sensibilities. Significant iconological moments in the lives of three leading Americans -- John Bartram, Samuel Mitchill and Timothy Dwight -- who donned their tourist habits to visit the Catskill Mountains, illustrate both the diversity of these influences and the beginnings of the Fashionable Tour. Analysis of the tour itself begins with chapter three. From their steamboat, tourists divided the Hudson River Valley into five "reaches" symbolizing grandeur (the Palisades), repose (Tappan Sea), sublimity (the Highlands), picturesqueness (the Hillsides) and beauty (the Catskills). In the first four reaches (chapter 3), the sublime Highlands dominate the landscape. But the "view from the top'' and Kaaterskill Falls at Pine Orchard in the Catskills were the most significant natural wonders in the Hudson Valley. Chapter five introduces Part II: West to Niagara Falls. The overwhelming effect of ongoing European settlement on the wilderness -- on flora, fauna and native Americans -- differentiates the unpredictable trip west from the predictable trip north. At Albany, tourists left their luxurious steamboats and transferred to stagecoaches and/or canalboats. Cohoes Falls, Little Falls and especially Trenton Falls, N. P. Willis' "Rural Resort," highlight the journey from Albany to Utica and suggest greater wonders to come. Images of the wilderness west of Utica comprise chapter seven. "Soft" pastoral landscapes, as in the Finger Lakes Region, did not arouse the intense response that major wonders such as the "view from the top" and Trenton Falls did. Niagara Falls was the climax and conclusion of the pilgrimage. The "greatest natural wonder" known and accessible to early nineteenth century tourists, Niagara elicited a torrent of enthusiasm and verbiage. After a detailed examination of tourist expectations and anticipations, descriptions and dreams, I focus specifically on the religious sentimentality which laced images of Niagara Falls. Pilgrims, responding with awe and protestations of "indescribableness," found evidence to support their popular religiosity. The trip from New York to Niagara was not just a relaxed holiday, but a highly focussed pilgrimage for persons seeking mystery and majesty in the sublime and the beautiful. Niagara, and to a lesser extent the other natural wonders; along the Hudson and across New York State, became religious shrines in early nineteenth century America.

<p>Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka huruvida begrepp som maskulint och feminint kan uppfattas i den nonfigurativa bilden. Med exempel ur den abstrakta expressionismen studeras detta utifrån genus och semiotisk teori. Även konstvärldens roll i producerandet av genus undersöks. En mindre enkätundersökning och bildanalys ingår i studien.</p> / <p>This thesis purpose is to examine whether notions as masculine and feminine can be understood in a nonfigurative picture. Thru gender theories and semiotics some examples from the Abstract Expressionist movement are studied. The art world’s participation in construction of gender is also examined. A picture analysis supported by a small survey is also included in the study.</p>

This thesis explores the role of Quaker women in science in an attempt to arrive at some understanding of what motivated Quaker women in nineteenth century America to go into the sciences. George Fox founded the Society of Friends in the mid-seventeenth century in England and the Quaker theology centered on the concept of the Inner Light, which is the idea that everyone has the capacity to perceive, recognize, and respond to God. Following their Inner Light to find God, Quakers also referred to themselves as "seekers of truth." Additionally, Quakers have believed since their inception in the equality between men and women. Given the Quaker desire to pursue truth and their belief that women have the same capacity to do so as men, it is not surprising that there were a number of Quaker women in science. Through an examination of three Quaker women in science, I discuss the Quaker influences in their lives and works with the larger goal of demonstrating the inherent connections that exist between Quaker theology and the pursuit of science in the nineteenth century. One such connection lies within the tradition of natural theology, which was prevalent in the larger scientific community in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The connection that is unique to Quakers, though, relates to their idea of the search for truth, which led many Quakers to employ scientific methods. The three Quaker women examined in this study, astronomer Maria Mitchell, naturalist Graceanna Lewis, and medical doctor Ann Preston, were all truth-seekers in some sense who wanted to find evidence of God's work within nature. / Graduation date: 2005

Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka huruvida begrepp som maskulint och feminint kan uppfattas i den nonfigurativa bilden. Med exempel ur den abstrakta expressionismen studeras detta utifrån genus och semiotisk teori. Även konstvärldens roll i producerandet av genus undersöks. En mindre enkätundersökning och bildanalys ingår i studien. / This thesis purpose is to examine whether notions as masculine and feminine can be understood in a nonfigurative picture. Thru gender theories and semiotics some examples from the Abstract Expressionist movement are studied. The art world’s participation in construction of gender is also examined. A picture analysis supported by a small survey is also included in the study.

The Claremont Autism Center is a 23 minute documentary on the strengths and benefits the Center brings to Claremont McKenna students, as well as children and families from the Inland Empire that deal with Autism on a daily basis.

This essay explores Swarm Consciousness in relation to the novels Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Remembering Babylon by David Malouf, and the manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. Through these novels, Swarm Consciousness can be reimagined in order to challenge the ways insects have previously been considered in literature. Swarm Consciousness is originally a concept from biology that explains the self-organizing systems of social insects such as for example bees or ants. Previously it was believed that these insect societies consisted of a great majority of mindless drones that were governed by a central authority, most commonly envisioned as a queen. However, if we base our vision of Swarm Consciousness on the more recent understanding of insect self-organization it is possible to challenge this rigidly divided traditional perspective into one that instead has the potential to give rise to visions of new and more creative interactions between humans and insects. These interactions are not limited to an in-group, out-group mentality, but Swarm Consciousness can be used to imagine interactions between groups, irrespective of their species identity. Due to this shift towards a more decentralized perspective, it is possible to create a new way of imagining the umwelt, as Jakob von Uexküll would define it, the unique environment, of vastly different creatures. The limits of the umwelt can be breached with the aid of Swarm Consciousness and create new possible forms of interspecies imagination. However, these intimate interactions surpass the individuals involved and create opportunities for glimpsing a wider planetary perspective which gives rise to an increased sense of planetary responsibility. Thus, Swarm Consciousness challenges both how we can think, but also who we can think with and, as a consequence, opens up new ways of perceiving unique and individual worlds, as well as the entire planet.

This thesis identifies a trend in recent postmodern dystopian fiction for writers to metafictionally dwell on the place of literature in a future context. This trend springs from similar concerns present in the two most influential dystopian novels of the 20th century, Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Yet, unlike Huxley and Orwell, for whom the marginalization of literature is merely one symptom of the hegemonic control oppressing these future societies, the postmodern writers I identify situate the book’s future disappearance at the epicenter of culture’s demise. In Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story (2010), electronic technologies have virtually eradicated print literature and the novel’s protagonist, Lenny, mourns the changes in social interactions he sees this shift in technology bringing about. In Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007), marginalized book-lovers see the devastation humanity continuously wreaks on the environment as a product of culture’s disdain for literature.

This thesis starts with an overview of the historical record tied to the birth of a new nation studied by Alexis de Tocqueville and Henry Steele Commager. It singles out the works of Henry Nash Smith and Eugene D. Genovese for an understanding, respectively, of the "myth of the frontier" tied to the conquest of the American West and the "plantation myth" that sustained slavery in the American South. Both myths underlie the concept of hybridity or cross-cultural relations in America. This thesis is concerned with the representation or lack of representation of hybridity and the roles played by female characters in connection with the land in two seminal American novels and their film versions---James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, and Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind---and Alice Randall's rewriting of Mitchell's novel, The Wind Done Gone , as a point of contrast. Hybridity is represented in the mixed-race bodies of these characters.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Religion)--Vanderbilt University, Dec. 2008. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Master thesis consists of the construction of a small hydroelectric power play model for laboratory use. The first step is to calculate parameters required for the creation of the 2D model Banki turbine. Next part is a proposal and selection of individual components of the model, such as generator, turbine housing, water circuit, pump and alternator mounting. The last step is to launch the model and verify, if the model of a small hydroelectric power plant achieves the required parameters.