Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Includes tables. Sponsor: Frank W. Cyr. Dissertation Committee: Dwayne E. Huebner. Includes bibliographical references.

The aim of this doctoral thesis is to investigate the practices of rough sleeping and inhabiting public space, with a focus on the modern city of Rome. By inhabiting public spaces, people who are homeless expose their private sphere to public view. Paradoxically, this public exposure of the private becomes a means of exclusion according to Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou (2013). Scholars acknowledge public space as constructed by the actions that people carry out in public (Lefebvre 1991; Tschumi 1996; Harvey 2012; Jon Goodbun et al. 2014). People who are homeless certainly contribute to the construction of public space (Petty 2016). However, as asserted by architectural scholar Gill Doron, certain practices 'reveal how the public space is restricted to a very small spectrum of activities, and how many other activities are not permitted' (Doron 2000, p.254). These practices put into question what public these spaces are designed and designated for, questioning why only some activities are regarded as public and why some others take place only at night when spaces are temporary urban voids. Rough sleeping in Rome takes place mostly at night, exposing the city to its own fragilities and contradictions. Public space emerges as precarious. It is defned by social and cultural boundaries, within which urban practices alternate one with the other. These are irreconcilable poles within a parallax gap (Žižek 2009). The theoretical scaffolding of the thesis is structured alongside two other transgressive case studies: Pussy Riot's occupation in Moscow and my interviews with parkour practitioners. These cases have been investigated in comparison with homelessness in order to highlight aspects concerning occupation of space as a performative action under precarious circumstances (precarity). The literary review is combined with auto-ethnographical studies I conducted with a community of rough sleepers, comprising 20-40 members who inhabit a portico area nearby St Peter's Square in Rome. I also ran focus groups, individual interviews and project presentations to people who either are involved in charitable bodies that deal with homelessness or are part of the general public, such as passers-by in St Peter's Square. This study has revealed a series of aspects concerning the negotiation of public space and the role of agency and mediation. This study has stimulated questions concerning the role design can play in discourses of social innovation and inclusion. The research conducted has also outlined diffculties concerning the range of data and the possible response to the many voices heard. How can design re-imagine the centre ground between alternative practices in space? By highlighting the centre as precarious, is it possible to fnd a way of re-thinking the centre? On the basis of this study, the aim of the research has been to look at the state of the gap between these alternative poles, investigating and exploring the concept of precarity. This suggests the possibility of redefning concepts of mediation, social inclusion and architectural activism, articulated further through a series of speculative projects, concluding with the presentation of a 'precarious' object I designed together with the community of rough sleepers in St Peter's Square and COTRAD onlus (a charitable body based in Rome).

Thesis (D.W.S.)--Institute for Worship Studies, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-130).

Thesis (D.W.S.)--Institute for Worship Studies, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-130).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2006. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-237).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2006. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-237).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Arts, 2000 / This thesis explores in empirical fashion the contribution made by St Peter's Secondary School to South African literary history. It takes as its starting point the phenomenon of the first black autobiographies having been published within a ten-year period from 1954 to 1963, with all but one of the male writers receiving at least part of their post-primary schooling at St Peter's School in Johannesburg. Among the texts, repositioned here within their educational context, are Tell Freedom by Peter Abrahams, Down Second Avenue by Es'kia Mphahlele, Road to Ghana by Alfred Hutchinson, and Chocolates for My Wife by Todd Matshikiza. The thesis examines the educational milieu of the inter-war years in the Transvaal over and against education in the other provinces of the Union, the Anglo-Catholic ethos of the Community of the Resurrection who established and ran the school, the pedagogical environment of St Peter's School, and the autobiographical texts themselves, in order to plot the course which the autobiographers' subsequent lives took as they wrote back to the education which had both liberated and shackled them. It equipped them far in advance of the opportunities available to them under the colour bar, necessitating exile, even as it colonised their minds in a way perhaps spared those who never attended school, requiring a continual reassessment of their identity over time. The thesis argues that their Western education was crucial in the development of their hybrid identity, what Es'kia Mphahlele has termed `the dialogue of two selves', which was in each case worked out through an autobiography. The typical, if simplified, trajectory is an enthusiastic espousal of the culture of the West encountered in their schooling at St Peter's, and then a rejection out of a sense of betrayal in favour of Africa, eventually leading to a synthesis of the two. The thesis concludes that it was the emphasis on all-round education and character formation, in the British boarding school tradition, with its thrust of sacrifice and service, which helped to fashion the strong belief systems of Abrahams and Mphahlele's later years, namely Christian socialism and African humanism, which inform their mature writings.

The thesis brings a global insight into the Prague's suburb of Bohnice. Captures the appearance since the first settlements until nowadays. Focusing mainly on both historical and socio-economical milestones, which created the city. According to the lack of written resources for the historical part of the theses and to the fact, that Bohnice are often reduced to the activities of the famous mental institution, the main target is the forming of Bohnice city in the 20th century. Concentrates on institutions of both social and health care, which can compete the famous mental institution. The thesis also supplies materials about the urban concept of the housing estate of Bohnice including the traffic solutions through the past century. Points out also outstanding architectural solitaires.