The dissertation explores the ability of light to embody and enhance the spirit of place in the Big Bend section of West Texas. A series of surveys and research investigated and then paired elements of light and place that were designed, and installed or simulated, in four experiential case studies. The case studies were evaluated by published authors of light and place and the dissertation committee and deemed mostly successful. Light installations can be embodied and enhance the spirit of place, the installations which were experienced “live” did this most effectively.

"Jack Kerouac Does Not Lie" recounts my pilgrimage in the summer of 2000, from southwest Florida to a canyon beach in California where Jack Kerouac—as I had read in his Big Sur—lost his mind forty years earlier. I was heavily influenced. Kerouac’s On the Road showed me what to do with myself. Big Sur showed me where to go. In the twentieth century Americans shifted their notions of the west coast from a means for sustenance to a symbol of post-war freedom. Kerouac seems to embody this momentum; the world and the burning spirit his work describes is a precursor to the sixties. His muse, Neal Cassady, is the common link—appearing as Dean Moriarty in Kerouac’s first major work and later as himself in Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. My parents were a part of this westward yearning’s last true surge in the early seventies, when they ventured cross-country and stayed out there for a time. They’d caught the tail end of the wave, and told me a bit about it. I was full of stories, mostly fiction. Sweating in my twenty year old conversion van with a big friend, Ben—whose goals were less "literary"—I sought to recreate the legends I had read, the movies I had seen, and the tales my parents had told me. I was on a mission; I wanted my trip to measure up. Ben was on vacation. Our folly is chronicled within; three weeks and four thousand miles of it.

The more we search outside of ourselves for answers, the less likely we are to be satisfied. Often, however, the external journey brings us closer to who we are as we experience the peaks and troughs of human existence. Ultimately, it is happiness that we seek. The idea and pursuit of happiness is a universal theme and I believe this search for happiness is also a search for home. Whether it is a physical or spiritual place, many of us search for that centre but the answer lies in the journey, not the destination. Using the road trip as the vehicle for this search, I set out across the USA to connect with others who were on the same journey. I photographed people (who had moved from their birthplace for reasons such as love and better opportunities), and landscapes that evoke both home and the journey. The road trip can be an escape from home but also a search for it and so the resulting project became two distinct sections that weave and overlap.

Against biblical odds, the baseball version of a stage mom and her grifting ex road trip their kids’ baseball team across the midwest in the name of life, liberty, and the little league world series.

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Les mythes américains génèrent des symboles et des stéréotypes fréquents dans l’imaginaire collectif. Leur usage dans la littérature québécoise exclut toute idéologie, privilégiant l’acte fondateur d’une nouvelle mythologie. Les mythes québécois se sont d’abord distingués de ceux de l’Amérique. Ils ont porté un regard critique sur la globalisation que peut susciter le territoire américain. En élaborant leur littérature nationale, les auteurs québécois de la Révolution tranquille ont formulé d’autres pistes interprétatives autour des mythes américains. L’américanité offre des perspectives anthropologiques fluides à l’adaptation du mythe au cinéma et en littérature. Le mythe tel que le définit Roland Barthes permet une interprétation contemporaine de chaque mythe québécois présenté dans cette étude. Le corpus est donc composé d’œuvres québécoises et étatsuniennes, de films de Denys Arcand et Clint Eastwood, de romans et textes argumentatifs de notre auteur tranquille référent, Jacques Godbout mais aussi de Jacques Poulin, Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, Antonine Maillet, Anne Hébert, Jack Kerouac. / American myths generate recurring symbols and stereotypes in the collective imagination. In Quebec literature, the use of these myths ignores ideology, favouring the founding act of a new mythology. Quebec myths firstly distinguished themselves from American myths, carrying with them a critical perspective on the globalising process driven by the American territory. In developing their national literature, Quebec authors from the Quiet Revolution shaped new interpretations of American myths. Americanness offers changing anthropological perspectives for the adaptation of myths into film and literature. The myth as Roland Barthes defines it, enables a contemporary interpretation of each Quebec myth you can find in this study. Thus, the corpus in my dissertation is made up of Quebec and American works, movies directed by Denys Arcand and Clint Eastwood and novels or argumentative essays by the quiet author who is the subject of this dissertation, Jacques Godbout as well as Jacques Poulin, Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, Antonine Maillet, Anne Hébert and Jack Kerouac.

Roadside deals with themes of self-discovery, transcendence, and the search for camaraderie in modern America. Many of the stories take place on or adjacent to the road: that eternal path of transience and transformation. Whether metaphorically or literally on the "roadside," many of the characters contained within are marginalized in their own lives and communities. It is through their grasping and searching for greater meaning in their lives that they come to gain understanding of their places in the world.

With developing technologies and growing infrastructures, connected experiences are expanding their realms towards various devices and scenarios in our lives. One of the areas, which is going under a big change due to this connectivity is the car related experiences. As connectivity is intrinsically enabler of different experiences and services, it is foreseen that it will bring a different dimension to car and driving related experiences as well.By investigating the future trends and possibilities that connectivity can provide to car and driving related experiences, this thesis aims for imagining the near future scenarios with an explorative approach, focusing on one and addressing to the rising issues with a design proposal that is meaningful to both users and the industry.The result, Tripcloud, contributes to the future scenario of having a road trip with the car, with a new digital platform that aims for supporting the users throughout the planning and bringing the plans into the car experience seamlessly and safely. It aims for reducing today’s existing complexity in terms of interaction and cognition to provide a better experience and avoid driver distraction. With providing organised information pieces, information exchange between people and automated links with mobile devices and car, Tripcloud offers easier an more convenient alternative for road trip planing and bringing the plans into car experiences for the near future.

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In this novella the main character, David Crumm, is getting older and decides not to wait around and die on his frozen ranch, but to retire to warmer climates. He leaves everything with his daughter, gets in his truck and drives south with his dog. In Florida, he accidentally hits and kills a migrant woman on her bicycle. The woman has a young son who survives the accident and, through a number of converging factors, David is compelled to personally take the boy back to his relatives in Nicaragua. The book then deals with David's experiences as he heads farther south, picking up more passengers along the way including his old friend Tom, on the run from the law; Frank, a strange American ex-patriot; and a beautiful tourist in Acapulco named Sheila.