Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Spreading the Seeds of a Solidarity Landscape: Co-creating a Biophilic Landscape and Training Curriculum in Northern Italy(2024) Christensen, Mary Elizabeth; Ruggeri, Deni; Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA); Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A wealth of research explores the link between biophilia, access to nature, health, well-being, and quality of life (Wilson, 1984; Kellert, 1997; Louv, 2008; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Cooper Marcus & Sachs, 2013). Drawing on this body of research, nature-based interventions employed by social work professionals promote positive connections to nature and improve health and well-being for vulnerable populations (Obeng et al., 2023; Overbey et al., 2021). This thesis explores a participatory action research project using the case study of Villaggio Solidale, a charitable co-housing community in Northern Italy. Following the use of participatory methods, including co-creation, listening, observation, and prototyping, researchers are co-designing a Solidarity Landscape and co-creating a training curriculum with community social workers and educators to integrate nature-based interventions, biophilia, and well-being into the larger ecosystem surrounding Villaggio Solidale, ensuring that the landscape will become a central tool to support community solidarity, health, and well-being.Item MINDING YOUR FEET: AN EXAMINATION OF CEMETERY RECORDATION AND ANALYSIS THROUGH GEOSPATIAL DOCUMENTATION IN FAIRFAX COUNTY, VIRGINIA(2024) Boyle, Colleen; Palus, Matthew; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Cemeteries are a wealth of information and are a vital cultural resource for the communities in which they reside. These spaces reflect the cultural and community practices, the evolution of public space, economic conditions, and religious traditions of those interred. This thesis seeks to answer the research question: can cemetery landscapes be understood using a phenomenological approach to interpreting cultural patterns and trends in a digital landscape? Understanding cemetery landscapes is vital to the understanding and preservation of the cultural landscapes of these communities, so clear and accurate documentation of these sites is possible and necessary when using modern geospatial technology. This thesis examines the results of the Fairfax County Park Authority’s Archaeology and Collections Branch cemetery survey using geospatial mapping methodologies to record cemetery boundaries and inventory grave and grave marker locations. Through the examination of each of the three cemeteries highlighted throughout this thesis, it was determined that a hybrid approach to cemetery analysis utilizing the theoretical framework of phenomenology in conjunction with the broader perspective offered through digital data and mapping allows for a greater understanding of a space and its use over time.Item PERSISTENCE OF FORM: A MATERIAL ETHNOGRAPHY THROUGH THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANAHEIM’S 20TH CENTURY LANDSCAPE(2022) Reed, Dean Joseph; Palus, Matthew M.; Samuels, Kathryn L.; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During the mid-20th century, Anaheim was one of many small unincorporated communities within southern California that would undergo a transition from a rural agricultural community into an industrial and commercial suburban sprawl. Previous works in cultural heritage resource management and local historical research within the City have been primarily centered around their local historic districts or larger commercial areas. However, the areas within proximity to these culturally defining areas have been largely undocumented. Those that have been documented have been studied under the regulatory lens of the National Historic Preservation Act or the California Environmental Quality Act. As a result, they are interpreted as just a product general growth of the City in the post-World War II era and determined ineligible for treatment or protection as historic resources. However, properties of this type are often examined as material culture that is independent of its surroundings. They have not been thoroughly examined for their data potential outside of the regulatory lens, nor has their connection to each other and the greater Anaheim landscape been considered fully. The analysis of architecture is useful in helping us understand production and use of space within the built environment. A further analysis, with the application of theory based in social production, space and place, and landscape may elaborate further on the broader social structures, allow a fuller understanding of the past, and help unpack the notion of material culture as a product. An approximately one-mile segment of East Lincoln Avenue, located near the center of Anaheim, exhibits a variety of the City’s vernacular architecture. In what ways did the City’s development allow these buildings to persist, and what processes were at play in their reconfiguration? Material culture, as a social product, requires a broader theoretical lens, a need to understand cultural resources as a part of a landscape, and a more in depth look into the individual. As the mid-20th century landscape emerges in the historical record, the importance of understanding the social factors that were at play are relevant to their preservation, especially as each phase of construction becomes overshadowed by the next, even to this day.Item SOUND OF THE CITY: Creating a balanced sound composition in urban green spaces(2021) Gray, Lauren Reed; Sullivan, Jack; Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA); Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Sounds in the landscape are an important, and an often-ignored aspect of the human experience. In urban landscapes, the sounds in the landscape create a symphony. Combining the beloved sounds of nature and humans, with the often less desirable, but no less important sounds of traffic and sirens. This thesis aims to put that symphony of sounds and its relationship to the landscape under the microscope. By first looking into the theories of composers John Cage and R. Murray Schafer, and then applying those theories to the soundscape and landscape, the exploration and examination of the conscious, subconscious, beautiful, and necessary, as it pertains to soundscape and landscape design, will be revealed.Item Death in the Round: A Critique of Funeral Architecture and Burial Practices(2019) Jesmer, James Nicholas; May, Lindsey M; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Traditional Cemeteries are known for their groomed, grass lawns with headstones denoting rows of graves. These environments often use vast swaths of land and serve as biological monocultures with one purpose—to hold people who have passed. Spaces like these are only activated when a burial takes place or when friends and family visit the deceased. Because of this, cemeteries are often placed at the edges of society and all but forgotten during everyday life. This distance augments society’s negative association with death. A cemetery complex will be the focus of this thesis. Consisting of ceremonial halls, mortuary, crematorium, and a refectory for repast, the complex will promote sustainable interment practices, serving as a model for future cemetery sites. The grounds will offer a variety of landscape typologies that accommodate the needs of natural burial, while providing programming for a waterfront park throughout the year. The location for this thesis will be on the urban edge of Part Covington in Baltimore, remediating a brownfield site and giving it back to the community, instilling values of environmental stewardship.Item "To Go to Nature's Manufactory": The Material Ecology of Slavery in Antebellum Maryland(2018) Perry, Tony; Williams-Forson, Psyche; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the environmental history of slavery in Maryland and attends specifically to the ways enslaved people’s relationship to their environment manifested in their everyday lives. In this project, I advance an ecological analysis that foregrounds networks of relation between slaves, slaveholders, soils, plants, animals, and cold weather. Grounding my analysis in the everyday world of slavery, my dissertation employs a framework I call material ecology, which utilizes object-oriented analysis as a means of thinking through, unpacking, and rendering the ecology of slavery in Maryland. Using this approach, I organize each of my chapters around a class of objects that materialize different ecological relations. As the points at which such relations converge, cast-iron plows, enslaved people’s shoes, slave-made charms, as well as stews and similar one-pot meals disclose distinctive interactions between the enslaved and their environment. From my analysis of the relationships that cohere around these objects, I argue that in antebellum Maryland slaves and slaveholders differently mobilized elements of their environment against one another in their multiform contests over power. Examining the ecological networks informing these contests illustrates the extent to which the environment in enslaved people’s lives was simultaneously antagonistic and empowering.Item LANDSCAPES OF TENSION: EXPLORING NERVOUSNESS AND ANXIETY ON A MARYLAND PLANTATION(2018) BAILEY, MEGAN; Shackel, Paul A; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines a late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century plantation site, L’Hermitage, which is located in Frederick, Maryland, on what is now Monocacy National Battlefield. It considers how the interactions among and between the plantation owners, the Vincendière family, and their enslaved workers, in order to investigate how negotiations of power and supremacy can be read through spatial organization, material culture, and interpersonal relations. I refer to Denis Byrne’s (2003) use of the phrase “nervous landscape” to explore how a landscape and its occupants can be literally and figuratively nervous when absolute power fails and a heterogeneity and multiplicity of power and identities are introduced. That is, the disruption of homogeneity and hegemony breeds nervousness. Byrne uses this concept to explore racial tension; however, this project recognizes that anxiety can emerge from uneasiness around other structural factors. This research relies on multiple sources, including historical documents, artifacts, and archaeological features in order to explore how race, gender, class, religion, and nationality interacted on the plantation landscape. This work applies particular attention to how the power dynamics around these hierarchies played out within the nervous frame, mitigating or contributing to a nervous landscape. The dissertation also uses this framework to explore nervousness in the literal sense; how anxiety was a fundamental element of the colonial experience, and more broadly how emotion is an important aspect of the human experience that should be considered in archaeological interpretations of the past. This research is intended to contribute to the National Park Service’s goal of enhancing its interpretation of the larger context of the Civil War. Monocacy National Battlefield (MNB) is primarily valued for the battle that took place in 1864, and this is reflected in much of its current interpretation. However, MNB is committed to expanding this interpretation to situate the Civil War battle in its historical, social, political, economic, and geographical context. Research on plantation life, including topics such as agriculture, slavery, and racism, will contribute toward this goal. Furthermore, the results of my study can be useful in framing the way Monocacy discusses power dynamics and identity in the context of L’Hermitage.Item WALK ALONG THE RIVER: COMMUNITY DESIGN PROCESS FOR THE NORTON RIVERWALK(2017) Reilly, Charles Dylan; Ellis, Christopher D; Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA); Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The City of Norton, nestled in Southwest Virginia’s coal country, has a proposed 2-mile Riverwalk running along the Guest River and connecting to an existing Safe Routes to School sidewalk. The designer employed informal interviews, a design charrette, and formal presentations during the summer of 2016 to better understand the challenges and opportunities for the Riverwalk. Design ideas from the community engagement process were triangulated and compared against the site analysis, to better understand which ideas had the most support and were feasible. The resulting design from this process focused on improving pedestrian connectivity; improving quality of life for residents and attracting visitors; and telling Norton’s history, from towering chestnuts to coal mining. The community engagement process reached about 145 people and produced media buzz for the project with four front-page articles in local and regional newspapers. The charrette brought residents from diverse perspectives to the design table.Item SUSTAINABLE ISLAND WATER CULTURE COLLECT, PROTECT, RESPECT(2016) Manongdo, Justin Agustin; Simon, Madlen; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As fresh water globally declines, our local communities are affected. This phenomenon is particularly acute in the islands of Hawai’i. The Hawaiians have a concept called Ahupua’a, which refers to the traditional land division system in Hawai’i. The goal of the research is to see how we can re-imagine island water culture to reintroduce authentic principles of the Ahupua’a to make modern developments sustainable. By addressing and understanding the experience, value of water, and history of its context, architecture can better be used as a tool for collecting, protecting and respecting water to create a deeper appreciation of this resource. This thesis project explores the human connection between water and landscape by utilizing architecture as a means for understanding the importance of this delicate resource. The research will be applied to the design of the Ala Wai Canal waterfront and boathouse in Waikiki. This project will serve as a test case for modern development with a focus on principles of the Ahupua’a and lessons to take for global uses.Item The Landscapes of Gaspard Dughet: Artistic Identity and Intellectual Formation in Seventeenth-Century Rome(2013) Cantor, Sarah; Colantuono, Anthony; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The paintings of Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675), an artist whose work evokes the countryside around Rome, profoundly affected the representation of landscape until the early twentieth century. Despite his impact on the development of landscape painting, Dughet is recognized today as the brother-in-law of Nicolas Poussin rather than for his own contribution to the history of art. His paintings are generally classified as decorative works without subjects that embody no higher intellectual pursuits. This dissertation proposes that Dughet did, in fact, represent complex ideals and literary concepts within his paintings, engaging with the pastoral genre, ideas on spirituality expressed through landscape, and the examination of ancient Roman art. My study considers Dughet's work in the context of seventeenth-century literature and antiquarian culture through a new reading of his paintings. I locate his work within the expanding discourse on the rhetorical nature of seventeenth-century art, exploring questions on the meaning and interpretation of landscape imagery in Rome. For artists and patrons in Italy, landscape painting was tied to notions of cultural identity and history, particularly for elite Roman families. Through a comprehensive examination of Dughet's paintings and frescoes commissioned by noble families, this dissertation reveals the motivations and intentions of both the artist and his patrons. The dissertation addresses the correlation between Dughet's paintings and the concept of the pastoral, the literary genre that began in ancient Greece and Rome and which became widely popular in the early seventeenth century. The pastoral world, with its melancholic atmosphere and nostalgia for antiquity, was quickly assimilated into landscape painting, most effectively in the work of Poussin and Claude, and also in Dughet's paintings. For artists in the seventeenth century, the pastoral landscape was a place of meditation on the ancient past and the future inevitability of death, a theme present in Dughet's work as well. The dissertation reveals connections to ancient Roman paintings unearthed at the time and to antiquarian culture and contemporary interpretations of early frescoes. This study presents a renewed and comprehensive appreciation for Dughet's landscapes and a more nuanced view of his intellectual contribution as an artist.