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 Transitional Housing: Breaking Cycles of Domestic Violence in North Philadelphia(2020) Brown, Elizabeth Conforti; Ohnstad, Tonya; Du Puy, Karl; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis proposes a transitional housing facility for survivors of intimate partner violence and other forms of domestic abuse. It describes the affected populations, explains associated risk factors, and discusses the long-term psychological and economic effects this abuse has on its victims. By analyzing the institutional programs available to survivors and the ways in which those systems fall short, this thesis hypothesizes that the availability of better transitional housing options can reduce the frequency of repeated victimization. This thesis interrogates how architecture and program can facilitate the same goals as clinical treatment for people recovering from trauma. It demonstrates four features to support healing: empowerment, connection, security, and peace. The thesis presents site analysis of a neighborhood in Upper North Philadelphia as a location for a design intervention, but also proposes that these guidelines are applicable to other communities, rather than site-specific.Item Workshop of the World: Uniting Community and Creating Opportunity through Adaptive Reuse(2017) Vogtman, John; Rockcastle, Garth; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)An abundance of abandoned structures exist in post-industrial cities throughout the United States. Many of these structures have significant historical and cultural ties which contribute to the identity of the city. This thesis seeks to examine how these remnants can be adaptively reused or revalued to strengthen and regenerate communities while retaining elements of the character and history of the site and building. Using the city of Philadelphia and the Delaware Riverfront as a case study, it identifies a range of possibilities and focuses on the PECO Delaware Generating Station as a final design proposal.Item Perceptual Resonance | Spatial Typologies as an Interpretation of Music(2017) BARKMAN, ERIN; Abrams, Michael; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis seeks to evoke a sense of place, identity and memory through a connection with music to capture the essence of place. Music can act as the link between architecture and people, to allow people to experience place in a more intimate way. By engaging all the senses, there can be a connection through our bodies to the building around us. Through the process of abstraction, we can link the audible world with the visual world, allowing music to resonate in architecture.Item Gateway to the City: Reconnecting Center City Philadelphia to the Delaware River Waterfront(2012) Gavin, David Michael; Kelly, Brian; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)This thesis proposes to examine the relationship between the dense city core of Philadelphia and the Delaware River waterfront. The thesis will consider the possibility of reestablishing connectivity between the city and waterfront that existed prior to the construction of I-95. The site in Center City Philadelphia is located along I-95 and bounded by Market Street, the Delaware River, and Walnut Street. The space over I-95 will be considered as potential buildable area and underdeveloped areas along the Delaware River waterfront will be investigated to promote greater utilization and active daily use. The thesis will study how appropriate programming of underutilized city land can activate the river's edge and establish links between neighborhoods immediately adjacent to the site. The thesis will also examine how park systems might provide an extension of comfortable open space prevalent throughout the eastern areas of Center City.Item "Let the People Have a Victory": The Politics of Transportation in Philadelphia, 1946-1984(2010) Kobrick, Jacob Ian; Muncy, Robyn L; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Urban transportation planning in the United States underwent important changes in the decades after World War II. In the immediate postwar period, federal highway engineers in the Bureau of Public Roads dominated the decision-making process, creating a planning regime that focused almost entirely on the building of modern expressways to relieve traffic congestion. In the 1960s, however, local opposition to expressway construction emerged in cities across the nation, reflecting growing discontent with what many citizens perceived to be a closed planning process that resulted in the destruction of urban neighborhoods, environmental degradation, and inadequate attention paid to alternative modes of transportation. Local freeway protestors found allies in the new U.S. Department of Transportation, which moved in the mid-1960s to absorb the Bureau of Public Roads and support legislation promoting a planning process more open to local input as well as a greater emphasis on federal aid for urban mass transportation. The changing culture of transportation planning produced a series of freeway revolts, resulting in the cancellation or modification of interstate highway projects, in major American cities. Changes in transportation planning played out differently in every city, however. This dissertation examines controversies over Philadelphia's major expressway projects - the Schuylkill Expressway, the Delaware Expressway, and the never-built Crosstown Expressway, in addition to major mass transit developments such as the city's subsidization of the commuter railroads, the creation of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, and the building of a railroad tunnel known as the Center City Commuter Connection, in order to trace the evolution of the city's transportation politics between 1946 and 1984. Significantly, Philadelphia's own freeway revolt succeeded in eliminating the proposed Crosstown Expressway, which would have created a daunting racial barrier while decimating several low-income African American neighborhoods. The Crosstown Expressway revolt, however, failed to change the overall trajectory of Philadelphia's transportation planning politics, which continued to be dominated by an exceptionally strong alliance between City Hall and large business interests. Philadelphia's turn to mass transit in the 1970s, in contrast to those of other cities, failed to redistribute transportation resources to its low-income residents, mainly because the city chose to devote a massive percentage of its federal funding to the Center City Commuter Connection, a downtown rail tunnel designed to serve approximately 8% of the region's commuters. The prioritization of a rail system serving predominantly affluent white suburbanites left Philadelphia's lower-income population saddled with a crumbling urban mass transit system, demonstrating that, despite a more open planning process and a greater emphasis on mass transportation, fundamental inequalities persisted.Item Infectious Disease in Philadelphia, 1690-1807: An Ecological Perspective(2006-05-15) Anroman, Gilda Marie; Sies, Mary Corbin; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the multiple factors that influenced the pattern and distribution of infectious disease in Philadelphia between the years 1690 and 1807, and explores the possible reasons for the astonishingly high level of death from disease throughout the city at this time. What emerges from this study is a complex picture of a city undergoing rapid cultural and epidemiological changes. Large-scale immigration supplied a susceptible population group, as international trade, densely packed streets, unsanitary living conditions, and a stagnant and contaminated water supply combined to create ideal circumstances for the proliferation of both pathogens and vectors, setting the stage for the many public health crises that plagued Philadelphia for more than one hundred years. This study uses an ecological perspective to understand how disease worked in Philadelphia. The idea that disease is virtually always a result of the interplay of the environment, the genetic and physical make-up of the individual, and the agent of disease is one of the most important cause and effect ideas underpinned by epidemiology. This dissertation integrates methods from the health sciences, humanities, and social sciences to demonstrate how disease "emergence" in Philadelphia was a dynamic feature of the interrelationships between people and their socio-cultural and physical environments. Classic epidemiological theory, informed by ecological thinking, is used to revisit the city's reconstructed demographic data, bills of mortality, selected diaries (notably that of Elizabeth Drinker), personal letters, contemporary observations and medical literature. The emergence and spread of microbial threats was driven by a complex set of factors, the convergence of which lead to consequences of disease much greater than any single factor might have suggested. Although it has been argued that no precondition of disease was more basic than poverty in eighteenth-century Philadelphia, it is shortsighted to assume that impoverishment was a necessary co-factor in the emergence and spread of disease. The urban environment of Philadelphia contained the epidemiological factors necessary for the growth and propagation of a wide variety of infectious agents, while the social, demographic and behavioral characteristics of the people of the city provided the opportunity for "new" diseases to appear.Item Beyond Realism: History in the Art of Thomas Eakins(2005-01-25) Reason, Akela M.; Promey, Sally M.; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Art historians often associate Thomas Eakins's realist depictions of modern life with the artist's most rational tendencies. In these images, Eakins's scrutiny of his subjects seems to verge on the scientific. Consequently, many of these works have been studied in terms of Eakins's devotion to understanding and replicating the tangible world around him, marshalling as evidence the artist's meticulous methods of preparation, his scrupulous study of anatomy, and his literal use of photographs. The sense that Eakins's creativity was always bounded by reason has contributed to the canonization of these modern life subjects. While these images reinforce the notion of Eakins's almost scientific faith in the real, they do not include many of the works that the artist deemed most important. Concurrent with these modern life subjects, Eakins also completed works that engage with historical subject matter. Although these images have often been dismissed as unimportant to Eakins's career, the artist numbered many of them among his best. Ranging from his colonial revival subjects of the 1870s and 80s to his reprisal of William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River in 1908, the historical works span the length of his career and engage in a dialogue with his more familiar realist images. This dissertation examines how in each decade of his career, Eakins used historical subject matter to assert his most deeply-held professional beliefs. A complex amalgam of tradition and modernity, each of these historical themes relates to Eakins's creation of a professional identity as an artist. I explore how Eakins's consciousness of the art historical tradition specifically influenced these works as well as guided the trajectory of his career. With respect to this tradition, Eakins believed that life study and hard work bound all great artists togetherpast, present, and future. Eakins advanced this notion by his insistent placement of the historical works in major venues alongside his powerful images of doctors and rowers. In his desire to become part of the art historical tradition himself, Eakins hoped that his historical subjects would continue to speak for him after his death.