Digital Commons Network^™

Warmth Of The Sun, Drake M. Gerber

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Warmth of the Sun, is a reflection on personal experiences I’ve had in the landscape while living in the Northwest. This curated experience is an attempt to capture my sincerity towards a place and hold onto that feeling. I intend to share faded memories of personal experiences through enigmatic sculptures to make the viewer look a bit closer at these objects and see the landscape in a new way. This paper explores thoughts on the idea of place, material, process, contemporary influences, and the experiences that inspired this body of work.

"Our Loons": Participant Attachments And Motivations Within A Community-Based Monitoring Program, Taylor Tewksbury

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Organizations can benefit from understanding person-place relationships and volunteer motivations as they recruit and sustain involvement in their community-based monitoring (CBM) programs. Place attachment, or the bond between people and their meaningful environments, is one lens through which to explore these relationships. Past studies have associated place attachment with environmentally responsible behaviors (ERB), such as CBM involvement. However, few studies have explored the relationship between place attachment and CBM in the context of volunteers’ attachment to the species of study.

The purpose of this research study was to explore the place-based relationships and motivations among volunteers of the Loon Preservation …

Tales From A Placeholder: A Relational Journey With Land, Place, People And Self, Kalle O. Fox

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The proposed thesis is a collection of place-based, long- and-short-form creative nonfiction essays. The places of interest are where the author spent different amounts of time in during her twenties, including Iceland, Miami and Seaside, Florida, Butte and Missoula, Montana, and a series of National Parks on the western side of the Continental Divide. This thesis is informed what cultural geographer Yi Fu Tuan coined as topophilia: the affective bond between people and place. “Place” and “sense of place,” while each having their own array of definitions in environmental scholarship, are considered interchangeable in the context of my work. A …

Fabrications, Molly V. Rivera

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The objects that surround us tell a story of our past, and act as physical stand ins for a person, place, or experience no longer present. My work explores the significance of objects and how we use them to preserve our memories and make them tangible. Memory is ephemeral and changes over time, simultaneously growing weaker and stronger. I use clay to accentuate this relationship, visually depicting both preservation and decay.

Inspired by my personal narrative, I recreate specific objects of significance by hand. This results in subtle variations of the original, much like the changes in our memory over …

Narratives Of Place: Reasons To Look Up, Dean Justice Leeper, Dean J. Leeper

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Narratives of Place: Reasons to Look Up, is and exploration and reflection of Dean Leeper's personal interaction and relationship to the landscape of Missoula Montana, while as a graduate student at the University of Montana. This paper explores his thoughts, definitions, influences, reflections and descriptions of his most recent work created for his Masters of Fine Art Thesis Exhibition. Leeper presents his work and ideas as a small part of a lager ongoing dialog of how humans understand ideas of place as they relate to finding a sense of self identity.

Understanding The Relationship Between Discursive Resources And Risk-Taking Behaviors In Outdoor Adventure Athletes, Mira Ione Cleveland

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study explores the various discursive resources influencing the identities of outdoor adventure athletes, specifically in regard to risk taking behaviors. The qualitative analysis reported here relied on participants’ accounts on how they understood themselves, specifically as outdoor adventure athletes. Interviewees had the opportunity to reflect on their identities when they were asked questions about their experiences in their sports. Discourse was the means to both develop and express understanding of their identities. Results indicate that personal relationships and mountain environments were perceived to have a major influence on both identity and risk taking. These influences emerged through the processes …

Agency Panic: A Reckoning Of Place, Brock M. Mickelsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Agency Panic: A Reckoning of Place may be best described as a type of documentation of a conversation between the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness and myself, one where a mutual language is not spoken but one where some understanding can be reached none-the-less. By moving through the landscape without goals or intentions a physical exchange ensues, a push and pull, a call and response, intimacy is gained through tactile experience. Through the use of wet-plate collodion photography I am able to create imagery that engages directly with the place. Its vulnerability records a conversation between two acting powers, artist …

Curated Chaos: A Rhetorical Study Of Axmen, Rebekah A. Mcdonald

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this study, the author uses mixed methods to analyze a three-dimensional place as a rhetorical artifact. The artifact, Axmen, is a family owned, for-profit retail store and a non-profit museum outside of Missoula, Montana. Using examples of the tangible and semiotic features found within the place, the author demonstrates and translates the rhetorical messages communicated there. These messages are then contrasted with the messages the owners and curators of Axmen want to communicate. The author argues that the current curation of museum artifacts and retail products is exclusive to white males, romanticizing blue collar work. This single-lens narrative of …

Bicycle Mobility In Glacier National Park: Assessing Going-To-The-Sun Road Travelers' Attitudes, Knowledge, And Perceptions Of Bicycling, Brian G. Battaglia

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The central aim of this thesis assessed whether Going-to-the-Sun Road (GTSR) travelers have a positive or negative association with roadway bicycling and the degree of public support for GTSR bicycling in Glacier National Park (GNP). Secondarily, this thesis tested a control and treatment group’s knowledge of roadway cycling laws to determine the effectiveness of a “Bicycles May Use Full Lane” sign and brochure, which both reflected Montana’s cycling laws. Finally, an analysis of the necessity of GNP’s partial bicycle restriction on the GTSR was conducted by comparing the characteristics of two road segments using GIS, and by assessing the attitudes, …

The Occurrence Of Place-Based Narrative In U.S. Senatorial Campaign Advertisements, Brian K. Munis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Narratives have been increasingly subject to study within social science disciplines. However, research pertaining to narrative within political campaigns is incomplete. For example, there has been a relative lack of attention in the literature to the symbolic discourse and imagery in many political campaign advertisements that—seemingly—exists in order to link candidates to specific geographic “places” within their constituencies. A more complete understanding of the association between narratives of place and political campaigns will allow us to more effective and accurately gauge how, when, and why candidates use this potential strategy; as well as its possible effectiveness in election outcomes. This …

When The Sap Flows: Affection And Industry In The Maple Woods, Nicholas R. Littman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis arises from my time waiting for, collecting, and boiling sap from maple trees into syrup. I spent four months in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York working for a modern commercial sugaring operation and sugaring in the old-fashioned manner—with buckets and a wood-fired evaporator.

The narrative follows my journey as a lifelong Westerner traveling east to learn an old tradition with my hands. Instead of observing how the warmth of a changing climate was affecting maple sugaring, I was thrust into a landscape defined by cold, during one of the coldest winters on record in the Northeast. …

The Shadow Of Polaris: Understanding Sound And Place, Burke Travis Jam

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Jam, Burke, M.F.A Spring 2013 The Shadow of Polaris: Understanding Sound and Place Chairperson: Associate Professor Brad Allen The Shadow of Polaris examines perception, perspective, and place. My research investigates a critical theory of sound as phenomenon and art object. The phenomenon of sound informs our perception and perspective of place. It articulates questions about how we experience and interact with the physical world. My intention is to create an experiential understanding of the physical and, more specifically, the natural world. Nature’s ephemeral cycles are symbiotic with the human experience of life. Examining this relationship illuminates how we perceive, experience, …

Where I Come From/Where I Am, Dean Ramsey Foster

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This story begins in the Midwest, among the everyman. A story lived by many. Where you go to “work” so that you can go “up north” and to “the lake.” This story is set in the cities of West Michigan, and on the banks of the world’s longest freshwater cost line. A place that is remembered through the souvenirs collected along the way. Where the color of the water, and the smell of the air, can release a flood of memories for those indoctrinated by this story. A place where I spent 26 years, living the story, working, going up …

Orphanhood And The Search For Home In L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz" And Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago", Amanda Marie Peterson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Defining home is not an easy task. Protagonists Dorothy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Yuri of Doctor Zhivago are alike in their search for home. They journey through the texts learning what home means to them, which leads to their own discoveries of home. Through these discoveries, they also learn about finding place within space, and how attachments to and love for other people can help to transform the enormity of space into a place of comfort.

Cairn Stones: A Mosaic Memoir And Manual, Bethany Mason Taylor

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

These twenty essays are scraps and fractals of larger stories, windows on coming to understand the world and my place in it. Taken as a whole, the collection tells the story of a formation of open-eyed hope. Roughly, they run from 2001 to 2010, covering the same years as the terrorist attacks of 2001, the War on Terror’s beginnings and toll, Hurricane Katrina, and growing awareness of globalization and climate change. These are big topics, and the only way I can make sense of them, and my coming of age within and around them, is to tell the stories of …

Palestinian-Levantine Dialect Diaspora:Exploring Its Role In Maintaining Palestinian Cultural Heritage & Identity, Samir Ibrahim Bitar

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cultural Geographers have written extensively on Diaspora, heritage, identity and their contributions greatly discuss how these theories integrate. The majority of what is available does not address the Palestinians specifically, hence my study fills a void in that it empirically addresses the Palestinian people and the role of their dialect and how it ties to Palestinian Diaspora, heritage and identity. Most of the literature has not viewed Diaspora, heritage, and identity thru the lens of language or language as a major player, an important one or perhaps vital. To produce these findings will contribute to the knowledge base on the …

Dynamic Human Relationships With Wilderness: Developing A Relationship Model, Bob G. Dvorak

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Dvorak, Robert, Ph.D., Summer 2008 Forestry

Dynamic human relationships with wilderness: Developing a relationship model

Chair: William T. Borrie

Wilderness managers are charged with the challenging goal of balancing resource protection and experience quality across a broad, value-laden landscape. While research has provided insight into visitor motivations, psychological outcomes, and meanings, a struggle exists to implement experiential concepts within current management frameworks. A need also exists to manage wilderness for concepts outside of setting attributes. This research posits the human experience of wilderness to be an evolving, enduring relationship. Therefore, research needs can be addressed by investigating and conceptualizing an …

Human Bonds With Public Wildland Places: Segmenting Communities To Inform Natural Resource Management, Neal A. Christensen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Public land managers must consider a broad range of information to develop effective and equitable plans for addressing contentious management issues. Appropriately designed social science research may contribute to better understanding of public interests regarding resource use, thus reducing conflict and contributing to cooperative solutions. This dissertation describes a social science methodology for developing understanding of human / place bonds using indicators of human expression of behaviors, beliefs, and emotions. The dissertation develops the concept of human / place bonds with a goal to better reflect the publics' views and desires for management of public lands. The purpose of the …