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- Creator:
- Constantino, Michael
- Description:
- Purpose of the Study: This thesis explores human evolution from a holistic, transpersonal, and psychospiritual perspective in attempt to answer a central question: What is necessary to restoring humanity’s relationship to nature amid our current ecological crisis? Humanity’s loss of interdependence with nature is examined within a context of trauma and an indigenous equivalent of soul loss at the individual, collective, planetary, and cosmic levels. Methods: This study utilizes peer-reviewed literature and triangulation from Jungian, indigenous, and transpersonal psychologies, which, as theoretical disciplines, offer insights that illustrate the importance of engagement with the sacred via the soul. An interdisciplinary approach is also used – drawing from the integral philosophy of Jean Gebser (1966/1986); the historical and cultural critique of Morris Berman (1981/1989); the mystery tradition of alchemy; somatic-based trauma literature; and contrasting views of traditional and contemporary science. Research methods of triangulation, reflexivity, phenomenology, and radical empiricism are used as means of measuring validity. Findings: Humanity’s lack of response to the ecological crisis may be the result of unrecognized individual and collective trauma, signified by a deepening separation from nature, loss of feeling, and symptoms of dissociation. These can be defined as traumatic conditions. When examined from an integral and psychospiritual perspective their interdependence and unconscious and transpersonal nature can be uncovered. Conclusions: This study sheds light on three areas: (1) the importance of psychospiritual and holistic considerations in human evolution, (2) a reexamination into the causes and remedies of our current ecological crisis, and (3) a reevaluation of the relevance of the psychospiritual interface, the interplay between psychological and spiritual phenomena and their involvement in the evolutionary process. The transpersonal and psychospiritual fields are often marginalized as unscientific but may be more relevant to true scientific inquiry than previously thought.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sonoma
- Department:
- Psychology
- Creator:
- Yoerger, Ronald Anthony
- Description:
- While studying environmental art, I reflected upon my own experiences related to the environment and its impact upon me. Largely, these experiences were gained while growing up on our family farm in Iowa, where the environment played an important role in life. The works produced during that study, related directly to those experiences. Some of the topics explored at that time pertained to: earth, erosion, and sedimentation; sights and smells of crops; and wind sounds. Initially, I felt some reticence in creating work about my experiences of the farm, fearing they might be considered too personal or too narrow. Nevertheless, I felt this work to be too crucial and too significant to allow my fears to curb its exploration. Sometime later, I became aware of having frequent recurrences of particular memories and images of the farm—events, places, objects which were indelibly etched in my mind. Sometimes these images occurred during changes in the weather, or seasons; from feelings of alienation, boredom, loneliness; or from missing my family and the farm. The recurrence and clarity of these images, and my personal identification with them, compelled me to focus upon them in my work. Initially, I drew the images, but soon discovered a need to express them in sculpture, which resulted in the first bas relief. I found this method to be a more effective means of expressing the nature and importance of these memories. The subject of this first bas relief (Plate I) was an old earthen root cellar, used to store fresh and canned fruits and vegetables from our orchard and garden. This “cave”, as we called it, was frequented throughout the year. In the fall, it was visited for re-stocking; in the summer, for protection against threatening storms, as a unique respite from heat, as well as a personal hide-away. Working with these first images, through drawing relief sculpture, encouraged additional images from my past to come forth: The Kitchen (Plate II), The Bale Pile (Plates VI & VIII), The Barn (Plate VIII), The Loading Chute (Plate XI), The Oatfield (Plate XII), and others. .. (See more in text)
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- Art
- Creator:
- Zhao, Yue
- Description:
- Italian, German, French, English and Chinese songs make up the six groups of this program. Selections were chosen from classical to contemporary in order to take an audience on an emotional journey through music and text. Groups are distinguished by various musical features, such as differences in melody, harmony, rhythm, text and accompaniment. Learning these songs can provide an opportunity for singers to experience the beauty of love and nature. "Spirate pur spirate" and "Amorosi miei giorni" by Donaudy as well as "La Promessa" and "La pastorella dell' Alpi" by Rossini are in the style of opera composers; they all contain the splendid cantabile melodies which are typical of the Bel Canto style. In "Spirate pur spirate," the singer's flexible coloratura passages represent breeze wafting around the beloved. "Amorosi miei giorni" is in strophic form with ravishing arching climaxes to express the admiration for the singer's lover. In "La Promessa," the shape of the vocal line up to the high voice is supported by simple broken chords in the accompaniment. "La pastorella dell' Alpi" is a lively song full of humor in which the voice line almost imitates yodeling. The two operatic stylistic composers uses differential composing techniques to interpret the theme of love. Joseph Marx's "Waldseligkeit" and "Der bescheidene Schäfer" and Richard Strauss' "Die Nacht" and "Ständchen" are lieder from the late Romantic period. The triplet accompaniment of "Waldseligkeit" represents the shimmering and shaking of tree leaves in the forest. In "Der bescheidene Schäfer," the changing nature of the shepherd in the fast-slow-fast pattern, the speaker is expressing the frustration of shy shepherd throughout a spoken-style of music. In "Die Nacht," the long sustained vocal line is supported by chromatic accompaniment as emotion intensifies and expresses the fear that the love will be stolen. The buoyant melody of "Ständchen" over the broken-chord arpeggio accompaniment expresses the passion of the lover. All of songs in the set are tiding into nature by the singer, taking place in forest, dealing with shepherd, experiencing the beauty and fear outside the night, and delivering the human nature of love. "Per pietà, ben mio, perdona" is written for character Fiordiligi from Mozart's Così fan tutte ends the first half of the program in an exciting way about love. She is tempted and struggling with mood on stage. Because of inner wrestling in the recitative, Fiordiligi undergoes many mood changes. Her emotions vary progressively from peace, sorrow, and feverishness are expressed by the changes in her vocal line. "Beau soir," "Romance" and "C'est l'extase langoureuse" are melodies composed by Debussy. He sets the text more like spoken French and captures the atmosphere of the poetry. The vocal line of "Beau soir" is subtle and out of focus with the rhythm. The shape of the melody is stepwise because of the French spoken melody style. The prelude of "Romance" builds to a more direct harmony accompaniment to provide the vocal part with a lighter deduction. "C'est l'extase langoureuse," from the six songs cycle Ariettes oubliées, involves harmonic adventurous, stepwise chromatic melodies and an ambiguous tonality that represents the word "langoureuse.' The way of music is related to nature by the most important of romantic themes. "Nature, the gentlest mother" by Aaron Copland, "Waiting" by Henry Mollicone, and "We'll to the Woods, and Gather May" by C. Griffes make up the English group. These three English nature-themed songs are variant in style depending on the text treatment by composers. While both Copland and Mollicone use meter changes supporting a lyrical vocal line changed by the rhythm of the text, Griffes does not. "Nature, the gentlest mother" is selected from the Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson. It is marked as a pastoral song, describing the beautiful nature by using the transparent textures in the piano as well as text painting by using trills and tempo changes. "Waiting," is one of the Seven Songs in Mollicone's song cycle, the lyric vocal lines, and occasional broken arpeggiated chords in accompaniment are longing for spring to arrive. Griffes is among an earlier generation of American composers, and his treatment of the text is more square. "We'll to the Woods, and Gather May" convey a delightful spirit of the girls hiking around the woods. "Father's Prairie, Mother's River" is a popular Mongolian song by the poet Xi Murong. She narrates a story of a prairie when she was obsessed with the beautiful nature scenes and longing for the return to nature. It is part of longing and humanity to maintain a beautiful place so that humans are able to rally their lovers to nature. In an art song recital, it is possible to recreate these themes of beauty, love, and nature. The arrangement of these pieces can provide ecstatic experiences both for the audience and performers. After analyzing the pieces harmonically and poetically, the singers and listeners will be rewarded with a unique satisfaction.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- Music
- Creator:
- Zimmerer, Emy Lou
- Description:
- My purpose is to create a curtain showing the changing nature of clouds and sky. By enveloping the viewer in luminous veils of color, I hope to evoke a separate moment of time and emotion that will be an expression of the sublime. I would define the sublime as the transformation and exaggeration of natural phenomenon within a contemporary romantic context. Influenced by the works of Joseph Mallord Turner, Caspar David Friedrich and Mark Rothko, I am particularly interested in their diffusion of space, light and color. My concept of this art work as an environment involved isolating a space 28 feet by 22 feet and transforming this space into a unified whole with related contiguous compositions. Starting with primed canvas and oil paint, work progressed toward the goal of creating light and atmospheric effects. After discarding heavy canvas, oil paint and cloud forms, I then experimented with painting on fine linen fabric acrylics and then with various rayon and polyester fabrics. Twenty-six panels of polyester lining fabric, measuring 96 inches in height and 45 inches in width, were used. This fabric was chosen after considerable experimentation because of its transparency and fragile weightless feeling. A wood grain surface under the fabric was used to obtain unique process effects. The acrylic washes, gravity and drying time combine to give random patterns and spontaneity to the panels. The first step of the installation was to staple the panels on one inch dowels that were cut exactly the width of the material. Holes were drilled into each end of the dowel and the fabric was draped over the dowel to float freely with an air space between the wall and the panels. The dowels were supported by two and two-and-a-half inch finishing nails driven into the wall at right angles. The light source was evenly spaced flood lights from above the work. The play of the air blowing through the vents caused the curtain to float gently and added an extra dimension to the work. Essential to this abstract notation of atmospheric elements is an impressionistic time sense and the use of colors ranging from the soft opalescent tones of dawn to the brighter colors of midday and on through the soft blues of evening. A waxed floor reflects the colors of the curtain, as in nature the smooth surface of a lake reflects the sky. The infinite structure of atmosphere, space beyond space, layer behind layer, all constantly changing, and creating luminous environs exerts significant influence upon my concept of painting. In my work, the intensity of natural phenomenon reflects the extremes of human emotion.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- Art
- Creator:
- Hanlon, Michael George
- Description:
- The Antelope Valley has long needed a nature study center to serve as a focal point for the development of curriculum in environmental education, conservation and outdoor education. This center serves to train high school students in the presentation of natural history topics to elementary grades and civic organizations. The center has also produced curriculum materials, houses permanent biological collections and serves as the organization body for field trips, guest speakers and special programs. Justification for this project comes from a variety of sources that include references from the Antelope Valley Conservation and Environmental Education Council, California State Education Code, Los Angeles County Course of Study, Antelope Valley Union High School District Educational Master Plan and interviews with effected elementary and secondary teachers. Background literature for this project considered the role and history of outdoor education, nature study, environmental education, conservation education and museums. Further analysis was made of the effectiveness of peer teaching, volunteer aides and docent programs as cited from current literature. The project developed student museum-skills, field training program, student nature study presentations, museum collections, field trips, loan services, wildlife monographs, and a miniature museum. An evaluation of the project’s effectiveness as indicated by the development of nine topics, presented ninety-two times to a total audience of 4,090, was diagnosed favorably by the written critiques of the observing elementary teachers. Additionally, nineteen collections were prepared, loan specimen made available to schools, slide programs produced and the incorporation of various new museum preparation techniques included in the project. The future of the project, although threatened by loss of revenue and administrative support, is expanding outside the realm of the high school district with the proposed inclusion in the development of a interpretative nature center for the City of Palmdale
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Northridge
- Department:
- Secondary Education
- Creator:
- Ursini, Jenny
- Description:
- Gardening has been known to reduce stress and increase relaxation in people with emotional disturbances, developmental delays, mental illness, sensory integration challenges, and the average gardener alike. Gardening has also been seen at times as a liberating and empowering activity that contributes to a sense of individual and group accomplishment. Though the relationship between gardening at schools has been studied in regard to creating and fostering community, agriculture education, health education, and other disciplines, the relationship between gardening at schools for children identified as having disabilities has gone largely understudied. Through a series of classroom visits and participation in gardening activities with children receiving services for special needs; this study seeks to further understand and explore this relationship. The gardening lessons will be accompanied by a series of journaling activities after gardening, and other modes of emotional and sensory expression (drawing, taking pictures, etc). Through teacher, potentially parent, student, and researcher surveys and expression activities, this relationship will be further explored and evaluated. This study may have broader implications in the curriculum and design of gardening based education programs, adaptation of special education programs, and student advocacy.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Humboldt
- Department:
- Environment and Community
- Creator:
- Benson, Chelsea L.
- Description:
- This thesis explores the role of special places—forts, dens, and hideouts— during middle childhood (ages 6-12). Natural settings have traditionally been children’s special places. Research has demonstrated the importance of outdoor special places in children’s lives including: helping children to develop and form bonds with the earth, and as locations for both privacy and socialization. The landscape of today’s childhood is undergoing dramatic shifts and researchers posit that children’s special places are shifting toward indoor settings. This thesis seeks to understand children’s experience of place in the Humboldt Bay region of Northern California. ‘Children-centered,’ qualitative research methods include interviews and an analysis of participants’ drawings and photographs. This thesis primarily examines how children’s special places contribute to child development, place attachment, and environmental stewardship values. More generally, this thesis asks children to reveal what places they consider to be ‘special.’ Results build on previous research and suggest several findings concerning the significance of children’s special places. First, children still prefer outdoor places as their special places. Second, outdoor special places are important for holistic physical, cognitive, and social development. Third, both indoor and outdoor special places are vital to children’s emotional development because these places act as refuges and sites for emotional regulation. Fourth, children care deeply about their outdoor special places and express environmental stewardship values concerning these places. And last, special places facilitate healthy place attachments. This thesis recommends that people who are involved in the processes and structures that shape children’s lives recognize the value of outdoor special places and provide children with time, freedom, and access to natural landscapes.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Humboldt
- Department:
- Environment and Community
- Creator:
- Borsch, Taryn
- Description:
- Limited documentation exists about the therapeutic effects of gardening for Native Americans. Native American individuals who utilized services at local Inter-Tribal Health Center participated in a horticulture group which has been in place since April, 2015. The project used a mixed-methods research design. Quantitative data were collected by administering a pre- and post-horticulture activity questionnaire and qualitative data were collected from staff members who participated in individual interviews regarding an evaluation of the context and progress of the horticulture group. Program evaluation techniques were used to measure the strengths of the established group, and recommendations offered for further development of the group. The goal of the project is to increase the data available about the therapeutic benefits of horticulture activity on Native Americans in recovery from substance abuse issues who are participating in ongoing aftercare treatment.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Humboldt
- Department:
- Social Work
- Creator:
- Collins, Nathan Joshua
- Description:
- This thesis is built on the assumption that in order to be a serious Thoreau scholar, one must move away from Walden (1854) and read his other works. Walden is, to be sure, Thoreau’s most studied book and remains an iconic example of 19th-century American transcendentalism. As I come to terms with this foundational text, I argue that Walden is a product of Emerson’s influence and mentorship, and as such, is an amalgam of Emersonian and Thoreauvian transcendental aesthetics. Emerson gave Thoreau the raw materials for his philosophical development, but ultimately Walden is an outlier in Thoreau’s progression as a writer. Fundamentally, young Thoreau and his mentor Emerson are divided by an epistemological disagreement the likes of young Aristotle and his mentor Plato. Is knowledge, thereby transcendence, to be found in the experience of nature itself? Or is nature merely a reflection of innate truths, that the physical world must be transcended to glimpse? In order to get at a more true sense of Thoreau’s project, I turn to his final and least studied work, Cape Cod (1865). My position is that Cape Cod is an important transcendental work that deserves further study. As it stands, it is a singularly unique example of American phenomenology. For Thoreau, knowledge is found in the experiential journey toward nature, to see our limits transgressed through consideration of the sublime, but not, in fact, to transgress those limits ourselves. For to transcend the boundaries of the natural world necessitates death, physical and spiritual.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Chico
- Department:
- English
10. Inheritance
- Creator:
- Coyle, Eliott
- Description:
- Inheritance is a collection of poetry that sets out to redefine the word “inheritance” through three sections. The first section of the collection follows the musical inheritance of the speaker and the impressions of family that have come before him. The narratives glimpse the history, the land, and the hardships of a generation separated in both time and place. The speaker’s inheritance can be seen as the music passed down from generations as well as the recording of the familial history in the form of poetry. In another way, this collection is asking readers to consider their bodies as an inheritance for the spirit. Implying philosophical and religious undertones, the second section focuses heavily on identity and on truly inquiring into our sense of who we think we are. The last section asks the reader to see the earth as a place of inheritance, a place they are inhabiting and becoming responsible for. It is asking readers to go out into the natural world and open their eyes and ears to the teachings of nature; it is asking them to find a home in it. As a whole, the collection is a meditation on the inevitable nature of transformation as it connects humanity with nature.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Chico
- Department:
- English