Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2023, Geography

In the face of past, present, and future environmental injustice in central Appalachia, mothers have been on the front lines of resistance to extractive industry. Scholars have acknowledged this pattern, yet no substantive research on why motherhood is invoked so often as a discursive tool has been completed. This thesis examines the factors which have led central Appalachian women activists to use motherhood in their activism and analyze the discourse's strengths and weaknesses.

Committee: Anna Rachel Terman (Advisor) Subjects: Environmental Justice; Environmental Studies; Geography; Regional Studies; Womens Studies

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

The natural beauty and the environment of the Appalachian mountains have been decimated by contemporary methods of coal extraction known as surface mining or mountaintop removal. In order to preserve the natural environment moving forward, architectural integration must raise awareness surrounding the issue by revealing the surface mining process to the public. In order to accommodate architectural designs that accentuate the natural environment, biophilic design principles must be implemented. Biophilic designs transcend the conventional purpose of the urban built environment by connecting society to the natural world. Embedding environmental characteristics into each design will help mitigate ecological decay by reducing building footprints and limiting energy consumption demands. As the built space becomes synonymous with the natural environment, occupants become more aware of their surroundings. At the heart of the rich coal-filled Appalachian Mountains lies Madison, West Virginia. Madison is nestled at the basin of the Little Coal River valley, where coal was discovered in 1742. Over the years, the picturesque landscape and the rich history has been diminished by the socioeconomic disparity of the coal industry. Madison, like many other coal towns throughout Appalachia, will serve as the primary case study for this analysis. The number of coal mining operations decrease each year as clean fossil fuels and renewable energy alternatives are developed. Today in the United States, only 30% of our energy is derived from coal. As this percentage continues to decrease, abandoned surface mines are becoming more prominent throughout southern West Virginia. Surface mines are the most common form of coal extraction; however, this controversial method has generated social, economic, political, and environmental problems. Due to the devastating environmental and economic impact of an abandoned surface mine, the Department of Environmental Protectio (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michael McInturf M.Arch. (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Riorden M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2018, Theology

The following dissertation articulates a constructive theology of creatureliness that speaks from within the particularities of Appalachia's spatial topography and religious culture. I analyze the historical development and ecological implications of industrial resource extraction, specifically the practice of mountaintop removal, within the broader framework of urbanization and anthropocentrism. Drawing on the unique religio-cultural traditions of the region, particularly its 19th century expressions of Christianity, I employ a spatial hermeneutic through which I emphasize the region's environmental and bodily elements and articulate a theological argument for the “creaturely flesh” of Appalachia.

Committee: Vince Miller PhD (Advisor); Silviu Bunta PhD (Committee Member); Kelly Johnson PhD (Committee Member); Anthony Smith PhD (Committee Member); Norman Wirzba PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Religion; Theology

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2015, Environmental Studies (Voinovich)

This hermeneutic phenomenological study explores community participation in a rural Appalachian health-based sustainable initiative located in southern West Virginia. In-depth interviews conducted with members of this community explored community participation in the lived experiences as described by the residents of Williamson. Residents' understanding of community participation was coded through the following themes: (1) answering the call is community participation; (2) jobs are community participation; (3) commitment to health is community participation; (4) helping one another (social capital) is community participation; (5) fallenness is community participation; (6) thrownness is community participation; (7) learned helplessness and victimhood are community participation; (8) nostalgia is community participation; (9) floods are community participation; (10) sentimental narrative: King Coal is community participation; and (11) Sustainable Williamson is community participation. Data revealed that community capacity, participation, and competence were emerging through activities within the health sector. A disparity existed between how the leaders of Sustainable Williamson perceived the level of community participation and the actual engagement described by the participants themselves. While the experiences of this community were in many ways similar to those encountered in resource-extraction communities, or in single-source employment communities, the context of Williamson the place makes this study unique as well as general.

Committee: Geoffrey D. Dabelko (Committee Member) Subjects: Climate Change; Environmental Economics; Environmental Health; Environmental Studies; Health; Regional Studies; Sustainability

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2009, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

The Appalachian Mountains are being systematically demolished, resulting in the homogenizing of the region's physical and architectural landscapes. This attempt at dominance has a detrimental effect on the history and longevity of the region's culture. This thesis offers a constructive response to the devastating effects of mountaintop removal. Appalachian land and culture are intimately connected, and by utilizing aspects of the culture and the unique site situation this thesis promotes the need for architectural specificity that acknowledges both our destructive history with the land and also our reliance on it. This project recognizes the reliance that Appalachians have on the natural resources that surround them, and their abhorrence of outsider influence. Sensitive awareness of the place ultimately helps in the attempt to translate the intangible qualities and dark poetics of the region into an architectural response. Five cultural themes are developed (history, ugliness, contrast, landscape, and narrative) which stimulate the use of the processes and remnants of the site to inform the design of a national historical park. The design fuses these contradictory cultural themes to create a tectonic architectural experience of heightened consciousness. An uncanny, sublime interaction with this horrific landscape, and an intimate engagement with the scars of the site, reveal the intrinsic bonds among all living things, and ultimately hope amidst the devastation.

Committee: John Hancock (Committee Chair); Vincent Sansalone (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Architecture

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Art

How can I imagine a way to reorient the perception of technological development to include the heap of externalities it continues to amass? Designing a sustainable system and enacting one on the ground may be conflicting assertions. The questions I continually ask in my work concern the increasingly dislocated spatial condition of art and how such visions compensate for anxieties about the environment and energy politics. Since my early site-based installations that focused on the specific histories of found sites, I have turned my attention to the institutional spaces, like the gallery and the museum. The work I have been making attempts to mediate between the viewer's body and the surrounding architecture to strip the neutral connotations of the white cube so to link it to a system of real physical consequence. I want the work to shock, to overwhelm, to seduce, and to hypnotize the viewer with forms that summon the electrical grid like a phantom.

Committee: Malcolm Cochran (Advisor); Dorothy Noyes (Committee Member); Michael Mercil (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Sociology