Dissertation Title: Upon this Rock I Build my Church: Borgund Stave Church and the Aesthetics of Permanence

Advisor: Neagley, Linda

Stephen Westich studies the medieval architecture of Europe with a special concentration on the Norwegian stave churches. His dissertation, with the tentative title: The Shrine in the Field: Materiality and Spatiality of Norwegian Stave Churches, will closely examine both the meanings and the techniques of meaning produced by the unique spaces of these buildings rooted in an investigation into the complex set of associations that adheres to the materiality of the Norwegian pine of which they are made.