Hamilton Dissertation
Lake Effects Transnational History and the Making of a Valencian Landscape By Sarah R. Hamilton A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in the University of Michigan 2013 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Dario Gaggio, Co-Chair Associate Professor Douglas Northrop, Co-Chair Professor Gabrielle Hecht Adjunct Professor Richard Tucker If the Albufera is not cared for it will disappear, but its disappearance will not cause anything else to happen. There will not be any geological cataclysm; nor any sort of catastrophe, or anything like that. Moreover, the physical destiny of the Albufera is that it will disappear. The lake, abandoned to itself, with no sort of attacks upon it or any efforts to care for it, is irretrievably condemned to disappearance. But this is the fate of any historical or artistic monument. Every building, for example, is condemned to disappearance, just as the construction of extinguished civilizations disappeared, and just as little by little the castles, chapels and monasteries lost in the Spanish geography are disappearing, important victims of carelessness, theft, and hooliganism. Restoration work is undertaken in order to alleviate this inexorable fate as much as possible. This is why any monument or work of economic or cultural interest is object of a permanent guarding and conservation that will allow such legacies of our parents to pass to our children. There is no explanation, then, for the abandonment and pillage that an area of scenic and cultural interest such as the Albufera has undergone. We have a responsibility to our descendants that this patrimony is not lost; that the cultural wealth of the Albufera, in the broadest sense of the word, passes intact to the generations to come.
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