UpDate - Vol. 12, No. 37, Page 11
July 22, 1993
Student wins NEH, NSF awards

     Michael P. Kucher, a graduate student in history and a Hagley Fellow
from 1987-91, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities
(NEH) dissertation fellowship.
     The new NEH program offers 50 dissertation fellowships in the
humanities, each with a stipend of $17,500. There were more than 1,500
applications for the awards, and no more than two fellowships can be
allotted to any single institution.
     A graduate of the New School for Social Research in New York City,
Kucher also was awarded a travel fellowship from the National Science
Foundation in February. He will use both fellowships to do research and
complete his dissertation in Siena, Italy.
     Interested in the technology of cities' infrastructures, Kucher is
researching the city-building process of Siena during the early
Renaissance, focusing on its water sources and water distribution system.
     A hilltop city, Siena received its water from aqueducts which were
carved in subsoil, soft stone and later covered to keep out debris. The
aqueducts ran for 10 miles along the hills and led from the water sources
to the city where they went underground to supply Siena's system of
fountains.
     The fountains and their pools were both functional and decorative,
Kucher said. Regulations for water use are still in existence, and some
water was designated for human consumption, some for animals and some for
laundry. Waste water was eventually channeled to the valley below.
     It was possible to perform certain processes such as dyeing and
tanning with the limited supply of water, but there was never enough water
inside the city walls to turn water wheels that powered mills for fulling
cloth or grinding grain. These mills had to be located along streams in the
valley below the city.
     The water supply system was at the "cutting edge of technological
development in Western Europe" during the late medieval period and the
early Renaissance, Kucher said. His research will focus on medieval
technical knowledge and engineering within a cultural and historical
context.
     His advisers are Lawrence G. Duggan, professor of history and
chairperson of graduate studies in history, and David Hounshell, formerly a
member of the history department and now at Carnegie-Mellon University.
                                        -Sue Swyers Moncure