Index: doc/theses/aaron_moss/phd/aaron-thesis.bib
===================================================================
--- doc/theses/aaron_moss/phd/aaron-thesis.bib	(revision 62e782ec0b91a7b157f6d5249bcba344a182de69)
+++ doc/theses/aaron_moss/phd/aaron-thesis.bib	(revision ce003174ac392567ebe9c4c0395c7c6b88deb808)
@@ -36,4 +36,17 @@
 }
 
+@article{Buhr94a,
+    keywords	= {assignment, parameter passing, multiple assignment},
+    contributer	= {pabuhr@plg},
+    author	= {P. A. Buhr and David Till and C. R. Zarnke},
+    title	= {Assignment as the Sole Means of Updating Objects},
+    journal	= spe,
+    month	= sep,
+    year	= 1994,
+    volume	= 24,
+    number	= 9,
+    pages	= {835-870},
+}
+
 @mastersthesis{Delisle18,
     author	= {Thierry Delisle },
@@ -65,2 +78,12 @@
     note	= {Accepted, to appear},
 }
+
+@mastersthesis{Schluntz17,
+    keywords 	= {constructors, destructors, tuples},
+    author	= {Robert Schluntz},
+    title	= {Resource Management and Tuples in \textsf{C}$\mathbf{\forall}$},
+    school	= {School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo},
+    year	= 2017,
+    address	= {Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1},
+    note	= {\href{https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/11830}{https://\-uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/\-handle/\-10012/\-11830}},
+}
Index: doc/theses/aaron_moss/phd/background.tex
===================================================================
--- doc/theses/aaron_moss/phd/background.tex	(revision 62e782ec0b91a7b157f6d5249bcba344a182de69)
+++ doc/theses/aaron_moss/phd/background.tex	(revision ce003174ac392567ebe9c4c0395c7c6b88deb808)
@@ -1,3 +1,13 @@
 \chapter{Background}
 
-This is the background. Basically, need to cite Ditchfield\cite{Ditchfield92}, Bilson\cite{Bilson03}, and Moss~\etal\cite{Moss18}
+\CFA{} adds a number of features to C, some of them providing significant increases to the expressive power of the language, but all designed to maintain the existing procedural programming paradigm of C and to be as orthogonal as possible with each other. 
+To provide background for the contributions in subsequent chapters, this chapter provides a summary of the features of \CFA{} at the time this work was conducted.
+
+The core design of \CFA{} is laid out in Glen Ditchfield's 1992 PhD thesis, \emph{Contextual Polymorphism}\cite{Ditchfield92}; in that thesis, Ditchfield lays out the theoretical underpinnings of the \CFA{} polymorphism model. 
+Building on Ditchfield's design for contextual polymorphism as well as KW-C\cite{Buhr94a}, an earlier set of (largely syntactic) extensions to C, Richard Bilson\cite{Bilson03} built the first version of the \CFA{} compiler, \CFACC{}, in the early 2000's. 
+This early \CFACC{} provided basic functionality, but incorporated a number of poor algorithmic choices due to a rushed implementation time frame, and as such lacked the runtime performance required for practical use; this thesis is substantially concerned with rectifying those deficits. 
+
+The \CFA{} project was revived in 2015 with the intention of building a production-ready language and compiler; at the time of this writing, both \CFA{} and \CFACC{} have been under active development continuously since. 
+As this development has been proceeding concurrently with the work described in this thesis, the state of \CFA{} has been somewhat of a moving target; however, Moss~\etal\cite{Moss18} provides a reasonable summary of the current design of \CFA{}. 
+Notable features added during this period include generic types[Chapter~\ref{generic-chap}], constructors and destructors\cite{Schluntz17}, improved support for tuples\cite{Schluntz17}, reference types\cite{Moss18}, first-class concurrent and parallel programming support\cite{Delisle18}, as well as numerous pieces of syntactic sugar and the start of an idiomatic standard library\cite{Moss18}.
+