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Fear And Nostalgia In Immigration, Daniel A. Matthews

Theses and Dissertations

Fear and Nostalgia in Immigration is a project that uses re-occuring memory and experiential memory to help us understand our common histories. The projects asks individuals to first share a re-occuring memory by writing it on a chalkboard. The next step is to then write an experiential memory about immigration, this can be a story you might have heard or it could be something from your own family history. These two tasks are done on a communal table where several individuals are engage in the same task at the same time. This aim of this exercise is to have something …

Those That Trespass Against Us: Childhood, Violence, And Memory In The White Ribbon, Joseph Kuster

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis examines aesthetic representations of childhood and violence in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, I argue that Haneke’s film interrogates notions of the idealized child in the context of German history/the history of the Tätergeneration in order to question the possibility of affixing particular objective truth to historical or cultural narrative. First, I examine and deconstruct culturally accepted representations of the child as a symbol of innocence and purity, and explore how Haneke’s film manipulates and subverts these tropes. I then approach the film using three different theoretical structures: the gaze of the monstrous child in the horror …

Swamp Boat, Gravy Boat: Memory And Place In Fiction, Kaycie Surrell

MSU Graduate Theses

The importance of memory to place is of particular interest to me and forms the basis for the bulk of my work. In my critical introduction I explore the work of authors and essayists who inspire my fiction work through their focus on place and memory. Specific authors include Sandra Cisneros, David Sedaris, and Pam Houston. Through my short fiction pieces I weave together the stories of my childhood from Florida to Missouri into a quilt that covers the important pieces of my life thus far. I am interested in how people are motivated by fear to write around their …

Consciousness, Perception, And Short-Term Memory, Henry F. Shevlin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dissertation Abstract: Consciousness, Perception, and Short-Term Memory

When we engage in almost any perceptual activity – recognizing a face, listening out for a phone-call, or simply taking in a sunset – information must be briefly stored and processed in some form of short-term memory. For philosophers attempting to develop an empirically grounded account of perception and conscious experience, it is therefore crucial to engage with scientific theories of the kinds of short-term memory mechanisms that underlie our moment-to-moment retention of information about the world. To that end, in this dissertation I review recent scientific evidence for a new form of …

"What's The Use Of Trying To Read Shakespeare?": Modes Of Memory In Virginia Woolf's Fiction And Essays, Sara Remedios Bloom

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation maps the relationship between Virginia Woolf’s fiction and essays, and William Shakespeare’s person and plays. I argue that Woolf’s writing is intended as an interactive practice of cultural memory, challenging her readers to become responders and to engage critically with the canon. I further argue that Woolf offers herself as inheritor of a literary practice that actively seeks to shape the values and social ideology of the time. The introduction defines three modes of memory operating in Woolf’s work: memory as opiate; memory as political instrument; and memory as dialectic. The first chapter shows the cultural memory of …

Experiencing Defeat, Remembering Victory: The Army Of Tennessee In War And Memory, 1861-1930, Robert Lamar Glaze

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the meaning of the Civil War in the South by examining white Southerners’ perceptions of the Army of Tennessee from 1861 to 1930. While scholarship on the war’s memory is immense and growing, little of this literature examines the memory of the Confederacy's war effort in the western theater—the area of operations military historians now deem central to the war's outcome. This project rectifies that oversight by examining white Southerners’ memory of the Army of Tennessee in the post-war decades. Unlike Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy’s primary western field army suffered a near …

The Poet's Corpus: Memory And Monumentality In Wilfred Owen's "The Show", Charles Hunter Joplin

Master's Theses

Wilfred Owen is widely recognized to be the greatest English “trench poet” of the First World War. His posthumously published war poems sculpt a nightmarish vision of trench warfare, one which enables Western audiences to consider the suffering of the English soldiers and the brutality of modern warfare nearly a century after the armistice. However, critical readings of Owen’s canonized corpus, including “The Show” (1917, 1918), only focus on their hellish imagery. I will add to these readings by demonstrating that “The Show” is primarily concerned with the limitations of lyric poetry, the monumentality of poetic composition, and the difficulties …

Only The River Remains: History And Memory Of The Eastland Disaster In The Great Lakes Region, 1915 – 2015, Caitlyn Perry Dial

Dissertations

On July 24, 1915, the passenger boat Eastland capsized while docked in the Chicago River, killing 844 of its 2,500 passengers. The Eastland Disaster remains the greatest loss-of-life tragedy on the Great Lakes. Using museum exhibits, government documents, trial transcripts, period newspapers, oral interviews, images, ephemera, and popular culture materials, this study examines the century after the disaster in terms of the place the Eastland has held in regional and national public memory. For much of that period, the public memory of the tragedy had been lost, but private memories survived through storytelling within the families of survivors, rescuers, and …

Crossing The Great Divide: An Investigation Of Data And Memory, Julia Pollack

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Crossing the Great Divide has been a working project for over two years. The project was initially inspired by the maps drawn and paths traversed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark 1804-1806. From June to August of 2015 a few travelers and myself followed their historic journey and traversed the landscapes of the American frontier on bicycle. We chose this mode of travel as it put us into a direct intimate relationship with the landscape and thus a more sympathetic connection to the histories that preceded us. Leaving from Clark’s survey point of Indian Boundary Line on the shore of …

The Archon(S) Of Wildfell Hall: Memory And The Frame Narrative In Anne Brontë’S The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, Alyson June Fullmer

Theses and Dissertations

In the first chapter of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Gilbert Markham invites his reader to join him as he attempts to recall the past. Because Gilbert uses the journal of another to supplement his own memories, the novel's frame narrative structure becomes saturated with complex memory-based issues and problems. Thus, the complicated frame narrative provides fertile ground for exploring the novel through memory. In studying the frame narrative, scholars have typically devoted their criticism to Gilbert and how he shapes the frame. Few scholars afford the other primary narrator of the novel, Helen, any power in shaping …

Continuum Of Significance, Diane Lee

Masters Theses

At the intersection of multiple simultaneous timelines, Continuum of Significance is a graphic design practice that acknowledges time and meaning as fluid, shifting variables. By challenging notions of obsolescence and assumed valuations, the work brings forward stories and experiences that might otherwise go unnoticed, or quickly fade from memory.

This body of work explores various attempts at reconciliation, vacillating between faster modes of production, and a practice deeply anchored and concerned with history, research, iteration, and contemplation. Materials gleaned from the mundane: the expired historic archive, and the vivid digital cache, are recomposed to invoke a slow read in our …

The Reality Of Combat!: An Analysis Of Historical Memory In Broadcast Television, Kaleb Q. Wentz

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the World War II television drama COMBAT!, which ran from 1962 to 1967, and how this program dealt with and addressed the national memory of the Second World War. The way in which the “Good War” is remembered has changed over time. In the years of the conflict and immediately following its conclusion, there was a sense of zealous patriotism surrounding the war, but as our culture changed, a more critical approach was taken.

This paper examines the way in which the show deals with its two main subjects – the American forces …

Remembrance: Drink While The Water Is Clean, Marissa Angel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper supports the Artist’s Master of Fine Arts exhibition held at the Tipton Gallery, located in downtown Johnson City TN from November 30, 2015 through January 22, 2016. The works Included in the exhibition consists of a series of mixed media collage paintings, a large scale etching combined with clay and a site specific installation.

The Exhibit features work that delves into the concept of nature as a subject of beauty, as well as a symbol of the resiliency of life. The work in this exhibit exposes the separation that exists between humanity and the natural world. Through …

Lieux De Mémoire, Lieux D'Oubli: La Mémoire Et L'Espace Urbain Dans Deux Romans De Patrick Modiano, Julia Mardeusz

Senior Theses and Projects

In this paper, I examine the intersection of memory and urban space in two of Patrick Modiano's novels, Dora Bruder and Quartier Perdu. To explain their intersection in these two novels and the difference between how memory and place relate to one another in each novel, I rely on theories of how collective and individual memory are affected by urban space created by Pierre Nora and Qazi Azizul Mowla.

"The Property Of The Nation": Democracy And The Memory Of George Washington, 1799-1865, Matthew Ryan Costello

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation explores how Americans personally experienced George Washington’s legacy in the nineteenth century through visits to his estate and tomb at Mount Vernon. By the 1820s many Americans had conflicting memories of the American Revolution and its most iconic figure, George Washington. As America grew more divided, so too did the memory of Washington. On multiple occasions, government factions and organizations attempted to claim his remains for political reasons. At the same time, Americans and foreign travelers journeyed to Mount Vernon to experience his tomb and forge a deeper personal connection with the man. These visitors collected objects such …

"The Fate Which Takes Us:" Benjamin F. Beall And Jefferson County, (West) Virginia In The Civil War Era, Matthew Coletti

Masters Theses

This thesis analyzes the editorial content of a popular regional newspaper from the Shenandoah Valley, the Spirit of Jefferson, during the height of the Civil-War Era (1848-1870). The newspaper’s editor during most of the period, Benjamin F. Beall, was a white, southern slaveholder of humble origins, who spent time serving in the Confederate military. Beall, however, had also quickly established himself as one of the preeminent Democrats in his home county of Jefferson, as well as both the Shenandoah Valley and the new state of West Virginia. Beall firmly believed in the institution of racial slavery and fought to …

Lost-And-Found Photos: Practices And Perceptions, Todd J. Wemmer

Doctoral Dissertations

Personal photographs become separated from their original owners in a number of ways, due to time or tragedy, sometimes ending up in strangers’ hands. Dealers, collectors, curators, bloggers, scholars, and families actively seek what are frequently called “orphaned,” “abandoned,” or “found” photos and present them to the public in multiple formats. This dissertation offers an analysis of the practices and perceptions that surround these presentations, and it argues for use of a more inclusive term (“lost-and-found”) to describe personal photos that are connected to both finders and losers. Data were collected in three primary ways: (1) examination of the current …

“There Is No God And We Are His Prophets”: The Visionary Potential Of Memory And Nostalgia In Cormac Mccarthy's No Country For Old Men And The Road, Marie Reine Pugh

Theses and Dissertations

Memory and nostalgia work in complex, paradoxical ways in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and The Road, both haunting the main protagonists, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell and the father, as well as bringing them to crucial realizations. These men give up the traditional hero role for the more meaningful and generative image of “carrying the fire,” which unites these two novels. Carrying the fire represents a memorial and nostalgic longing for home and family. Bell and the father attain this vision because of their obsession with the past, and because of their struggle with memory and nostalgia. Memory, …

Mémoire Et Identité Dans Les Réécritures Caribéennes : Wide Sargasso Sea Et La Migration Des Coeurs, Camille Charlery

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis will study creole identity in Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), prequel of Jane Eyre, as well as in Maryse Condé's La Migration des Coeurs (1995), a rewriting of Wuthering Heights. I argue that both novels create a new creole identity by conversing with their original texts as well as by going beyond the official definition of creoleness. Using the concepts of obsessive memory and forced forgetfulness, I explore the tension betwee innate and constructed identity. First, I focus on the meaning of creoleness, then, I examine how memory plays a crucial role in the novels through topics …

On Coming And Going, Quintin Teszeri

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dossier and the accompanying exhibition On Coming and Going (presented at the Artlab Gallery in January 2017) constitute my MFA in Visual Arts thesis. The first chapter of this dossier is a Comprehensive Artist Statement in which I reflect on how my art, thinking, and life engage different meanings of coming and going in different ways. The statement approaches a deeply subjective and aggregate philosophy, or perhaps an attitude, or perhaps most appropriately if also most cliché, a way of being, in the face of relentless transience. The second chapter is a review of Michel de Broin’s 2016 Castles …

The Christmas Truce: Myth, Memory, And The First World War, Theresa B. Crocker

Theses and Dissertations--History

The 1914 Christmas truce, when enemy soldiers met, fraternized and even played football in No-Man’s-Land, is frequently used to support the popular view of the First World War as a “stupid, tragic and futile” conflict, the ultimate “bad” war. The truce, which one historian describes as “a candle lit in the darkness of Flanders,” is commonly perceived as a manifestation of the anger that soldiers felt towards the meaningless war which they had been tricked into fighting. However, contemporaneous sources show that the impromptu cease-fire was not an act of defiance, but rather arose from the professionalism of the soldiers …

Drawing Out The Intangible: A Study Of The Depiction And Reinterpretation Of Memory In Two Comics, Malkie Scarf

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

This project is concerned with how we remember, represent, and reinterpret personal history, and it addresses what happens when the intangible stuff of memory and personal experience (lacking any stable visual appearance) are materialized into a visual format – that is, into the medium of comics, comprised of both images and words. Two stand-alone comic books deeply invested in this task of reinterpreting personal memories are at the fore of this analysis: David B.'s Epileptic and David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp.

"An Everlasting Service": The American And Canadian Legions Remember The First World War, 1919-1941, Mary E. Osborne

Theses and Dissertations--History

The public tends to think of war memorials as fixed monuments, but I argue that the American and Canadian Legions served as living memorials that acknowledged veterans’ war-time service by providing service to veterans and to the public. This dissertation focuses on how Legionnaires interacted with one another and with their local communities during the interwar years to construct memories of the First World War. By analyzing local chapter records from Michigan, New York, and Ontario, Canada, this case study highlights the contrast between the organizations’ national and local activities. The local posts’ and branches’ wide range of activities complicated …

Echoes, Sarah Abigail Adleman

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

When I was sixteen, my mother was killed one evening while running on the bayou behind our house in Houston. The man, who is now on Death Row in Texas, beat, raped, and then strangled her to death. Writer Mary Cappello says of Creative Nonfiction, to compose discursively requires that we turn in the direction of the discourses that have made us who we are rather than start from a place of what we think happened to us in the course of our lives. She goes on further to say, Creative nonfiction appreciates the power of prepositions. Instead of writing …

Body Memory, Juana Cecilia Arias

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The Arts Center of St. Peter, located at 315 S. Minnesota Ave, in St. Peter, MN, hosted the thesis exhibit, Body Memory. The exhibit ran from April 8, 2016, through May 8, 2016. The opening reception was held on Saturday, April 9, 2016.

Ceramic sculptures were created with a variety of textile and paper imprints on the clay surface, then folded over an internal paper structure, and placed in a constructed canvas hammock to allow gravity to alter the form. All sculptures were finished using underglaze washes to emphasize the surface textures. Gloss tile sealer, wax, waxed paper, silk, or …

Meta-Analysis Of Cognitive Performance In Fibromyalgia, Tyler Reed Bell

All ETDs from UAB

Fibromyalgia is a disease that encompasses difficulties with pain, physical function, and emotion, but is also characterized by complaints of poor cognition. Over the last two decades, a vast amount of literature has tested for cognitive differences between individuals with and without fibromyalgia. The purpose of the current study was to conduct a quantitative synthesis on these differences across multiple cognitive domains. After a systematic search of eligible studies, random-effect meta-analyses were conducted on effect sizes (Hedges’ g) derived from 37 cross-sectional studies covering domains of processing speed, memory and executive function. Participants included persons with fibromyalgia (total n = …

Narrativizing Pain: Reconstructing Selfhood Through Memory And Language, Erin Joy Carden

Senior Projects Spring 2016

The three female authors I study for this paper- Alicia Kozameh, Alicia Partnoy, and Nora Strejilevich- are all survivors of the Argentinean military Junta’s state-inflicted terror and who have written, with great beauty, about the horrors they experienced as political prisoners during the Dirty War. Through the written word these survivors gain the power to reclaim their human dignity and a sense of distinctive selfhood which were severely damaged through trauma and torture. Through analyzing four works: Steps Under Water(1996) by Alicia Kozameh, The Little School(1986) and Revenge of the Apple(1999) by Alicia Partnoy, and A Single …

"Recipes Like Floating Islands:" Recipe, Autobiography, And Memory In The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, Chloe Alice Chappe

Senior Projects Spring 2016

My project is an exploration of various dimensions of The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. The cook book is a cook book, but it is also a collection and an autobiography. The recipes in the book originated in Alice’s physical recipe collection box which began when she was a child and continued throughout her life. The autobiographical narrative develops out of the memories that were created around each recipe. Because of the compilation of memories that are attached to each of the recipes in the collection, Alice writes her life story through her recipes. Each recipe represents a person, …

El Valle De Los Caídos: Spain’S Inability To Digest Its Historical Memory, Michael Heard Johnson

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Effects Of Affective Arousal On Color Perception And Memory, Nicole Elizabeth Lang

Senior Projects Spring 2016

The link between affective arousal, color perception, and color memory was explored by inducing fear, sadness, or embarrassment in 158 participants who them completed a color perception and memory task. It was predicted that participants experiencing fear or embarrassment would more often correctly identify and remember red and green than a neutral condition whereas experiencing sadness would lead to less correct identification and memory for blue and yellow than neutral. There was only a marginally significant effect of fear on color memory for red. In the low arousal condition, there was an effect of fear on color memory for green …