Digital Commons Network^™

Beyond The Battlefield: Direct And Prosthetic Memory Of The American War In Viet Nam, Susan L. Eastman

Doctoral Dissertations

“Beyond the Battlefield: Direct and Prosthetic Memory of the American War in Viet Nam” examines shifts in American, Viet Namese, and Philippine memorial, literary, and cinematic remembrance of the war through the cultural lenses of later wars: the Gulf War (1990-1991) and the “War on Terror” that began in 2001. As opposed to earlier portrayals of the American War in Viet Nam (1964-1975), turn-to-the-twenty-first-century representations engage in an ever-broadening collected cultural memory—a compilation of multifaceted, sometimes competing, individual and group memories—of the war. “Beyond the Battlefield” begins with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) because it serves as the impetus for …

Representations Of Remembrance: Literature And Memory In Borges, Pigila, And Fresán, Paul Michael Mcneil

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines three works by Argentine authors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries: Jorge Luis Borges's "La memoria de Shakespeare," Ricardo Piglia's La ciudad ausente, and Rodrigo Fresán's Mantra. These works explore the theme of memory directly, and provide insight into the role of memory in relation to literature, technology, and media. To understand memory and its functions and failures, I employ concepts from recent scientific inquiry into the nature of memory, particularly neuroscience and clinical psychology. Within this framework, I show how memory and narrative fiction share a number of similarities, and explore the …

Memory Created, Maria Fabrizio

Theses and Dissertations

Memory is like afternoon light penetrating the windows of a fast moving car. The light coming through the trees creates images, reveals objects and faces, and introduces fluctuating sensations of warmth and coolness. Sometimes these images appear in logical sequences and at other times they are fleeting, surreal, and ambiguous. While memories are often presented linearly as fact, in actuality our stories only grasp at the truth. They are fragmented, imagined, and rearranged. By examining the intersection of reality and imagination in memories we see retelling as an act of creativity.

The Door In The Threshold., Ani Kristine Volkan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is the supporting document for the Master of Fine Arts exhibition, The Door in the Threshold, held in the Slocumb Galleries at East Tennessee State University from March 15-19, 2010. The exhibition contains twelve pieces of artwork, mounted on the wall. The paper expands upon such themes as memory and family as explored by the work in the gallery. The title of both the paper and show reference the impact of my Armenian heritage on my creative process. Doors in Armenian folklore were sacred places containing the threshold to the spiritual. Thus, my pieces are meant to …

Screen/Writing: Time & Cinematics In An Age Of Rhetorical Memory, Joshua Hilst

All Dissertations

This essay argues that part of memory is external to ourselves. This memory, which began with writing but has since grown to encompass digital media, the internet, and other forms of new media, faces a two-fold problem in the information age. The first is privatization, which is represented by copyright, and has heretofore received a greater share of scholarly attention. Regulation is represented through the concept of protocols, which are the rules digital media execute in order to perform functions. Protocols are a regulation of external memory, which I argue also represents a threat to deliberation, the form of rhetoric …

Voice On The Skin, Sarah Turner

Theses and Dissertations

“The body can write on the skin from the inside—the soul, the mind, and the passions rise to the surface in boils, blushes, and rashes, and the invisible inside speaks by writing from the other side of the page”. -James Elkins Skin not only covers but reveals what is behind it. I utilize its language as indicator of flaws and pathologies. I depict and manipulate this, not just as it already exists with the human body, but as projections of my psychological states onto inanimate objects. Proposing that sight is a kind of touch, we touch with our minds, through …

Amnesia Y Nostalgia, Una Odisea Africana Y Española: La Inmigración Africana En La Espana Contemporanea Como Vista En Tres Representaciones Fílmicas Españolas, Lorraine Anne Lynch

World Languages and Cultures Theses

Este trabajo explora los temas de la nostalgia y la amnesia, de los africanos inmigrantes así como de los españoles, representados en tres películas contemporáneas españolas que se tratan de la inmigración de los africanos a España. Va a explorar estos temas de la amnesia y la nostalgia a través de los pasos de un inmigrante africano – 1ª paso) el viaje difícil de África a España, 2ª paso) la vida del inmigrante dentro de España, y 3ª paso) el regreso a África - como representados, respectivamente, en las siguientes películas: 14 kilómetros (2008), Said (1998), y Pobladores (2006).

Empty Streets In The Capital Of Modernity: Formation Of Lieux De Mémoire In Parisian Street Photography From Daguerre To Atget, Sabrina Lynn Hughes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study proposes the existence of lieux de mémoire in the photographs of Eugene Atget (1857-1927). My framework is based on historian Pierre Nora's definition: a lieu de mémoire is an object or idea which has become a symbolic stand-in for a community's memorial heritage. I suggest that Atget's photographs of the streets of old Paris, in concert with an empty-street aesthetic function as lieux de mémoire for their primary audience, antiquarians and professional archivists who specialized in old Paris.

According to Nora's structure, identification of a lieu de mémoire requires first the establishment of a historical tradition. In the …

A Land Fit For Heroes?: The Great War, Memory, Popular Culture, And Politics In Ireland Since 1914, Jason Robert Myers

Dissertations

Despite the fact that over 200,000 Irish men fought in the British Army during the First World War, Ireland's sizeable contribution to the war remained in the shadows of history for most of the twentieth century. This dissertation examines the cultural components of the memory of the Great War in Ireland and argues that, taken together, they constitute an alternative Irish national identity that threatened and challenged republican nationalism. These cultural components existed in the realm of vernacular memory, which lay beyond the reach of the Irish government. By examining commemorative rituals, war memorials, and popular culture, this project breathes …

Rightly Or For Ill: The Ethics Of Remembering And Forgetting, Alison Nicole Reiheld '93

Doctoral Dissertations

Forgetting a birthday, a wedding anniversary, a beloved child's school play or a dear colleague's important accomplishments is often met with blame, whereas remembering them can engender praise. Are we in fact blameworthy or praiseworthy for such remembering and forgetting? When ought we to remember, in the ethical sense of 'ought'? And ought we in some cases to allow ourselves to forget?

These are the questions that ground this philosophical work. In fact, we so often unreflectively assign moral blame and praise to ourselves and others for memory behaviors that this faculty, and moral responsibility for it, deserve careful philosophical …

The Cultural Memory Of German Victimhood In Post-1990 Popular German Literature And Television, Pauline Ebert

Wayne State University Dissertations

My dissertation analyzes the representation of Germans as victims of the Third Reich and the Second World War in post-1990 German memory. After unification, there no longer were two states that could each blame the other as the heir of National Socialism and this past had to be renegotiated. The claim that many Germans had been victims became central as evidenced by the vast number of popular literature, commercial cinema and television programs of this subject. I argue with Wulf Kansteiner (2006) that to understand collective memory, we should explore mass media representations. As the majority of highbrow artifacts do …

Recasting The Role Of Memory In The History Of Rhetoric: The Case Of Nineteenth And Twentieth Century Autobiographies By Rhetors Of Color, Hector Carbajal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The primary object of study in this dissertation is memory within autobiographical writing among writers of color. Specifically, this project uses autobiographies by Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Frederick Douglass as case studies for how minority writers of color remember within the act of writing. Memory is an important object of study because it is partially the medium by which knowledge is reproduced, reconstructed, and invented. Autobiographical writing is significant because it is a genre that has enabled individuals to write themselves as part of history. Being a part of history is important because it allows a subject to change the …

Altered Interactions, Kristen Rego

Theses and Dissertations

Surrounding materials, signage, and detritus on the daily path offer plenty to look at, if not too much. The eye seeks comfort in its passive vision by ignoring its peripheries. Identification of my personal vision reveals itself through the manipulation of ignored material. I consider hand-made vs. machine made, singular vs. the multiple particularly in plastics, packaging and other utilitarian objects. Industrial processes influence my one-person operation. Understanding the way objects are made allows for an opportunity to connect with them. I’m already surrounded by them, the least I can do is get to know them better.