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Toward Truth And Reconciliation: Public Memory, Philosophical Pairs, And The Edmund Pettus Bridge, Allyson K. Hayden
Toward Truth And Reconciliation: Public Memory, Philosophical Pairs, And The Edmund Pettus Bridge, Allyson K. Hayden
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis connects the rhetoric of Bryan Stevenson which advances truth and reconciliation for racial healing in the United States to a case study of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. I examine common cultural invocations of the bridge that support the persistence of a blurry public memory that occludes visibility of its original memorial dedication to a known white supremacist and instead celebrates it as a landmark of the civil rights movement. I also analyze arguments for both changing and keeping the name of the bridge that occurred between 2015-2020, illustrating ways in which Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s philosophical …
Vietnam Continued: The Battle For American Public Memory In Public School History Textbooks, Donnie Owens
Vietnam Continued: The Battle For American Public Memory In Public School History Textbooks, Donnie Owens
All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023
The question of “how do we actively remember the past?” can perhaps best describe the purpose of public memory studies. Acknowledging this question, I analyze popular public-school textbooks to assess the way in which educational literature constructs the public memory of the Vietnam War. In total, the narratives of the texts construct a public memory of Vietnam as a controversial conflict contained within a decade of American uncertainty. However, these narratives also take care to minimize or leave aside the details of Vietnam’s lasting impact and in favor of reaffirming American exceptionalism. Ultimately, this thesis finds that students who read …
Memory And Rememory: Critically Cultivating An Appropriate Response Through A Storied Approach To Listening, Katie W. Powell
Memory And Rememory: Critically Cultivating An Appropriate Response Through A Storied Approach To Listening, Katie W. Powell
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation argues for a storied approach to listening from the perspective of a white Southern woman. To do this, I carefully followed the work of two community groups. One, the Washington County Community Remembrance Project, is working to install a marker venerating Aaron, Anthony, and Randall, three enslaved people who were lynched in our area in 1856. The other, the James H. Berry United Daughters of the Confederacy, is responsible for installing a Confederate statue on the Bentonville Square in 1908 that was removed in 2020. As illustrated by the use of archival research and embedded participation in interracial …
The Myth Of Southern Atonement: Constructed Forgiveness In Public Spaces, Elizabeth Ashley Clayborn
The Myth Of Southern Atonement: Constructed Forgiveness In Public Spaces, Elizabeth Ashley Clayborn
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This thesis provides a rhetorical analysis of public space in Arkansas and examines the ways in which the myth of Southern Atonement is constructed within those spaces. Three formal elements characterize Southern Atonement: absolution from the past, distinctiveness in constructed authenticity, and hope for a post-racial future. The analysis develops over three case studies which I argue contribute to the construction, engagement, and actualization of this cultural myth. The first chapter looks at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and The Unexpected art project as a source of identity construction and place attachment. Then I examine The Billgrimage, or the monuments and museums …
Constitutive Memories Of City Space: Rhetorics Of Civil Rights Memory In Detroit’S Urban Landscape, Scott Mitchell
Constitutive Memories Of City Space: Rhetorics Of Civil Rights Memory In Detroit’S Urban Landscape, Scott Mitchell
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation examines public memories of civil rights injustice and resistance as constitutive rhetorics of urban culture and spatiality for the city of Detroit. By studying the city of Detroit as it navigates an ongoing period of dramatic change and redevelopment, this study demonstrates how material manifestations of memory become the constitutive forces that define what many describe as “Detroit’s heart and soul.” This project illustrates the embedded cultural logics produced from sites of public memory, thereby arguing city spaces as locations bound to their legacies and beholden to material and symbolic consequences of their past. This dissertation proceeds through …
Embedding Nationalism: Construction & Effects Of National Narratives In The Xxvii Olympic Games' Opening Ceremony, Rachel Elizabeth Presley
Embedding Nationalism: Construction & Effects Of National Narratives In The Xxvii Olympic Games' Opening Ceremony, Rachel Elizabeth Presley
Theses - ALL
This thesis examines the construction and effects of the XXVII Olympic Games’ opening ceremony as a national narrative, scripted by and for the state. The performance’s chronological structure and staging of its characters have profound effects on how Australian bodies are read and remembered as citizens. The ceremony’s narrative features a distorted retelling of colonial history that produces enormous consequences in how Indigenous and non-Indigenous, male and female actors are presented. An analysis of these characters reveals how the national narrative comes to function as a piece of political propaganda that perpetuates idealized forms of citizenship within a hegemonic patriarchal …
Detroit's Sport Spaces And The Rhetoric Of Consumption, Anthony C. Cavaiani
Detroit's Sport Spaces And The Rhetoric Of Consumption, Anthony C. Cavaiani
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation argues how Detroit’s spaces of sport consumption rhetorically configure the city’s identity. Specifically, this project interrogates the city’s sports spaces and argues how they anchor identity in the following ways: through the production of accessible discourses, through the emphasis on certain discourses and the de-emphasis of other discourses, through the regulation, control and biopower of the city’s sports spaces and their rhetorical effect on Detroit’s identity, and through the creation of distinct public memories produced from these discourses.