Digital Commons Network^™

Objects Of Remembering: Material Culture, Oral Histories, And Historic Sites In Utah's World War Ii Story, Sara Watkins

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

The Second World War was a war of stuff and stories. Much of this stuff still exists today in the form of objects, oral histories, and historic places. They remind people of the families from all over the state of Utah who sent sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers to faraway lands to fight for their freedoms. Many of these men did not come home, and those who did return came back with experiences that forever changed them. Objects, stories, and places also show how the war touched those on the home front. Women went to work in the defense industry, …

Decolonizing Memory: Erasure And Resurgence Of Indigenous History In The Intermountain West, Chase Wilson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Decolonizing language, memory, and history is an important step in confronting dominant historical narratives in higher education and the general public. This paper focuses on the settlement of the US Intermountain West – where the violent roots of white settlement have been downplayed in the public historical consciousness through the dominant narrative of "pioneer heritage." Beginning with a study of Ogden, Utah, early histories of the area are reexamined, analyzing the contexts in which Native peoples are mentioned (or not) in order to understand their presence by the turn of the twentieth century. Next, my focus moves on to analysis …

“Whan The Turuf Is Thy Tour”: Analyzing Gender Codes Of Burial Monuments In Late Medieval And Early Modern England, Shelbie Durrant

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The cultural pressures of gender conformity and "norms" have lasted as long as the social constructs of gender themselves. Gender is present and can be analyzed in symbols within material culture such as the Russell family funerary monuments located in their private chapel in Chenies, London. Gender, although not always transparently at the front of consciousness, was interacted with, performed, and memorialized in life and death, especially for families that were high status. The presence of gender in these funerary monuments illuminates how expected conformity of gender norms were in this time — so present that they were literally set …

Personal Details, Ben Nathan

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In 2022 I lost my Paternal Grandmother. I found that in addition to the loss of a dear matriarch I mourned everyday things lost to the past. From furniture to childhood relationships, I was made keenly aware of their absence. As I longed to spend more time in the past, I created a studio practice of printing and drawing, whereby I enable myself to spend hours a day in quiet introspection, just drawing and reflecting on my life as expressed by personal details.

My work melds renderings of everyday spaces and objects from memories of childhood and my present experience …

Telling Her People's Story: Mae Timbimboo Parry, Matriarch Of The Northwestern Band Of The Shoshone Nation, 1919-2007, Dean Mcguire

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Mae Timbimboo Parry played a significant role in changing the public’s narrative about the Bear River Massacre and shaping the current knowledge about Northwestern Shoshone history. According to Mae Parry, Northwestern Shoshones were not desperate victims of violence but rather Native Americans who adapted from a great tragedy and survived on their own terms. This thesis explores the meaning of her work for Northwestern Shoshones today.

Spectrum, Kara Kellett

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Many people believe their memory works like a video camera, capturing and storing their experiences. However, memories can be manipulated or planted without us noticing. If this seems insignificant, consider the big consequences of false memory: although eyewitness identification of a criminal is often unreliable, it has an incredible power to sway a jury.¹

My interest in studying memory and my introspective nature has led me to create this series of work—a visual collection of my experiences as a spectrum of color and shape. These pieces have been influenced by age, emotion, personality, and bias. With each piece, I …

Remembering As Resurrection: Transgenerational Trauma And Memory In J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter Series, Erika Beckstrand

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

What does it mean to bear witness to the memories of previous generations’ trauma victims? What lessons should we learn from those who came before us to ensure a happier future?

This thesis explores the trauma and memories of the deceased or older generation found in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. I intend to analyze the character of Harry Potter as he interacts with the memories of the previous generation, which he is able to resurrect in embodied forms through the use of magic. By testifying to the memories of the previous generations’ trauma, Harry is able to break the …

The Role Of Orexin Receptors In Diurnal Variations In Learning And Memory, Jacob Christian Blotter

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The brain's ability to learn and remember is a topic of extensive debate and research. Mammals share many similarities, including the way in which information from the outside world is processed and stored. Mammalian circadian rhythms have long been thought to be essentially involved with these processes. Orexin, a neurotransmitter in the brain, plays a crucial role in arousal and circadian rhythm. This study is designed to explore the brain's ability to process and store information at different times of the circadian period, and to explore the role of orexin by comparing the performance of normal (wild-type) mice and abnormal …

Survival Analysis For Truncated Data And Competing Risks, Michael Steelman

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The purpose of this project is to consider the problems of left truncation and competing risks in analyzing censored survival data, and to compare and contrast various approaches for handling these problems. The motivation for this work comes from an analysis of data from the Cache County Memory Study. Study investigators were interested in the association between early-life psychologically stressful events (e.g., parental or sibling death, or parental divorce, among others) and late-life risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). While conventional methods for censored survival data can be applied, the presence of left truncation and competing risks (i.e., other adverse events …

The Pool Of Memory, Elizabeth Diane Hansen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

A selection of images portraying "The Pool of Memory"

Communities Of Memory: The Utah History Fair And The Utilization Of History And Memory, Nicholas Andrew Demas

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Utah's students, grades 4-12, create projects for the Utah History Fair, Utah's National History Day affiliate program. As far as the rigors of youth academic prowess are concerned, National History Day and the Utah History Fair are amongst the top in the nation. Within the myriad of projects created by Utah's participating students is important information about what aspects of the past captures students' attention and why they choose to research their selected topics. Through a careful examination of student topics from 1981-1984 and 2009-2012, this project taps into what students comprehend about the past. Further inspection into why students …

Ordinary Spirits In An Extraordinary Town: Finding Identity In Personal Images And Resurrected Memories In Lily Dale, New York, Mary Catherine Gaydos Gabriel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Every summer, Lily Dale, New York, a community founded on spiritualist beliefs and steeped in an eccentric explosive past, hosts thousands of visitors seeking to communicate with dead friends and relatives, while the residents lead ordinary lives in the midst of the supernatural hype permeating their town. Their stories are considered by most to be secondary to the illustrious trappings of the community in which they occurred. My research employs oral histories prompted by personal photographs to showcase the residents' everyday experiences amidst the town's infamy, illuminating the undervalued individual experience of those living in communities of such extraordinary repute. …

Heritability Of Cognition Subscales In The Cache County Memory Study Cohort And Methods For Estimating Heritability, Colette Kelly Childs

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The rapid improvement of genotyping technology holds the promise of better understanding the genetic causes of complex disease. While traits of interest often include the presence or absence of disease, there is growing interest in intermediate phenotypes (or so-called endophenotypes) that may yield more information about disease onset or course. In particular, changes over time with respect to an investigative ordinal measure often contain significant predictive power, and rate-of-change phenotypes are becoming important in their own right when studying genetic association. Initial steps in assessing the potential genetic determinants of a continuous trait often involve estimating the degree of the …

Monuments And Massacre: The Art Of Remembering, Lafe Gerald Conner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Rain transformed the dusty trail outside our trailer into a highway of sediments speeding and settling. Inside the trailer I pulled on my boots and raincoat while my dad slipped into a larger version of his own. Then, with my two brothers, we embarked in puddle play. Aimed at impeding the torrent, we employed any object; rocks, branches, wood chips, even our own wet boots and hands. Eight years old, maybe nine and I knew nothing about erosion or sedimentation, only that rain brought the stream and the stream brought puddle play.

I hold this memory, feeling its grainy texture …

Jamie Hyatt Memorials, Jamie Lea Hyatt

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

In the words of Carlo Scarpa, "remembering is like constructing and then traveling again through a space" (Scarpa 2000). It is my desire to illustrate the importance of using a collective memory and emotion when designing a space. To demonstrate my findings I will relate the importance of memory and emotion, as tools designers can use in conveying meaning through design, with four different memorial spaces. These memorials include the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C.; the Meditation Space in Paris, France; the Oklahoma City Memorial in Oklahoma City; and the East Side Gallery in Berlin, Germany. It is my hope …

Diabetes, Cognitive Decline, And Alzheimer's Disease: The Cache County Study On Memory, Health, And Aging, Gene Charoonruk

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Studies have reported mixed results for people with or without diabetes with cognitive decline or Alzheimer's disease (AD). Cognitive decline and AD among people with diabetes will be the focus of much discussion since results have been controversial.

The study examined whether diabetes is associated with cognitive decline and whether it is an independent risk factor for the development of AD among elderly residents of Cache County, Utah.

Results revealed an association between diabetes and a lower average Modified Mini Mental State Examination (3MS) score of nearly a point lower at baseline. Results also showed an association between diabetes and …

Artistic Truth, Jennifer Jones

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Since I began writing personal essays I have looked at others' writings differently. I analyze writing techniques and look for hidden how-to instructions from which I can learn more about the craft from the masters. One technique that has continually fascinated and challenged me as a writer is the weaving of fact and fiction into meaningful and colorful works of art. As I grew more serious about writing creative non-fiction my senior year, my interest in the shaping of truth in writing intensified and the idea for this study was born. Part One of the following is a compilation of …

The Effect Of Elaboration On Memory: Self-Generated Elaboration Vs Experimenter-Provided Elaboration, Sung-Il Kim

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of elaborations on memory. Two types of elaborations (self-generated elaboration and experimenter-provided elaboration) were examined. The experiment consisted of three phases (incidental learning phase, immediate test phase, and delayed test phase). In the incidental learning phase, subjects were asked to make plausibility judgments about 28 fictitious episodes. Half of these were about well-known individuals and the other half were about unknown individuals. Each name (either well-known or unknown) was presented with either two supportive facts or without the supportive facts. During the immediate test phase, subjects were given unexpected memory …

The Preschool Child's Knowledge Of Musical Pitch, Farol Ann Nelson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The objective of this study was to determine what kinds of musical instruments were most effective in developing pitch discrimination in preschool children. Five melody instruments were used in this study, including a wooden soprano recorder, a C flute, a commercially made xylophone, a melodica, and a set of cut conduit pipes played as a xylophone-type instrument. Children from the Child Development Labs at Utah State University, Logan, Utah comprised the sample.

It was found that children do identify high and low pitches more easily in some instruments than in others. They discriminated between high and low pitches of the …

Verbal Memory Of Preschool Indian And Non/Indian Headstart Children, Karen L. Swenson Carter

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this study was to test the hypotheses l) there is a significant difference between scores of Head Start children on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in Utah and the norms of the Verbal Memory Test from the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities; 2) there will not be an association between being Indian or non-Indian; 3 ) there will be an association between teaching styles and the children's performance on the language test. The T test was used to analyze all of the data. The experimental sample scored lower, but not significantly lower than the standardized norms. …