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The Dark Is Not My Enemy: The Personal Essay As A Form To Explore Trauma And Memory, Raistlyn Camphuysen

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Dark Is Not My Enemy is a collection of personal essays exploring the connection between trauma and memory, as well as how different forms of the personal essay respond to the challenges of memory in the meaning-making process. This thesis includes three essays—a scenic flash essay, a lyric essay, and a memoir essay—and a critical introduction that explores the theories that inform the formal choices made in the essays and explains how these choices help confront, understand, and heal from sexual trauma.

Laypeople’S Perceptions Of Secondary Trauma In Criminal Justice System Workers, Mariah Simone

Student Theses

This study sought to examine laypeople’s perceptions of secondary trauma experienced by criminal justice system workers. Specifically, how these perceptions of exposure to secondary trauma influence laypeople’s perceptions of those workers’ memory ability. To investigate these perceptions, we collected data from 70 participants in a Pilot Study, 383 participants in Study 1, and 408 participants in a Replication of Study 1 regarding their perceptions of secondary trauma in various criminal justice careers. Specifically, using a modified Autobiographically Memory Questionnaire to examine how their perceptions of secondary trauma exposure affects their perceptions of memory ability in these workers. We also collected …

Standing On The Edge Of A Dream, Parto Ahmadpour Mobarake

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Standing On the Edge of a Dream delves into the intricate tapestry of lived experiences shaped by relocation, emphasizing the nuanced space that exists between reality and imagination. As an individual who has undergone the transformative journey of immigration, I recognize that the concept of relocation is like standing on the edge of a dream. This notion becomes a living structure, intricately woven with threads from our past, present, and future. My artistic exploration extends beyond my artworks, yet it remains deeply rooted in my personal narratives. The artworks in the exhibition continue to draw inspiration from personal memories and …

Making It Stick: Exploring Teaching Tools For Choreography Retention In High School Musicals, Katie Arjona

Master's Theses

Dancers often perform pieces that linger in their brains and bodies long after they are danced on stage. For some dancers, the use of unique pieces of music, unusual technical elements, or an emotional connection to the movement has imprinted choreography in the dancer’s body and mind. In preparation for musicals done at the high school level, dancers are often asked to learn choreography to multiple songs within a short span of time and often have little dance training. This creates a unique position for the high school choreographer who will not only have to teach the actors the steps …

Effects Of Chronic Stress On Working Memory Are Sex-Specific And Age-Dependent, Tyler Jamison Cox

Theses and Dissertations

As the aging demographic of the United States expands, the convergence of age-related cognitive decline and stress-related dysregulation emerges as a substantial concern, impacting not only the lifespan but also the overall well-being of American citizens. In the realm of research, there has been a pronounced focus on Alzheimer's Disease, leading to an imbalanced allocation of resources compared to the study of normal aging. It is widely acknowledged that executive function deteriorates as individuals age, a concept substantiated by numerous investigations conducted in labs dedicated to the study of normal aging. Significantly, even among individuals afflicted with neurodegenerative disorders affecting …

Memory, Violence, And Detours: Strategies Of Resistance To Epidermal Invisibility Within The French Republic, Claudine E. David

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The subjection of black citizens in France and their invisibility in the (post)colonial space has been marked by segregation in peripheral urban zones, with a hardening of policing methods and controls based on racial appearanc. I argue that monumental representation in public space is not neutral but participates in the promotion of a specific ideology. I show thé ellipses in French patrimonial monumental glorification, including the appropriation of the memory of revolutionary heroes such as Louis Delgrès and Toussaint Louverture, concomitant with the occultation of many other black figures. I argue that representation matters, that France must repair this asymmetrical …

The Consolidation Of Memory Associations, Kyle A. Kainec

Doctoral Dissertations

Creating memories is a fundamental challenge for the human brain. To create memories, defining features of experiences must be stored distinguishably without forgetting other memories. Memory associations represent co-occurring features and defining features across experiences. Memory associations are represented as networks of information that are stored in the brain. New memory associations are encoded during experiences and can be used to update existing memory associations during offline intervals. However, the mechanisms that underlie how encoded memory associations are stored within existing networks during offline intervals remains unclear. The experiments in this dissertation address a significant theoretical gap in understanding the …

Investigation Of The Role Of The G-Protein-Coupled Estrogen Receptor In Memory Consolidation In Gonadectomized Male Mice, Gustavo Dalto Barroso Machado

Theses and Dissertations

Estrogens are cholesterol-derived hormones that play crucial physiological and pathological roles in both sexes and across the lifespan. Many research groups have replicated the beneficial roles of 17-beta-estradiol (E2), the most potent estrogen, in memory consolidation in the past decades, even though some mechanisms are still unclear. The rapid effects of E2 in memory formation are attributed to its binding to different estrogen receptors (ER), notably the intracellular receptors ER and ER, as well as the membrane ER called G protein-coupled estrogen receptor (GPER). Previous work from our laboratory demonstrated that acute post-training infusion of E2 into the dorsal hippocampus …

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 …

Screening Bodies: Post-Dictatorship Chilean Cinema, Elaine Joy (Ej) Basa

Theses and Dissertations

Censorship was the modus operandi during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. People and media alike suffered as the oppressive Chilean government suppressed many truths about the Coup, the torture and disappearance of victims and their families, and facts about the state violence that took place from 1973 to the late 1980s. The resulting trauma nurtured a culture of silence, a divided social fabric, and many gaps in historical knowledge. Those who absorbed the media experienced a lack of connection and identification with fabricated and falsified histories, thereby essentially cut off from truly engaging with the traumas of Chile’s dark history. The struggle …

The Effects Of Ketones On Brain Metabolism And Cognition, Erin Reiko Saito

Theses and Dissertations

The brain is one of the most energetically demanding organs within the human body and is cognitively susceptible to energetic deficits such that the rise in obesity, insulin resistance, and Alzheimer’s disease in recent decades pose a substantial threat to cognitive longevity. The therapeutic efficacy of ketones are well-established in epilepsy and are currently being applied to other disease states. Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by impairments in brain glucose uptake and metabolism in regions relevant to learning, memory, and cognition that progress with the disease. While brain glucose uptake is impaired, ketone uptake is unaltered, potentially enabling ketones to fuel …

False Memories For Stereotypes: Effects Of Attention And Delay, Maria Corea Dubon

Theses and Dissertations

The present study investigated the conditions in which stereotype-based beliefs elicit the creation of false memories for information consistent with racial-occupational expectations and the extent to which attentional depletion increases this likelihood. This was examined in the context of racial-occupational stereotypes for White and Latino individuals. Participants were presented with pictures of faces paired with stereotype-consistent and -inconsistent occupational information. One group of participants was exposed to these stimuli while also completing an additional task designed to divide their attention. Their memory for these pairings was tested in both an immediate and delayed recognition test. Due to the social reliance …

Evaluating The Impacts Of Accent And Semantic Context On Listening Effort, Avanti Khare

Honors Theses

Nonnative accented speech is associated with increased listening effort for English-monolingual listeners, even if the speech signal is intelligible. Semantic context is a global characteristic of English phrases that quantifies the degree to which words communicate a cohesive idea. Previous research suggests that semantic context may be used as a helping factor during speech perception in adverse conditions. The current work examines the relationship between speaker accent and semantic context using global semantic anomalies. Participants performed a randomly prompted recall task during lists of varying semantic context levels recorded by native and nonnative-accented speakers. Results are discussed in terms of …

/////// Babaamiwizh – Blood Memory And How We Carry Ancestral Histories /////// On Memory, Immersive Theatre, Improvisation, & Absurdity, Olivia Shortt

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

babaamiwizh – blood memory and how we carry intergenerational histories: a collection of fragmented stories and thoughts on making Indigenous art. These writings attempt to find the balance of an artist's humanity, the artistic process and working with colonial institutions. I am stitching together my perspective on Indigeneity, museums and the process of repatriation, collaboration with trusted community members, as well as the land and its medicines.

Assessing The Potential Influence Of Anti-Transgender Bias On Memory And Judgements, Dante Sasso

Honors Theses

Decades of prior research have shown that our memory is susceptible to a variety of influences that can distort the accuracy of what we remember. For example, false memories can be implanted into an individual's mind and top-down factors like expectations and prejudicial biases can sway what we do and don't remember about an event. The current study was designed to assess the potential memory-modifying influence of an understudied, yet important, type of bias - anti-transgender bias. Although prior research has documented the prevalence of anti-transgender bias in today's society, no study has yet examined how these biases may shape …

Vanitas, Sae Jung Oh

Masters Theses

Vanitas is a tribute to the missing pieces within the reconstruction of human memory, places, and data. It is a cartography of words, including home, apartment complex, reconstruction, mourning, archive, memory, memorialization, a god within, collective memory, photogrammetry, cyberspace, omnipresence, meandering, heterotopia, alleyway, construction site, and mirror. I invite readers to meander in the map of relations and be lost in the topography. What can you discover when you meander? What happens when you renounce being a subject and become an object seamlessly blended into the topography?

Beyond Burial - Transforming Death: A New Ritual Of Farewell And The Ecological Return Of The Body To Nature, Chang Xie

Masters Theses

Burial and funeral culture have been shaped by human self-awareness and reflect an anthropocentric worldview. The modern funeral industry's multi-billion-dollar enterprise is based on the principle of protecting, sanitizing, and beautifying the corpse to promote the idea of human exceptionalism. However, this practice overlooks the natural process of decay and the potential beauty in returning the body to the earth, with which the body shares the same chemical basis as the earth itself. Modern science has provided Eco-friendly green burial methods, such as soil modification, ice burial, and water burial, making it suitable to contribute to natural ecology using human …

A Room Full Of Pigeons And Three Spectators, Dina Khorchid, Dina Nazmi Khorchid

Masters Theses

My work explores themes of identity politics, domesticity, land and memory access - in relation to my own lived experiences as a Palestinian refugee, a daughter of a missing war casualty and an artist.

In this thesis book, I present a cumulation of thoughts, emotions and findings, along with a selection of works from the last two years.

During my time at the Rhode Island School of Design, messenger pigeons took over my studio, channeling physical and mental realms of grief and remembrance. By looking closely at the bird’s aesthetics and behaviorisms in my first semester, their resting deceased bodies …

Rooted In Topsoil, Jiaying Wang

Masters Theses

Disillusioned by my transnational identity, I have come to realize that my sense of belonging is no longer attached to any physical location, but instead to a state of mind, to an intimacy with the world. My notion of home is an obscure and unsettled—at times utopian—idea, which can be infinitely decoded, re-positioned and re-established psychologically. This thesis is an investigation of that liminal state, questioning the paradoxical place at the intersection of longing and belonging, interior and exterior, rootedness and uprootedness. Through a collection of short essays that accompany projects, I seek to unpack the precarious emotional complexities that …

From John Street To Union, Andrew Shea

Masters Theses

I have been making paintings constructed loosely from my experience of walking about one mile each morning from my apartment in Fox Point to my studio in downtown Providence, and of walking back each night. My goal is to rediscover the feeling of these outdoor places—their lights, atmospheres, colors, and topographies—through the process of painting inside the studio. As such, the visual representations of these paintings are not straight-forward and objective, but oblique and affective.

I hope that these works draw one’s attention to the idiosyncrasies of natural life and to the particularities of weather. I want the paintings to …

Cuando Lloro, Melissa Medina

Masters Theses

There are moments where I am suddenly hit with a deep sentimental longing for a time that no longer exists, one that has transformed into a deep nostalgia, one that becomes more and more conflicted as time passes. Often thought of as a yearning for a recent past, or homesickness, nostalgia can be difficult to define. Although the concept and emotion associated with nostalgia may seem familiar, the word is in fact complex. Nostalgia, for the immigrant, is an escape from their marginalization; an opportunity to embrace the complexities. Painting then becomes an embrace, a direct connection between the present …

Objects And Apparitions: A Portable Museum, Yesuk Seo

Masters Theses

My work transcends the boundaries between painterly printmaking and sculpture. Through hand-pulled silkscreen prints, I create abstract pixelated images depicting our constantly changing relationship with meaning and reality. Memories are often glamorized and distorted whether it is our childhood home, our neighborhood, or the city. My practice archives my family history and traces patterns in memory and space by using invisibility as a phenomena to render newer explorations of abstraction, in time and in urban landscapes. Objects & Apparitions: A Portable Museum, pairs moiré patterns of ghostly printmaking with wooden objects in specific arrangements. It captures my nomadic journey between …

You're Making Me Sentimental, Chris Geng

Masters Theses

My project is a personal search for a different way to see the footprint we have left on the landscape. A way of seeing that finds potential in existing buildings without placing the building in the background, that instead engages sentiments in order to approach reuse as an act of layering that retains the memories of before. I went about uncovering the memories of a site through film photography, a process equally rooted in nostalgia and sentimentality. These images attempt to capture the beauty of melancholy and in turn, ask the architect and audience to slow down and contemplate as …

What’S Good: Sharing Food And Meaning-Making Among Commensals, Lucor Jordan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To explore how systems of meaning are formed and reformed over an individual’s lifetime in the context of food, meals, and commensality, this research applies a critical phenomenological lens to food-centered life histories centered on the life experiences of childhood, adulthood and the diffusion of food knowledge within a food centric community between individuals within age cohorts and across generations. Through reflective interviewing community members within Denver metropolitan area anti-hunger organization, this research is able to provide insight into several secondary questions, including: Is childhood a formative space for the cementation of these systems of meaning and value and do …

The Persephone Series: Storytelling, Art, And Making Sense Of Myself, Katie M. Frank

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What can I do with what I already have? How can I make of it something beautiful, or useful, or interesting? Over the past two and a half years, I have been creating wall sculptures and collages out of found objects that speak to the history of my family, the way the earth reclaims its space after being used by humans, and how our individual lives have impact beyond our recognition. The people we love, the things we have lost, the garbage and grief we try to bury: it doesn’t go away. It comes back to the surface in shapes …

Active Imagination, Wellbeing And Ways Of Seeing: A Phenomenological Inquiry Into Experiences Of Adult Learners With Visual Impairments, Steinberg Henry

Educational Studies Dissertations

Six female and two male adult learners who became blind between the ages of 20 and 75 years participated in this study conducted by a blind researcher. The purposely sampled eight were interviewed virtually by way of Zoom. In combination with Johnny Saldana’s work on codes, this study used the NVivo framework for determining structuring categories, selecting node themes, code frameworks and final codes from the first interview. 291 codes were clustered under 26 node themes. NVivo’s word frequency search and Word Tree were applied to clarify and lend a number value to participants’ codes. The second interview, administered after …

Melting, Dripping, Becoming: The Operations Of Memory From The Perspective Of Wax, Naomi Yu

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In my thesis, I explore how different compositional and material techniques are used to re-create a memory. Looking at artists such as Kiki Smith, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Anselm Keifer, I investigate the ways in which they utilize 2D and 3D materials to re-create feelings of memory.

I argue that the art object can conserve and portray memory through metaphorical acts of preservation. I will be specifically studying the acts of encasing and layering as a means to simulate the feelings of memory. I argue that these metaphorical actions create an artificial sense of time that imbues these objects with created …

Don't Forget Me: A Discussion On Social Memory And Commemoration, Anfernee Murray

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between social memory and social identity development among groups who share contested interpretations of their shared social memory. With social memories being a collaborative process that requires consensus and compromise, there arises conflict when groups are divided in deciding on what event of their shared history is relevant to remember - for it is these memories that influence and shape how a group identifies itself.

For Black Americans, this contention arises in the conversations surrounding the difficult and traumatic histories of their enslaved ancestors by the ancestors of their white counterparts. This is further complicated …

All Memories Fade, Lynn Bierbaum

Theses

All Memories Fade is an installation and sculptural exhibition examining familial connection through my developed fear of forgetting. These works comprise many materials, including glass, resin, silk fabric, wet plate collodion images, and chemigrams. This installation uses light and optical variants to communicate the fear of losing one’s most cherished memories in life. All Memories Fade draws inspiration from my family farm in Minnesota that had been sold when I was young. The encapsulated sculptures and installation produce a distorted perception of home through material memory, utilizing light and shadow to highlight those distortions and abstractions that checker one’s past. …