The border between Russia and Estonia has undergone significant changes in the past two and a half decades from a border between two Soviet republics to an international border and external EU border. In the public discourse and the scholarly literature, this border has been cha…
Calls for examining the interrelations between individual and collective processes of remembering have been repeatedly made within the field of memory studies. With the tendency being to focus on either the individual or the collective level, there have been few studies that hav…
This dissertation examines the accretive violence wrought by nuclear power on bodies and spaces through a study of Chernobyl’s transnational memory. By examining this infamous disaster, I clarify the process by which power renders those impacts invisible, as well as the ways in …
In the field of memory studies, “history” is usually used as an indicator of the past, while “memory” is our perception of that past. “History” is what has happened, while “memory” is what we imagined has happened. As memory and history diverge, the distortion of memory increase…
This study investigates the relationship between German author Lothar-Günther Buchheim (1918–2007), his bestselling 1973 novel Das Boot (The Boat), and the Federal Republic of Germany’s endeavor to come to terms with the spiritual damage left behind by National Socialism as well…
Any approach to the past tailors our perception of the present, which is in turn inevitably elusive and unstable. The present is a site of contestation between memory and history, as well as a site for recounting the distant past by reflecting it through the prism of the present…
The Columbus memorial in Syracuse, New York was erected in the early 1900s by Italian-American immigrants who hoped for inclusion in the American master narrative. Indigenous peoples, on the other hand, have long recognized Columbus as a slave trader and as the person who instig…
Specifically focusing on the Museum at Warm Springs, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, and the High Desert Museum this thesis explores how Native and non-Native museums exist at the intersection of historical narrative production and memory studies. By examining how these…
This thesis analyzes, for the first time, how audiences have engaged with Shakespeare in both colonial and post-colonial Punjab, a state in India. It demonstrates how Shakespeare’s cultural mobility is dependent upon how target cultures re-semniotize his plays to accommodate ele…
This dissertation explores the relationship between memorial museums and visitors, reexamining the process of remembering traumatic events in United States history. My work examines this meaning-making dynamic in case studies of four memorial museums: The 9/11 Memorial Museum, T…
The objective of this dissertation is to examine the mutually constitutive relationship between historiography, collective memory, and cultural narratives in the representation of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962) in present-day France and Algeria. Taking the turn of …