Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Cultural Memory'

Intercultural contacts that allowed for cross-cultural fertilization were made possible through translation. Translation, in the main, has been understood as an activity that requires knowing the source and target languages to achieve the same informational and emotive effects of the source language in the target one. Yet, the search for equivalence led translators to realize that linguistic terms do not appear in isolation; they are part and parcel of a culture. Fairclough's stipulation, from a critical discourse analysis point of view, that language as discourse is invested with ideologies that organize socially shared attitudes, engages language in a complex relationship with social cognition, power and culture. The characterization of language as such leads to the production of a master discourse through which identity, similarity and difference are identified. Within the context of globalization, intercultural translation, particularly between cultures that are unequal politically and economically, adheres to a master discourse of translation and representation through which the other is received, accepted and/ or refused then reproduced. Consequently, source texts and people are transformed into signs familiar to the translating community constructing as such domestic identities of foreign cultures. Drawing on translation from Arabic, and in light of critical discourse analysis approaches, the translation of culture and the culture of translation, the research considers the case of Nawal El-Saadawi. The aim is to explore and examine how the constraints and disciplinary demands of the master discourse of translation and representation affect the translation traffic from Arabic into English. In a rapidly globalizing world, the ethics of translation postulate that translation should create a readership that is open to cultural differences for a true globalization of cultures, and improve cultural relations rather than being a tool for reinforcing and diffusing existing representationsa nd images of one culture about the other

This study explores female agency within Roman patriarchy. It brings recent developments in gender theory to an analysis of patriarchy and the experience of women within it. It cautions against assumptions that patriarchy was a fixed and monolithic system which impacted women disproportionately, without first considering its implications for both men and women and examining how it operated in daily interactions. It questions perceptions that patriarchy automatically subordinated women and denied them agency. In researching this line of questioning, it considers two meanings of subordination. While ‘subordinate’ can entail control over another, a second definition refers to social preferencing in terms of the ‘importance’ or ‘status’ of one gender compared to another. In considering evidence for both aspects of subordination, it finds that Roman patriarchy was a complex and nuanced system, one in which the parameters of women’s experience had as many allowances as it did constraints and one which respected and honored its women. This study then tests these findings through a new paradigm of inquiry- women’s position in cultural memory. This is undertaken through a consideration of both the active role of women in preserving the cultural memory of Rome through the performance of religious ritual and the representation of women in the literary construction of Rome’s cultural memory by the 1st century BCE author, Livy.

The aim of the research is to examine the multiple spatial frameworks and materially manifested forms of memory by applying current memory studies theory to four areas of memorial experience: personal memory, civic memory, tourism and film. The thesis looks at memory practices based in the North East, particularly those that take place in Newcastle upon Tyne, and explores how the city is remembered in specific memory practices and institutions. Combining work in memory studies and cultural geography, the thesis highlights how memory is spatialized and is particularly concerned with the city that shapes, and is shaped by, memory and memory practices. Changes have taken place in the relationship between space, place and temporality that have affected memory and practices of memorialization. At first glance, the technologies we use and the spaces we inhabit can be interpreted as leading to a pervasive amnesia. The thesis challenges this assumption. It proposes that the concept of heterotopia provides a critical mode of reading memory spaces offering a more positive account of the way memory is currently being experienced. The thesis looks at how memory is realized in the fabric of the city and how the historical city itself is represented through the discursive practices of memorial public art, the museum and the cinema, creating a collective cultural memory. The particular contribution that this thesis makes is that it tests the explanatory power of the concept of heterotopia in relation to memorial sites and it applies memory studies to the city of Newcastle in a time of transition and renewal.

The focus of this study was to manipulate factors to determine whether mental representations of logical problems differed by culture. The cultural differences hypothesis suggests that Anglo students would be more likely to have a linear representation (e.g. arranging objects that differ in a "line" mentally) whereas Hispanic and Native American students would have a nonlinear (pivot) organization. The results indicated that Hispanic children solved questions better if they appeared in a pivotal format, whereas, Native American and Anglo children performed better if the stimuli were presented in a linear method. With grade level, Hispanic children shifted to the linear format and Anglo and Native American children improved upon the pivot presentation. This suggests that there may be differences in mental representations of objects for Hispanic children that is influenced by acculturation.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2006.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-01, Section: A, page: 0312. Adviser: Stephen J. Stein. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Dec. 12, 2006)."

That slavery was largely excised from the cultural memory of the Civil War in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly by white Americans, is well documented; Slavery and the Civil War in Cultural Memory moves beyond that story of omission to ask how slavery has been represented in U.S. culture and, necessarily, how it figures into some of the twentieth century's most popular Civil War narratives. The study begins in the 1930s with the publication of Gone with the Wind--arguably the most popular Civil War novel of all time--and reads Margaret Mitchell's pervasive tale of ex-slaveholder adversity against contemporaneous narratives like Black Reconstruction in America , Absalom, Absalom!, and Black Boy/American Hunger , which contradict Mitchell's account of slavery, the war, and Reconstruction. Spanning nearly seven decades, this study tells the story of how cultural productions have continued to reinterpret slavery. Focusing primarily on novels and films but also drawing on interviews with ex-slaves, private journals, and court records, each chapter explores how slavery is represented in a particular historical epoch and highlights each narrative's contribution to the creation of cultural memory, particularly its conformity to earlier works or its revision of antecedents. In addition, Slavery and the Civil War in Cultural Memory traces representations of slavery through recurring themes such as hunger, disease, marriage, and madness and seeks to understand how the narratives in question comment directly on the concept of memory. Among the topics discussed are the Civil War centennial; how Margaret Walker's Jubilee relates slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction to the civil rights movement of the 1960s; the controversy over The Confessions of Nat Turner; the Roots phenomenon, and the copyright lawsuit filed against the publisher of Alice Randall's unauthorized parody, The Wind Done Gone. The study concludes in 2005, with March, Geraldine Brooks's reimagining of Little Women, and E.L. Doctorow's The March, about Sherman's campaign through Georgia and the Carolinas. A pattern emerges in the final chapters that shows recent authors conjuring, in order to revise, elements of Absalom, Absalom! and Gone With the Wind.

Authorised narratives of British popular music history have been deployed as representations of national identity by a range of institutions and individuals. The London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, for example, presented a range of musical artists and songs that had been selected to represent aspects of British cultural identity to an international audience. The following year, a speech delivered by British Prime Minister David Cameron cited examples of British popular music in order to demonstrate British cultural successes in an international field. This thesis argues that authorised narratives such as these have failed to reflect the diversity of music cultures in the UK, drawing upon literature that highlights the concerns of ethnic minority groups who are frequently faced with exclusion from mainstream heritage narratives, and on a case study on British Bhangra music. British Bhangra is a musical genre closely associated with the BrAsian community, and in this thesis it is used to explore the relationship between popular music heritage and multiculturalism and address the following research questions: How have individuals involved with the British Bhangra music industry and audience groups responded to authorised narratives (Smith, 2006) of British popular music? How has British Bhangra been constructed as heritage – whether authorised, un-authorised or self-authorised – and where is this taking place and by whom? In order to address these questions, the thesis adopts two methodological approaches: qualitative research in the form of ethnographic fieldwork, and the analysis of particular musical works produced by British Bhangra artists and promoted as heritage – such as songs featuring in audience-constructed online charts attempting to define the ‘50 Best British Bhangra albums’. The ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in three areas in England: Bradford and Leeds in the North-East of England, Birmingham, and Tower Hamlets in East London, and enabled an exploration of British Bhangra heritage sites and practices in each location. Face-to-face and email interviews were also conducted with artists, music promoters and archivists involved with the British Bhangra music industry as well as with Bhangra audiences, and published interviews from print and online sources were consulted. This helped to examine British Bhangra heritage from the perspective of the artist, audience and music industry workers involved. At the same time specific British Bhangra songs were analysed in order to explore musical constructions of national identity and cultural memory and related concepts, such as ‘homeland’ or ‘authenticity’, both of which emerged as highly valued by British Bhangra audiences and artists. Attempts by artists and music journalists to construct a ‘canon’ of British Bhangra music frequently involve efforts to evaluate these musical works in terms of their perceived ability to express authenticity, or to evoke connections with a rural Punjab. The music is analysed in relation to such debates, and the way in which particular artists and songs have become enshrined within British Bhangra music heritage practices is explored.

This thesis argues that one of the tasks of literary hiStory is to identify and challenge the processes by which writers who were once highly valued come to be forgotten and excluded from the canon. I investigate the work and cultural milieu of three such writers: Douglas Goldring, John Rodker and Mary Butts. The first chapter sets the terms of the argument, and presents the grounds for a reconfiguration of the conventional historical view of modernism. The second examines the early wor~ of Douglas Goldring: his achievements as editor of The Tramp are related to its cultural and historical situation; I then turn to the history of conscientious objection in the First World War in order to explore the politics of his 1917 novel The Fortune, and to provide historical material necessary for the later reading of Rodker's Memoirs of Other Fronts. This leads on to a discussion of some of his subsequent political novels and plays. In the third and fourth chapters, I analyse the work of John Rodker, from his adolescence in the East End of London to his maturity, first in relation to modernist dance and theatrical experiments in London during the first war, and later to avant-garde writing in England and France in the 1920s, particularly as it draws upon psycho-analysis. The fifth chapter examines the novels of Mary Butts, particularly Ashe of Rings, which is read as a war-novel, but one which makes constructive use of her interest in the occult. What this category meant during that period is also investigated, which allows me to formulate a broader argument that situates her work within a tradition that takes fantasy seriously, while remaining critical of the conceptual framework of psycho-analysis. I follow this up by showing the later importance of unconscious anti-semitism to her capacity to elaborate an ecological nationalism. The final chapter examines anti-semitism and satire in the relationship between Rodker and Wyndham Lewis, and offers a further explanatory justification for the argument of the thesis.

Negotiating Cultural Identity through the Arts: The African Cultural Memory Youth Arts Festival (ACMYAF) examines ways in which African cultural memory, and the extent to which the arts based approaches benefited the cultural identity socialisation experiences of young people of African migrant descent. Arts were used to explore the identities of a group of youth of African descent, as a means to developing understanding of the issues relating to their bicultural socialisation and ways in which Arts-based strategies could be used to address them towards bicultural competence. Bicultural competence implies the ability to function successfully in both the dominant and subordinate culture. The research project was motivated by the fact that Australian youth of African descent experience psycho-social challenges to their cultural identity development. Quite often this includes a denigration of their African cultures and identities through monocultural and exclusive cultural practises of Eurocentric Australia. And yet the young people involved in this study carry with them embodied knowledge and memories from African culture acquired through cultural socialisation prior to arrival in Australia as well as in ‘African’ homes in Australia, through parental cultural education and transmission. Such knowledge and cultural values play a significant role in identity formation and self-concept of the African descendant youth in Australia. Accordingly the festival was organised as an aesthetic and educative theatrical event using the Ujamaa circle and the African centred pedagogy theory, Participatory action research and Performance as a research Inquiry for the project. A participatory approach, through educative dialogue and performance enabled the participants to reveal their own embodied knowledge about African cultural memory leading to an educative exploration of its relevance through theatrical events. The process also enabled the participants to recall and document their cultural memories and subsequently reflect on their significance to identity negotiation and construction. The methodological research process became a Bicultural Socialisation Education Program (BSEP) because it enabled the participants through the theatrical events to integrate both subordinate and dominant cultural ideas towards self-affirming epistemologies and achieve a positive self-concept of themselves. It is the study’s conclusion that the festival, as a third space, enabled the participants to explore African cultural memory educatively by enacting art forms and dialogue that informed their African Australian identities. Furthermore, the methodological approach enabled the participants to reveal factors that influenced their bicultural socialisation experience, namely: visibility, racism, criminal stereotyping, alienation and specific issues relating to intergenerational relations. These factors present ongoing psycho-social challenges to the participants and in turn influence their bicultural socialisation experience and self-concept. The methodological approach was effective in enabling the participants, as a group of diverse African identities to develop an African Australian sensibility and to become conscious of their own agency in mobilising African cultural memory in an Australian context, towards bicultural competence.

This dissertation discusses Italy’s bestselling author Andrea Camilleri’s series of Montalbano crime novels. It poses the question of what makes Camilleri’s series so successful in the contemporary literary marketplace and if his success is a representation of Italian culture (and by extension, the postmodern or post-postmodern Italian literary scene). This dissertation deals with Camilleri and his success from a narrative literary point of view. It examines Camilleri’s work from several different perspectives, placing it within the vaster context of Italian literature while also taking a meticulous look at Camilleri as the author who has managed to free a literary genre from its previous confines and opened new boundaries for Italian literature. The dissertation demonstrates how Andrea Camilleri provides a "security blanket" for his readers: by including many elements of a common cultural memory, he keeps his readers safely anchored. These elements include a long list of recurring characters that function almost like the chorus in a Greek play. Certain thematic elements, such as Montalbano’s perpetual search for Justice, and his struggle to combine the written law with the law of men are a topoi of Western literature, as are the antonyms eros/thanatos as well as food and death, which Camilleri heavily employs. The Sicilian author manages to root his work deeply within a literary tradition through direct citations, and explicit and implicit references to the canon, but also breaks new ground and manages to move Italian literature a step forward. In front of this apparently nostalgic background, the Sicilian author plays with and invents many new components in his works, satisfying thus the Italian need for the "known" with the pleasure of a discovery of the "unknown" or the "new", which is a major reason for his success. Camilleri participates in a (post)modern shift of horizons, but does not radically challenge his reader’s "expectations". His series of Montalbano mysteries presents literature of a high level that almost by chance becomes part of an "immediate" literary canon, but does not set out with the ambition to become part of "the canon".
Romance Languages and Literatures

Abstract : The Mi’gmaq colonial experience is not unique among North American Native peoples, but being among the earliest in Canada to be colonized by Europeans, who arrived largely from the East, our people have had to contend with over 500 years of colonization and assimilation. The goal of this research is to explore the cultural practices of continuity and cultural memory as applied in selected examples of Mi’gmaq stories/literature, past and present. As a Mi’gmaq woman, having spent most of my life in the First Nations community of Listuguj in Quebec, I felt the need to focus my research on Mi’gmaq culture and stories. I believe our culture is rich and interesting in its history, language, and literature; I wish to showcase this in my thesis. By providing an overview of the still emergent literature of the Mi’gmaq Nation in its various forms (storytelling, novel, memoir, autobiography, poetry), I intend to illustrate that the Mi’gmaq people as well as their culture and language have been and still are continuously evolving. The stories presented in this thesis assure cultural continuity by creating and keeping a collective memory in the form of narratives that can be read, expressed, and interpreted many times over. My own understanding of cultural continuity stems from the Mi’gmaq sense of culture which is made up of three aspects: traditions, consciousness or identity, and language. I identify “continuity” as the forward-motion study of culture and the consistent existence of Mi’gmaq values, knowledge, and stories and how they have continuously evolved. Mi’gmaq culture is in a constant state of renewal while it still upholds a sense of influence from our collective past. Jan Assmann’s theorization of the concept of cultural memory is a way society ensures cultural continuity by transmitting its collective knowledge through generations. In accordance with Assmann’s notion of cultural memories as stores of knowledge from which members of a community construct their collective and individual identities, my idea of “cultural memory” is deeply related to narrative memory in the sense that story (in its many forms) inevitably preserves, defines, and transmits memories as well as teachings of Mi’gmaq culture and beliefs. Through the (re)interpretation of past stories and the formation of new ones, Mi’gmaq literature constitutes a means of defining our cultural identity for ourselves and for others. The forward motion of cultural continuity in my study does not idealise a pre-colonial past nor does it encourage leaving our shared history behind, but rather I wish to demonstrate that Mi’gmaq literature re-members and shapes our cultural past as it relates to our ever-evolving present to assist us on our journey towards the future. The goal of my thesis is to show that examples of Mi’gmaq traditional and modern literature and stories depict a Mi’gmaq culture and identity that is not stunted in the past, but rather syncretises cultural memories and visions for the future. The four chapters in this paper reflect the past, present, and future of Mi’gmaq stories, though not in a strictly linear manner. By means of applied reading of selected texts and exploring the significance of the past in the present and its relationship towards the future, I intend to represent a mixture of linear and cyclical concepts of time. Chapter One will begin in the past with a discussion of the cultural practice and functions of traditional Mi’gmaq storytelling and pre-colonial worldview. This chapter illustrates how Mi’gmaq history and traditional stories are interrelated as stores of cultural memory and knowledge. Chapters Two and Three explore differing patterns present in contemporary Mi’gmaq literary representations. Chapter Two explores the issues of Native cultural authenticity as well as the myths of the “Imaginary Indian” (Daniel Francis) and the “timeless condition” (Anne-Christine Hornborg), which posit Native culture and peoples as relics of the past with no future. Namely by analyzing two historical novels with Mi’gmaq characters that are written by non-Mi’gmaq authors, The Deserter (2010) by Paul Almond and Cibou (2008) by Susan Young de Biagi, this chapter presents the importance of questioning and analyzing what we as Mi’gmaq people read about our own culture. Chapter Three depicts Mi’gmaq self-representation in the form of non-fiction residential school Survivor narratives, specifically Out of the Depths by Isabelle Knockwood and Song of Rita Joe by Rita Joe. Both authors write about the past in order to encourage individual and collective healing, following residential school experience, with a hopeful vision for the future. Having both survived the assimilatory and abusive system of the Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia, Knockwood and Joe depict personal, and sometimes contrasting, views of the residential school legacy. Deena Rymhs’ parallel analysis of residential schools as prisons, how residential schooling caused a significant rupture in cultural continuity by enacting spatial and ideological diaspora as defined by Neal McLeod, as well as Aboriginal resilience and healing are key theorizations in this chapter. Finally, Chapter Four looks at the discourse of the past in the present in examples of Mi’gmaq contemporary literature. The notions of belonging and identity construction are significant in Mi’gmaq literature. In the colonial past (and to an extent still today), Native peoples have not been in control of their own cultural identities. In order to contextualize the current issues surrounding Mi’gmaq/Native identity that are reflected within the narratives in this chapter, Indian Status as a legal identity conferred on Native peoples and its implications on personal and cultural identity as well as community belonging are explored. Keeping in mind the negotiations of both ascribed and self-ascribed cultural identities, Stones and Switches by Lorne Simon, My Mi’kmaq Mother by Julie Pellissier-Lush, two books for children by Michael James Isaac, as well as selected poetry by Shirley Kiju Kawi, will be analysed with a view to recognizing a modern hybrid Mi’gmaq identity. On the whole, Mi’gmaq people (and those who wish to learn more about Native and Mi’gmaq people) can always find useful and relevant information in our collective past. Mi’gmaq storytelling and literature, in their multitude of forms, represent viable stores of cultural memories that link both past and present traditions, values, and realities as our culture moves into the future.
Résumé : Ce travail de recherche vise à explorer les pratiques de continuité et de mémoires culturels en utilisant une variété d'exemples provenant de la littérature Mi'gmaq du passée et du temps présent. L'expérience colonial du peuple des Premières Nations Mi'gmaq n'est pas unique en ce qui concerne les Autochtones d'Amérique du nord mais ils ont cependant été parmi les premières Nations autochtones à être colonisés au Canada par les Européens, qui sont arrivés de l’est, et ont donc eu à vivre avec les effets de plus de 500 ans de colonisation et d'assimilation. En tant que jeune femme Mi’gmaq, ayant vécue la majeure partie de ma vie dans la communauté des Premières Nations de Listuguj, Québec, j’ai senti le besoin de centrer mes recherches sur la culture et les histoires Mi’gmaq. Dans ce mémoire, je souhaite mettre en valeur la richesse de l’histoire, la langue et la littérature de mon peuple. En donnant un aperçu de la littérature encore émergente de la Nation Mi’gmaq sous ses différentes formes (les contes, les romans, les mémoires et biographies, la poésie, etc.), ce projet a pour but d’illustrer que la culture et le peuple Mi’gmaq sont en évolution constante. Les histoires présentées au cours des chapitres suivants s’inscrivent dans une tradition de continuité culturelle car elles créent et entretiennent une mémoire collective sous la forme de récits qui peuvent être lus, exprimés et interprétés à de nombreuses reprises. Nous définissons le terme "continuité" comme étant l'étude de la culture et de l'existence persistante des valeurs, des connaissances et des histoires Mi'gmaq ainsi que la façon dont ces éléments ont évolués au cours de leur existence. Deux aspects importants de la continuité culturelle sont la littérature et la langue. Dans ma conception de continuité, je m’informe de la définition Mi’gmaq du concept de la culture qui comprend trois aspects : les traditions, l’identité et la conscience, et la langue. J’identifie la notion de continuité comme étant un mouvement vers l’avant dans l’étude de la culture et de la survie des valeurs, de la connaissance et des histoires Mi’gmaq en relation avec leur évolution dans le temps. Effectivement, la culture Mi’gmaq est en constant état de renouvellement. Sa littérature reflète cette réalité en contribuant à préserver et à rétablir les traditions et les valeurs du passé tout en détenant une vision directrice et encourageante pour l’avenir de notre culture, de notre identité collective. Les exemples de littérature traditionnelle et moderne Mi’gmaq tracent alors une ligne de continuité dans le temps qui avance vers le futur avec l’information culturelle du passé. La culture Mi’gmaq est en état de renouvellement continuel tout en conservant ses racines dans notre passé collectif. La théorisation du concept de mémoire culturelle par Jan Assmann est une façon pour la société d'assurer une continuité culturelle en transmettant son savoir collectif à travers les générations. Conformément à la notion de mémoires culturelles d'Assmann en tant que réserves de connaissances à partir desquels les membres d'une communauté construisent leurs identités collectives et individuelles, notre interprétation du terme "mémoire culturelle" est profondément liée à la mémoire narrative, parce qu'une histoire dans toutes ses formes va préserver, définir et transmettre inévitablement les souvenirs, l'histoire, les croyances et les enseignements de la culture Mi'gmaq. Par la réinterprétation des textes traditionnels du passé et la création de nouvelles histoires contemporaines, la littérature Mi’gmaq constitue un moyen de définir notre identité culturelle autant pour nous-mêmes que pour les autres. La proposition d’un mouvement vers l’avant, vers l’avenir au cœur de notre recherche n'a pas comme but d'idéaliser le passé précolonial ni d'encourager l'abandon de notre histoire partagée, mais de démontrer que la littérature Mi'gmaq commémore et forge notre passé par sa relation avec notre présent en constante évolution pour nous assister dans notre voyage à travers le temps, vers un futur. L’objectif de ce projet est de démontrer que des exemples de littérature Mi’gmaq (traditionnel et contemporain) mettent en valeur une culture et une identité Mi’gmaq qui n’est pas éclipsé par les ombres de son passé, mais au contraire, s’informe et s’inspire des mémoires culturelles de son passé afin de mieux s’épanouir de manière créative au temps présent et d’assurer sa continuité dans le futur. Les personnes Mi'gmaq, leur culture et leur langue ont été et sont encore en évolution continuelle. Ces quatre chapitres reflètent le passé, le présent et le futur des histoires Mi'gmaq mais pas nécessairement de façon strictement linéaire. En faisant lecture critique d'une sélection de textes et en explorant la signification du passé pour le présent et sa relation envers le futur, nous avons l'intention de représenter une combinaison d'éléments relatifs aux concepts du temps, d'un point de vue à la fois cyclique et linéaire. Chapitre Un débute dans le passé en étudiant la fonction des histoires traditionnelles Mi'gmaq et la vision précoloniale de celles-ci. Le premier chapitre illustre comment les rapports historiques et les contes traditionnels sont étroitement liés en ce qui concerne leur valeur en mémoire et en connaissance culturelle. Certains aspects de la mythologie/cosmologie traditionnelle Mi’gmaq y ont expliqué à travers deux exemples de contes précoloniaux. De plus, la perspective Mi’gmaq dans certains rapports historiques coloniaux sont explorer. Ensuite, dans les Chapitres Deux et Trois, les diverses représentations littéraires actuelles des histoires Mi'gmaq sont explorées. Le deuxième chapitre examine les grandes questions de l’authenticité culturelle ainsi que les mythes de l’Indien rêvé (Imaginary Indian de Daniel Francis) et de la condition intemporelle (« timeless condition » de Anne-Christine Hornborg) qui positionnent les cultures et les peuples amérindiens comme des vestiges du passé sans avenir. Notamment avec l’analyse de deux romans historiques à propos de personnages Mi’gmaq au 17e siècle écrits par des auteurs non-Mi’gmaq : The Deserter (2010) de Paul Almond (traduit en français en 2013 sous le titre Le déserteur) et Cibou (2008) de Susan Young de Biagi, ce chapitre présente l’importance de questionner et analyser ce que nous lisons à propos de notre propre culture. Les deux romans sont le fruit d'une recherche historique détaillé sur l'histoire Mi’gmaq à l'époque de (ou un peu avant) la colonisation. Cependant, la représentation des personnages Mi’gmaq ne va pas au delà du champ d'application limité du passé colonial et perpétue les exemples de stéréotypes qui se retrouvent souvent dans la littérature populaire et romantique à propos de la culture amérindienne d'aujourd'hui. Le troisième chapitre reflète l’autoreprésentation littéraire Mi’gmaq sous la forme de récit documentaire de survivants de pensionnats indiens, particulièrement Out of the Depths de Isabelle Knockwood et Song of Rita Joe de Rita Joe. Ayant survécues au système d’assimilation et d’abus du pensionnat indien de Shubenacadie au Nouvelle-Écosse (le seul pensionnat pour enfants autochtones de ce genre à être établi dans les provinces maritimes du Canada), Knockwood et Joe écrivent leur passé (et donnent voix à plusieurs autres survivants et survivantes) dans leurs récits afin de favoriser le processus de guérison et de réconciliation au niveau individuel et collectif en encourageant la voie à un avenir plus prometteur. Par la lecture de ces récits de vie, ce chapitre découvre les blessures physiques et psychologiques infligées aux cultures amérindiennes par le système des pensionnats. L'analyse parallèle de Deena Rymhs sur les pensionnats autochtones en tant que prisons, comment la vie dans les pensionnats autochtones a causé une rupture significative dans la continuité culturelle en promulguant une diaspora idéologique et spatiale comme définie par Neal McLeod ainsi que la résilience et la guérison autochtone sont des éléments clés de la théorisation de ce chapitre. Finalement, dans le quatrième chapitre, nous explorons les thèmes du passé reliés au présent par des exemples de la littérature Mi'gmaq contemporaine. Les notions d'appartenance et de construction d'identité sont significatives dans la littérature Mi’gmaq. Durant la période colonial (et dans une certaine mesure, encore aujourd'hui), les Autochtones n'ont pas été en contrôle de leur identité culturelle. Afin de mettre en contexte les problèmes actuels affectant les Mi’gmaq/Autochtones et qui se reflètent dans les histoires qui se retrouvent dans ce chapitre, le statut d'indien en tant qu'identité légale accordée aux Amérindiens et ses implications sur l'identité personnelle et culturelle ainsi que l'appartenance à la communauté amérindienne sont explorées. En gardant à l'esprit les négociations entre l'identité culturelle accordée et l'identité culturelle choisie, le roman Stones and Switches de Lorne Simon, la mémoire My Mi’kmaq Mother de Julie Pellissier-Lush, les deux livres pour enfants écrits par Michael James Isaac ainsi que des sélections de la poésie par Shirley Kiju Kawi seront analysée dans le but d'y reconnaitre l'hybridité de la nouvelle identité Mi'gmaq moderne. Dans l'ensemble, les Mi’gmaq, et les gens voulant apprendre à connaitre davantage les Autochtones et les Mi’gmaq, peuvent trouver de l'information pertinente dans notre passé collectif. Les histoires et la littérature Mi'gmaq, dans ses multiples formes, représentent des réserves de connaissances viables qui relient les traditions, les valeurs et les réalités du passé et du présent au fur et à mesure que notre culture progresse vers l'avenir.

The focus of this study was to manipulate factors to determine whether mental representation of logical problems differed by culture. The cultural differences hypothesis suggests that Anglo students would be more likely to have a linear representation (e.g., arranging objects that differ in a "line" mentally) whereas Hispanic students would have a nonlinear (pivot) representation. The results indicated that Hispanic children solved questions better if they appeared in a pivotal format, whereas Anglo children performed better if the stimuli were presented in a linear method. With grade level children improved upon the linear format. This suggests that there may be differences in mental representations of objects for Hispanic children that is influenced by acculturation.

This dissertation considers the impact mobile media technologies have on the production and consumption of memory narratives and cultural memory discourses in Canada. Although this analysis pays specific attention to concepts of memory, heritage, and public history in its exploration of site-specific digital narratives, it is set within a larger theoretical framework that considers the relationship between mobile technology and place, and how the mobile phone in particular can foster both a sense of place and placelessness. This larger framework also includes issues of co-presence, networked identity, play, affect, and the phenomenological relationship between the individual and the mobile device. This is then considered alongside memory narratives (both on the national and quotidian levels) at specifically sanctioned sites of national commemoration (monuments, historic sites) and also in everyday urban spaces. To this end, this dissertation covers a wide range of augmented reality apps and forms of digital storytelling including locative media narratives, site-specific digital performances, social media and crowdsourced heritage archives, and urban mobile gaming and playful mapping. Despite common criticism that mobile phones only serve to distract us from our surrounding environment, I argue that mobile technology can generate deeper, more affective attachments to places by reformulating ways of perceiving and moving through them. They do this by insisting that place is more than just its material properties, but rather is composed of a fluctuating relationship between materiality, time, and affect. Following this framework, I also emphasize how mobile technology shifts the traditional mission of the archive to preserve and protect the past to something more playful, more affective, and more preoccupied with the circulation of the past in the present. Included in this analysis are crowdsourced archives created on social media platforms which, I argue, are particularly well suited to capturing the dynamic qualities of memory and living heritage practices. A contributing factor in this is the mobile phone’s position as a site of intimacy and co-presence, which situates it in a long history of communication technologies that employ rhetorical and technological strategies of co-presence, immediacy, and intimacy. Chapter one examines the role that locative media narratives play at official sites of memory in Canada’s capital region from app-based historical tours to more playful narrative encounters, through the lens of the archive and the repertoire. Chapter two then considers the digital site-specific performance piece, LANDLINE, to unpack how mobile media foster everyday place memories in urban spaces through the mobile phone’s position as a site of intimacy for geographically distant, but virtually co-present, individuals. Chapter three analyzes my own experimental method, Maplibs, which follows a mobile game structure to encourage participants to engage in acts of playful placemaking and collaborative storytelling in order to highlight an alternative process of engaging with place that carries the past forward in meaningful ways. And finally, chapter four analyzes the social media group “Lost Ottawa” to explore how collaborative memory communities mobilize through social media platforms like Facebook and create new forms of participatory heritage. In all of this, place is understood as a dynamic assemblage of stories and memories that the mobile phone, through its ubiquitous impact on social practices, plays a key role in shaping.

In recent years a proliferation of video installation has been created concerning the notion of cultural identity and cultural memory. Highlighting the complexities of these themes, video installation provides the artist with an opportunity to create an affective environment for the viewer, through which the lived experiences that inform cultural identity may be expressed, shared and understood; while the experience of viewing becomes a part of the process of becoming that cultural identity continues to undertake. It is the central argument of this thesis that the strengthening relationship between video installation and the concept of cultural identity is intrinsically linked to the medium’s ability to create an immersive sensory field involving sight, sound, time, space and movement, in which the viewer undergoes a phenomenological experience and engages in an active questioning of how cultural identity is formed, experienced and evolved. Drawing on phenomenological, postcolonial and feminist theory, I critically analyse the sensory elements of three video installations that are global representatives standing for this body of arguments; Shirin Neshat’s Rapture, Dana Claxton’s Sitting Bull and The Moose Jaw Sioux and Nalini Malani’s In Search of Vanished Blood. Relevant due to their themes of cultural identity and the poetics of memory, and their use of all the sensory components of video installation as a means of communication, these artworks illustrate the diverse issues that cultural identity can include, along with an evolution in the complexity of the medium itself. Moving beyond issues of representation, this thesis delves into the communication of cultural identity and memory between the artist and the viewer.

This thesis brings together the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, revealing their respective work as peculiarly engaged with memory. Poetic memory is examined at different levels: not just what it means actively to remember, but also how a poem might be more or less characteristically memorable. Hardy and Frost are also revealed as poets who see the unique properties of poetry as a genre in which certain phenomena, people and places might be remembered, if not preserved. While having a strong basis in close analysis and literary history, the project breaks new ground in setting concepts familiar to poetry scholarship within a scientific framework. Interdisciplinary in nature, this thesis uses evidence from psychological experiments to emphasise the cognitive fundamentals which underpin those Hardy and Frost poems remembered as aesthetic or cultural artefacts. Four core chapters explore issues of expectation, recognition, voice and identity, showing the meeting points for Hardyean and Frostian memory and offering new readings which connect these canonical figures. Throughout, the thesis foregrounds Hardy’s and Frost’s concern for local memories. Beginning with how the formal properties of Hardy’s and Frost’s verse appeal to human cognitive pre-dispositions, the project ends by considering how identity is culturally conditioned, and how Hardy’s and Frost’s poetry restores to significance those individuating features otherwise forgotten by cognitive and cultural memory systems. Using archival material and the respective letters of Hardy and Frost alongside the poems allows this project to offer a thorough reading of a topic close to both poets’ hearts. Beyond a study of two specific poets, this thesis also reveals why and how poetry might be sought after as a valuable mnemonic device and sheds new light on the act of reading poetry.

The common conception that the cemetery holds the memory of all who died and were buried before us is a false one. There were certain biases in who was being commemorated, a form of selectivity to the memorial process, that caused a great number of people to erode from the landscape. The argument is based on observations from a sample of seventeen hundred individuals from the latter half of the nineteenth century in Montreal and surrounding villages. A selection of twelve surnames from archival data includes the three main cultures present in Montreal in the nineteenth century (French Canadians, Irish Catholics and English Protestants) and allows me to reconstitute families, to identify their kinship ties, and to determine their situation in life. Records from the cemeteries on Mount Royal and from the parishes of three rural villages confirm the burial of individuals from the sample. The presence or absence of these individuals in the cemetery landscapes depends on different commemorative practices influenced by religion, culture, gender, status and age.

is dissertation studies memory in the aftermath of the Chilean dictatorship through the Revista de Critica Cultural, edited by the prominent cultural critic, Nelly Richard In response to officially sanctioned narrative forms of memory which appealed to notions such as 'reconciliation' and 'consensus', transforming political compromises into transcendental moral principles in order to establish a redemptive sense of closure, the journal insists on a notion of memory in a state of constant reactivation in the present. Distinctive because of its championing of neo-avantgarde art and literature, the journal's articulation of alternative approaches to memory has been charged with the aesthetics of postmodern fragmentation that sets ii apart from the militant orthodoxy of the traditional Left.

This thesis will examine how Charles Dickens’s characters have enjoyed numerous afterlives beyond the original work in which they were created, ultimately seeking to understand better Dickens’s legacy in literature through the cultural memory of his characters. I begin by looking at how the idea of ‘character’ has been presented in literary genres and in literary theory, using Dickens’s SBB to illustrate how Dickens developed the literary genre of Charactery. Before looking at how Dickens’s characters have lived outside of their novels, I will look at a few of Dickens’s manuscripts and selected letters to see how Dickens originally wrote these characters. I will use Dickens’s own words to try to understand Dickens’s relationships with his characters and apply this to readers’ relationships with Dickens’s characters. I will then use terms and ideas borrowed from trans media studies (including fandom and fanfiction) to illustrate how Dickens’s characters’ afterlives create an archive of character; this means that the many adaptations and appropriations of Dickens’s characters are all significant attributions of the ‘original’ character. Working from this idea, I will then look at how Dickens’s characters materialise in things, memorabilia and household items, and how these things contribute to the character ‘afterlife’ not only in their visual representation but also in the choice of item in which they are represented. In the final chapter, I will use the recent BBC series Dickensian as a current practical representation of the direction of Dickensian studies and Dickens in popular culture; the basis for the creation of the show being Dickens’s characters themselves. Ultimately, by considering Dickens’s characters as archontic, allowing that their meme-like nature continually contributes to their archive and thus, every attribution in their afterlives is significant to how they are remembered even if anachronistic.

The Algerian War (1954-62) has been recognised by historians, sociologists and cultural theorists as one of the most divisive episodes in recent French history. Yet the historiography of the conflict is marked by periods when the war was broadly absent from the national memorial sphere, contrasting against others where violent memories of the conflict have coalesced around issues such as immigration, torture, and historical education. This thesis articulates how these and other social frameworks have influenced the cultural memory of the 1.2 million French military service conscripts, or appelés, who served during the Algerian War. Taking a quantitative and qualitative approach, informed by a Halbwachsian model of collective memory formation, and interdisciplinary readings on the social frameworks of Algerian War memory in France, this thesis thus outlines a historiography of constructions of the appelés in French cultural memory, which pays due attention to the medium in which that memory is constructed. Beginning with an overview of a wide corpus of appelé cultural memories from five media, through dialogue with historical, cultural and sociological literature about the conscripts and models of Algerian War memory, the thesis develops an appelé specific phasing of cultural memory. The thesis then advances four case studies which each examine constructions of the appelés in a distinct medium, and situates them within the appropriate phase in the evolution of appelé cultural memory. These studies consider the construction of the appelés in: firstly, television news magazine Cinq colonnes à la une (1959-60); secondly, two prose texts, Philippe Labro’s Des Feux Mals Éteints (1967) and Noël Favrelière’s Le Déserteur (1973); thirdly, Marc Garanger’s photo album La Guerre d’Algérie vue par un appelé du contingent (1984); and finally, three sets of texts drawn from contemporary online digital media.

The Wechsler Memory Scale –iii is the newest version of a six-decade old neuropsychological inventory. Since its conception, the Wechsler Memory Scale has been highly utilized by practitioners to accurately assess various memory functions in adult subjects. Revisions made within this inventory include the Faces I subtest, a facial recognition scale, which was added in order to strengthen the instrument’s accuracy at measuring episodic memory. Facial recognition, both cross-race and within-race, has been researched extensively and consistent biases have been found between race of test taker and cross-racial identification. Theories of exposure/contextual interaction (environment) and biological foundations have been the subject of study in the past in order to determine from where these racial identification deficits stem. The current study focuses on revealing bias in the Faces I subtest, regarding to an unequal distribution of racially representative faces in the testing materials. Eighty-eight college students were recruited to view forty-eight pictured faces from the Faces I subtest and determine the racial category to which the pictured face belonged. The subjects’ categorical responses were the basis for calculating a percent agreement score for racial category of each face. It was determined, using the results of subjects’ responses, that the Faces I subtest contained an unequal distribution of racially representative faces in both the Target and Interference testing material. This confirmed the presence of an inherent bias within the subscale. The implications of memory accuracy for the WMS-iii are discussed as it relates to different fields of study, but none more directly than the criminal justice system. Eyewitness testimony is a pivotal evidentiary tool in the criminal justice system, and ramifications of cross-racial identification deficits and biases in the tools to accurately assess memory are increasingly bringing this once heavily relied upon tool into question.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Anthropology, 2007.
Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 25, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0649. Adviser: Anya Peterson Royce.

This study explores how Chinese ancient cultural memory is constructed, and specifically how it is reconstructed through Chinese Xianxia TV dramas during the past five years. Ancient Chinese culture has become a hit in Chinese popular culture today, in which Xianxia TV dramas draw the biggest audiences. This study focuses on the ways, namely the transformations between cultural memory as storage memory to cultural memory as living functional memory, in which the Xianxia genre reconstructs the past. Bringing together a ritual view of communication, cultural memory and participatory culture, it applies a cultural approach to communication, which refers to the production and the fandom reception of Xianxia TV drama. Meanwhile, the perspective of culture industry provides a critical dimension to look into this highly commercial genre. This study is based on the analysis of content and representations of the theme song lyrics, posters and the general narratives of six selected Xianxia TV dramas, as well as a virtual ethnography of fan-generated videos and their comments. The findings suggest that, the reconstruction of ancient Chinese cultural memory in Xianxia TV dramas is a complex interplay between the culture industry logics of Xianxia production and the passionate participatory fan culture. The limited representations of the past in the series are absorbed and practiced by the fan audiences. Through fan practices, the fans extend the media text with their passion and knowledge of ancient culture, attaching the cultural memory into their present real-life cultural identity and hence vigorously transforming cultural memory from storage memory into functional memory.  This study speaks to the lack of bottom-up perspectives in the studies of the ancient culture revival trend in China, and it contributes to a deeper scholarly understanding of the Xianxia genre.

A comprehensive battery of commonly used neuropsychological tests, including the WMS Associate Learning and Visual Reproduction subtests, forming the focus of this study, were administered to a southern African sample (n = 33, age range 18-40). This sample composed of black South African, IsiXhosa speakers with an educational level of Grade 11 and 12, derived through DET and former DET schooling. The gender demographics were as follows; females n = 21 and males n = 12. This sample was purposefully selected based on current cross-cultural research which suggests that individuals matching these above-mentioned demographics are significantly disadvantaged when compared to available neuropsychological norms. This is due to the fact that current norms have been created in contexts with socio-cultural influences; including culture, language and quantity and quality of education distinctly dissimilar to individuals like that composed in the sample. Hence the purpose of this study was fourfold namely; 1) Describe and consider socio-cultural factors and the influence on test performance 2) Provide descriptive and preliminary normative data on this neuropsychologically underrepresented population 3) Compare test performance between age and gender through stratification of the sample and finally to 4) Evaluate the current norms of the two WMS subtests and assess their validity for black South Africans with DET and former DET schooling with comparisons to the results found in the study. Information derived from the statistical analyses indicated that a higher performance in favour of the younger group over the older age range was consistently found for both WMS subtests. With regards to gender, some higher means were evident for the male population in the sample than was produced by the female group. Lastly, due to the fact that most scores derived from the sample were considerably lower when compared to the available norms, it is felt that socio-cultural factors prevalent to this population are a significant cause of lower test performance and thus warrant the development of appropriate normative indicators.

Neste trabalho, procurou-se construir uma aproximação da experiência de um grupo de cultura popular no que diz respeito à transmissão de seus valores e práticas entre as gerações e à transformação deles nesta passagem. Experiência, tal como é compreendida por Benjamin (1985), conta aqui como lente fundamental na medida em que requer do olhar do pesquisador um voltar-se sobre si mesmo, tendo em vista a elaboração do que ele encontra como sua matéria-prima. O trabalho de campo da pesquisa foi feito com o grupo de Jongo do Tamandaré (Guaratinguetá-SP), portador da herança de um ritmo brasileiro de origem africana, que foi tomado como interlocutor, no espírito da pesquisa etnográfica. A etnografia é tomada não como prescrição metodológica, mas como disposição intelectual (Geertz, 1978) a partir da qual o pesquisador se constitui como tradutor de sua própria experiência em campo junto a seus interlocutores, aberto a lógicas insuspeitadas e desconcertantes. No contexto de globalização e do investimento crescente nas ações de salvaguarda do patrimônio cultural imaterial brasileiro, o processo de transmissão da cultura revelou-se como uma esfera de tensões, em que o repertório de saberes da memória coletiva e a linguagem das novas tecnologias disputam entre si e se hibridizam, configurando no grupo pontos de vista diversos e dilemáticos. Porém, para além da aproximação com essas forças de permanência e mudança que se contrapõe e se compõe no seio do grupo, o trabalho de campo suscita sobretudo indagações acerca de como os caminhos de transmissão da cultura criados nessa tensão se situam em relação à necessidade moral de elaboração e transmissão da experiência (Bosi, 1992). Nessa direção, é o próprio sentido mesmo da cultura como modo de estar no mundo (Arendt, 2005) e sua significância na teia de relações humanas que é retomado, tendo em vista uma visada qualitativa dos caminhos e desafios que a cultura popular e seus criadores vêm encontrando para deixarem, na sua passagem pela vida, um rastro (Ricoeur, 1997)
At this assignment, we looked into building an approach from the experience of a group of popular culture in regard to the transmission of its values and practices among generations and also to their transformations at this passage. The experiences as much as it is comprehended by Benjamin (1994), tells us here as something fundamental as it requests from the way we look at it, a quick look at ourselves, having as a target the elaboration from what we found as our raw material. At this research, the field work was done along with the Jongo of Tamandaré group that bears the memories of the Brazilian people that originated from Africa, which, here was taken as the interlocutor in he spirit of this ethnographic research. The ethnography is taken not as a methodological prescription, but as an intellectual disposition (Geertz, 1978) from which the researcher becomes a translator of his own experiences fielded along with his interlocutors, therefore opened to logics that are inconspicuous and sometimes clumsy. In the context of the globalization, and the growing investments in the actions of preserving the abstracted cultural material, the transmission process of the culture came up as a sphere of tensions, in which the collective repertoire of knowledges and memories and the language of the new technologies put up with each other into a fusion, configuring in the group different points of view and dilemmatic. However in order to go beyond this approach with these forces of permanence and changings that many times go against each other in the heart of the group, the field work is based over all in the questionings about how the different ways of transmission of the culture created in this tension is allocated in relation to the moral necessity of elaboration and transmission of backgrounds (Bosi, 1992). Towards it, it is the sense of the culture like the same sense as being in the world (Arendt, 2005) and its meaning in the net of human relations envisioning paths and challenges that the popular culture and its creators are facing in order to leave traces of their lives in the memorabilia of humanity (Ricoeur, 1997)

Estudo sobre o processo de construção identitária da cidade de São Luís. Dos vários epítetos pelos quais a cidade é designada, são contemplados aqui apenas os de Atenas Brasileira, Única cidade brasileira fundada pelos franceses e Jamaica Brasileira. O propósito é o de identificar as condições sociais, políticas e culturais presentes no contexto específico de cada uma dessas construções. São levados em conta o modelo eurocêntrico e o elitismo cultural vigentes na sociedade de um século XIX marcado pelas categorias dominantes/dominados, cultura letrada/cultura popular próprias das condições que ensejaram o estabelecimento da Atenas Brasileira. Foi analisada a estratégia que fez de um acontecimento histórico a instauração de um ato fundador de tradição e, por extensão, de criação de identidade cultural, tática que deu a São Luís, na primeira década do século XX, a designação de Única cidade brasileira fundada pelos franceses, a mesmo tempo em que ensejou a revitalização da primeira identidade cultural. Por fim, a análise do advento da Jamaica Brasileira nos anos de 1970, identidade cultural oriunda das massas populares e periféricas da cidade de São Luís, caracterizadas pela exclusão social e negritude, de forte apelo sensível e estético marcado pelo ritmo, pela dança, pela música reggae de origem jamaicana. Esses estudos tiveram como fundamentos epistemológicos teorizações dos campos da comunicação, dos estudos culturais, memória e narrativa. Para sua realização foram efetuadas leitura e análise de material bibliográfico e documental, realizadas entrevistas e aplicados questionários. O estudo revelou que os processos de construção das identidades culturais da cidade de São Luís foram influenciados pela po
Study of the process of identity construction in the São Luís city. Of the various epithets by which the city is designated, are included here only the Brazilian Athens, Only Brazilian city founded by the French and Brazilian Jamaica. The purpose is to identify the social, political and cultural present in the specific context of each of these constructs. Are taken into account the Eurocentric model and existing cultural elitism in a society of the nineteenth century marked by categories dominant / dominated, literate culture / popular culture typical of conditions that gave rise to the establishment of the Brazilian Athens. Was analyzed the strategy that made a historic event for the establishment of a founding act of tradition and, by extension, the creation of cultural identity, a tactic that gave São Luís the first decade of the twentieth century, the designation of Only Brazilian city founded by the French, the same time which led to the revitalization of the first cultural identity. Finally, analysis of the advent of the Brazilian Jamaica in the 1970s, cultural identity deriving the masses and peripheral São Luís city, characterized by social exclusion and blackness, sensitive and strong appeal marked by the rhythm, the dance, reggae music of Jamaican origin. These studies had as epistemological theories from the fields of communication, cultural studies, memory and narrative. For this realization were done reading and analysis of bibliographical and documentary material, interviews and completed questionnaires. The study revealed that the processes of construction of cultural identities in the São Luís city were influenced by certain political and communicative action in different forms of mediation.

The 1998 television broadcast of The New Zealand Wars documentary series was a significant public event, which had a major impact on a broad range of communities and individuals in Aotearoa New Zealand. This popular television history engaged with issues of historical veracity, race, culture and nationhood and challenged previously dominant discourses associated with these concepts. In doing so, it provoked heated debate, and a re-imagining of 'nation', and also opened up spaces for alternative ways of engaging with historical narrative. Informed by post-colonialism, cultural studies and cultural memory, this thesis explores the discursive and affective role of The New Zealand Wars, as it has operated within the turbulent climate of 1990s New Zealand cultural relations. This catalytic function is described in this thesis as a phenomenon of a television series shaped by, whilst also intervening in, processes of cultural colonisation and decolonisation. While both of these processes involve the transmission of discourse via cultural forms, the act of cultural decolonisation requires, in addition, the convergence of a number of agents (people and communities, discursive and memory resources) and circumstances, within particular contextual conditions. Such a convergence provided the conditions for the discursive synthesis, which shaped the production, construction and reception of this series. The role of audio-visual media (and specifically television documentary) in transmitting cultural memory is significant as it enables the flow of memory through channels or forms (such as visual, oral and aural traditions) that can bring about new perspectives and critical reflections upon colonial discourse and dominant concepts of nation and culture. In addition to these social and intellectual processes of audience engagement, this thesis argues that experiential and affective dimensions of cultural memory can (in these specific circumstances) open up radical spaces, offering the potential for generating awareness and sparking political action. These issues are explored through a tripartite analysis of the production context, construction and reception of The New Zealand Wars series. The integration of these three phases of analysis has generated a number of insights into the potential of audio-visual forms, including their producers and audiences, to participate in the negotiation of, and resistance to, colonial discourse. Such insights serve to challenge taken-for-granted constructions of nation and history, and suggest the increasing relevance of alternative concepts such as community-building and cultural memory. Ultimately, this thesis argues that television documentary can serve as a prime site for the articulation of these concepts. The New Zealand Wars serves as a case study, which demonstrates both the potential of this site, and the significance of the social-historical and cultural context in framing this series.

This thesis investigates “English Hecubas” as they appear in the recurring stories my culture tells itself about legendary Troy. Analysing a necessarily select number of Hecubas, spanning from the twelfth to the twenty-first century, I uncover a history of intricate cultural negotiations as theatre, literature and pedagogy attempt to domesticate the grief-stricken Trojan queen and recruit the classical past into the service of an ever-changing English present. My interest lies in the performative potential of texts. I therefore consider the reception of English Hecubas as they are culturally activated, looking to textbooks and classrooms, play-texts and theatres, print material and their readerships, insisting that schoolmasters, pupils, actors, authors, spectators and readers remain visible as the creators of meaning. Adopting ‘Presentism’ (as developed by Terence Hawkes) as my theoretical approach, the thesis is structured achronologically. This configuration gestures toward a more synchronic reading of Hecuba, replicating twenty-first century encounters with ancient mythological characters, by starting with our present “situatedness” yet juggling accumulations of history gathered with each prior acculturation. Classical Hecubas (of Homer’s Iliad, Euripides’ Hecuba and Trojan Women, Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Seneca’s Troas), entered England in the Renaissance via the imported texts and tenets of continental humanism. Pre-existing Hecubas of England’s oral tradition, medieval romance epics and indigenous Troynovant myths were forced into dialogue with their long-lost textual origins. This clash of Hecubas occurred within a crisis of mourning, resulting from the Reformation’s radical alteration of English funeral rites, which left maternal grief a culturally contentious site of anxiety. Thus, within its eight-hundred year span, the thesis repeatedly returns to the Renaissance to investigate the origins of the modern English Hecubas with which I begin. Hecuba’s grief can lead her to gouge out men’s eyeballs and murder their sons; tactics of accommodation and assimilation have been necessary to render this potentially violent ‘alien’ valuable within England’s cultural lexicon. By exposing the systemic marginalisation, mitigation, suppression and sublimation of Hecuba’s maternal grief and fury, this study hopes to recuperate the value of Hecuba’s essential mourning work.

This dissertation examines heritage as a social construct by way of critically accessing the precursors, proponents and processes of the Tulbagh restoration. This research is focused on understanding the reasons why and how, after the earthquake of 1969, Church Street was reinstated to its 'historic' 18/19th century appearance. This reconstructive restoration is unpacked within its South African socio-political, 20th-century situation to examine the motivations of the proponents behind the restoration as well as their conservation philosophies that underpinned the stylistic reconstruction of Tulbagh back to what was regarded as its Cape Dutch 'best'. The study comprises of an examination of both the theoretical development and practical application of reconstructions. Research traces the development of conservation in South Africa, first under the Union government and then under the Afrikaner Nationalist government to understand how Afrikaner Nationalism was superseded by the creation of a white South African identity. Pierre Nora's theories around memory and identity are explored and applied in order to contextualise the Tulbagh case study in a theoretical framework to highlight similarities and differences. The proponents of the Tulbagh restoration consisted of a wide and varied selection of the South African conservation fraternity and included the National Society, the Cape Institute of Architects, historian Dr Mary Cook, the Simon van der Stel Foundation, Anton Rupert and his Historic Homes Company, Gawie and Gwen Fagan and Dr Hans Fransen, as well as the National Monuments Commission/Council. These same role players came together in the decade before the earthquake to formalise their association, conservation resolve and philosophies. The findings of the study suggest that although united with a common vision, philosophy and determination, these conservation advocates all had their own agenda and differing motivations for their involvement in Tulbagh's restoration. Motivations ranged from straightforward conservation concern and a response to the threat of cultural devastation on one hand to ideological nation-building ideals and Afrikaner nationalism on the other. Although politics impacted early on and all three levels of government funded the bulk of the restoration costs, the diversity of the proponents suggests that this project was more complex than being motivated primarily by nationalism.

A Thesis submitted to The University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine.
Purpose: compare the Southwestern Indigenous Cognitive Assessment (SWICA), a novel tool for screening AI older adults in Arizona, with The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), a commonly used memory screening tool, for comparison of cultural bias. Methods: Cultural bias was assessed by retrospectively comparing coded participant responses to 16 questions about their cultural context. Intrasample variation on MoCA and SWICA tests was controlled by using the participants as their own controls. Data were analyzed using a multiple regression general linear model on SPSS software. Results: Scores on the SWICA test were independently associated with English use in the home (Beta = .396, p = .026), years of education (Beta = 335, p = .027), and ease of learning (Beta = .361, p = .029), but not age (Beta = .366, p = .054). Scores on the MoCA test were independently associated with age (Beta = ‐.491, p = .001), English use in the home (Beta = ‐.320, p = .039) , and years of education (Beta = ‐.284. p = .030), but not ease of learning (Beta = ‐.267, p = .067). Conclusions: Scores were similar on both tests (t=3.934, p=.001), and were independently associated with English use in the home and years of education. SWICA was uniquely associated with ease of learning and MoCA was uniquely associated with age. This preliminary comparison demonstrates the usefulness of SWICA, and validation of this tool is recommended.

This dissertation is based on the analysis of humor in rakugo, a traditional genre of comedic storytelling in Japan. This project tackles the question: How does highly structured rakugo humor contribute and shape the Japanese society’s perceptions of the city of Tokyo in an age where the major social trends are dominated with a highly mediated and digitized lifestyle. In analyzing humor in rakugo, I argue that the farcical encounters, by refracting certain domains of human experience that cannot be articulated otherwise, provide a spectacle through which to view the deeper nuances in the sociocultural panorama of city life in Tokyo on the scale of individual interactions, institutions and neighborhoods. Rakugo and its mode of oral storytelling plays on the intricate discursive dynamics, by means of which tradition and modernity are imagined, represented, and the relationship between them negotiated. Additionally, the performance of rakugo, which has a long history that goes back to Early Modern Japan, triggers an affective imagination of the neighborhood life of the city’s past, where such imagination influences the Japanese society’s perception of the present. Rakugo’s popularity in the twenty first century is, in part, a result of the ideology of the Japanese state, on the other hand, it is mostly due to the power of the humorous folk narratives and mindfulness of the performers that the genre maintains a sense of coherence and agility, and urges the audience to embrace the patterns and lifestyle of the past, while remaining tuned with the prevailing trends of ambiguity and conspiracy in the aftermath of the recent triple disaster. My dissertation consists of eight chapters: After providing introductory statements and questions regarding the importance of humor in generating an analytical view of the Japanese society, in the first chapter, I map out the layers of memory and imagination transmitted through the story-telling voice and embodiment in a rakugo performance. The oral storytelling of rakugo activates an auditory perception of the neighborhood life of Tokyo that is characterized by simple, informal conversations and playful interactions, where such ease of direct interactions leads to a construction of the ancient neighborhoods as a sanctuary from the hyper mediated matrix-like lifestyle of contemporary Tokyo. Rakugo’s parodic tone gives the impression that, although times might change, human situations do not. Hence the humorous content of rakugo helps maintaining a sense of continuity within the rapidly changing trends of urban life. On March 11 2011, my fieldwork was interrupted with a big earthquake, which was followed with a tsunami hitting the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. Therefore, the second chapter questions the limits and possibility of humor and the rakugo performers’ reactions in a time of ambiguity and conspiracy in the aftermath of Japan’s recent triple disaster. While exploring the contemporary interpretations of ghost stories (kaidan banashi) and gallows humor, this chapter focuses on the binary tensions between the causes of fear and its humorous modification, and gets tied-up to the contemporary society’s fear and anxiety toward technology and the humorous interpretation of such fear in rakugo. The third chapter focuses on the changing notions of fame and stardom by comparing the generation of the legendary performers with contemporary ones in the light of the changing rhythms of urban life, which has an impact on the production of humor on the contemporary rakugo stage. The fourth chapter has an analytical perspective on the rakugo audience as fans and patrons, while engaging in the discussion of connoisseurship in relation to iki and tsū, (indicating stylishness and expertise, respectively). The fifth chapter focuses on the portrayals of foolishness while providing an analysis of mockery of the scholastic knowledge of modernity in rakugo stories. This chapter provides an analysis of Japanese modernity through the humorous perspective and mockery of the Edo commoners, their masterful use of the nonsensical logic, and the way such perspective is interpreted by the contemporary rakugo performers. The sixth and final chapter tackles the importance of voice projection in the performance of rakugo. While problematizing the so-called incompetence of female voice, as an accepted norm by the majority of the community of rakugo performers, this chapter also problematizes the issue of voicing culture and tradition.
Anthropology

This dissertation is based on twenty-one months of ethnographic fieldwork in Damascus and Suwyada, Syria. Research focused on the Druze religious sect. The central focus is on a religious minority's strategies for preserving their sense of separateness and uniqueness while at the same time claiming pan-Arab and patriotic Syrian affiliations. Three broad topics are used to discuss this: reincarnation, marriage, and memory. Because the primary focus is on a religious minority, one of the major concerns has been to elucidate notions of relational identity from a Druze point of view. This dissertation is an argument against any kind of facilely labeled Druze identity, and is an extended discussion of various facets of Druze experience, on what it means to be a member of a religious minority in the contemporary Middle Eastern state of Syria in the mid-1990s. Identity might be best understood as affiliations and affinities, multiply interacting levels of meaning, and a question of frequently adjusting focus and perspective. Reincarnation is not usually associated with Islam, and the Druze belief in reincarnation is one thing that sets this sect apart from the Sunni majority in Syria, even stigmatizes them. This dissertation also explores the nature of the everyday lived experience of Druze reincarnation, and how it is a point of cohesion for the community as a whole, but at the cost of some emotional splintering of individuals selves and families. Reincarnation has concrete social effects on both families and communities. It brings together members of unrelated families who otherwise would never have cause to know one another. Reincarnation also functions doctrinally to support the sect's prohibition against outmarriage. Outmarriage was perceived to be occurring with increasing frequency among the Druze in the 1990s, and was a hot topic of conversation. This dissertation explores the nature of ideologies being reproduced, as well as challenged and altered, through the debate ongoing in the community regarding marriage and outmarriage. Both reincarnation and outmarriage are topics that raise the issue of the Druze's relationship to non-Druze, and relational identity, since they both deal with ideologies of boundary maintenance, and "purity" of sect membership.

This thesis explores the formation of a distinctive type of popular cultural memory I have chosen to call newsreel memory, through a close analysis of oral testimonies provided by older residents of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and its districts. Focusing on the 1940s, this study demonstrates that although newsreel memories are anchored within the autobiographical, the interpretation of individual recollections can only be fully realised within wider cultural frames of meaning, significantly the familial, the generational, and the national. This thesis makes it clear that newsreels produced a unique viewing experience and one in which the pleasures associated with the spectacle of ‘actuality and knowledge’ were paramount. In addition, the gathered recollections themselves illustrate that in an important imaginative sense newsreel viewing brought historic news events, particularly during the Second World War, into existence and newsreel audiences into an imagined communion. Given the clustering of individual newsreel memories around an ultra-familiar canon of historic events, this study reveals the formative relationship between the historic events recorded by the newsreels and the personal expression of a particular popular wartime memory. Further, this thesis argues that one of the unique features of newsreel memory is its ‘entangledness’, that is, the way in which newsreel memories have been re-imagined and re-framed by the subsequent use of newsreel material in other cultural contexts. Finally, this study shows that, although the newsreel image derives its cultural authority from its perceived iconic status, what is in fact evoked is an imaginary witnessing of the prediscursive news event. As a result, what is recalled in newsreel memory is an event that took place else-where and else-when. Thus, it is the role of newsreel viewing as an important form of secondary witnessing that is explored here: a complex process, which confirms newsreel memory as a unique expression of both popular cultural memory and history.