Thesis (doctoral) - Freie Universität, Berlin, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 277-298).

In recent years, scholars have emphasized the importance of collective memory in the making of national identity. Where does death fit into the collective memory of American identity, particularly in the economic and social chaos of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did death shape the collective memory of American national identity in the midst of a pluralism brought on by immigration, civil and labor rights, and a transforming culture? On the one hand, the commemorations of public figures such as Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt constructed an identity based on Anglo-Saxonism, American imperialism, and the “Strenuous Life.” This was reflected in the burial of American soldiers of the Spanish American and Philippine American wars and the First World War. On the other hand, the commemorations of soldiers and sailors from the Civil War, Spanish American War, and Great War created opportunities to both critique and appropriate definitions of national identity. Through a series of case studies, my dissertation brings together cultural and political history to explore the (re)production and (trans)formation of American identity from the Civil War to the Great War. I am particularly interested in the way people used funerals and monuments as tools to produce official and vernacular memory. I argue that both official and vernacular forms of commemoration can help historians understand the social and political tensions of creating national identity in a burgeoning industrial and multicultural society.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-304).

Honors thesis (History)--Oberlin College, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130-135)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed September 15, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-151)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 391-395).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 135-151) and index.

This thesis presents the ways in which four major Dutch opinion journals have depicted the war of decolonization between the Netherlands and Indonesia and its afterlife in the years 1994, 1995, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2016. More specifically, through a textual analysis of 99 articles, it investigates which frames were attributed to the war by the four journals and which arguments were used to support these evaluations. Combining theories of social memory and the media’s relationship with the public, the results are linked to the academic debate on the Dutch social memory of the war of decolonization. The findings reveal that the examined opinion journals either frame the war positively or negatively, but rarely neutrally. In addition, great continuity and stability in the ways in which the journals framed the event was found, as the tone of the articles essentially did not change between 1994 and 2016. Due to the similar topics discussed and arguments given, it is also argued that the debate which took place in the Dutch opinion journals can be understood as very similar to the academic debate on the Dutch social memory of the war of decolonization.

What does it mean to link one's own history to that of another person or group of people? In what sense can a given history be 'one's own' or 'another's'? This thesis investigates movements between histories in three autobiographical texts which confront intergenerational shifts in language, triggered by the legacies of violent histories. Nabokov charts his movement from the Russian to the English language against the backdrop of the October Revolution, the Second World War and the Cold War. Perec's text confronts the silences in his family history produced by the death of his father in the Second World War and his mother's deportation to Auschwitz. His autobiography engages with a family history of displacement and movement between religious affiliations, countries, alphabets and languages, triggered by multiple waves of anti-Semitism, culminating with his mother's death in the Holocaust. Chamoiseau explores the ambivalent cultural and linguistic affiliations produced by a post- or neo-colonial childhood in Martinique. The thesis argues that in such contexts the links between the author's life and the lives of previous generations take on a central importance. Further, it demonstrates that each author goes beyond his own collective history to forge links between his life and those of other people who have lived through or are still suffering the legacies of different histories of violence and oppression. Though these movements have sometimes been noted, the original contribution of this thesis is that it argues such movements are central to the autobiographical texts under discussion. It looks at why and how inter-generational shifts in language inflect these authors' approach to the connections between their own histories and those of other people, and tests what is to be gained when the critic takes up the comparative interpretive framework these texts establish. By opening up a dialogue between these texts and a range of current theories of traumatic memory, inter-generational transmission of memory and 'multidirectional' memory, it finds that a comparative approach has the potential to enrich and nuance current debates in these areas.