Inside Story explores the essence of story and attempts to connect the audience to the significance of story in their own lives. The documentary examines story and determines the elements necessary for its formation. The film investigates the psychological aspects of story, inspects the physiological processing of story that connects story to the way we think and perceive, and finally, emphasizes the functions and values of story.

Towards the end of the 1960s in France we witness the awakening of the memory of the Holocaust and the Occupation which coincides with the publication of Patrick Modiano’s first novel, La place de l’étoile. It is from this time that Jewish memory of the Holocaust begins to surface and we see the emergence of a literature of the post-Holocaust generation. Modiano belongs to this generation that, being deprived of a personal memory of the Holocaust, turns to this period in a quest for roots and identity. Like his Jewish colleagues, Modiano struggles to come to terms with a past that he has not experienced and an absence of memory. This dissertation analyses Modiano’s use of the period of the Holocaust as signifier of Jewish identity in four of his novels in order to highlight the role of the issue of Jewish identity in the construction of a textual identity / Vers la fin des années 60 on voit en France le réveil de la mémoire de la Shoah et de l’Occupation qui coïncide avec la publication du premier roman de Patrick Modiano, La place de l’étoile. C’est à partir de cette époque que la mémoire juive de la Shoah va pouvoir se faire entendre et qu’on constate l’émergence d’une littérature de la génération d’après la Shoah. Modiano appartient à cette génération qui, étant dépourvue d’une mémoire personnelle de la Shoah, se tourne vers cette période dans une quête de racines et d’identité. Comme ses confrères juifs, Modiano a du mal à se réconcilier avec un passé qu’il n’a pas vécu et une absence de mémoire. Cette étude examine de près le recours de Modiano aux années de la Shoah en tant que signifiant de l’identité juive dans quatre ouvrages afin de mettre en exergue le rôle de la problématique de l’identité juive dans la construction d’une identité textuelle chez cet écrivain / Linguistics and Modern Languages / M. A. (French)

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In his novels Slaughterhouse-five and The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut explores issues of cultural identity in technologically-advanced societies post-World War II. With the rise of globalization and rapid technological advancements that occurred postwar, humans worldwide were mitigating the effects of information overload and instability in cultural identity. The influx of cultural influences that accompany a global society draws attention to the fluidity and inevitability of cultural change. A heightened awareness of cultural influences—past and present—creates anxiety for the generation living postwar and before the dawn of the Information Age. This generation suffers from “cultural schizophrenia”: a fracturing of the psyche characterized by anxiety over unstable cultural identities and agency. With the characters of Billy Pilgrim and Winston Niles Rumfoord, Vonnegut explores the different reactions to and consequences of cultural schizophrenia. His unique writing style is an effective hybrid of science fiction conventions and the complexities of human culture and society. Ultimately, Vonnegut explores the dangers of detachment and the complicated nature of agency with novels that are both innovative and accessible.