Thesis (D. Min.)--Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [17]-[19]).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [17]-[19]).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [17]-[19]).

This project concerns a Jewish community in the city of Kobe, Japan and its condition of memory/history. It attempts to create a film of this condition. The project consists of a written thesis and a 40min film. The written thesis describes the process of developing a creative strategy for the film. There are already many films which choose migration as a subject. And because of the loose meaning of migration, different kind of topics are and can be labeled under migration. In this project, I attempt to make a film which is intrinsic to this case. My research process starts with fieldwork to understand this Jewish community. Through a 10 month period of fieldwork mainly in Kobe, Japan, I discovered the incompleteness of history or memory in this Jewish community. In other words, the fragility of their history and collective memory in this place. I set the research question for this project as: ‘what kind of filmic form can respond to this incomplete memory/history condition?' To address this research question, I first examine this fragility of memory and history through an interdisciplinary set of references, such as migration studies, memory studies, and urban studies. I argue that ‘trace' is a useful concept in accessing a past, in spite of the incompleteness of history/memory in this place. I also conceptualize the idea of a geographical trace seeking to understand the nature of migrational traces. I then move on to discussing how the idea of a material trace is not sufficient to adequately attend to this memory/history condition of the Jewish community in Kobe. I first paid attention to existing material traces such as the synagogue, but there is a limit to this approach since much has disappeared. These traces of the community that still exist and the invisible traces that don't anymore form a temporal layer of the city. Also, some of the traces were dispersed and located in other places, such as New York City and Washington, D.C. in the USA. These traces were also invisible in a sense that they are out of the purview from Kobe. The traces located in Kobe and found in New York City and Washington, D.C. form a geographical layer mediated by the experience of migration. Based on this field examination, and also engaging with a corpus of films, documentary theory, and discussions in visual anthropology, I propose what I call a poetics of delay. This poetics of delay seeks to employ cinematic means to translate the condition of history/memory of the Jewish community in Kobe with its gaps and forms of invisibility. I argue that this poetics of delay can communicate the partiality and invisibility of the past through sustaining a literal delay in seeing and knowing within the viewer's experience. The aim of the film is not to provide an undisputed historical narrative of the Jewish community, though it does reflect on that history. Rather, it attempts to represent the difficulty of retrieving history and recovering memory through the medium of documentary film.

published_or_final_version / Geography and Geology / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis (M.A.)--Marshall University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Abstract included. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 48 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 46-48).

Thesis (D. Litt. et Phil.)--University of South Africa, 1997.

Thesis (D. Litt. et Phil.)--University of South Africa, 1997.

Thesis advisor: Bonnie Jefferson / This thesis analyzes the discourse surrounding two of the most celebrated professional athletes in the present generation. Kobe Bryant and LeBron James are two highly talented basketball players who have both been hailed within the world of sports ever since they left high school and entered directly into the NBA. This study argues that the media has presented the careers of both Bryant and James in the form of carefully constructed and familiar narratives. The analysis incorporates concepts drawn from Walter R. Fisher, Seymour Chatman, Karyn and Donald Rybacki and Kenneth Burke, in order scrutinize the narrative elements existing within specific artifacts presented by the media. The analysis demonstrates how the selected artifacts uphold plotlines that are already recognizable to the audience. Through influential rhetorical devices, the media frames the careers of Bryant and James so that the two men are featured as the mythological heroes of their tales. This study reveals the power of framing a message as an identifiable narrative as well as the implications the construction has for both the athletes and the audience. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Communication Honors Program. / Discipline: Communication.

This is a study of how two small neighbourhoods, Mano and Mikura, recovered from the 1995 Kobe (Japan) earthquake, with a particular focus on the relationship between community vulnerability and capacity. Few studies have examined these interactions, even though vulnerability reduction is recognized to be a vital component of community recovery. Drawing from literature on disaster recovery, community development, vulnerability analysis, community capacity building and the Kobe earthquake, a community vulnerability and capacity model is elaborated from Blaikie et al.’s Pressure and Release Model (1994) to analyze the interactions. The Mano and Mikura cases are analyzed by applying this model and relating outcomes to the community’s improved safety and quality of community lives. Based on the experience of Mano, appropriate long-term community development practices as well as community capacity building efforts in the past can contribute to the reduction of overall community vulnerability in the post-disaster period, while it is recovering. On the other hand, the Mikura case suggests that even though the community experiences high physical and social vulnerability in the pre-disaster period, if the community is able to foster certain conditions, including active CBOs, adequate availability and accessibility to resources, and a collaborative working relationship with governments, the community can make progress on recovery. Although both Mano and Mikura communities achieved vulnerability reduction as well as capacity building, the long-term sustainability of the two communities remains uncertain, as issues and challenges, such as residual and newly emerging physical vulnerability, negative or slow population growth and aging, remained to create vulnerability to future disasters. The case studies reveal the interactions of community vulnerability and capacity to be highly complex and contingent on many contextual considerations.