The exposure of social problems such as forced disappearances is necessary for the history of society. The interactive documentary is a new digital proposal for the creation of spaces for the reconstruction of a social memory. In this paper, a content analysis is used to analyze the construction of the interactive narrative for the reconstruction of memory in the webdoc Forensic Landscapes and, with this, to identify its narrative composition in the construction of new spaces for the user’s experience. The interactive documentary generates a shared feeling between the user and the interface due to resources such as hypertextuality, database, narrative elements, representation modalities and interactivity. Thus, immersion is adhered, a new way of exposing a social theme in 360 degrees which recreates a sensory experience within an imaginary universe. Through the story, the memory of the agents involved in forced disappearances in Latin America is reconstructed.

Digital media has created more opportunities for stories to be interactive, allowing the user to participate in plot events and even change the direction of a story. Interactivity can make stories more engaging however if the plot can change as a result of user input then the story becomes non-linear. The resulting system is known as a potential narrative because a narrative is only presented through user interaction. Non-linear stories require extra considerations and content compared to a linear story of similar length. Computer generated content for video games has grown as a field and this raises the possibility of using computer assistance for the creation and management of interactive stories. This thesis explores the paradigm required for both computers and developers to understand potential narratives. The success of a potential narrative requires the same coherency and credibility that a regular story does, in addition to a new layer known as player agency. Coherency refers to the logical causal progression of a plot, credibility is the verisimilitude of the presented story world and player agency is how satisfying the interactive elements are. These three criteria are the guiding principles for the creation of an intuitive potential narrative model. We present a state transition model for potential narratives as well as a prototype using relational programming to generate coherent traversals through a manually authored potential narrative. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc) / Writing stories for video games and interactive fiction is a time consuming and complex affair. The resulting web of possible events and pathways through the non-linear story is known as a potential narrative. Computer assisted tools for creating potential narratives could cut down on production costs and open the door for stories that are able to adapt to the player in real-time. In order for these generated stories to be viable they must be coherent, credible and allow for player agency. These criteria describe whether stories make logical sense and are satisfying for the user to interact with. Taking that into account we present a model for coherent interactive stories which keeps track of the story world and the events that could happen within it. As a proof of concept we implement this model with a prototype to generate traversals through a manually authored potential narrative.

Women with HIV are particularly at risk for poor mental health outcomes and for a number of traumatic experiences, including sexual abuse. Benefit-finding is the ability to generate positive outcomes resulting from trauma and is important for women with HIV, since it is motivated by distress and has demonstrated health benefits among individuals with trauma and/or medical conditions. Qualitative narrative measures, especially those that reflect life stories, are most likely to assess benefit-finding. Narrative coherence, which reflects how well a life story is told, may be associated with benefit-finding and with better mental health outcomes. The current study hypothesized that greater psychological distress (depressive symptoms [CESD] and quality of life [QOL]) HIV disease progression (HIV viral load [VL] and CD4 count), and sexual abuse, and lower levels of substance use, assessed with self-report measures at multiple visits over an average of 10 years (M = 10.05 years, SD = 3.47 years), would predict benefit-finding and coherence, coded from autobiographical narratives of 99 women with HIV (91% African American, mean age = 44.78 years, SD = 8.85 years) who were participants in the Women's Interagency HIV Study, Chicago site. Greater benefit-finding and coherence were also hypothesized to predict higher resilience coded in narratives cross-sectionally and higher CD4 count, QOL, and antiretroviral medication (HAART) adherence, and lower VL and CESD 6 months following narrative administration (M = 5.64 months, SD = 1.49 months). Partial correlations and multiple hierarchical linear and logistic regressions controlling for demographics and other relevant covariates indicated that hypotheses were partially supported. History of sexual abuse predicted greater benefit-finding only. There were no significant longitudinal predictors of narrative coherence. Benefit-finding was positively related to narrative coherence and resilience (cross-sectionally) and positively predictive of HAART adherence, greater likelihood of CD4 >= 350 and undetectable VL, and fewer depressive symptoms 6 months later. Coherence was not significantly related to post-narrative outcomes. Results suggest that benefit-finding has numerous health benefits among women with HIV and that interventions for this population should draw on and enhance benefit-finding, a potential strength in facing adverse circumstances.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Historic monuments and markers can be found across the United States. There are always different motivations involving why they were placed and who or what is being acknowledged. Markers and memorials remembering a white woman named Frances Slocum recognize that she was taken by Delaware Indians in 1778 and eventually married a Miami chief before dying in Indiana in 1847. What the markers and memorials fail to show is the life of Maconaquah, a Miami woman that was adopted by a Delaware family after being taken in Pennsylvania. Since being located by her white family, Maconaquah’s story has been retold, celebrated, and remembered as the story of Frances Slocum, a lost but now found sister. The memorialization of Frances Slocum and erasure of Maconaquah began with the captivity narratives that told the story of Slocum from the perspective of her being lost and then found by her white relatives. Native captivity narratives began when the increased colonization of the North American continent led to conflict and violence between the white colonists and Indigenous tribes; popular narratives began as early as 1624 with Captain John Smith’s Generall Historie. When captives shared their stories, it was a way to share information about the different cultures they had encountered, as well as created a division of white colonial cultural and Indigenous cultures. Narratives like the ones written about Maconaquah focus on her white identity and family and firmly emphasize any difference in dress, home, or demeanor. Maconaquah is not recognized so much for the life she created among the Miami as she is mourned for the life she could have had with her white family. This dismissal of her Indigenous identity continued onto her monuments and markers that refused to acknowledge her name or her legacy. To properly remember Maconaquah’s life and legacy, any potential monument or marker will need to disrupt the narrative previously presented in favor of centering her Miami identity.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Stories of Indian captivity had long interested Anglo-American readers. Throughout the early republic, the genre of women's Indian captivity narratives took on another significance. "Captivating a Nation" places the scholarship of Indian captivity in conversation with American nationalism and reveals the ways in which Indian captivity narratives became the surface upon which American imagined their nation. "Captivating a Nation" is an examination of women's Indian captivity narratives published between 1787 and 1830. These narratives provided more than a continuous repository of settlers as victims in an untamed wilderness. They were narratives of nationhood in complex and contradictory ways. Indian captivity narratives were a popular genre among readers of the early American republic. Yet, less than half of those concerning male captives were published in multiple editions, while every narrative concerning a female captive was republished. Unlike the captivity narratives of men, those concerning women were re-published and re-consumed because settler women taken captive to Americans of the early republic symbolized the tenuousness and vulnerability of the young nation. That is, they simultaneously gave voice to fears related to national stability as well as contained those fears with the redemption of the woman and her return to white society. / History