Side-by-side, surprisingly, in the appendix of the Buffalo Historical Society’s publication Obsequies of Red Jacket at Buffalo, E. Pauline Johnson and Walt Whitman memorialize Red Jacket’s reburial on October 9, 1884, with their respective poems, “The Re-interment of Red Jacket” and “Red Jacket, (From Aloft.).” Through this textual showdown, this report interrogates the usefulness of the vanishing Indians narrative, instead interpreting the event as the locus of a heterogeneous, spiritual contest over bodies and their potential significations. Although orchestrated by Buffalo’s European American elites, the reburial also included representatives from the Six Nations tribes, among them Mohawk Ely S. Parker as well as Johnson. Paying attention to heterogeneity, whether differences in religion, tribal affiliation or class, at the event allows us to understand the varying stakes of the conflict, from debates over Christianity to immigration to the establishment of literary and social relations. While Whitman, nearing the end of his life, contemplates proper memorialization in “Red Jacket, (From Aloft.),” Johnson deploys the elegy to lay claim to her Native ancestry and burgeoning literary career. Monumentalizations often attempt to conceal such heterogeneity by creating the illusion of a dominant, national narrative. Alive within these events, nevertheless, a different image persists, one that preserves the messy debates over religion, land settlement, immigration, citizenship and transforming Native governments that actual memorialization ceremonies create. / text

Looking primarily at the family photographs in Anne Carson’s epitaph in book form, this essay explores how Nox multiply exhibits translation as the approximation of an imperfect nearness. The replica of a testimonial object Carson created after her brother’s passing, Nox is a resolutely non- narrative work of poetry structured around a belabored translation of a Catullan elegy, prose poems, photographs, and other fragments of memorial matter. Examining Nox as an intimate archive made public through Carson’s act of curation, my project draws attention to how this work analogizes translation to the understanding of affective life. Inspired by Marianne Hirsch’s critical work on vernacular photography, I demonstrate that the exhibited family photographs in Nox not only thematize Carson’s focus on illumination and darkness, but also materially amplify the inaccessibility of the felt lives they encapsulate. I argue that Nox, like the photographs it houses, models a memorial practice insistent simultaneously on materiality and the incomplete proximity to what remains. / text

Ce travail examine la participation des diasporas à la transformation des conflits dans le pays d’origine, en particulier celle qui prend la forme d'engagement dans les travaux de mémoire. Il explore le rôle des diasporas dans les batailles mnémoniques en jeu dans les processus de transformation du conflit dans le pays d'origine, et revisite donc la triade «artisans de paix - saboteurs - neutres» propre aux analyses de conflit. Cette recherche examine les diverses batailles de mémoire existantes entre les individus et les groupements et qui renvoient aux différentes vagues migratoires et classes sociales, ainsi qu’aux diverses histoires d'activisme politique transnational. Ce travail évalue la relation entre l'Etat d'origine et sa population à l'étranger. Ainsi, il examine les manières de (ré)imaginer, de verbaliser et de mettre en œuvre les notions de «patrie», de «retour» et de «bon citoyen» pour les populations à l'étranger, qui cadrent les processus de production d’un comportement spécifique visant à garantir la prospérité et la sécurité du pays d'origine. En outre, cette étude examine la réceptivité du pays d’origine à la (ré)incorporation des souvenirs diasporiques dans le récit négocié à construire dans le cadre d’un processus de transition à l'issue d'un conflit. Cette recherche se base sur des données obtenues grâce à des travaux de terrain comprenant l’observation participante des activités associatives et consulaires, la collecte de témoignages oraux des membres des associations de migrants colombiens à Paris, New York, DC et Boston, ainsi que sur des sources primaires rassemblées dans les archives du Congrès colombien et du MAE à Bogota (COL). / This work delves into diaspora participation in conflict transformation in the homeland, in particular that which takes the form of engagement in memory works. It explores the role of diasporas in the mnemonic battles at play within a process of conflict transformation in the country of origin, thus revisiting the “peace-makers ― spoilers ― neutrals” triad that traditionally categorizes diaspora participation in homeland conflicts.This research examines the diverse mnemonic struggles among individuals and groupings pertaining to different migratory waves, social classes, and with different histories of transnational political activism.This study assesses the relationship between a sending state and its population abroad. Hence,it looks at the modes of (re)imagining, verbalizing, and enacting of the notions of ‘home’, ‘return’ and ‘good national’, for populations abroad, as part of state-led subject-making processes aiming at producing a specific behaviour that will guarantee the prosperity and security of the country of origin. Also, the study addresses homeland responsiveness to (re)incorporating diasporic memories into the negotiated narrative to be constructed as part of the process of coming to terms with mass violence and the transition out of conflict. The research is based on data obtained through fieldwork encompassing participant observation of associational and consular activities, the collection of oral testimonies from members of Colombian migrants’ associations in Paris and in the New York City – DC - Boston line, as well as on written sources compiled in the Depository of Congress and the archives of the Colombian MFA in Bogota.

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Soldiers and civilians alike sought to make sense of the war following the silencing of the guns with the signing of the armistice in 1918. One of the foremost veteran groups leading this effort was the American Legion, founded in 1919. This World War I veteran organization would provide an outlet for Great War veterans to share camaraderie, interact with their local communities, and ultimately pay homage to their fallen brothers in arms. In line with the national organization's agenda and programs, the American Legion Kings Mountain Post No. 24 in Johnson City, TN executed two very different versions of WWI memorialization, one built in 1922 and another in 1935. These two memorials served the community in vastly different ways throughout the 1900s. The first was a commemorative marker and the second was a community centerpiece. In this paper, I argue that the differences between two World War I memorials in Johnson City are demonstrative of how the community progressively oriented its identity and infrastructures around Great War veterans following the conflict. Johnson City's physical and memorial landscapes changed as the city sought to reconcile the war and its survivors. Each memorial served veterans and the larger community in ways that aligned with both the veterans' needs and larger social contexts of Johnson City at the times of their creations. Ultimately, the memorials were intended to serve very different purposes within the community. Both veterans and nonveterans in the community responded more favorably to the 1935 Johnson City WWI memorial initially, and then continued to utilize it much more frequently throughout the twentieth century. It was a memorial that was intended to be interacted with regularly. The second memorial's central role in the community was cemented by how the memorial's placement and style differed from its predecessor. The second memorial was more accessible to the public, partnered with a more prominent municipal facility, had an expanded scope, and utilized nationalistic iconography. These key differences are a result of the community's increased dedication to Great War veterans by 1935. As care for World War I veterans became a central component of the city, so did memorializing the conflict. / Master of Arts

On December 24, 1924, a wall of water and alkali muck engulfed Palmertown, a small community in Saltville, Virginia. Houses were swept away and by the time all of the bodies were pulled from the wreckage, the death toll had reached 19-an immense loss for the tight-knit community. A dam, owned by Mathieson Alkali Works, loomed approximately 100 feet above Palmertown, keeping at bay the chemical muck produced by the company plants. Despite the extent of the damage, the flood is largely absent from discourse and no historical marker exists to memorialize the tragedy. Furthermore, Palmertown and neighboring Henrytown were expunged in the mid-twentieth century when Olin Corporation rebuilt the dam overtop of the town sites. Stories of the event have been passed down for generations, immortalizing a specific story of the disaster in the memories of many local residents of Saltville, so why is it not memorialized? The cultural framework of Saltville determined how and why this disaster and others have been remembered or forgotten. In 1924, Saltville residents were accustomed to tragic events; to some extent these events were seen as part and parcel of life in a company town in Appalachia. Yet, nearly a century after the tragedy, the process of unearthing of difficult events can illuminate much of the community's collective history and restore the fragmented communal memory. The memorialization of the Palmertown Tragedy of 1924 establishes a framework for acknowledging an arduous past and identifying the roots of a town's resilience. / Master of Arts

The massive mortality rates of the American Civil War challenged mid-nineteenth century Americans' understandings and relationship with death. Faced with inadequate methods of individual identification and record-keeping that were unable to keep up with the overwhelming mobilization of both men and resources that the war demanded, many soldiers simply disappeared or were buried under a stone marked "unknown." Even soldiers who kept their names died far from home, away from family, in a manner that challenged nineteenth century traditions of death. These factors caused many soldiers to seek some manner of permanence to ensure that their name would not be forgotten following death. This project examines the ways in which soldiers used visual culture, particularly graffiti, drawings, and studio photographs, to find permanence amidst the destruction and death of war. By looking at the subjects of and the ways that soldiers used the visual culture they created, this thesis seeks to understand the value of visual culture as both an outlet for soldiers of the Civil War and as an invaluable source for historical research today. This project first explores the role of religion as both a subject of and an influence on visual culture. It then moves on to examine how soldiers used visual culture as a means finding permanence, including as a means of claiming a place in and piece of the war and as a form of memorialization. By examining the power of visual culture for finding permanence, this project provides insight into the ways in which soldiers sought to remember each other and their own experiences while also adding to the human conversation on mortality. / Master of Arts

This thesis explores landscape's framing role in memorialization through a discussion of southeastern United States mill villages. This paper moves the preservation discussion from the architectural realm of an isolated textile mill building to the scale of the landscape encompassing the entire infrastructure of mill life. The beginning of the 20th century witnessed the transformation of the piedmont region of South Carolina from a farmland of sharecroppers to the cotton textile center of the nation. This rapid industrialization altered rolling landscape and winding creeks into a series of mill villages and dammed waterways connecting larger cities of neighborhood mills. The beginning of the 21st century is witnessing another transformation, the shuttering of those mills because of globalization and a trend toward adaptive reuse into luxury apartments. While this form of preservation rescues a portion of the deteriorating memory infrastructure, it threatens to distort or erase the unique relationship between mill and mill village by romanticizing mill life and brushing over the complex history of labor present in those spaces. The landscape reveals that the mills channeled not only human labor, but also the work force of nature through dams regulating waterways. Like the social restructuring of the mills, this restructuring of nature had impacts: disturbed ecologies, toxic sedimentation, and altered waterways. Investigation proceeds through a research and design process. Research includes creating a spatial data set of the mills in the South Carolina piedmont region from a list in the 1930 edition of Clark's directory of southern textile mills. This mapping along with watershed analysis determines a specific mill site for intervention along a waterway where dams have impaired the natural ecology. The design explores the potential of revising or removing the mill dam, a piece of memory infrastructure, and wrestles with the balance of preservation and ecological restoration. / Master of Landscape Architecture

Who was Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn? He was born in Rạch Giá, Việt Nam in 1938; served in the South Vietnamese army—the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)—during the Second Indochina War; and was publicly executed by the Communist forces on August 14, 1975, after refusing to surrender. Beyond that, it depends whom you ask. To the current Communist government of Việt Nam, whose historical narrative of national unity against foreign invasion denies the legitimacy of South Vietnam, he is a political traitor. To the American state, who conceptualizes the Vietnam War as a struggle between the U.S. and the Communists, he is a forgotten subject. To patriotic South Vietnamese veterans in the diaspora, who push back against these state imposed narratives of “organized forgetting,”[1] he is hero. To Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn’s family members, most of whom live in Việt Nam, he is a loved a one. To me, he is a grand-uncle. But I did not know of his fame—of his story—until I was twenty-one. Researching Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn, I grappled with the following questions: Who has the power to write history? How do stateless peoples archive their own history? What is the relationship between history and cultural memory? How is cultural memory embodied and enacted? How do cultural memory practices both challenge and constitute “official” history and nationalist discourse? What is the nature and use of a politics haunted by ghosts and oriented towards the past? In the first body chapter, I draw from websites created by South Vietnamese veterans—what I call a “subaltern digital archive”—to recreate a biographical sketch of Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn. This sketch is interwoven with a narration of the geopolitical context—the different events that were happening in the Asian Pacific during Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn’s lifetime. I acknowledge that all of history is a construction—a process of editing and making sense of the past—and thus I construct a history that centers, rather than effaces, Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn. The other two body chapters examine the cultural memory production surrounding Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn. One chapter highlights the ways in which South Vietnamese Americans engage in cultural memory practices, carving out a space in the present for the ghost of Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn. In these memory acts, Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn becomes a symbol for the Republic of Vietnam—a way for veterans to resurrect the ghost of this now-defunct state. Although South Vietnamese Americans’ resistance to state imposed narratives is admirable, I acknowledge that not everyone has the privileged to be so vocal. Thus in the next chapter, I highlight the oral histories of Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn’s family members, most of whom live in Việt Nam, and thus are not allowed to publicly commemorate their loved one. These are stories that exist only in the space of memory—that are absent from both official state histories as well as the online timelines created by South Vietnamese American veterans—timelines that focus of Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn’s military valor. Instead, Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn’s relatives offer an alternate version of heroism—a more feminine version of heroism that appreciates Colonel Cẩn’s virtues and domestic contributions as well as his masculine victories. [1] Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 7.

Thesis (doctoral)--Technische Universität, Berlin, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (366-385) and index.