The ways in which death, bereavement, and memorialization are expressed and experienced have begun to take on historically unique forms due largely to the widespread permeation of the Internet and social media within Western culture. Mourning and the memorialization of the deceased are increasingly being expressed in an online capacity through the mediums of social networking websites such as Facebook. This study endeavors to uncover the ways in which newly emergent, technologically mediated forms of bereavement and memorialization occur, how these online practices differentiate from conventional offline grieving procedures, and in what ways they impact the cultural visibility of death in society. A mixed-method research design incorporating both a content analysis of existing Facebook memorial pages as well as interviews with those who have engaged with them was conducted in order to elucidate the various ways in which the relatively new phenomena of online mourning and memorialization occur on Facebook. / Graduate

No description available.

The 2013–2014 Revolution of Dignity in the capital city of Kyiv was an overwhelming popular demonstration of the Ukrainian public’s desire for a western-oriented, democratic, and European future for Ukraine and its rejection of the Russian-oriented loyalties that have troubled the country since gaining independence in 1991. The western choice embodied by the revolution—which resulted in violent deaths, countless injuries, and the overthrow of the corrupt presidential regime—lingers in the form of memorials that serve not only as reminders of the violence, but as evidence of the continued affirmation of this choice. I argue that the sociological construction of the revolutionary Heavenly Hundred Heroes and the participatory commemorative practices dedicated to such demonstrate how memorialization can foster the transition away from the corrupt authoritarian past toward a democratic future through the promotion of civic engagement. I employ the perspective of memorialization paired with a post-colonial framework to explain how the revolution is remembered by the Ukrainian public, analyzing the key interactions between civic identity formation, hybridity, memory, sites of conscience, and transitional justice to demonstrate how commemoration strengthens the culture of democracy. The examination of three different types of memorialization—grassroots, official, and the site of conscience—demonstrates the different ways in which memorials serve as sites of discourse and engagement for Ukrainian society. The ongoing attempts at the reforms promoting transitional justice demonstrate that memorialization of the revolution, in strengthening the culture of civic engagement, helps promote democracy. In Ukraine, civic engagement fostered by memorials positions them as crucial components of transitional, post-colonial spaces. / Graduate

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, decorum called for the veneration of past presidents as devoted patriots. The terms "sage" and "statesman," which became synonymous with patriotism, riddled the remembrances of every president during this period. The Civil War, however, marked a significant shift in national meanings of patriotism. Civic virtue and morality gave way to post-Civil War ideals of warrior heroism. No longer would presidents simply be expected to maintain virtue and character; rather, they were to exhibit the heroism of Civil War soldiers. For those presidents who did not meet the public's new patriotic criteria, their once untouchable legacies became contested terrain. This thesis explores how changing definitions of patriotism influenced the public's consideration of and relationship with presidents, and how the former leaders — as well as their families and supporters — manipulated the nation's collective memory of their lives and administrations. It specifically focuses on James Buchanan (d. 1 June 1868), whose administration not only preceded the Civil War but also bore the brunt of post-Civil War opprobrium. Buchanan and his descendents repeatedly sought to refute the public's disparaging "verdict of history," which criticized the former president's passivity in response to secession as evidence of his lack of patriotism. Over time, various forms of monuments and memorials arose in an attempt to counteract this criticism. This thesis demonstrates that as the Civil War influenced meanings of patriotism, presidents and their descendants took measures to control public memory via increasingly innovative and elaborate forms of memorialization. / Master of Arts

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Charles W. Sanders / General James Birdseye McPherson, the highest ranking Union officer killed during the Civil War, slowly over time became a largely forgotten figure in the collective memory of most Americans. A brief examination of the general's personal life and military career reveals that his life's narrative presented a captivating story, one which successfully captured the attention of his contemporaries. In the fifty years following his death, several groups of interested individuals sought to honor the general's memory through the construction of memorials. This dissertation approaches the history of McPherson through a memory study focusing particularly on the general's memorialization and the four main locations where the general had monuments built in his honor. In Washington, D.C., Clyde, Ohio, Atlanta, Georgia, and McPherson, Kansas, the attempts to preserve McPherson's memory both succeeded in certain ways but also fell short of accomplishing their primary goal. In the process of memorialization the general was both remembered and forgotten. The funding, unveiling, and preserving of the various monuments illuminates the politics of commemoration as well as the motives behind those seeking to honor McPherson. With the passing of time, McPherson's memory slowly began to evolve in each location and generally changed to reflect the times and circumstances of the citizens. In each case, the McPherson memorials signified something different to the community, including a permanent reflection of local identity, a symbol of sectional reconciliation, or a means of promoting civic pride and local boosterism. Ultimately, although the memorialization of McPherson served as the best attempt to honor the generals' memory, the narrow scope and reach of memorials could not successfully preserve McPherson's memory beyond a very limited range and within small communities of interested parties.

Magister Artium - MA / This thesis is concerned with the lives and deaths of four 1938 Voortrekker Centenary Monuments. The 1938 Voortrekker Centenary saw the construction of more than 500 centenary monuments. Each one of these structures has a biography. This study will consider how monuments celebrate current regimes and ideologies instead of narratives pertaining to the past. It will explore how monuments dating from South Africa’s imperialist and apartheid pasts reflect continued inequalities in both rural and urban South African landscapes. It will also consider how monuments cement problematic and mythological versions of the past. The most infamous 1938 Voortrekker Centenary Monument is the Voortrekker Monument, designed by Gerard Moerdyk, in Pretoria. The Voortrekker Monument is important because in many ways it acts as a proxy to the hundreds of smaller 1938 Voortrekker Centenary Monuments scattered around South Africa. This study will look at how some of the theoretical frameworks concerned with the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria can be applied to three centenary monuments in the Riebeek Valley and Durbanville in the Western Cape. This thesis will consider how perceptions of the symbolism of these monuments have changed between their construction in the late 1930s and 2018. The Afrikaner nationalistic fever that gave birth to these structures will be dissected. It will also consider how the 1938 Voortrekker Centenary Monuments symbolically changed as South Africans witnessed the disintegration of apartheid. This study will explore how these monuments have integrated into the heritage and experiential economies. It will also consider some of the anomalies relating to these structures, including hauntings. Finally, the vandalism, destruction and futures of these structures will also briefly come into question.

This dissertation examines the convergence of ruins and memory. It is an inquiry into the role ruins play in indexing, impeding and enabling memories of war through literary and non-literary media. My analysis is informed by a classical Arabic literary tradition of contemplating ruins. I question the nexus between the ruins motif and contemporary Arabic literature and culture by analyzing how the motif is reworked in the contemporary Lebanese prose, poetry and memorial sites under study. At the heart of this study is an attempt to explore the multivalent nature of war memories in Lebanon--their inscription, mediation, and transformation--through the framework of ruins. Drawing on the classical Arabic literary tradition of contemplating ruins allows me to analyze the way ruins are interpreted and represented in contemporary Lebanese vernacular, literary, museological and poetic matrixes of memory. I argue that these modern works invite us to contemplate ruins in new and challenging ways that exceed the classical regard and longing for an ephemeral past. This is to suggest that the classical Arabic ruins motif in its modern guise is not an organic offshoot of its pre-Islamic predecessor. Through their evocation of the past via its ruin-traces, the modern works under examination effectively transform the poetics of nostalgia to new affective and alternative imaginary spaces. It is precisely in the creative tension between the traditional and the modern, the real and the imagined ruins, where a contemporary poetics of memory lies. Central to my analysis, then, is the issue of memorialization in its aesthetic, textual and material dimensions as it informs the critical practices of writers, artists, poets, museum curators and inhabitants of war. Ruins emerge as a major trope that ties together divergent artistic, literary and cultural and oral practices, constituting complex forms that generate public and private memories of war. Hence ruins as temporal anchor, is both the portal and the substance of my inquiry into the dialectics of war and memory in Lebanon. How are ruins, in their material and aesthetic dimensions, enfolded into the discourses of textual, vernacular and literary landscapes of memory? This question is answered by commencing a textual and ethnographic journey through museum sites, derelict spaces, narrative and poetic constructions of memory.

In 1861, the U.S. Congress, responding to the growing number of Civil War dead, passed legislation regulating the burial practices of the Union Army. Six years later, the legislative body established a government-administered national cemetery system (NCS) that only interred Union soldiers killed in action. Subsequent pressure, from veterans groups, families, concerned citizens, and Congress led to the expansion of the institution’s eligibility regulations and funerary landscapes. As the product of over a century and a half of political and social negotiations, the NCS now consists of nearly 200 cemeteries, on domestic and foreign soil, that inter a vast array of individuals whom the government has deemed patriots. Drawing on cultural history, memory studies, anthropology, and art history, “These Honored Dead” illustrates how the NCS evolved from necessary wartime burial grounds into a federal memorial institution whose activities defined and announced the nations’ geographic, political, and social boundaries. Through an administrative and cultural history of the institution, this dissertation considers how Americans from diverse backgrounds and within divergent historical contexts have turned to the NCS to understand their individual and national identities and ideals. I look to the institution’s funerary landscapes as physical and affective evidence of how the federal government and the U.S. citizenry negotiate social and political relations. In the process, I interrogate “whose deaths matter?” to the national democratic mission. I argue that by developing national cemeteries and maintaining exclusionary interment regulations, the federal government announced a racialized, gendered, and politicized hierarchy of national belonging. The persistence of the NCS demonstrates that the nation mourns and memorializes patriotic sacrifice, regardless of martial victory, to make sense of contemporary anxieties. This dissertation illustrates the ways that the federal government mediates cultural and social politics, alongside its own interests, to construct a politically and socially useful memorial embodiment of patriotic sacrifice.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until June 1, 2013. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-242)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until June 1, 2013. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-242)