Divided into two parts, this dissertation aims to be a reflection on the creative process in visual arts, based on the testimony of the creator/artist. The image of the Virgin Mary as a source of plastic work and theoretical research is seen here from the perspective of miscegenation in the search for understanding the source imagery. The first part, "Birth of the Virgin Mary" is the establishment of the work process and construction of the Virgin Mary and, of personal memory as the trigger that motivated the development of the works. The second part, "Memory of the Virgin Mary" meets the concept of mestizaje, and lies in the use of the Virgin Mary as the appearance of erratic memory that constantly is regarded to the social. There is a meeting of mestizo ways of doing works that is always immersed in an "intertwining" of countless possible interpretations. / Dividida em duas partes, a presente dissertação se propõe a ser uma reflexão sobre o processo criativo em artes visuais, partindo do testemunho do criador/ artista. A imagem da Virgem Maria, como fonte de trabalho plástico e pesquisa teórica, é encarada aqui pelo viés da mestiçagem, na busca por entender essa fonte imagética. A primeira parte Nascimento da Virgem Maria trata da instauração e do processo de trabalho e construção dessa Virgem Maria bem como da memória pessoal como o gatilho que dispara as motivações da elaboração das obras. A segunda Memória da Virgem Maria vai ao encontro do conceito de mestiçagem e recai no uso da imagem da Virgem Maria, como aspecto de memória errática que regressa constantemente ao social. Um encontro mestiço de um fazer/ obra que sempre está imerso entre entres , incontáveis, de possibilidades interpretativas.

This dissertation explores the relationship between remembrance and citizen humanities. Combining the study of three qualitative empirical sources (an explorative comparison of five citizen humanities projects, an autonetnography conducted in one of the projects and the observation and analysis of the interaction of the online community in said project) the epistemic culture in citizen humanities and how remembrance is enacted in this context are addressed. The findings indicate that the participatory epistemic culture inherent to the citizen humanities allows a limited number of participants to transcend the roles that are assigned as mere data collectors, pursuing their own independent research projects. In this context, remembrance takes place in two levels, first by creating cultural mnemonic manifestations in the form of searchable metadata, transcribed data, digitized objects, images and rerecorded stories and second, by the act of creating knowledge and sharing it with the community. Finally, it is suggested that in the context of the citizen humanities, the traditional dichotomy of history vs. memory is challenged by the figure of the citizen historian, as this subject creates historical knowledge but also enacts mnemonic practices exemplified by the creation of cultural mnemonic manifestations and by recalling, recognizing, and localizing memories, both their own and from others.

This thesis is based on my stay at a retro "ROH recreation - holidays in Tatras as 'then'" organized and provided by one Czech travel agency whose major customers are elderly people. The thesis focuses especially on the motivation of these people to buy such a product, and describes how they spend a holiday like that. This detailed description is an extremely important starting point for clarifying the phenomenon known as nostalgia, which is also in relation to post-communist countries referred to as 'ostalgia". Using the concepts of social memory I show that next to the officially accepted version of history there is a large number of alternative and often contradictory "memories" based on small personal histories of everyday life, which do not include Communism as a political system, but "ordinary" life in the communist times. The main goal of my thesis is to try to find the answers to the question, whether that what the older generation misses is really the communist regime itself, or the sentence "it was better under communism" hides something completely different from mere identification with a particular political establishment. Key words: ROH recreation; communism; retro; nostalgia; social memory; habitus

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, American culture has experienced a renewed interest in pandemic events, including the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. Based on research carried out in cemeteries and monuments in Salt Lake City, Utah, this paper compares commemoration practices relating to the Spanish Influenza pandemic and the simultaneous events of First World War within the city. Such research provides evidence that warfare enjoys a greater presence in places of social memory than does disease, suggesting an inequality in the cultural value placed on different causes of death. This outcome is the result of numerous factors and continues to impact the relationship between memory, disease, and American society today.

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This dissertation examines the cultural and lived experiences of economic abandonment in deindustrialized zones by exploring how residents of a former single-industry economy negotiate this process via communicative constructions of identity, class, and social memory. As this work examines the conflicts about economic decline, class, and memory that inform the predicament of the residents of small towns within Appalachia and beyond, it contributes to ethnographies of deindustrialization in advanced capitalist societies, in zones of mass mineral extraction, as well as to other work on the Appalachian Region. The analysis of these constructions is based on three sets of data: material gathered during two years of offline ethnographic fieldwork in the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania, autoethnography, and the collaboration with local participants vis-à-vis a multi-modal and multi-sited "public digital humanities collaboratory" called “the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeastern Pennsylvania Digital Project” (the latter, a term I develop to expand the methodological vocabulary), to which community members contributed through communication forums about the history, culture, and media representations of the Coal Region. Three narrative chapters analyze a series of lived experiences and theoretical concerns. The first of these chapters, chapter four, analyzes how place, identity, and memory link with past and present class, labor, and industrial dynamics, as well as landscapes left to ruin to demonstrate how, in the Anthracite Region “King Coal” maintains hegemony. Although the mining industry no longer exists as a viable form of employment, inhabitants still consider themselves residents of “The Coal Region,” and dialogue with modes of identification that evolved in the Anthracite Coal Region. These identifications unite earlier diverse, pan-ethnic identities tied to Europe and are at the basis of the emergence of a new subjectivity—a "coalcracker"—one with family who worked in the mines literally “cracking the coal.” As the landscapes are left to ruin, I develop the term "environmental classism" to conceptualize the impact of the fallout from King Coal. Chapter five examines dominant mediated imaginaries of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which have become cultural tropes for a modern ghost town. In these dominant narratives, the obliteration of Centralia, subject to an underground mine fire for 57 years, has been largely produced for the consumption, commodification, commercialization, and the aesthetic experience of either tourists or horror genre fans. I term this production "cultural extractivism" or the expropriation of cultural resources, memory artifacts, images, narratives, or stories extracted from a marginalized or forgotten community or culture for use by a dominant community or culture. The chapter shows local residents challenging such "cultural extractivisms." Chapter six examines the demolition of the Saint Nicholas Coal Breaker, the last anthracite coal breaker and the largest one in the world, a topic that surfaced on the "public digital humanities collaboratory" and compelled considerable discussion. Research on this discussion demonstrates that this structure served as a coping mechanism for community members. Local residents constructed labor-related identities tied to social memory around it. These analyses of how Coal Region residents used their agency to create artifacts suggest that media can be a site of resistance. In addition to the artifacts presented on the "public digital humanities collaboratory," community members submitted and curated their own (unsolicited) artifacts. Theoretical flashpoints emerged, often resulting in local residents issuing challenges to dominant narratives and politics about the Coal Region. This ethnographic research involves offline immersive contact with informants extending to online interactions that resulted in methodological and theoretical expansions which provide the basis for communication scholars and ethnographers 1. to rethink ideas about how they conceive online and offline spaces previously thought of in binary terms; and, 2. likewise to reconsider ethnographic research on economic abandonment in marginalized communities beyond urban and rural binaries. / Media & Communication

Detroit's shocking decline has been a topic of national concern for several decades now, but attention paid to the city's problems reached new levels when the American public learned that the U.S. automotive industry was in jeopardy, eventually needing more than $17 billion in loans from the United States government to stay afloat. Once the fourth largest city in the United States, the Motor City ushered in the twenty-first century with half the number of residents it had just fifty years before and new monikers like Murder City that mocked the city's formerly heroic identity. To the nation, Detroit was dying, and its failure to live up to its potential as a thriving metropolis demanded the public's mournful attention. How had a city that was once mighty fallen so far? The purpose of this thesis is to understand what meanings media texts attribute to Detroit, how they negotiate its symbolic value in the American narrative, and what functions they perform in the public sphere by contributing to national discourse in these ways. The nation has been told it should care about the city's recovery, which begs the question: Why? Why does Detroit matter? Drawing primarily from memory studies and integrating urban history, sociology, and ruin studies, this thesis performs a rhetorical analysis of four case studies that negotiate the meaning of Detroit as public discourse. This thesis argues that narratives of Detroit implicitly placate a country in crisis and reinforce the continued relevance of American values--individualism, capitalism, and post-racial multiculturalism--to the new world order. These cultural texts implicitly ask: Are we the superpower we were when Detroit stood at the helm of our empire? If not, who or what can we blame for the overthrow of the nation? In this way, media discourses on Detroit function to negotiate a transitioning national identity and restore social order by resolving the questions that Detroit's demise evokes, determining its impact--symbolic and otherwise--on the future of the country, and assessing the state of the nation. / Mass Media and Communication

Este trabalho aproxima as contribuições da teoria das representações sociais e dos estudos em memória social para a compreensão do campo religioso, especificamente o Espiritismo, reconhecendo a importância da recordação de personalidades para a dinâmica religiosa. Esta pesquisa objetiva analisar o conteúdo da representação social de perfeição, o conteúdo e estrutura da memória de personalidades do Espiritismo e a relação entre ambos. Trata-se de estudo descritivo, desenvolvido em duas etapas. Participaram 75 participantes auto-declarados espíritas - 38 na primeira etapa e 37 na segunda, sendo entrevistados 24 desses. Os participantes, em média, possuíam 37,3 anos de idade e 16,7 anos como espíritas. Na primeira fase aplicou-se, através da Internet, a técnica de evocações livres com o termo indutor “espíritos superiores”, na qual os participantes respondiam que pessoas se associavam ao termo. Na segunda, prosseguiu-se com as evocações livres e questionário, para caracterização dos participantes. A partir das doze personalidades mais lembradas, realizou-se entrevista semi-estruturada, com questões sobre características, virtudes, lembranças, hierarquia das personalidades, e questões sobre o significado da perfeição e como alcançá-la. Os dados das evocações foram analisados através das técnicas do quadro de quatro casas e construção de árvore máxima de similitude. As entrevistas foram analisadas mediante análise categorial temática. Assim, verificou-se que as personalidades mais recordadas foram: Chico Xavier, Jesus, Allan Kardec, Emmanuel, Bezerra de Menezes, Madre Teresa de Calcutá, Joanna de Ângelis, Gandhi, André Luiz, Francisco de Assis, Maria de Nazaré e Divaldo P. Franco. A representação social de perfeição foi expressa, de modo simplificado, na sentença: um caminho, difícil e longo, em que o ser humano sai da sua condição de inferioridade para a perfeição, através do conhecimento (proveniente do trabalho, do estudo e do auto-conhecimento), livrando-se do seu egoísmo e expressando o amor, tal como demonstrado e vivido por Jesus. Verificou-se, ainda, que essas memórias se organizam, principalmente, em dois modelos de valores complementares no Espiritismo: 1) conhecimento, inteligência, razão, estudo, livro e 2) amor, vivência, fé, trabalho, exemplo. Eles se constituem nas duas condições essenciais para se alcançar essa perfeição. O primeiro modelo está principalmente personificado na figura de Allan Kardec e o segundo, em Jesus. Nesse sentido, o Espiritismo opera na mente dos fiéis, uma síntese entre ambos os modelos, tendo em Chico Xavier a personificação dessa síntese, constituindo-se como tipo ideal de espírita. /// [en] This work resorts to the contributions of both social representations theory and the studies about social memory in order to understand the religious field – Spiritism in particular – considering the importance to remind personalities in religious practices. This survey aims to analyze the contents of social representation of perfection, the contents and structure of Spiritism personalities’ memory as well as their relation. This is a descriptive study carried out in two sessions involving 75 self-declared Spiritism subjects with 38 people in the first session and 37 in the sec ond, being 24 of them interviewed. The participants are, on average, 37.3 years old who have been engaged in Spiritism for 16.7 years. A free-evocation technique with an inducing term “Superior Spirits” was applied in the first session through the Internet as the participants claimed that people were associated with the term. In the second session, we used free evocations and questionnaires in order to characterize the participants. Based on the 12 most reminded personalities, we had a semi-structured interview with questions about characteristics, virtues, memories, personality hierarchy, and questions on the meaning of perfection and how to reach it. The evocation data were analyzed through the four-housed chart techniques along with the EVOC 2003 software and the construction of the maximum similitude tree. Analyzing the interviews through the thematic categorial analysis, we figured out that the most reminded personalities were Chico Xavier, Jesus, Allan Kardec, Emmanuel, Bezerra de Menezes, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Joanna de Ângelis, Mohandas K. Gandhi, André Luiz, Francis of Assisi, Mary (mother of Jesus), and Divaldo P. Franco. The social representation of perfection was simplified and expressed in the sentence: the hard and long way human being follow when leaving his inferiority condition to reach perfection through knowledge (obtained from labor, study, self-knowledge), getting rid of selfishness and expressing love, as demonstrated and experienced by Jesus. We also concluded that these memories are mainly organized into two complementary value patterns in Spiritism: 1) knowledge, intelligence, rationality, study, literature and 2) Love, experience, faith, labor, example. They comprise two basic conditions to reach that perfection. The first pattern is mainly personalized in Allan Kardec’s image, and the second in Jesus. According to this view, we can ascertain that Spiritism operates in the faithfull’s mind, a synthesis between both patterns, being Chico Xavier its personification and thus regarded as the ideal type of spiritist. / CAPES

The topic of social memory has been discussed for almost 20 years in the international field, but it hasn't been reflected in the Czech environment yet. This master thesis tries to introduce the topic of social memory theory to the Czech theological audience. It concentrates on the critique of the "criteria approach" in the historical Jesus research from the social memory theorist, esp. Chris Keith. It also tries to find roots of this way of thinking either among theorist of social memory like its "father" late Maurice Halbwachs and our contemporary Jan Assmann, or among New Testament scholars like Birger Gerhardsson and Werner Kelber who challenged the development model of the gospel tradition presented by Rudolf Bultmann. The critique of Bultmann is the basis of Keith's critique of the "criteria approach". This thesis presents Keith's concepts of "Jesus-memory approach" and "New historiography" and presents critiques of it both from the international scholars and its own. This thesis is a contribution to the field of hermeneutics and the development of methodology.

This thesis explores the nature of contemporary sculptural practices in relation to the broader field of installed sculpture (which deploy articulated, interrelated, but autonomous components) and in the context of recent approaches to both curation and display. The artistic work and attendant commentary constitute a response to the issues of sculptural agency and display raised by both the practice-based outcomes and key works of several contemporary artists: Gabriel Kuri, Gedi Sibony, Melanie Counsell, Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Michael Dean. In a number of exhibitions ‘post-installation’ practices and the function of ‘montage’ sculpture is examined. Through outlining the current landscape of sculptural production and medium specificity a progressive notion of the monument is established. The sculptural artwork is seen to retain a political resistance, as both art-object and thing in the world. An assessment is made of how sculptures produce space within and through their exhibition context, directly related to the production of space as a whole (a social morphology posited by Henri Lefebvre). Applying a conception of time in reference to spatial production opens up the artwork’s potential to draw on complex codes of mnemonic function, which can potentially generate emancipatory agency from ideological issues in late-capitalism. Re-readings of key installed works by Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Mark Dean, through contexts derived from Nietzsche and Mark Fisher, reveal how sculptures can activate specific mnemonic codes, or collective memory. Such art works utilise a ‘forgetful memory’ – a reflexive process of positing, junking and reimagining relationships to cultural information. The body of artistic work produced for this research, intertwined with its critical reflection, makes an original contribution to knowledge by interrogating theoretically and experientially the potentials of ‘the sculptural’, as part of the plural production of art and exhibition-making. By means of practice and its outcomes, the research engages the current dynamics of spatial production and radicality of sculptural objecthood. The work examines the complex relationships between social memory and historicity, with which sculpture in an exhibition environment can engage.