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- All Subjects: history
- Creators: Boyce-Jacino, Katherine
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Resource Type: Text
Description
In the sixty-seven years following the end of World War II, West Germany and Japan underwent a remarkable series of economic and social changes that irrevocably altered their respective ways of life. Formerly xenophobic, militaristic and highly socially stratified societies, both emerged from the 20th Century as liberal, prosperous and free. Both made great strides well beyond the expectations of their occupiers, and rebounded from the overwhelming destruction of their national economies within a few short decades. While these changes have yielded dramatic results, the wartime period still looms large in their respective collective memories. Therefore, an ongoing and diverse dialectical process would engage the considerable popular, official, and intellectual energy of their post-war generations. In West Germany, the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung (VGB) emerged to describe a process of coming to terms with the past, while the Japanese chose kako no kokufuku to describe their similar historical sojourns. Although intellectuals of widely varying backgrounds in both nations made great strides toward making Japanese and German citizens cognizant of the roles that their militaries played in gruesome atrocities, popular cinematic productions served to reiterate older, discredited assertions of the fundamental honor and innocence of the average soldier, thereby nurturing a historically revisionist line of reasoning that continues to compete for public attention. All forms of media would play an important role in sustaining this “apologetic narrative,” and cinema, among the most popular and visible of these mediums, was not excluded from this. Indeed, films would play a unique recurring role, like rhetorical time capsules, in offering a sanitized historical image of Japanese and German soldiers that continues to endure in modern times. Nevertheless, even as West Germany and Japan regained their sovereignty and re-examined their pasts with ever greater resolution and insight, their respective film industries continued to “reset” the clock, and accentuated the visibility and relevancy of apologetic forces still in existence within both societies. However, it is important to note that, when speaking of “Germans” and “Japanese,” that they are not meant to be thought of as being uniformly of one mind or another. Rather, the use of these words is meant as convenient shorthand to refer to the dominant forces in Japanese and German civil society at any given time over the course of their respective post- war histories. Furthermore, references to “Germany” during the Cold War period are to be understood to mean the Federal Republic of Germany, rather than their socialist counterpart, the German Democratic Republic, a nation that undertook its own coming to terms with the past in an entirely distinct fashion.
ContributorsPiscopo, Michael (Author) / Benkert, Volker (Thesis director) / Moore, Aaron (Committee member) / Machander, Sina (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
In the United States, nearly every state has a state history museum, where the natural and cultural history of the state is researched and put on display through tangible objects and intangible stories. Despite the unique nature of its history, the state of Hawaii is one of the few states that does not have a proper state history museum. The closest thing the state has to a state history museum is the Bishop Museum, which focuses mostly on Native Hawaiian culture and history from ancient times up until the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. This thesis explores why there is no state museum to cover the modern history of the Hawaiian Islands, and lays out a general proposal for what a future Hawaii State History Museum could look like. In researching this project, inspiration was taken from the state history museums of Colorado and Texas, the History Colorado Center and the Bullock Texas State History Museum, respectively. The proposal covers the physical location and design of a potential museum building and how it would be laid out inside. It then provides a list of exhibit ideas while addressing questions of narrative perspective, with the overarching narrative of the museum being “Hawaii History for Hawaii locals.” Lastly, it discusses the importance of the connection between the community and the museum in order to be successful. With current Hawaii legislators showing an interest in actually establishing a state museum for modern Hawaii history, this thesis can serve as a framework from which the real museum can be built off of.
ContributorsVoss, Michael (Author) / Boyce-Jacino, Katherine (Thesis director) / Holian, Anna (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor) / The Sidney Poitier New American Film School (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
In this paper, I tackle the question of the validity of lesbian as a category of historical analysis. To do this, I first explore the history of lesbian as a category of identity from the late nineteenth century into the twentieth century, focusing specifically on how it has changed over time. This leads into a discussion of lesbian as a category of scholarly analysis by lesbians themselves, with special attention given to Adrienne Rich’s essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” and her concept of the lesbian continuum. I then seek to establish this concept of the lesbian continuum as a valid category of historical analysis that we can use to analyze women and their relationships with other women. Crucially, this analysis is centered on the middle and upper class whose social situations afforded them the privilege of being recorded in history. As a result, much of this paper is unfortunately centered on white women rather than women of color. While the latter half of the twentieth century began to see the inclusion of women of color in lesbian scholarship, there is still much room to expand this paper via research into the lives of lesbian women of color since the Victorian era.
ContributorsCvancara, Alexandra Barolet (Author) / Boyce-Jacino, Katherine (Thesis director) / Weitz, Rose (Committee member) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Pokémon is one of the most profitable multimedia franchises of all time, yet few have endeavored to examine how it has reached such a status. The story of Pokémon is not only the story of its many media ventures and the people who create them, but the story of its fans as well. Through a comprehensive analysis of developer interviews, contemporary news articles, fan blogs and forums, and existing scholarly work, this thesis presents the history of the Pokémon franchise and its fandom as never before, emphasizing four main themes of technology, nostalgia, community, and capitalism as key to understanding how Pokémon has become the titan of popular culture that it is today and how its fandom has developed alongside it.
ContributorsFedje, Kylan (Author) / Boyce-Jacino, Katherine (Thesis director) / Ingram-Waters, Mary (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2022-05
ContributorsMorgan, Marshall (Author, Co-author) / Shrestha, Milan (Thesis director) / Boyce-Jacino, Katherine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2021-12
ContributorsMorgan, Marshall (Author, Co-author) / Shrestha, Milan (Thesis director) / Boyce-Jacino, Katherine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2021-12