Matching Items (13)
Description
This thesis argues that physical landscapes, from intentional sites of memory to average public spaces, play a foundational role in the formation and continuation of the official politics of memory that underpins Serbian cultural memory and collective identity. Thus, in order to understand the complexities of the Serbian collective identity, the landscapes that underpin such an identity must first be understood. Building off prior findings, the three landscapes to be considered relate to three pivotal moments in Serbian nation-building and identity formation: the end of the Ottoman presence, World War II and Yugoslavia, and the wars of the 1990s. This thesis put surveys of Serbian landscapes, which map both sites of remembrance and sites left to be forgotten in Belgrade, as well as oral histories with local young-adult Serbians in conversation in order to elucidate the extent to which individual conceptions of the past and of the Serbian identity correlate to the official politics of memory in Serbia. Young-adult Serbians have been selected, as their only personal experience with each moment of history under consideration is generational memory and state narratives of the past. Ultimately, this study seeks to expand and verify the themes of remembrance found in Serbia as well as understand how the reconstruction of the past, starting from the end of the Ottoman presence to the 1990s war, has figured into the various nation-building projects in Serbia. Building on Halbwachs and Nora, this study understands culture memory as dependent on objectivized culture, like buildings, which naturally challenges the traditional separation of memory and history. Though it does not represent the full Serbian public, this study demonstrates the limited role the physical landscape has in shaping the understanding of the past held by the Serbians interviewees.
ContributorsStull, Madeline (Author) / Manchester, Laurie (Thesis advisor) / Cichopek-Gajraj, Anna (Committee member) / Thompson, Victoria (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Buildings and monuments serve as a communal declaration of identity and as the physical landscape upon which memories are inscribed. Through its ability to concrete identity and capacity to reconstruct the narratives of the past, public spaces and places have the structure of memory and serve as a fundamental aspect of cultural memory from which groups derive their identities. Beyond the social function of communal spaces, as a spatial claim architecture is a political expression of the territorial imperatives of the state. Consequently, both the political and social significance of physical spaces/places lead to the direct targeting of buildings, landscapes, and recognizable monuments in the processes of war.
As evidenced by the 1991-5 War in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, culturally-relevant and internationally recognizable symbols of culture, like Stari Most in Bosnia and the Old Town of Dubrovnik, were destroyed with the purpose of manipulating the physical memories of the communities, thereby directly affecting the cultural identities of the communities residing there. As it stands, scholarship on the subject of memory in post-war areas has failed to consider the effects of space/place on memory, consequently failing to provide a viable theoretical framework to explain the interplay of space/place, memory, and identity. This paper is an effort to connect the current scholarship on memory, its function and effects on identity, with the realities of the physical environment in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia and their function of imposed confrontation, and thus recollection, of the War. The purpose of my thesis is to put city landscapes (private, uncrated memories) and museum narratives (public, curated memories) in communication to demonstrate how influential a factor space/place is in determining collective memory in a Balkan context. Cultural memory is at once incredibly vulnerable to reconstruction and massively determinate of group identity, thereby necessitating a deeper understanding of its determinant factors and the present uses of such factors.
As evidenced by the 1991-5 War in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, culturally-relevant and internationally recognizable symbols of culture, like Stari Most in Bosnia and the Old Town of Dubrovnik, were destroyed with the purpose of manipulating the physical memories of the communities, thereby directly affecting the cultural identities of the communities residing there. As it stands, scholarship on the subject of memory in post-war areas has failed to consider the effects of space/place on memory, consequently failing to provide a viable theoretical framework to explain the interplay of space/place, memory, and identity. This paper is an effort to connect the current scholarship on memory, its function and effects on identity, with the realities of the physical environment in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia and their function of imposed confrontation, and thus recollection, of the War. The purpose of my thesis is to put city landscapes (private, uncrated memories) and museum narratives (public, curated memories) in communication to demonstrate how influential a factor space/place is in determining collective memory in a Balkan context. Cultural memory is at once incredibly vulnerable to reconstruction and massively determinate of group identity, thereby necessitating a deeper understanding of its determinant factors and the present uses of such factors.
ContributorsStull, Madeline Helene (Author) / Niebuhr, Robert (Thesis director) / Carrese, Susan (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This thesis examines the evolution of the interpretation of the battle of Gettysburg, as well as how the analysis and presentation of the battle by multiple stakeholders have affected the public's understanding of the violence of the engagement and subsequently its understanding of the war's repercussions. While multiple components of the visitor experience are examined throughout this thesis, the majority of analysis focuses on the interpretive wayside signs that dot the landscape throughout the Gettysburg National Military Park. These wayside signs are the creation of the Park Service, and while they are not strictly interpretive in nature, they remain an extremely visible component of the visitor's park experience. As such, they are an important reflection of the interpretive priorities of the Park Service, an agency which is likely the dominant public history entity shaping understanding of the American Civil War. Memory at Gettysburg in the first decades after the battle largely sought to focus on celebratory accounts of the clash that praised the valor of all white combatants as a means of bringing about resolution between the two sides. By focusing on triumphant memories of martial valor in a conflict fought over ambiguous reasons, veterans and the public at large neglected unsettling and difficult conversations. These avoided discussions primarily concerned what the war had really accomplished aside from preserving the Union, as white Americans appeared unwilling to confront the war's abolitionist legacy. Additionally, they avoided discussion of the horrific levels of violence that the war had truly required of its combatants. Reconciliationist memories of the conflict that did not discuss the violence and trauma of combat were thus incorporated into early interpretations of Civil War battlefields, and continued to hinder understanding of the true savagery of combat into the present. This thesis focuses on the presence (or lack thereof) of violence and trauma in the wayside interpretive signage at Gettysburg, and argues that a more active interpretation of the war's remarkably violent and traumatic legacies can assist in dislodging a faulty legacy of reconciliationist remembrance that continues to permeate public memory of the Civil War.
ContributorsPittenger, Jack (Author) / Simpson, Brooks D. (Thesis advisor) / Schermerhorn, Calvin (Committee member) / Dallett, Nancy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013