Digitized Honors Theses (2002-2017)

Date of Award

5-2017

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Degree Name

BA

Department

English

Faculty Mentor

Steven Trout

Advisor(s)

Patricia Mark, Ph.D., Susan McCready, Ph.D.

Abstract

The Alabama War Dog Memorial and other patriotic monuments are created to intentionally influence collective memory within a specific culture and alter thoughts and feelings towards particular events in the past and present. The communication of these memorials is never as simple as their creators intend, and each memorial only represents a part of the large event it commemorates, the meaning and audience subject to change over time. While the term collective memory can take on many different meanings based on its context and origin, in this project, '"collective memory' refers to the version of past events that any given group- say, a veterans organization, a literary movement, the citizens of a specific community, or a nation- expresses through 'remembrance,' the set of cultural usages by which that version is constructed and presented," a definition taken directly from Dr. Steven Trout's On the Battlefield of Memory: The First World War and American Remembrance, 1919-1941. In many ways, the Memorial reflects the collective memory of both the Mobile and American population towards the Vietnam War and the treatment of war dogs postwar.

Comments

© 2017 Ayla Oden ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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