The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials: Towards a Theory of Temporary Memorials

From the commemoration of September 11 to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, recent decades have witnessed a substantial increase in the number of new public memorials built in both Europe and the United States. This volume considers the contemporary explosion of public commemoration in terms of changed cultural and social practices of mourning, memory, and public feeling. Positing memorials as the physical and visual embodiment of our affective responses to loss, Erika Doss focuses especially on the memorial ephemera of flowers, candles, balloons, and cards placed at sites of tragic death in order to better comprehend how grief is mediated in contemporary commemorative cultures.De laatste jaren neemt het aantal publieke gedenkplaatsen in Europa en de VS enorm toe. Met bloemen, kaarsen, ballonnen, handgeschreven berichten en pluche beesten, creeëren we tijdelijke gedenkplaatsen om zo een tragische of traumatische dood te verwerken. In The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials gaat Erika Doss in op deze explosie van publieke gedenkingen. Ze neemt daarbij nieuwe rituelen van rouw, herinnering en publieke gevoelens in beschouwing. Gedenkplaatsen, zo stelt zij, zijn een visuele uiting van publieke affectie. Hun betekenis vraagt om een kennistheorie gebaseerd op historische context, sociale betekenis en emotionele omstandigheden

Moebius Syndrome Awareness Day 2016 at Oregon State University

Moebius Syndrome is a congenital neurological disorder that results in weakness or paralysis of the sixth and seventh cranial nerves, resulting in inability to form facial expression. The current study examined the relationship between orientation of describing Moebius Syndrome and the participant ratings of pictures of individuals with Moebius Syndrome of friendliness and capability. The medical model is a description of Moebius Syndrome focusing on symptoms and treatment. The social model is a description focusing on how Moebius affects patient’s lives and social relationships. Participants were then asked to rate pictures of people with Moebius Syndrome in terms of friendliness and capability on a five-point scale. It was hypothesized that participants chosen to participate in the social model would rate the pictures higher on both dimensions than participants in the medical model. Participants were invited to create a sign with what others should know about Moebius Syndrome. These signs were then analyzed for content using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software. Signs were separated into medical and social model and compared across five categories. It was hypothesized that signs created after the social model would reflect a higher percentage of social words, whereas medical signs would reflect more medical terms. It was found that there was no significant difference between social and medical model groups in how participants rated pictures in terms of both variables. Participants were asked to rate their knowledge of Moebius Syndrome before and after the intervention on a five-point scale. It was found that knowledge about the condition significantly increased during the course of the intervention. Signs created after partaking in the social model of disability scored significantly higher in the “social” category. Signs created after hearing the medical model of disability resulted in significantly higher in the “medical” and “body” categories. Regardless of model received, participants felt social understanding was significantly more important than finding treatments and cures. The results of this study indicate that informing participants of Moebius Syndrome results in an increase of knowledge. This would indicate that the intervention was successful, regardless of the insignificance between groups on progression of knowledge. Overall, knowledge intervention in a population of college students, faculty and community members results in increased knowledge and positive ratings of capability and friendliness

The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials : Towards a Theory of Temporary Memorials

De laatste jaren neemt het aantal publieke gedenkplaatsen in Europa en de VS enorm toe. Met bloemen, kaarsen, ballonnen, handgeschreven berichten en pluche beesten, creeëren we tijdelijke gedenkplaatsen om zo een tragische of traumatische dood te verwerken. In The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials gaat Erika Doss in op deze explosie van publieke gedenkingen. Ze neemt daarbij nieuwe rituelen van rouw, herinnering en publieke gevoelens in beschouwing. Gedenkplaatsen, zo stelt zij, zijn een visuele uiting van publieke affectie. Hun betekenis vraagt om een kennistheorie gebaseerd op historische context, sociale betekenis en emotionele omstandigheden

Tangible Things: Making History through Objects

Review of: Tangible Things: Making History through Objects, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Ivan Gaskell, Sara J. Schechner, and Sarah Anne Carter, with photo-graphs by Samantha S. B. van Gerbig

Public Art, Public Response

Recording available from: https://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/media/514n59x68nMuseum Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts and the IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institut

American Art Matters: Rethinking Materiality in American Studies

The “material” turn has steadily gained currency in cultural studies and the humanities, with scholars increasingly attentive to theorising things and examining their presence, power, and meaning in any number of fields and disciplines. This essay stems from the keynote lecture given at the conference MatteReality: Historical Trajectories and Conceptual Futures for Material Culture Studies, held on March 23, 2017, at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Freiburg. Focused in particular on the meaning of materiality in American art history and American Studies today, it opens with an examination of the factors of monetisation and mobility and segues to a consideration of more efficacious ways to assess, theorise, and critique the material turn. Two areas that are particularly relevant in terms of rethinking, and mediating, materiality in American art and American Studies are those of technological process and affect: how things are made and how things make us feel

Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs : Public Art and Cultural Democracy in American Communities

Doss examines the way in which public art is a site of conflict and a symbol of struggle in cultural democracy by analysing in detail seven specific projects, the controversies surrounding them, and the reasons behind their failure. Doss argues that public art is most effective when it is linked to a notion of a public sphere that involves, at every level, the community in which the project is based. Index, 4 p. Biographical notes on the author. Circa 325 bibl. ref

The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials

From the commemoration of September 11 to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, recent decades have witnessed a substantial increase in the number of new public memorials built in both Europe and the United States. This volume considers the contemporary explosion of public commemoration in terms of changed cultural and social practices of mourning, memory, and public feeling. Positing memorials as the physical and visual embodiment of our affective responses to loss, Erika Doss focuses especially on the memorial ephemera of flowers, candles, balloons, and cards placed at sites of tragic death in order to better comprehend how grief is mediated in contemporary commemorative cultures.De laatste jaren neemt het aantal publieke gedenkplaatsen in Europa en de VS enorm toe. Met bloemen, kaarsen, ballonnen, handgeschreven berichten en pluche beesten, creeëren we tijdelijke gedenkplaatsen om zo een tragische of traumatische dood te verwerken. In The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials gaat Erika Doss in op deze explosie van publieke gedenkingen. Ze neemt daarbij nieuwe rituelen van rouw, herinnering en publieke gevoelens in beschouwing. Gedenkplaatsen, zo stelt zij, zijn een visuele uiting van publieke affectie. Hun betekenis vraagt om een kennistheorie gebaseerd op historische context, sociale betekenis en emotionele omstandigheden