Browsing by Author "Isaak, Marissa Tamar, 1980-"

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    Remembering the Present: Oregon's Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial
    (University of Oregon, 2010-06) Isaak, Marissa Tamar, 1980-
    On Veterans Day 2006, Oregon's governor dedicated the newest addition to the capitol grounds, a memorial fountain commemorating the soldiers killed in the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: The Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial. The political contestations surrounding the memorial demonstrate how ideologies become inscribed onto landscapes. After conducting a qualitative analysis including interviewing participants and detractors of the monument, observing the site on multiple occasions, and examining its media coverage, I conclude that the memorial stakes a claim to the meaning of this controversial war long before the fighting is over, it reproduces geopolitical imaginaries promoted by the Bush Administration, and it reconfigures trends in the representation of soldiers. By taking a multi-scalar approach to this research, I am able to combine geopolitical, State-level, and embodied approaches to memorial research. This project furthers the geography literature by exposing the multiple meanings contained in one local commemorative site.