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UNIVERSITY GRADUATE BULLETIN ANNOUNCEMENT
Florida International University
University Graduate School
Master’s Thesis Defense
Abstract
On Record: Soundscapes as Metaphor and Physical Manifestation of Memory in Early
Holocaust Novels and Contemporary Criticism
by
Mariane Stanev
This thesis brings together two perspectives on Holocaust memory production:
one novelistic record of the years leading up to The Holocaust in Britain and one
reflection on The Holocaust from the hindsight perspective of a liberator in the Soviet
Union. The intersection of the two accounts offers a locus of analysis for the diasporic
literary energy created by the catastrophe in the 20th and 21st centuries. The novels being
analyzed are Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts and Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate.
The project offers a theorized standpoint on the role of literature on official historical
archives.
The project interprets soundscapes as both an extended metaphor to articulate the
immaterial processes of memorialization and as a literal commentary on sound textures
developed in Holocaust novels. The critical perspective incorporates contemporary
notions of narratology, archival practices, and cultural manifestations of language into the
notion of literary ethnomusicology. By analyzing the soundscapes and sonic textures of
Woolf and Grossman’s novels, the project proposes a method through which
contemporary readers can engage the diasporic energy caused by The Holocaust.
Date: March 16, 2015
Time: 1pm
Place: MMC, DM 457
Department: English
Major Professor: Michael P. Gillespie