Dissertation Research: The Inheritance and Disinheritance of Memory

这个博士论文项目将研究二战期间在苏联军队服役的犹太退伍军人家庭中关于过去的交流，他们现在住在美国。将采用民族志方法来追踪一代人的过去是如何被后代理解或否定的决定性时刻。该项目将通过应用有关移民和种族、身份理论以及关于维持和丧失集体记忆的理论来解释社区与复杂过去的关系，从而为这一学科做出贡献。集体记忆的研究构成了一个新兴的社会学研究领域，本论文将把这一研究扩展到祖父母和孙子之间的关系领域。此外，本论文将有助于代际传承的研究，因为代际传承很少涉及两代以上的人，以及代际关系的研究，因为代际关系主要关注并发现象。苏联历史和犹太历史的强度和象征性深度将有助于戏剧化研究的动态。

This doctoral dissertation project will examine communication about the past within families of Jewish Veterans who fought in the Soviet Army during World War II and who now live in the United States. Ethnographic methods will be employed to trace how the decisive moments one generation's past are understood or repudiated by successive generations. The project will contribute to the discipline by applying theory from literature on immigration and ethnicity, identity theory, and theory regarding the sustenance and loss of collective memory to interpretation of a community's relationship to a complex past. Studies of collective memory constitute a burgeoning field of sociological inquiry, and this dissertation will extend this research into the sphere of relationships between grandparents and grandchildren. In addition, the dissertation will contribute to research on intergenerational transmission, which has rarely incorporated more than two generations, and to research on intergenerational relationships, which has focused primarily on concurrent phenomena. The intensity and symbolic depth of both Soviet history and Jewish history will serve to dramatize the dynamics to be researched.