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Although silence is certainly not what comes to mind first when considering the vast archive of critical research on postwar Pacific Rim relations, this thesis argues that it should be. By widening interpretations of collective memory and revisiting questions of the authenticity and completeness of historical records, I bring to the forefront perspectives of those who were silenced in the aftermath of the Asia-Pacific War. Such instances of silence—both imposed and self-inflicted—are examined in the following interrogations of: 1) the Tokyo Trial; 2) state control of (trans)national bodies through the aestheticization of war death; and 3) Japan’s fractured national identity as a result of the roles played both actively and passively by (trans)national subjects. Silence as historical amnesia, erasure, denial, revisionism, and/or shame touches the stories of all people affected throughout this era of conflicting imperialisms. In the wake of the 20th century’s violence, this paper points out which memory spaces have been forced to habituate these types of silence in the process of the un-making of the Japanese Empire, and intends to reclaim responsibility for an unethically attained postwar prosperity.

France fell to Nazi Germany in June 1940. Vichy, the collaborationist, right-wing regime that arose following France's capitulation, believed defeat resulted from a decadent social and political culture, whose origins resided in the republican values of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Headed by Marshal Philippe Petain, the Vichy regime rejected republicanism and pursued a utopian vision to fundamentally remake France, beginning with French men. While some historians have explored Vichy's hopes of making a so-called New Man, relatively few have considered the means by which Vichy strove to make its New Man a living, breathing reality. This thesis draws upon school textbooks published by the Vichy regime to show how national regeneration and historical revisionism in French education worked hand in hand to bring Vichy's New Man to life, one child at a time.

Sally Hazelet Drummond is an iconoclastic artist situated within the revolutionary movement of Abstract Expressionism. Drummond is the first female to graduate from the Hite Art Institute, earning a master’s in painting in 1952. During her study at the University of Louisville she explored Abstract Expressionism. In 1953 Drummond joined the Tanager Gallery, one of the Tenth Street artists’ co-ops. In the midst of Willem De Kooning, Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko, Drummond refined her work into a simplified, contemplative style that she continued to develop over the course of her life. Drummond described Abstract Expressionism as a kind of iconoclastic fervor. While history has remembered the style as being characterized largely by wall sized canvases swabbed with gestural marks of the artists or huge fields of color, re-assessment today allows for a much larger perspective that encompasses the avant-gardism of the movement. Drummond continued the iconoclasm of the early abstract expressionists by rejecting these methods of working, creating her own definitive iteration.

There has been a movement to exclude a Biblical worldview from high school American history textbooks exchanging it for a secular worldview through the use of historical revisionism. Available literature failed to adequately address the impact of revisionism within the pages of American history textbooks specifically concerning the portrayal of the American Puritans. Therefore, an analysis of American history textbooks beginning in the 1870s through the 1990s was necessary to demonstrate the existence of historical revisionism regarding the treatment of the American Puritans and whether a trend existed to revise their place in American history textbooks over the past two centuries. Sixty-five high school American history textbooks were examined in this analysis, five from each decade covering the 1870s to the 1990s. Three research questions were asked: What is an appropriate historical view of the Puritans? What are the changes that have occurred in the treatment of the Puritans over the time span from the earliest high school American history textbooks until the end of the twentieth century? And what is the impact of secular education (revisionism) on the portrayal of the Puritans? An analysis document also directed the examination of each textbook and was validated by the work of Perry Miller and United States History: Heritage of Freedom published by A Beka Book. Findings were presented that illustrated trends of secular (progressive) revisionism in twenty-seven categories and topics. The most prominent means of revising the story of the Puritans was the elimination of material concerning their beliefs and practices. The removal of this history served to diminish the presence of a Biblical worldview while promulgating an alternate secular worldview. Implications of this trend analysis were outlined and suggestions made for Christian education. Historical revisionism is a by-product of secular educational philosophy. In this study of sixty-five high school American history textbooks it was evident that historical revisionism had influenced the treatment of the Puritans. The result of this revisionism was biased, superficial textbooks promoting ignorance of America’s rich Christian heritage.