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Abstract:
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The history of the United States’ occupation in the Philippines requires an alternative archive that includes family stories , museums sites , and other memories to articulate the nearly inexplicable legacy of imperial trauma . My project foregrounds the intangible effects of American imperialism , traced in generational memories of Filipinos and Filipino Americans and their descendants . Addressing three key moments defining the Filipino and Filipino American experience : the Philippine -American War , World War II , and 21st century global capitalism , I look at how the under -the -surface , banal nature of imperial trauma’s legacy marks Filipino identity and creates blind spots in the Filipino imaginary . My dissertation examines sexual atrocities committed by American soldiers during the 1898 -1902 Philippine -American War , revisits memories of World War II and the Japanese Occupation as represented in military museums in Fredericksburg , Texas and on Corregidor Island , Philippines , and concludes with the importance of the babaylan figure , from an ancient priestess tradition in the Philippines , for diasporic Filipinas to negotiate the contemporary challenges of everyday living . My dissertation examines the use of strategic storytelling to recover lost histories , heal from the past , and re -create the present . |