PhD Oral Exam - Sarah Pollman, Communication Studies

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

Massachusetts supported 14 state-run psychiatric asylums during the 19th and 20th centuries, whose histories followed a utopian arc—from idealistic hope of universal cure to bureaucratic and financial difficulties—resulting in 11 of these hospitals closing in the late 20th century during deinstitutionalization. Today these former hospital buildings and grounds have emerged as sites of contested memory where narratives of medical progress clash with stories of institutional abuses. This dissertation examines the ongoing impacts of these difficult heritage sites—and the cultural memory they invoke—by writing a contemporary history of these hospitals after their closures during deinstitutionalization and before 2022, when the Special Commission on State Institutions, a disability-led truth and reconciliation commission, was established by Massachusetts state legislation. Ex-patient-led activism in former hospital cemeteries, state and municipal-led heritage preservation initiatives and artist-led performance and installation art are linked together to demonstrate how community-led actions can contribute to the production and maintenance of memory at sites of difficult heritage. Using theory from cultural memory studies and spectrality studies, this discursive analysis uses haunting to demonstrate how the dialectical relation between presence and repression shapes both cultural memory practices and their material manifestations across former hospital sites. Methods from material culture studies and visual analysis, supported by extensive archival research, elucidate interconnections between community-led cultural memory practices and the development of official policy for reconciliation, crucially linking activism, art practice and legislative justice together to provide insight into how contemporary communities remember and memorialize institutions that were central to psychiatric care during asylum era medicine in the United States.