Abstract
This research aims to analyze Paradise, California, and the Camp Fire, by way of a theoretical framework of shared commemoration that mediates the emotional experience of trauma. This research explores how social memory is formed through emotion work that makes sense of trauma and natural disasters; specifically, I want to understand the connection between social memory and the management of life after a human-caused natural disaster. My research asks: how does the community remember and how are these understandings shaped in and through residents’ emotional experiences? How do residents identify trauma as an experience, how will they remember and express this socially, and how will this trauma flow into the emotional discourse of social memory and community healing? To understand this, I examined the 2018 Camp Fire as a site of observation; I chose this specific catastrophe due to its severity as the deadliest wildfire in California history to date. My thesis used ethnographic methods such as participant observation, media analysis, interviews, and surveys with residents affected by the Camp Fire.