Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Braving Shame: The Rhetoric Of Bravery In Contemporary Women's Memoir, Debra Gayle Parker Nov 2016

Braving Shame: The Rhetoric Of Bravery In Contemporary Women's Memoir, Debra Gayle Parker

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation interrogates the rhetoric of bravery as a culturally-infused way of hearing certain kinds of personal narratives. As a cultural rhetoric, “bravery” has deep roots in masculine militaristic ideology in which cowardice, courage, and shame are conceptually linked to a sense of duty. The memoir industry represents one environment that archives what is valued as brave writing. As rhetoric precariously at work in the memoir industry, this dissertation investigates the cultural assumptions that drive literary bravery as it is used to assess contemporary memoirs, particularly memoirs written by women. Braving Shame invokes a new brand of bravery—one that de-emphasizes …


Split Wounds: Diverging Formations Of Trauma In The Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders V, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, And The Rat Laughed, And Once Were Warriors, Emily R. Johnston May 2016

Split Wounds: Diverging Formations Of Trauma In The Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders V, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, And The Rat Laughed, And Once Were Warriors, Emily R. Johnston

Theses and Dissertations

Split Wounds interrogates naturalized, normalized trauma wisdom—particularly the individualization and pathologization of sexualized trauma. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of discursive formation, explicated in The Archaeology of Knowledge as a set of conditions that enables history, this dissertation elucidates differing discursive formations of trauma in contemporary medical documents, literary texts, and films. The introductory chapter explicates how founding texts in the field of trauma theory construct trauma as a preverbal, psychological experience that can only be represented through fragmented, non-linear, anti-narrative textual strategies. Chapter two exposes such Euro-American modernist ideology in the American Psychiatric Association’s clinical definition of posttraumatic stress disorder …


Queer Horizons: Queer Assemblages And ( Re ) Visioning The"Coming-Out"Trauma Narrative In Fiction, A Critical Introduction, Eric Jason Pitman Mar 2016

Queer Horizons: Queer Assemblages And ( Re ) Visioning The"Coming-Out"Trauma Narrative In Fiction, A Critical Introduction, Eric Jason Pitman

Theses and Dissertations

The experience of many queer subjects in "coming-out" often results in a great deal of continued adversity over the course of their lifetimes, in spite of what popular, exceptionalized narratives such as the "It Gets Better" campaign might suggest. "Coming out" often entails a great deal of trauma, thus making the need to continue "coming out" a source from which anguish continues to emanate and affect queer bodies. Unfortunately, there are few fictional texts dealing specifically with "coming-out" trauma narratives. Queer subjects who continue to endure trauma through the act of "coming out" often discover that the written worlds of …


Trauma And Human Objecthood, Leslie Kelman Jan 2016

Trauma And Human Objecthood, Leslie Kelman

Theses and Dissertations

I am processing recent traumatic personal content in multiple media. This investigation dovetails with the work I was conducting previously, that of contemplating humans as objects continuous with their environment. This represents a reduced position in the biological hierarchy for humans, or a rejection of the hierarchy itself.


Familial Betrayal And Trauma In Select Plays Of Shakespeare, Racine, And The Corneilles, Lynn Kramer Jan 2016

Familial Betrayal And Trauma In Select Plays Of Shakespeare, Racine, And The Corneilles, Lynn Kramer

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I will argue that familial betrayal is a central element in sixteenth-century British tragedy and seventeenth-century French tragedy. Family relationships help to define who the characters are and provide a point of identification between the audience and the play. This identification, as Aristotle argues, is necessary for the arousal of pity and fear and thus creates the possibility of catharsis. Fear is a key component of psychological trauma. This is the main link between Aristotle’s theories and modern trauma theory but there are other overlapping ideas that form a basis as to why old tragedies still resonate …


Wreading, Performing, And Reflecting: The Application Of Narrative Hypertext And Virtual World Experiences To Social Work Education, Linda Ayscue Gupta Phd Jan 2016

Wreading, Performing, And Reflecting: The Application Of Narrative Hypertext And Virtual World Experiences To Social Work Education, Linda Ayscue Gupta Phd

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I propose the use of a new media composition of narrative hypertext, performances in a virtual world, and a dialogic process of writing to provide a continuum of learning opportunities in social work education. I suggest that the structure of the hypertext narrative, embedded with hypermedia, mirrors the dissociative aspects of traumatic memory. I argue that work with the multivocality and multisequentiality of narrative hypertext emulates the process of discovery in the clinical interview. The immersive component of work in a virtual world deepens the realism and affective impact of simulations and creates opportunities to practice and …