History Commons^™

Trudging The Road Of Happy Destiny: The Gift Economy In Early Alcoholics Anonymous History And The Creation Of The Big Book, Timothy J. Parker

History

In 1939, Bill Wilson and his peers published Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism, and in doing so, codified a spiritual gift economy through which millions of people have recovered from alcoholism and other addictions. This project examines the pragmatic formulation of this economy and argues its origins were driven as much by self-interest as altruism. It further explores the syncretic leadership of Bill Wilson and his mark on "The Big Book."

Everyday Perseverance & Meaningful Toil: Mapping The (In)Distinguishable Process Of Recovery Post-Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Louisiana, Monique Hassman

Theses and Dissertations

For nearly a century, anthropological scholarship on disaster has contributed to advancing emergency preparation and management, however examination focusing on survivors’ return and responses in the aftermath of catastrophe, specifically the ways in which residents work to recover—if at all—remains far from comprehensive, especially in urban, post-industrial settings.

Following calamity, what remains? What is disturbed? What becomes reconstructed? Who repairs the tattered social fabric or restores the built environment? And how do these processes transpire? These questions summarize the research interests of this dissertation, which examines the place-making practices not of experts or administrators, but, rather, those enacted by (extra) …

Landscapes Of Recovery: Belonging And Place In Post-Katrina Literatures, Lee Martin Abbott

Theses and Dissertations

In Landscapes of Recovery: Belonging and Place in Post-Katrina Literatures, I analyze narratives of physical and social change following the events of Hurricane Katrina while providing a critical reading of the representations of New Orleans’s and the Gulf Coast’s urban landscapes in works of urban planning, nonfiction literature, and activist writing. A general line of inquiry informs this project: how do narratives about the disaster landscape following Katrina make visible or invisible certain political subjects? I assert that, by telling stories about the post- and pre-disaster landscape and its urban development history, these narratives carry out the process of displacement. …