Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Meadow: A Novel, Scott Albert Winkler

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE MEADOW: A NOVEL

by

Scott A. Winkler

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor George Clark

The Meadow considers the question of how all Americans, both civilians and military personnel alike, are affected by the United States’ military actions. Set during the Vietnam era, The Meadow tells the story of Walt Neumann, who is torn between his dream of going to college and his father’s insistence that his sons serve their nation as he did in World War II. Circumstance unexpectedly enables Walt to pursue his dream, but he also comes to realize the source …

Writing Trauma In Iraq: Literary Representations Of War And Oppression In The Fiction Of Sinan Antoon, Zahraa Qasim Habeeb

MSU Graduate Theses

The Iraqi war narrative reflects the traumatizing situation that omnipresence of war and three decades of oppression have caused to Iraqis' views of life. Writing about their traumatic experience is an essential way of giving voice to their wounds. The Iraqi American novelist Sinan Antoon is a "wounded storyteller" who is able to give words to the wounds of his homeland. His two novels, I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody and The Corpse Washer, address the physical and psychological trauma of wars and prolonged years of oppression in Iraq. Academic research and literary production about the effect of trauma presented in the …

Music Therapists Behind Locked Doors: The Role Of Trauma Exposure And Current Music Therapy Practices In Correctional And Forensic Psychiatry, Deanna K. Bush

Masters Theses

The purpose of this descriptive study was to explore the role trauma exposure has on the possible development of symptoms of Vicarious Traumatization (VT) in the lives of Board Certified Music Therapists employed in correctional and forensic settings. Research was conducted through completion of an electronic survey. Additionally, the researcher sought to identify current music therapy practices as well as differences between practicing in forensic settings and correctional settings. The participants involved in this study were Board Certified Music Therapists who work in forensic and correctional settings. Survey invitations were electronically sent to 133 prospective participants as listed on either …

"100 Years Later, It Is Still So Powerful": Navigating The Effects Of The Armenian Genocide And Its Trauma On Armenian American Youth, Lara S. Kleine

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the effects of the Armenian Genocide on five Armenian American university students ages 18 to 29 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The impact of this event from 100 years ago is passed down generationally and still affects the current descendants of its survivors. Since this genocide is still denied by Turkey, its perpetrators, and by the United States, the impact on Armenians has increased as each generation fights for official recognition.

By conducting semi-structured qualitative interviews, the participants revealed its impact on their identity. This thesis was grounded in intergenerational trauma transmission theory and collective memory …

The German Jewish Post-Holocaust Novel: Narrative And A Literary Language For Loss, Corey Lee Twitchell

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how a constellation of German Jewish post-Holocaust novels confronts the paradox of recovering and recuperating lost stories of Holocaust victims. I analyze how works by Edgar Hilsenrath, Jurek Becker, and Fred Wander reveal a preoccupation with the innumerable stories and testimonies of the individuals who did not survive the Nazi Judeocide to contribute to the archive of experience. These novels gesture toward an epistemological alternative to this loss: they consider possibilities for recovering the unarchivable. These German Jewish authors employ a particular cluster of varied narrative strategies: the dialogic, linguistic and cultural elements of Eastern European Jewish …

Catching My Breath, Amanda Faith Conner

MSU Graduate Theses

Catching My Breath is a collection of four fictional, graphic novel scripts that examine themes such as identity, trauma, death, and family relationships. Each story takes place in different coastal cities in Maine, including Kennebunkport, Sandy Neck Beach, Old Orchard Beach, and Crescent Beach. These specific locales create a distinctive atmosphere for each story within the collection, as well as provide the places from which the protagonist's recollections originate. This collection uses the visual and verbal technique of comics to illustrate the protagonist's childhood and adulthood identity construction.

“Healing A Hurting Heart”: Femrite's Use Of Narrative And Community As Catalysts For Traumatic Healing, Candice Taylor Stratford

Theses and Dissertations

FEMRITE, the Ugandan Women Writers Association, was created in 1996, and over the last twenty years, it has become the largest and most successful women's writing group in East Africa and one of the most influential literary communities on the African continent. It has become an essential element of Ugandan literary society, and a large proportion of its writings reflect various forms of trauma, begging an engagement with trauma theories. I will argue that through strategies of narrative recuperation and the establishment of communities, FEMRITE has created avenues for women writers, their subjects, and their readers to engender healing from …

People With Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Heal With Story, Donald M. Twist

Doctor of Ministry

This dissertation claims there is a growing inability within American culture, due to continuous technological connectedness and lack of physical community, to move beyond treating the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to actually healing it. I assert that by reestablishing community through storytelling, sufferers can experience deeper healing. Section One defines the nature of PTSD and its symptoms, while incorporating various academic and ministry-related viewpoints. Section Two delineates what has been done to treat PTSD and why simply treating symptoms is not enough. Section Three is the heart of this dissertation and discusses how our current communities and technology …

Legacy Of Shame: A Psychoanalytic History Of Trauma In The Bluest Eye, Martina Louise Hayes

ETD Archive

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison’s troubling short novel which focuses on the lives of a traumatized and disempowered African-American family and the community in which they live. The book openly discusses a variety of social taboos carried out by various members of a Black community in Lorain, Ohio. The most disturbing being the rape of a young Black girl, resulting in pregnancy by her father. Through the omniscient narration of a teenage girl, readers are thrown into the lives and thoughts of the adults and children within this community as they attempt to deal with these extraordinary situations as …

The Trauma Thesis: Medical And Literary Representations Of Psychological Trauma In The Twentieth Century, Sarah Louise Eilefson

Dissertations

The historian Samuel Hynes has observed that World War I was not only the greatest military and political event of its time but also the greatest imaginative event. Soldiers and civilians struggled to comprehend the war’s devastation and the changes it produced while medical practitioners and artists examined the war as a site of extraordinary trauma. My project explores two of the many archives of trauma: the medical discourse through which trauma was defined; and representations of trauma in a variety of English language novels from the early and mid-twentieth century. I begin with a historical survey of the medical …

Ode To Amiel: A Micro-Budget Experimental Essay Film, Phyllis Redman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ode to Amiel is a feature-length experimental essay film by Phyllis Redman, made as part of the requirements for earning a Master of Fine Arts in Film in the Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema track from the University of Central Florida. The film explores one woman's reaction to trauma and depersonalization disorder through the journal entries of 19th Century Swiss philosopher, Henri Frederic Amiel. Passages from Amiel's Journal Intime provide the narrative and voice over for the lead character, a grieving mother who finds herself locked behind an inescapable, invisible and immaterial barrier that separates her from the outside world. Following the …

Damned If You Do--Damned If You Don't: A Queer Woman Of Color's Journey Of Trauma, Agency, And Leadership, Windy Paz-Amor

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

ABSTRACT

Navigating systems of leadership in Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) in higher education as a Queer Woman of Color can be a challenging and complex process--one that integrates identity, experience, expertise, knowledge, patience, and most importantly the ability to risk; while remaining authentic and professional. It is a balance, which in my own experience and expertise requires constant reflection, evaluation, and adaptation. A negotiation of owning that one has power and agency, while realizing that the many intersecting identities that one holds influences how dominant culture perceives that power and agency. To reach authentic reflection and evaluation in leadership it …

The Historian’S Daughter (A Novel); Monsters And Memory (An Essay), Rashida Murphy

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis comprises two parts, a novel and an essay. ‘The Historian’s Daughter’ is a work of fiction based on family memories and historical research that speaks to the trauma of abandonment and displacement in an immigrant family living in Australia. The accompanying essay is titled ‘Monsters and Memory’ and is an autoethnographical text which combines theoretical, experiential and embodied research to argue that the inclusion of women’s stories, particularly those of trauma and abuse, must be foregrounded in any exploration of cultural and diasporic memory. Drawing primarily on the work of Said (1978, 1993, 1999, 2001), Bhabha (1990, 1994), …