This study examines the contemporary American memoirs Goat (2004) by Brad Land, Prozac Diary (1998) by Lauren Slater, and The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976) by Maxine Hong Kingston to reveal how these texts push traditional thematic and genre boundaries as well as conceptions of minority identity. Their inclusion of fictional aspects, episodic structure, narrative excesses, and non-teleological endings work to enhance their status as sociocultural critique and protest. This dissertation utilizes a social oppression angle within disability studies to demonstrate the overlapping processes and experiences of marginalization faced by these disparate protagonists who are dis-abled due to their undesired bodily variations and their failure to meet sociocultural standards of appropriate embodied behavior. Society is ideologically unwilling to accommodate or accept the differences the protagonists possess. Such a frame expands the artificial and culturally constructed notion of disability by illustrating the ways that discourse and ideologies of embodied normalcy intersect to constitute various minority identities as incompetent and unworthy. The texts bear witness to each protagonists’ struggle to cultivate meaningful subjectivity and reject passive victim status; however, their resulting survivor subjectivities are both resistant to and complicit with hegemonic tenets. This literary project augments ongoing work in minority, identity, autobiography, cultural, and disability studies that deconstructs essentialist paradigms while reinforcing the important cultural and literary work of contemporary memoir. Moreover, it fills a critical gap with respect to Goat and Prozac Diary, bringing these two texts into the critical discussion of autobiography. Finally, this dissertation illustrates that memoir is uniquely positioned within literary genres to navigate the interconnectedness of identity, subjectivity, and ideology, thus challenging readers to confront the injustice of a sociocultural structure that sanctions these inequities in the first place / Writing a better story : authorizing a vivid and valid self -- Lauren Slater's Prozac diary : the medical model and the suppression of the patient -- Maxine Hong Kingston's The woman warrior : the spectacular subjugation of the dually oppressed and dis-abled body -- The three memoirs : no prosthesis needed. / Writing a better story : authorizing a vivid and valid self -- Lauren Slater's Prozac diary : the medical model and the suppression of the patient -- Maxine Hong Kingston's The woman warrior : the spectacular subjugation of the dually oppressed and dis-abled body -- The three memoirs : no prosthesis needed. / Department of English

This dissertation examines contemporary Iraqi North American women’s life narratives within the frame of postcolonial autobiography theory. Through narrating their experiences of oppression, war, and displacement these women reveal the fragmentation of identity that occurs under such unsettling situations. However, I argue that in the course of narrating their stories and in spite of the fragmentation they suffer, these women are able to establish selves that distinguish and recover from fragmentation and loss through a process I term defragmentation. They are able to defragment their identities by reconstructing unique selves through the act of life narration, through relational remembering, and finally by resisting patriarchal and Western influences on how they perceive themselves and their experiences. Thus they are able to defragment their sense of disjointedness and reaffirm their sense of Iraqiness, even in the diaspora. This study explores the major causes of fragmentation in the work, which are divided into trauma and displacement. Unlike the studies and statistics that political approaches and media coverage have provided, these works shed light on the disruptions caused by war, oppression, separation from loved ones, and exile in the daily lives of these narrators or the lives of their friends and relatives. Therefore, in addition to the new identity that these women create in order to cope with their new lives in the West, they also construct a hybrid identity that is capable of recollecting and narrating these traumatic experiences. Within the space of hybridity, Iraqi North American women have to deal with vast differences between Western and Middle Eastern cultures; the transformation entails not just a change of place but an acceptance or understanding of a new culture, a new religion, and a new identity. The struggle of settlement, or re-settlement, becomes that of establishing an identity that does reflect the stereotypical images of Middle Eastern women in Western perceptions and a struggle to maintain selves that can contain both the past life and the present in what can be considered a third space. Although the main topic of this dissertation is defragmentation in the life narrations of Iraqi North American women, this study also covers the cultural and political history of Arabs in general, and of Iraqis specifically. There are also references to the migrations of Arabs to North America and a brief background of the roots of Arab North American literature. These topics will be discussed in order to provide an understanding of the histories from which these women, or their families, have migrated and their positions within Western culture and scholarship. In addition, this approach provides an insight into the complexities of these women’s identities that reflect multi-layered affiliations, interests, and cultures. The works chosen for this study include written and oral life narratives by Iraqi North American women who write from Canada and the United States. These works are Zaineb Salbi’s Between Two Worlds: Escape From Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam (2005), Dunya Mikhail’s A Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea (2009) and a National Film Board documentary titled Baghdad Twist (2007), by Jewish Iraqi Canadian Joe Balass. In the documentary, Joe Balass interviews his mother, Valentine Balass, as she recounts growing up in Iraq and later experiencing exile from her homeland. The final work I address is The Orange Trees of Baghdad: In Search of My Lost Family (2007) by Leilah Nadir, a Canadian born Iraqi writer. Through her memoir Nadir tries to reconnect with her father’s family in Iraq while uncovering their traumatic experiences of the Gulf War. The narrators in my research belong to different social classes, age groups, and practice different religions, but they all identify themselves as Iraqi women. These women, through their interpretations of living life between two (or more) cultures, offer important perspectives not only on their own ethnic society, but also on the role of ethnic women in North American society in general. There has been a massive increase in the migration of Iraqi women to North America in the last thirty years; their perspectives on political, social, and religious changes are an important part of understanding the experiences of this ethnic group. Through their life narratives, these women are able to display their unique selves by portraying their ability to contest the boundaries and limitations of borders and societies that try to eliminate one identity or the other.

Studies of women’s experimental narrative in the twentieth century have often been fixed to political interests in the recovery of women’s artistic practices for inclusion in the canons of literary modernism and formal postmodernism. Concurrent trends in philosophy and critical theory, however, propose the interrogation of the limits of subjectivity itself, suggesting that the most provocative assertions about human experience eschew the very categorical delimitations, like gender, on which such recovery projects depend. This dissertation traces the literary investments of women, particularly queer women, whose experiments in life-writing reconfigure the boundaries of human subjects without relinquishing claims to the material or political conditions that shape their lives. “Rough Text” examines writing that queers or complicates autobiography by featuring self-referential protagonists whose lives illustrate the explosive consequences of both gender and genre manipulation. Writing themselves by unfastening themselves textually, temporally, and spatially, these authors do a liberating violence to their own coherence that shakes, and then rethinks, the grounds of their ontologies in ways that offer alternatives to the “psychological squalor” Fredric Jameson describes as the postmodern condition.

Studies of women’s experimental narrative in the twentieth century have often been fixed to political interests in the recovery of women’s artistic practices for inclusion in the canons of literary modernism and formal postmodernism. Concurrent trends in philosophy and critical theory, however, propose the interrogation of the limits of subjectivity itself, suggesting that the most provocative assertions about human experience eschew the very categorical delimitations, like gender, on which such recovery projects depend. This dissertation traces the literary investments of women, particularly queer women, whose experiments in life-writing reconfigure the boundaries of human subjects without relinquishing claims to the material or political conditions that shape their lives. “Rough Text” examines writing that queers or complicates autobiography by featuring self-referential protagonists whose lives illustrate the explosive consequences of both gender and genre manipulation. Writing themselves by unfastening themselves textually, temporally, and spatially, these authors do a liberating violence to their own coherence that shakes, and then rethinks, the grounds of their ontologies in ways that offer alternatives to the “psychological squalor” Fredric Jameson describes as the postmodern condition.

This thesis examines the influence of life experiences and personally significant texts on the formation of an individual’s personal and professional identity. Through autoethnographic exploration, the author explores the experiences and texts that have constituted his personal curriculum, shaped the way he views the world around him, and informed the role he hopes to embody as an educator. The author argues that by sharing our stories and analyzing the cultural artifacts we have connected with over a lifetime, we become more cognizant about and better equipped to take responsibility for the people we are in the process of becoming. The sharing and exploration of our lived curricular experiences, he suggests, may cause students to invest more heavily in their education and potentially foster more widely representative and meaningful school cultures. / Graduate / 0727 / 0399 / 0401 / travisrichey@hotmail.com

This Master of Arts by research was comprised of two components: creative practice (60%) and a written thesis (40%). The creative practice was partially represented in an exhibition of paintings, drawings, photographs and artist books entitled Traces, held at WiseART Gallery, 166 Ann St, Brisbane, March 2005. The written component is represented in this manuscript. This case study illustrates the creative process of an individual artistic practice through intuitive inquiry, which utilized self-observation methods such as painting, drawing, photographing, bookmaking, exhibitions, journaling, questioning and mindfulness. Intuitive inquiry is outlined as the predominant method of both the phenomenon of art making in this case, as well as the method used to study the creative process. The concept of intuitive inquiry as a research method, by its similarity to this particular creative process, was well suited to studying its delicate, preconscious, internally reflective and reflexive activities. Intuitive inquiry also underpins the exceptional, transformative experiences of the artist, which are often excluded from conventional empirical research. The results of this study demonstrate that it is through the hermeneutic interpretations of process, product and dialogue that a deeper understanding of the creative process is gained. The hermeneutic model of creative process that emerged (Fig 4.14) will assist others in a deeper understanding of how creative process can be utilized in generating new knowledge. More importantly, it is this creative interpretive process that can lead to transformative experiences, which encourage both the artist and the audience to search for a deeper engagement with each other and the world.

This research project comprises a stage play Section 24 of the Criminal Code, and accompanying exegesis, which focuses upon the experience of a woman accessing the Criminal Justice system after she is raped. The play is in the verbatim model and draws upon court transcript, which is deconstructed to reveal the workings of Defence counsel 'storylines' and meta-narratives of gender, sexual availability and power. The exegesis investigates attitudes toward rape and rape victims perpetuated by Australian popular culture, and the way that myths about false rape complaints and 'deserving victims' continue to influence the reporting and conviction rates for rape. The thesis argues that recent reforms have yet to make an impact on the conviction rate or experience of women accessing the Justice system, because of entrenched misogyny within the system itself. Several factors contribute to widespread ignorance of the reality of our own Criminal Justice system, and the thesis proposes that a work of verbatim theatre may redress the paucity of understanding that enables the dysfunction of the current system. The paper explores the different approaches taken by Verbatim theatre practitioners and the appropriateness of the Verbatim theatre model for communicating this particular (lived) experience. Questions of ownership over one's story, and representation in that story indicate the emancipatory potential of a work. Where practitioners do not have a personal connection to their subject matter or material and access material that is already in the public domain, they may feel a greater freedom to manipulate story and character for dramatic effect, or to suit an activist agenda for change. It is shown that a playwright with a personal connection to her material and subject must address issues of ownership, ethical representation, veracity and verisimilitude when creating a piece of verbatim theatre. Preferencing the truth of the Complainant Woman's experience over the orthodoxies of the well-made play may contribute to a negative response to the work from male audiences. However, the thesis concludes that the subject of rape and its prosecution invokes a gendered response in itself, and ultimately questions the desirability of presenting a play that delivers a palatable story rather than an unpleasant truth.

The loss of intimacy is a pervasive tale, felt especially poignantly when the particular story, with its plot lines of love and betrayal, soaked as they are in rage and grief, is my own. By inverting the research process, whereby I call upon friends, and strangers who become friends, to assist me in the meaning-making process, this autoethnographic account of the twenty year downward spiral of my now defunct marriage makes tangible the shared project of making sense of intimacy, love and loss. It connects the personal to the social, cultural, and (most especially) the politically gendered nature of heterosexual relationship experience. It speaks of the process that makes it possible for me to tell my story and of the ethical tensions involved in telling a story of

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2009. / Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 73 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of French and Italian, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-64).