The development of literary journalism has, in part, been a reaction to the strictures on employing the writer's own voice in conventional journalism. A number of students of the genre have identified voice as a characteristic of literary journalism, but voice has not been viewed—or used—as an important object of critical investigation. The neglect of voice is due partly to its confusion with point-of-view but mainly, this thesis argues, to an overriding emphasis on the analysis of the use of fictional techniques by writers of literary journalism. Tom Wolfe argued famously in The New Journalism that four techniques distinguished the work of literary journalists: the writing of scenes, the capturing of dialog, the use of third-person point-of-view, and the reporting of “status” details. Subsequent students of literary journalism have tended to focus on the use of those techniques in the works they analyze. This study of Tracy Kidder's work illuminates the gradual maturation of technique in one of the most successful practitioners of literary journalism. Kidder's voice developed over the course of a writing career that had, at the time of this writing, produced seven books. From a halting first-person narrative to a narrative that employed the first person rarely and unobtrusively, Kidder moved in this third and subsequent books until his last to an authoritative voice that permitted him to deepen his narratives and explore the broader implications that resonated in the particular subjects he chose. Close examination of his books also reveals a voice that, in many places, employs in description and characterization a metaphoric imagination generally associated with the poet rather than the journalist. Most readings of Kidder's work have focused on his achievement in exhaustively researching a subject, in rendering scenes with accurate dialog and vivid description, in portraying characters in rich detail, and in adopting points-of-view that offer illuminating perspectives. This study denigrates none of that achievement but contends that the analysis of his narrative voice leads to both increased understanding of journalistic technique and richer readings of the individual works.

This dissertation examines the historical forces that have rhetorically and discursively transformed suicide from a philosophical, legal, religious, and political issue into a primarily medical problem subsumed under the rhetorical banner of "mental health." In this dissertation, I examine the print press' articulation of the institutional belief that suicide is the act of irrational, mentally ill, disturbed, or otherwise impaired people in need of "prevention," "intervention," "help," and "care." What is said in the mainstream press about the self-inflicted deaths of U.S. residents---who are physically healthy, have caring friends and family, are relatively well-educated, have some measure of means, and, thus, are perceived by their peers as having everything to live for---speaks directly to the political nature of discussions about suicide and suicide prevention. Mainstream news media discussions of suicide tend to focus primarily on the mental health and "personal" problems of those who kill themselves, while suicide prevention is routinely represented as a fundamental right, a necessary public service, and a form of benevolence. What are the social, economic, political, and philosophical implications of representations of suicide and suicide prevention that ignore or downplay the specific lived reality of the people who commit suicide? Are there views of suicide that diverge from the dominant view of suicide as a health issue requiring professional medical solutions? And if there are, how does the mainstream press treat those ideas as rhetorical constructs? What can and cannot be said about suicide in the major media? Who speaks and who does not? Who are the people whose stories are told in the press? Why are these particular stories told? Does the wide-spread disapprobation of suicide in the U.S. limit understandings of suicide that do not privilege medical, psychiatric, and scientific explanations? What exactly is at stake in treating suicide and suicide prevention as political issues as well as mental health issues? By mapping the historical progression of the major ideological currents informing how this culture thinks and talks about suicide, this dissertation considers suicide's potentially subversive, political, and resistive nature.

Drawing on a rich archive of print and electronic sources, in-depth interviews and participant observation in three Slovak lesbian and gay nongovernmental organizations Ganymedes, Museion and Altera, this ethnography presents a culturally and historically situated analysis of the conditions and effects of the emerging visibility of sexual minorities in post-1989 Slovakia. At the core of this study is Foucault's theorizing of sexuality as an effect of discourses, and his genealogical approach to studying the links between discursive practice and different modalities of power. Through uncovering multiple and diffuse sites where heteronormativity is challenged, this study disrupts dominant narratives of social change that efface sexual-political struggle, and situates the emerging visibility of sexual minorities in Slovakia within the larger contexts of postsocialist transformations, European integration and globalization. This dissertation examines the following questions: How can we explain the rise of visibility of sexual minorities in post-1989 Slovakia? What are the sites of heightening visibility? How do various discursive practices effect the formation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer sexual-political subjectivities and activist networks in the context of Slovak language and culture? How do postsocialist transformation, European integration and globalization affect the "queering" of civil society in contemporary Slovakia? Slovak sexual minorities emerged from invisibility with the establishment of LGBT nongovernmental organizations and periodicals in a period of societal crisis triggered by the collapse of communism in 1989 and ensuing political, economic, and cultural change. During Slovakia's accession to the European Union, LGBT activism was further mobilized by access to new knowledge and resources, marginal participation in transversal decision-making, and transnational activist networking. While Slovak LGBT activists still struggle with movement participation, they continue to establish themselves as producers of counter-knowledge and as political force that can no longer be ignored. This study documents their communicative and political intervention as a record of a social movement taking shape, and as an analysis of contested sexual discourses at a key historical juncture. It aims to contribute insight and intellectual energy to future activism and to the evolution of queer culture in Slovakia.

Social theorist Jürgen Habermas describes the public sphere as a network for communicating information and perspectives that creates public opinion, a network which is neither of the state, nor of private economic and household life. The ideal public sphere is a rational communicative process allowing participation in political and scholarly debates towards finding agreement, where speakers and addressees need not talk about themselves. Habermas does not blur the line between public and private; the two complement each other instead. Intersubjectivities reach consensus---or achieve what journalism calls "professional objectivity". Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 1999 to 2003 and contextualized with historical sources, this dissertation explores these Habermasian ideals with data from the everyday life of Croatian journalists, important participants in transforming their post-socialist, post-war nation-state. Using broad strokes, the public sphere model is useful to describe transitional Croatia, but, when we look at the fine grains of the everyday lifeworld and put the newsroom in the wider context of culture, the communicative rationality of the journalistic milieu is not just the complementarity of the public and private, but the complicative, as well. The concept of the public sphere is a useful analytic descriptor for institutional creatures with a "monolithic" identity as "journalist". Ethnography, however, shows us journalists as individuals---individuals with sanguine and affinal ties, with organizational and associative pulls, with overt and covert identities. As I tell the stories of Croatian broadcast reporters and consider their ever-evolving subject matter (in this case, the Croatian presidency), I describe molecular variables of the journalistic field within wider cultural articulations. I find the concept of the public sphere needs to include a rhizomic model of communication, where uncentered connections are made or broken at any given spot, with interruptions and new networking happening at any occasion. As planes of communication mediate between structured orderly thinking on the one hand and the chaos of chance happenings and the complexity of their ever-shifting origins and outcomes on the other, Habermas' modernist attempts to find the normative place in communicative rationality are fleeting when working from the ground up in the Croatian journalistic milieu.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.