This dissertation sought to answer four research questions in relation to the master narrative of modern parenthood, themes of untellable tales of parenthood, how parents make sense of their identity in light of possessing untellable tales, and mechanisms parents utilize to cope with and make sense of their untellable tales. What emerges from this dissertation is a much needed, in-depth illustration of the multi-faceted, myriad pressures modern parents face. Furthermore, the results of the data analysis show the lengths parents will go to, to try and live up to the expectations placed upon them in modern society. Finally, this dissertation illuminates the (often) creative ways parents embark upon sense-making and coping strategies to continue to work each day to raise the next generation for future success. Through inductive, open-coding, qualitative analysis the findings related to each research question illustrate many varied, and rich themes. The master narrative of modern parenthood was discovered to contain ten separate narrative threads that weave together to create a rich tapestry of how parents are expected to be responsible for Determining the Future Success of the Child. Five of the narrative threads dictate the roles parents are expected to play within their daily parenting: Provider, Protector, Teacher, Biggest Fan, and Enforcer. Additionally, the master narrative of modern parenthood instructs parents to perform each of the roles in with: Unconditional Love, Selflessness, Attention, Enjoyment, and Perfection. When analyzing parent untellable narratives for emergent themes, it became clear the master narrative was closely entwined with what makes tales of parenthood untellable. The themes that emerged within untellable tales of parenthood were that of: Inadequate Provider, Inadequate Protector, Inadequate Teacher, Inadequate Biggest Fan, and Inadequate Enforcer. Furthermore, tales of parenthood can be deemed untellable because they illustrate a parent performing the various roles of parenthood with the opposite of the master narrative performative expectations. As a result, performative themes of untellable tales were found to be: Selfishness, Frustration, Inattention, Too Good, and Unconditional Love. Possessing untellable tales of parenthood did not disable parents from making sense of their parental identity. Instead, untellable tales were utilized by the parent to explore his or her identity and make sense of who he or she was or wished to be as a parent. This identity exploration manifested within four themes of identity sense-making that emerged during data analysis: Identity Under Construction, Identity Unintelligible to Others, Identity Outlier, and Identity Undecided. Within each of these identity sense-making themes, parents worked to accept/reject their untellable tale of parenthood and understand the stability/fluidity of their parental identity. Finally, when seeking to understand how parents cope with and make sense of their untellable tales of parenthood two large themes emerged: Cognitive Strategies and Communicative Strategies. Within the theme of Cognitive Strategies, parents embarked upon Internal Narrative Reflection and Internal Narrative Reframing to internally work through, assess, and understand their untellable tale of parenthood while not risking outsider judgement, or identity defamation. Communicative Strategies parents utilized for coping and sense-making purposes were found to be: Tell the Untellable, Tell a Therapist, Write the Untellable, and Tell and Alternative Tale. Through these Communicative Strategies parents could reap the benefits of sharing their untellable tale (sometimes creatively) to get listener feedback, emotional validation, and support that then helped the parent cope with and make sense of the challenge presented within the untellable tale and/or the challenges of parenting more generally.

The scientific study of wisdom is a contentious field. There is little agreement among dominant research programs concerning how to conceptualize and measure the elusive phenomenon of wisdom. The current study argues for a narrative analysis of this concept given that autobiographical stories offer a contextually rich vista into real-life manifestations of wisdom. Presented here is a qualitative investigation of autobiographical wisdom narratives from 8 individuals distributed across parameters of age, gender, and degree of wisdom. Results point to the possibility that relatively wise persons define wisdom more elaborately, participate in more sophisticated autobiographical reasoning processes, and engage with master narratives in a more evaluative and critical manner than relatively unwise individuals. These features did not appear to differ across levels of age and gender. This study validates a narrative approach to the science of wisdom, and suggests that stories may be central to advancing our understanding of this concept.

The scientific study of wisdom is a contentious field. There is little agreement among dominant research programs concerning how to conceptualize and measure the elusive phenomenon of wisdom. The current study argues for a narrative analysis of this concept given that autobiographical stories offer a contextually rich vista into real-life manifestations of wisdom. Presented here is a qualitative investigation of autobiographical wisdom narratives from 8 individuals distributed across parameters of age, gender, and degree of wisdom. Results point to the possibility that relatively wise persons define wisdom more elaborately, participate in more sophisticated autobiographical reasoning processes, and engage with master narratives in a more evaluative and critical manner than relatively unwise individuals. These features did not appear to differ across levels of age and gender. This study validates a narrative approach to the science of wisdom, and suggests that stories may be central to advancing our understanding of this concept.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Despite clinical recommendations, only 25.8% of infants in the United States are exclusively breastfed at 6 months of age. Breastfeeding policies and communication campaigns exist to support exclusive breastfeeding, and women who use formula report facing stigma and feeling like a failure. Narratives can be used to discern how individuals make sense of experiences related to health, and narrative theorizing in health communication provides a framework of problematics used to explain how individuals construct stories that reveal the tensions between continuity and disruption and creativity and constraint. Individual experiences are often influenced by master narratives such as “Breast is best,” which are phrases that shape our understanding of the world. Because of the negative impact of using formula on maternal well-being, the purpose of this research was to use a narrative framework to analyze the stories of women who used formula in relation to the master narrative of breast is best. Building off of pilot interviews with 22 mothers, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 women who had used formula within the first 6 months after giving birth and had an infant no older than 12 months at the time of the interview. Qualitative analysis revealed that women perceived formula as shameful and costly. Conversely, they viewed breastfeeding as biologically superior, better for bonding, and a way to enact good motherhood. Current messaging about breastfeeding, particularly for women who intend to breastfeed, may have unintended negative effects when women face a disruption to their breastfeeding journey. In addition, women viewed breastfeeding and formula feeding as in relation to and in opposition to one another, reducing the perceived acceptability of behaviors such as combination feeding. Despite constraints in the master narrative regarding acceptable infant feeding practices, women demonstrated creativity in their individual stories and found formula feeding enabled more equitable parenting and preserved mental health. Practical implications include that organizations promoting exclusive breastfeeding in the United States should move away from framing breastfeeding as an all-or-nothing choice and develop tailored and value-neutral messaging recognizing breastfeeding as a complex psychosocial and biological process.

This study aims to answer how Interactive Digital Narrative authoring tools shape the authoring process. Any tool or software shapes the way its users interact with it, oftentimes without the user even knowing it. It is therefore important to understand how these processes work when talking about authoring tools for IDNs, as they will inevitably shape its output. Three authoring tools were selected, those three being TextureWriter, Scrivener, and Twine. A standardized Game Design Document was created, and four participants were recruited to use those three authoring tools to adapt said Game Design Document. A focus group was conducted after the participants had used their tools for a fair amount of time to ascertain their authoring process experience. In the end, the participant using Twine did not attend the focus group, prohibiting evaluation of that tool. The results showed that there are a number of previously unknown ways in which the two evaluated authoring tools shape the game authoring process: Fundamental structure, temporal structure, spatial structure, presentation structure, mechanics of interaction, and multimedia inclusion. The results also showed a strong correlation between a master narrative and in how the authoring tool limited the author.

The United States’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has been shaped by the country’s pre-existing narratives around disability. The master narrative of disability presents disability as a static condition that inherently lowers a person’s quality of life. This creates bias in physicians dealing with disabled patients, since under the master narrative’s logic disability is a negative trait that must be eradicated or cured. This troubling view has wider ramifications during a global pandemic as well. The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped everybody’s relationship with time, bringing even nondisabled people closer to the experience of disability. However, the federal government and many state governments adhered as closely as possible to able-bodied conceptions of time. This has hindered the United States’ pandemic response by misprioritizing “reopening the economy” even at the expense of people’s lives. This creates a cycle, because this mismanaged response has led the country into even greater uncertainty about the pandemic, which moves everybody even closer to disabled conceptions of time. Had the master narrative not been so powerful, perhaps the United States could have responded more effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic. / Urban Bioethics

Since the publication of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), Berliner and Biddle (1995) have argued media have assisted leaders in creating a “manufactured crisis” (p. 4) about America’s public schools to scapegoat educators, push reforms, and minimize societal problems, such as systemic racism and declining economic growth, particularly in urban areas. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (2001) functions as an important articulation of this crisis (Granger, 2008). Utilizing the theoretical lenses of master narrative theory (Lyotard, 1984), Critical Race Theory (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001), and social capital theory (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman 1988), this study employed critical discourse analysis (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009) to unmask the mainstream media’s master narrative, or dominant story, about Victory High School (VHS), which was reconstituted under the authority of the NCLB Act (2001). Findings revealed a master narrative that racialized economic competition, vilified community members, and exonerated neoliberal reforms. Drawing on the critical race methodology of counter-narratives (Yosso, 2006), individual and focus group interviews with 12 VHS teachers, alumni, and community elders illustrated how reforms fragmented this school community, destroying collective social capital, while protecting the interests of capitalism and neoliberalism. By revealing the interests protected by the media’s master narrative and beginning a counter-narrative voiced by members of the community, this study contributes to recasting the history of the VHS community, to understanding the intersections between race and class in working class communities of color, and to exposing the impact of neoliberal educational reforms on urban schools.

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This dissertation concerns the legacy of the Nazi forced enlistment during World War II and focuses more precisely on the case of Alsace/Moselle. Many of these French men, enlisted by force from 1942 in the German army, were sent to the Eastern Front and experienced Soviet prison camps. The aim of this thesis is to examine how knowledge and memories about forced enlistment and Soviet captivity have been remembered, commemorated, communicated and passed on since the Alsatian/Mosellan POWs (Prisoners of War) carried the tokens of enemies or traitors when reintegrating their motherland, France. Four strategies dealing with the experiences of forced enlistment and of internment in Soviet prison camps are examined. I present how the first and most common strategy, i.e. avoidance, is contributing to an individual and collective construction of silence. Then I argue that a second strategy, the constitution of families of remembrance, is helping them to articulate and narrate their experiences (third strategy). The fourth strategy is the organisation of pilgrimages (emic term) to the former prison camp of Tambov, where the majority of the Alsatian/Mosellan POWs were gathered during the war. This last strategy actualises the issue of the transmission of the war experiences given that pilgrimages bring together three to four generations. Through fieldwork observations of the journeys I show how the pilgrims engage with a sense of the past. They remember and reassess the meaning of the past in terms of the social, cultural and political needs of the present. The importance of place and the aspect of self-in-place are thoughtfully analysed in order to highlight the process of passing on the memory of Tambov. I conclude by arguing that the agents of remembrance interviewed for the purpose of this thesis are engaged in turning the tangible and intangible legacies of World War II into heritage. This is done by releasing the legacy of forced enlistment and internment in Soviet prison camp from the private/familial sphere and inscribing it in the public sphere. Yet, the agency of the former POWs and their descendants shows how to let pass a past “that does not want to pass” in a contemporary European context.

Cette thèse espère contribuer au dépassement du récit dominant qui a longtemps marqué l’historiographie du mouvement des droits civiques. Différents mécanismes de production du consensus, tant externes au mouvement qu’internes, ont contribué à masquer les tensions qui le traversaient et à le délimiter étroitement autour du seul aspect racial. Ce récit unifiait artificiellement la minorité noire en minorant les clivages de classe, de genre, les tensions générationnelles ou spatiales qui préexistaient aux années 1960 et en limitant les objectifs de ces mobilisations à la revendication de l’égalité des droits raciaux. Par ailleurs le maccarthysme et le triomphe du consensus libéral ont marginalisé la gauche noire et relégué les femmes à l’arrière-plan. Marginalisés en tant que forces politiques, les courants radicaux et les femmes ont aussi été d’abord effacés du récit historique. Cette représentation restrictive du mouvement des droits civiques a pu s’intégrer au récit national américain, aux dépens des voix radicales discordantes et du Nationalisme Noir de la période postérieure à 1966. Cependant ces clivages préexistaient : ce travail s’inscrit dans la perspective d’une histoire longue du mouvement des droits civiques qui met l’accent sur les continuités qui, des années 1930 aux années 1970, lient les générations entre elles. Il s’agit alors de dépasser les limites chronologiques traditionnelles et les clivages spatiaux qui opposent un Nord et un Sud essentialisés pour se situer à l’échelle locale, à la hauteur des militants dans la multiplicité des mouvements locaux. Nos sources en majorité autobiographiques, mais aussi photographiques, permettent de rendre compte de l’écart entre les militants locaux et leurs leaders nationaux du New Deal au Black Power. Les autobiographies militantes constituent des contre-récits qui remettent en question le récit dominant et dévoilent les tensions politiques et les projets minoritaires : ceux de la gauche noire, mais aussi les clivages genrés, générationnels ou spatiaux. Les revendications économiques et féministes de même qu’une dimension internationale sont aussi mis en lumière. La photographie de presse participe à cet effacement des clivages, par l’iconisation de figures célèbres. Malgré le maccarthysme, les thèmes et les idées de la gauche noire perdurent pourtant par le biais de l’image. Cette thèse tente de redonner leurs voix aux leaders anonymes du mouvement, à ceux dont les idées ont été masquées ou déformées et qui témoignent de la complexité d’un combat où classe, genre et race sont liés mais aussi en concurrence. / In this dissertation I hope to contribute to the criticism of the dominant narrative that has long been at the center of the historiography of the black liberation movement. Different consensus-building mechanisms, both external and internal to the movement, masked its tensions and tended to delineate it exclusively around race. This narrative artificially unified the black mi-nority by mostly obliterating the movement’s class divisions as well as the gender, generation-al, and spatial tensions, that existed prior to the 1960s, and by limiting its objectives to the demand for legal rights. Furthermore, McCarthyism and the triumph of the liberal consensus marginalized the black left and relegated women to the background while politically radical currents and the demands of women were also erased from the historical narrative. This nar-row vision of the black liberation movement was integrated into the US national narrative at the expense of the discordant voices of radicalization and Black Nationalism of the post-1966 era. This work adopts the perspective of a long civil rights movement by focusing on the con-tinuities that linked various generations, from the 1930s to the 1970s, thus going beyond the traditional and the spatial divides, which oppose an essentialized regional divide between North and South in the dominant narrative to focus instead on the diversity of local movements The sources used focus on autobiographies and on photography, making it possible to account for the differences in point of view between local activists and their national leaders, from the years of the New Deal to the Black Power era. Militant autobiographies constitute counter-narratives that challenge the master narrative and reveal political tensions and minority projects, including those of the black left; they also point to gendered, generational and spatial divides as well as to economic and feminist demands, and they show the international dimen-sion of the black liberation movement. Mainstream photography participated in the erasure of the tensions in the movement through the iconization of famous figures. Still, in spite of McCarthyism, the themes and ideas of the black left are visible through their own images. With such sources, this doctoral dissertation attempts to give voice to the anonymous leaders of the movement, to those whose ideas have been masked or distorted and whose testimony testifies to the complexity of a struggle where class, gender and race both concur and compete.