The goal of this research was to explore cohort differences in the role of communication in romantic relationships throughout the lifespan. This project explored the direct and indirect effects of attachment styles (i.e., anxious, avoidant) and negative communication patterns (i.e., Gottman's four horsemen: criticism, defensiveness, contempt, stonewalling) on commitment levels, psychosocial outcomes, attitudes toward union transitions (i.e., marriage, divorce, cohabitation), reasons for divorce, and reasons for delaying divorce as a direct function of experience with marital biographies. A marital biography refers to the history or experiences with union transitions in romantic relationships. A secondary aim is to test differences in these same variables as a function of direct experience with divorce moderated by age at the first divorce. Participants, including young divorced adults between ages 18-49 (N = 162) and gray adults ages 50+ (N = 96), completed a survey with measures including attachment, communication practices, commitment, attitudes toward union transitions, psychosocial outcomes, reasons for divorce, and reasons for delaying divorce. The results indicated that, insecure attachment styles and Gottman's four horsemen are predictive of divorce, with stonewalling being an aggravating factor, particularly for anxious attachment styles, and the risk for divorce. The experience of union transitions, especially divorce, affect how we approach future romantic relationships in addition to altering psychosocial outcomes, personal, moral, and structural commitment. Gender differences were found in divorced participants’ personal and moral commitment, psychosocial outcomes, and reasons for divorce. Age at first divorce-related differences were present in participants' structural commitment, reasons for divorce, length of delay, and reasons for delaying divorce. Even though age at first divorce was not a moderating factor, it still played an important role in reasons leading up to and outcomes of divorce.

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 10, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Thesis advisor: James Calvin. Includes bibliographical references.

Many of us believe that poetry, specifically activist and experimental poetry, is capable of intervening in our society, as though the right words will call people to action, give the voiceless a voice, and reorder the systems that perpetuate oppression, even if there are few examples of such instances. Nevertheless, my project looks at these very moments, when poetry alters the fabric of our real, to explore the ways these poetical interventions are, in effect, instances of what I have come to call “dissensual” poetry. Using Jacques Rancière’s concept of dissensus and the distribution of the sensible, my project investigates the ways in which dissensual poetry ruptures the distribution of the sensible—“our definite configurations of what is given as our real, as the object of our perceptions and the field of our interventions”—to look at the ways poetry actually does politics (Dissensus 156). I look at three different types of dissensual poetry: concrete poetry, sound poetry, and instapoetry. I argue that these poetic practices prompt a reordering of our society, of what is countable and unaccountable, and of how bodies, capacities, and systems operate. They allow for those whom Rancière calls the anonymous, and whom we might call the oppressed or marginalized, to become known. I argue that bpNichol’s, Judith Copithorne’s, and Steve McCaffery’s concrete poems; the Four Horsemen’s, Penn Kemp’s, and Christian Bök’s sound poems; and rupi kaur’s instapoems are examples of dissensual poetry.