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What We Hide is a collection of memoir essays that explores the themes of mystery and deception in personal relationships, specifically within familial and romantic ones. Though the essays in the collection explore the decades from early in the narrator's childhood through her move to Florida for graduate school, the narrator's keen discernment of the world around her and her curiosity for what experiences shape a person's character remain constant. Many essays explore the extent of her father's alcoholism and the consequences of it, as well as the narrator's obsession over the possible sources of his addictions. Other essays examine the narrator's relationships with men beginning when she enters high school and question the extent to which her strained relationship with her father both excuses and/or explains the way she deceives and allows herself to be deceived in these relationships. What We Hide is endlessly implicating and looks for the accountability of these situations from all sources. The narrator delves into the sneakiness of her parents' courtship, the accusations that become commonplace during their divorce, the ways in which the narrator lies to family, friends, and boyfriends for her own selfish motives, and how each of these experiences shapes subsequent ones. What We Hide uses personal experience, emails, and newspaper articles to demonstrate the vulnerability, contradictions, and complications that are inherent in all of us as humans and how these weaknesses manifest themselves in the relationships with those we are closest with.

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“Not Drowning but Waving: The American Junior Year Abroad” explores and describes study abroad amongst college students while also showing the historical roots of study abroad. This thesis seeks to understand the history and current issues in study abroad while also giving a literary description of the experiences, personal changes, and development of insight in the students who decide to study abroad. The Introduction serves both as the introduction to my project as well as an overview of the history and current issues within study abroad. It is divided into three main parts. The first section discusses the impetus for the project, the research methodology, relevant literature, and the genre of creative nonfiction. The second section covers the history of American travel and study abroad, as well as the work of the Fulbright Program. The third section is a short survey of contemporary trends within study abroad, and addresses issues of gender, race, location, and student behavior while abroad. The creative portion of this thesis describes the study abroad students’ stories, experiences, and insights during and after a semester in Europe. The first three chapters of this section—“Leaving”, “Destinations” and “Guardians at the Gate”—describe some of the initial experiences during a semester abroad. Chapter one looks at the process of traveling to a new country and adapting to new cultural norms. Chapter two describes the study abroad destinations where I did my primary research for this project. Chapter three explores some logistical issues in study abroad, namely academics, finances, and housing. Chapter four explores the challenges students face after the initial excitement of study abroad wears off, and looks at the issues of student responsibility, danger, harassment, and alcohol abuse. Chapter five describes student travel habits, which is one of the most popular elements of study abroad but also one of the more problematic. Chapter six looks at the challenge of re-entry to North America for study abroad students, and chapter seven provides a conclusion to the piece.

L’objet de ce mémoire est d’explorer le lien étroit qui existe entre la pratique de l’autobiographie et l’écriture comme forme d’engagement dans l’œuvre de Simone de Beauvoir, grâce à une analyse du genre ambigu de L’Amérique au jour le jour et des discours politiques qu’il renferme. Bien que L’Amérique au jour le jour constitue le corpus principal de ce mémoire, nous utiliserons aussi des textes contemporains à la rédaction du journal de voyage américain pour guider notre classification générique, dont les Lettres à Nelson Algren, les Lettres à Sartre et Les Mandarins, ainsi que les volumes de l’ensemble autobiographique beauvoirien qui portent sur l’après-guerre, même si ceux-ci sont postérieurs à la rédaction du journal. À l’aide de concepts issus de la poétique des genres, comme les questions de hiérarchie, de proportion, d’intention et de programme, et de l’éthique de l’engagement de l’écrivain telle que définie par la notion sartrienne de l’engagement, nous tenterons de démontrer que l’ambiguïté générique de L’Amérique au jour le jour relève d’une action délibérée de l’auteure visant à mettre en péril son capital symbolique pour assurer la crédibilité de son engagement intellectuel. Une fois les concepts précités définis, le deuxième chapitre de notre mémoire s’attardera à explorer toutes les facettes de l’ambiguïté générique du journal américain, alors que le troisième chapitre démontrera le lien entre les écritures intimes et l’engagement, tout en explorant les formes que prend l’engagement dans le livre. Pour ce faire, nous analyserons trois discours politiques tenus par Beauvoir dans son œuvre : la critique du consumérisme américain, la critique de la condition des Noirs et la critique de la femme américaine. Nous conclurons notre mémoire en démontrant que L’Amérique au jour le jour est devenu une sorte de matrice dans la pratique autobiographique et scripturaire de Simone de Beauvoir, ainsi que dans son engagement. / The main purpose of this master thesis is to explore the intimate connexion between the practice of autobiography and writing as a form of engagement in the work of Simone de Beauvoir, through an analysis of the ambiguous genre in America Day By Day and the political views that the book puts forward. Although America Day By Day is the basic corpus of this thesis, other texts contemporary to the American travel log will also be used to guide our generic classification, including Letters to Nelson Algren, Letters to Sartre and The Mandarins, and the volumes of Beauvoir’s autobiography that deal with the post-war period, even if they were written after the American travel log. Using concepts from genre theory, including issues such as hierarchy, proportion, intent and program, and the ethical commitment of the writer as defined in the Satrean concept of engagement, we will attempt to demonstrate that the generic ambiguity of America Day By Day is a deliberate action by the author aiming to jeopardize her symbolic capital, therefore ensuring the credibility of her intellectual engagement. Once the concepts above have been defined, the second chapter of our paper will focus on exploring all facets of genre ambiguity in the American travel log, while the third chapter will seek to illustrate the intimate connection between creative nonfiction and intellectual engagement, as well as exploring commitment’s forms in the book. To do this, we will analyze three political discourses found in Beauvoir’s work: criticism of the American consumerism, criticism of the Negro Problem and criticism of American women. We conclude our thesis by showing that America Day By Day has become a sort of matrix in Beauvoir’s autobiographical practice, as well as in her intellectual “engagement”.

L’objet de ce mémoire est d’explorer le lien étroit qui existe entre la pratique de l’autobiographie et l’écriture comme forme d’engagement dans l’œuvre de Simone de Beauvoir, grâce à une analyse du genre ambigu de L’Amérique au jour le jour et des discours politiques qu’il renferme. Bien que L’Amérique au jour le jour constitue le corpus principal de ce mémoire, nous utiliserons aussi des textes contemporains à la rédaction du journal de voyage américain pour guider notre classification générique, dont les Lettres à Nelson Algren, les Lettres à Sartre et Les Mandarins, ainsi que les volumes de l’ensemble autobiographique beauvoirien qui portent sur l’après-guerre, même si ceux-ci sont postérieurs à la rédaction du journal. À l’aide de concepts issus de la poétique des genres, comme les questions de hiérarchie, de proportion, d’intention et de programme, et de l’éthique de l’engagement de l’écrivain telle que définie par la notion sartrienne de l’engagement, nous tenterons de démontrer que l’ambiguïté générique de L’Amérique au jour le jour relève d’une action délibérée de l’auteure visant à mettre en péril son capital symbolique pour assurer la crédibilité de son engagement intellectuel. Une fois les concepts précités définis, le deuxième chapitre de notre mémoire s’attardera à explorer toutes les facettes de l’ambiguïté générique du journal américain, alors que le troisième chapitre démontrera le lien entre les écritures intimes et l’engagement, tout en explorant les formes que prend l’engagement dans le livre. Pour ce faire, nous analyserons trois discours politiques tenus par Beauvoir dans son œuvre : la critique du consumérisme américain, la critique de la condition des Noirs et la critique de la femme américaine. Nous conclurons notre mémoire en démontrant que L’Amérique au jour le jour est devenu une sorte de matrice dans la pratique autobiographique et scripturaire de Simone de Beauvoir, ainsi que dans son engagement. / The main purpose of this master thesis is to explore the intimate connexion between the practice of autobiography and writing as a form of engagement in the work of Simone de Beauvoir, through an analysis of the ambiguous genre in America Day By Day and the political views that the book puts forward. Although America Day By Day is the basic corpus of this thesis, other texts contemporary to the American travel log will also be used to guide our generic classification, including Letters to Nelson Algren, Letters to Sartre and The Mandarins, and the volumes of Beauvoir’s autobiography that deal with the post-war period, even if they were written after the American travel log. Using concepts from genre theory, including issues such as hierarchy, proportion, intent and program, and the ethical commitment of the writer as defined in the Satrean concept of engagement, we will attempt to demonstrate that the generic ambiguity of America Day By Day is a deliberate action by the author aiming to jeopardize her symbolic capital, therefore ensuring the credibility of her intellectual engagement. Once the concepts above have been defined, the second chapter of our paper will focus on exploring all facets of genre ambiguity in the American travel log, while the third chapter will seek to illustrate the intimate connection between creative nonfiction and intellectual engagement, as well as exploring commitment’s forms in the book. To do this, we will analyze three political discourses found in Beauvoir’s work: criticism of the American consumerism, criticism of the Negro Problem and criticism of American women. We conclude our thesis by showing that America Day By Day has become a sort of matrix in Beauvoir’s autobiographical practice, as well as in her intellectual “engagement”.

The genre of biography is, by nature, imprecise and limited. Real lives are lived synchronously and diversely; they do not divide spontaneously into chapters, subjects or themes. All biographers construct stories, in the process forcing the disordered complexity of an actual life into a neat literary form. This doctoral submission comprises a book length creative work, Poisoned: The Trials of Mary Dean, and a reflective written component on that creative work, Writing Fictionalised Biography. Poisoned is a biography of Mary Dean, who, although repeatedly poisoned by her husband at the end of the nineteenth century, did not die. This biography, presented in the form of a first-person memoir, is based closely on historical evidence and is supported with discursive notes and a select bibliography. The reflective written component, Writing Fictionalised Biography, outlines the process and challenges of writing a biography when the source material available is inadequate and unreliable. In writing Poisoned my genre solution has been fictionalised biography - biography which is historically diligent while utilising fictional writing strategies and incorporating fictional passages. This written component reflectively discusses how I arrived at that solution. It includes discussion of the sources I utilised in writing Poisoned, including the limitations of trial transcripts and other court records as biographical evidence; useful precursors to the form; the process wherein I located both a form for my fictionalised biography and a voice for my biographical subject; possible models I considered; how I distinguished established fact from speculative supposition in the text; as well as some of the ambivalences and ethical concerns such a narrative process implies.

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