The plot of my novel in progress, Gentille Alouette, follows a sixteen-year-old female poltergeist named Alouette Tansy as she navigates her complicated relationship with her mother, Rhododendron “Rho” Tansy. Alouette is a violent entity, born out of her mother’s long simmering and manifested angry after Rho witnesses a catastrophic event as a child. Separated from her mother and raised by her grandmother, Elzina “Nona” Tansy, Alouette must come to grips with her otherworldly physicality and strange abilities all while trying to comprehend her own existence and sense of humanity. The short story, Rusalka Rusalka, follows a young girl named Remmie who is suspended from her high school after assaulting another student. She finds herself on work detail in the Great Dismal Swamp aiding Rusalka, the mysterious wife of a renowned marine biologist. Rusalka’s instability and affinity for exotic fish prove much more treacherous that Remmie could have ever imagined.

Doctor of Philosophy / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Karen S. Myers-Bowman / Immigrant Muslim mothers is a rapidly growing population in the United States for which there seems to be little or no information about their health values and parenting practices. Approximately 4 million adolescents in the U.S. have Arab Muslim immigrant parents. The goal of this study is to understand how adolescent girls’ health behaviors can be shaped and influenced by sociocutlural factors especially the mother-daughter relationships and the influences of living in a Muslim community in the U.S. The immigrant Muslim mother’s values (religious and cultural) that shape these relationships were examined. Next, the influence of the new dominant culture; the American culture on the mothers’ values, maternal practices and thus the adolescent daughter’s health behavior was addressed. Using criterion sampling strategy, eleven immigrant Muslim mothers and their American Muslim adolescent daughters (N=22) who were born and also raised in the United States were recruited and interviewed. The interviews were transcribed verbatim, coded, and analyzed following phenomenological research methods. Mothers in this study showed that their health values were shaped by Islam, culture origin and the acculturation factor. The majority of the mothers explained that they were more religious in the United States and some of them mentioned that they left out their culture of origin values and accept some values from the new dominant culture. Mothers in this sample explained that in order to share their values with their daughters, they needed to be close, supportive, open minded, good listeners to them. In addition, they followed different maternal practices such as: tried to be available, monitored their health behaviors, had healthy communication with them although there was imposing, and tried to model different health behaviors. However, the daughters’ perception of the mothers’ health values and maternal relationships was an important factor in determining how these values and practices could shape the daughters’ health behaviors. The results revealed that daughters who perceived that their mothers’ values and practices were shaped by the three factors were more likely to follow healthy behaviors. A theoretical model was developed. Implications for family professionals and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Existing research suggests that illness can have profound implications for the family. The purpose of this thesis is to explore mothers and daughters experiences of the mothers breast cancer in order to determine how their lives were affected by the illness. In particular, I focus on shifts that occurred in their family roles, responsibilities, and relationships. Twelve qualitative interviews were performed with four mother-daughter dyads. Each mother and daughter participated in an initial interview together, as well as a separate follow-up interview. Interview data was analyzed thematically using a blended feminist-interpretive approach. The major themes emerging from the analysis pertained to: shifts in family roles and responsibilities, coping with breast cancer, and growth in family relationships. These themes identify specific aspects of mothers and daughters lives that were affected by breast cancer. Specifically, the findings contribute to the overarching theme that mothers and daughters experienced biographical disruption as a result of the mothers breast cancer, in that the illness required the women to re-assess their everyday lives and expectations for the future. However, the range of experiences described by the mothers and daughters suggest that the degree to which biographical disruption occurred varied depending on the extent to which their lives were altered by breast cancer. Therefore, I conclude that mothers and daughters experienced varying degrees of biographical disruption as a result of the mothers breast cancer. This conclusion indicates that the breast cancer diagnosis has an array of significant implications for mothers and daughters, some of which continue well beyond the completion of acute care. Recognizing that mothers and daughters family roles, responsibilities, and relationships were affected to some extent by the breast cancer experience will help to improve the types of support offered to women in the future.

Eudora Welty’s sense of place is often discussed by scholars, but they have limited their discussions of place in Welty’s texts to place as region or, more specifically, the South. In so doing, Welty is often pigeonholed as a regionalist writer. Looking at the home when considering place makes Welty’s texts more universal and appealing to readers of all regions and countries. Every individual either has a home or longs for one; all understand the pull toward a home of some kind. Using the theoretical lens of social and psychological theories of space, place, and the home, this study presents a close reading of the homes in Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding and The Optimist’s Daughter. In addition, archival research from the Eudora Welty collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History aids in understanding how drafting the stories and the ways in which the stories evolved add to a reading of home in the texts. In her famous essay “Place in Fiction,” Welty asks, “What place has place in fiction?” (781). In analyzing the role of the home in Welty’s fiction, the reader must ask: What place has the home in fiction? Analyzing the homes in Delta Wedding and The Optimist’s Daughter reveals the characters’ identities – both individual and collective identities, and in so doing, it allows the reader to better understand the motives behind the characters’ actions and reactions.

Existing research suggests that illness can have profound implications for the family. The purpose of this thesis is to explore mothers and daughters experiences of the mothers breast cancer in order to determine how their lives were affected by the illness. In particular, I focus on shifts that occurred in their family roles, responsibilities, and relationships. Twelve qualitative interviews were performed with four mother-daughter dyads. Each mother and daughter participated in an initial interview together, as well as a separate follow-up interview. Interview data was analyzed thematically using a blended feminist-interpretive approach. The major themes emerging from the analysis pertained to: shifts in family roles and responsibilities, coping with breast cancer, and growth in family relationships. These themes identify specific aspects of mothers and daughters lives that were affected by breast cancer. Specifically, the findings contribute to the overarching theme that mothers and daughters experienced biographical disruption as a result of the mothers breast cancer, in that the illness required the women to re-assess their everyday lives and expectations for the future. However, the range of experiences described by the mothers and daughters suggest that the degree to which biographical disruption occurred varied depending on the extent to which their lives were altered by breast cancer. Therefore, I conclude that mothers and daughters experienced varying degrees of biographical disruption as a result of the mothers breast cancer. This conclusion indicates that the breast cancer diagnosis has an array of significant implications for mothers and daughters, some of which continue well beyond the completion of acute care. Recognizing that mothers and daughters family roles, responsibilities, and relationships were affected to some extent by the breast cancer experience will help to improve the types of support offered to women in the future.

This essay takes a look at two short stories from the novel Krik? Krak! written by the Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat. The short stories “Caroline’s Wedding” and “New York Day Women” are about mother-daughter relationships where the mothers and daughters are either first or second generations immigrants from Haiti. This essay focuses on these relationships and how they are related to immigration. To address these issues of relationships and immigration, several critics and their opinions on the subject are presented as well as an examination of key events in the short stories.

Amy Tan¡¦s The Joy Luck Club and Cristina Garcia¡¦s Dreaming in Cuban propose the matrilineal narrative of woman suffering and spiritual growth. Multiple narrators tell personal stories about the past events to cope with their current concerns and coming difficulties. Their storytelling functions as a way of making sense of experiences and fashioning identity. The first chapter explores how the narrative activity enables the del Pino and Joy Luck women to construct a preferred version of personal experiences. They not only tell stories to create idealized self-images but also live their lives to justify the images. Though they portray themselves as capable women in personal stories, they often appear vulnerable and mentally unstable in reality. Such contradiction results from the traumatic events the women leave untold, and they resist telling partly because of their madness and partly because of their repudiation of the events. The second chapter will examine their traumatic experiences to understand how their emotional problems determine the representation of their personal narratives. Due to the early traumatic experiences, the women develop maladaptive schemas to cope with their negative emotions. The schemas, however, undermine their interpersonal relationships and prevent them from fulfilling the basic needs. While wrestling with their emotional problems, they unwittingly transplant schemas into the next generation. The third chapter examines how certain crucial moments in their lives enlighten the women to have awareness of their schemas at the core of their suffering. The death of the family members and serious mother-daughter disagreements provide the opportunity for the women to move beyond the limited way they used to perceive themselves and others. With an open and positive attitude, they relate the traumatic experiences to understand how their early suffering contributes to their present difficulties and outgrow what has troubled them before.

This thesis sets out to explore Sara Suleri¡¦s memoir Meatless Days in terms of trauma, memory and writing. The first chapter traces the historical background and Pakistanis¡¦ trauma framed in nostalgia. The second chapter probes into the teaching of Suleri¡¦s mother: the performance, the unplot and the identity, in which I resort to Julia Kristeva¡¦s critique essays to replace Suleri¡¦s mother¡¦s position in Pakistani society since she exists there with ¡§heterogeneous¡¨ cultural and national identity. The third chapter, focusing on Benjamin¡¦s theory on history and memory, deals with Sara Suleri unique writing style. Suleri¡¦s Meatless Days uses her allegorical writing to open herself to the possibilities of silence, introspection, isolation and loneliness in the memoir. Suleri¡¦s writing shares some of the single-minded self-absorption with her mother and has somehow been channeled in to her memorized and lost beloved. The memoir then develops into a story that seems to involve synchronicity, but actually involves our need for synchronicity when synchronicity is simply the way coincidence indulges itself in wish-fulfillment.

This study examines the cultural and historical constructs of the patriarchal father, the dutiful daughter, and the “Cult of Southern Womanhood” that have impacted the depiction of the relationship between fathers and daughters in the works of southern writers Shirley Ann Grau, Gail Godwin, and Alice Walker. The authors illustrate fathers who influence their daughters by supplying their needs and supporting their desires, but also of fathers who have hindered the emotional growth of their daughters. The term father-force describes the characters’ understanding and revision of the power of the fathers over their lives. Evidence includes the primary works by the writers themselves, criticism of these writers from other sources, and their own words about their works. New Historicism theory supports the position that Grau, Godwin, and Walker use the historical context of the 1960s to help shape and articulate some of the more contemporary issues, anxieties, and struggles, reflected in the literature. The impact of father-daughter relationships in southern novels is an important aspect in the understanding of Grau, Godwin, and Walker’s contributions to American literature. These writers try to discover acceptable methods of dealing with their characters’ relationships with their fathers within the requirements of a society that has established clear roles for both father and daughter. The three writers emphasize good and bad examples of the cultural contexts being explored, and their writings show a historical perspective of the changes that have occurred in the South in father-daughter relationships from 1950 until the present time. The authors show their characters often becoming successful in the real world outside the home in an effort to gain their fathers’ recognition of their accomplishments, his acceptance of their individuality and differences from him, and his approval of their methods of gaining success. Strong feminists characteristics are displayed in the writings of the three authors. Grau, Godwin, and Walker share the characteristics of female characters that connect with their fathers through race, the burden of the past, gender, class and religious expectations. / Dr. Ronald R. Emerick Dr. Karen A. Dandurand Dr. Kelly L. Heider

This thesis is a result of a Minor Field Study with the purpose to examine the transnational labour migration by women in the Philippines who seek temporary employment abroad but plan to return to the Philippines after their contracts expired. The thesis is based on three months of anthropological fieldwork primarily in Manila between January and March 2013, using interviews and observations as my main methodological tool. I will reflect over the way in which women labour migration affect the women individually and socially by leaving one context and entering another. Migration places the Filipina outside the domestic sphere within their home country and increases their income-earning power. The Filipina has taken the role as the family’s breadwinner and is thereby challenging dominant gender roles within the Philippine society. The experience being a female migrant enhances their status, makes them stronger, more confident and provides them with the opportunity to make decisions independent of their male partners. Filipinas are being praised by their own society as ‘modern day heroes’, but at the same time blamed for leaving their obligation as dutiful daughters, nurturing mothers and caring wives. Ideas from state and society do not correspond to the reality, namely a reality where women have taken the position as their family’s main breadwinner. Which complicates the ability to induce a change in ideas regarding gender roles for men and women. Conclusively, the female migration has not resulted in a change regarding gender roles within the Philippine society.