<p>ABSTRACT</p><p><strong>Background:</strong> A diary often helps the critically ill patient better to understand her/his illness and fill gaps in memory regarding their experiences in the ICU. To date there appears to be a lack of research that specifically focuses on family members’ experiences of the use of a diary within the intensive care setting. <strong>Aim: </strong>The aim of the study was to explore how family members experienced a diary kept during their sick relative’s stay in the ICU. <strong>Methodology: </strong>A qualitative methodology and, in particular, a hermeneutic approach were deemed to be appropriate for the study. Eleven participants were interviewed relating to nine diaries. Collected data have been analysed using hermeneutic interpretation inspired by Gadamer. <strong>Findings:</strong> Family members experienced that the diary sustained strengthened and deepened the connection to their sick relative and confirmed the presence of family members at bedside. The diary worked as a forum for mutual exchange of information between nurses and family members which led to a feeling of being united with the nurses in understanding. This in turn created a sense of togetherness and the family members didn’t feel neglected. In addition the diary was experienced as an implied hope that the outcome of the ICU stay would be good<strong>, </strong>thereby lending strength to worried family members<strong>. Conclusion: </strong>The diary was experienced as a tool that enhanced family members’ wellbeing.</p>

This dissertation performs a diary-side ethnographic reading of socialist Yugoslavia of the period 1950-1974. It offers a reassessment of the diary-form, starting with an analysis of approaches in historiography, literary studies and theories of the advent of the modern self, by proposing and demonstrating a reading that takes into full consideration the understandings and practice of diary-keeping in terms of anthropological debates. The epistemological concerns surrounding the questions of writing and the field, and the intricate place of the diary genre, of being there, and in the ethnographic archive are situated within close readings of discrete diaries written in socialist Yugoslavia of the period. The diary-form taken in the strict sense implies an account that argues with the reading of diary texts and with “diaristic evidence” and, in this case, depends on the “law of genre.” Its concerns is with the genre practiced, hence authored, by individual diarists,. This ethnographic engagement is rooted in the practice of collecting (published, archival and private sources) and further tracing of the diary texts, by close reading and with attention to the problematic of textuality. Two quasi-concepts of “every-daily inscriptions” and “economies of secret-ing” are posited as generic marks and inform an analytical approach that focuses on the historicity and publicness of the diary-forms at hand. Thus defined, as different textual practices of serial diurnal self-recording that adhere to calendar marks, diaries are not to be substituted for by the ideologies of the everyday, nor simply reduced to chronologies of (general) events. In focus here is the diary-form’s capacity to create withdrawal, not only in terms of publicness, but what is inscribed or marked in the text as the folding of a secret. I read the diary as a place of dissemination and circulation of (public) textual forms. In this way, in the work of this dissertation that depends on diaries as its primary object and source of study, attention is moved to scenes of the social life of the form. It presents the classificatory logic of autobiographical and other documents, public forms, and the literary and (personal) archive-creating practices of diarists. The textual historicity is read within this logic of diaristic inscription and the practices specific to the form, such as withdrawal, re-reading, publishing and keeping. The dissertation probes the question of periodization in terms of the diary-form that is neither a culturally specific practice, nor posited as expressive of the period. It is a study that makes visible a set of contingencies, and thus addresses the complex question of the forms, historicity and historical consciousness inscribed by the diarists’ textual practices outside heritage discourses, histories of the present and the approaches of memory studies. The four parts of the dissertation are curated from within case studies to address the forms of authority and authorial discourses in socialist Yugoslavia where diary-side, or, what is considered to be a subjective source, subsumes the institutional as well as the realms of the “ordinary” along with that of dissent, where studies of the authoritative forms are more frequently directed. The ethnographic work of the dissertation and its arguments are situated within the logic of “diaristic evidence,” where the strictness of the diary-side reading of socialist Yugoslavia puts forth (auto)biographical political authority as a form of political power and its representational logic, the forms of ambassadorial representation of Yugoslav exceptionalism, the claims of youth and generationally authoritative interpretations, the forms of literary authority, and testimonial diaristic accounts.

ABSTRACT Background: A diary often helps the critically ill patient better to understand her/his illness and fill gaps in memory regarding their experiences in the ICU. To date there appears to be a lack of research that specifically focuses on family members’ experiences of the use of a diary within the intensive care setting. Aim: The aim of the study was to explore how family members experienced a diary kept during their sick relative’s stay in the ICU. Methodology: A qualitative methodology and, in particular, a hermeneutic approach were deemed to be appropriate for the study. Eleven participants were interviewed relating to nine diaries. Collected data have been analysed using hermeneutic interpretation inspired by Gadamer. Findings: Family members experienced that the diary sustained strengthened and deepened the connection to their sick relative and confirmed the presence of family members at bedside. The diary worked as a forum for mutual exchange of information between nurses and family members which led to a feeling of being united with the nurses in understanding. This in turn created a sense of togetherness and the family members didn’t feel neglected. In addition the diary was experienced as an implied hope that the outcome of the ICU stay would be good, thereby lending strength to worried family members. Conclusion: The diary was experienced as a tool that enhanced family members’ wellbeing.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

This thesis as for object the diary literary genre. It is divided into two distinct parts: the first relates to textual criticism, and the second to the creation of a short diary novel. / The critical text's problematic is based-on the elaboration of indices of fictionality within an excerpt from the non-fictional diary of Henriette Dessaulles (Journal), where the author narrates her convalescence journey at Orchard Beach. Based on theoretical grounds generated by narratology and the pragmatics of speech acts, this research focuses on the function of two narrative strategies, elaborated by the diarist. These consist in the textual inscription of the addressee, as well as in the construction of the narrative voice. / As far as the creative text is concerned, it utilizes many generic features of the personal diary, amongst which can be found a relatively bare and unrestrained literary style; the rule of periodicity is also observed. Moreover, the aspects tackled in the text are typical to the tenor of teenager's personal diary: the search of one's identity, relationships with significant ones, sexual desire, friendships, loneliness and death. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Thesis (M. Ed.)--Dept. of Education, University of Adelaide, 1990. / Typescript (Photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-200).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 298-304). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 298-304). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.), Natural Resources, Environmental Education, University of Wisconsin--Stevens Point, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-112).

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 35-37).