Please note: creative writing works are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock icon and fill out the appropriate web form. / War and Pace Report is a collection of five short stories. / 2999-01-01T00:00:00Z

The politics of writing of the Caribbean Canadian writer Marlene Nourbese Philip and the Turkish German writer Emine Sevgi Ozdamar show a crucial concern for the development of serious multi-racial, multi-cultural, and multilingual dialogue, a concern which will also be the focus of this thesis. The specific contribution this study of the two writers will provide to the field of ethnic minority and non-White women's writing in Canada and Germany consists of its comparative-interdisciplinary approach. Critical texts on the writings of Philip and Ozdamar or on cultural, literary and lingual hybridity are numerous, ' especially in the areas of minority discourse, post-colonialism and feminism. However, linkages of these three components are very rare. A major emphasis of this work is to reveal the significant similarities -an approach still carefully attending to the context-specific cultural and individual differences-that exist in Philip's and Ozdamar's writings and writerly positions and hence to motivate an intensification of comparative work and co-operation between the disciplines of Canadian and German literature. The introductory chapter clarifies and explains the choice of literary theory and tern1inology that builds the framework for the comparison done here. This involves a critical discussion of the concepts of cultural, literary, and lingual hybridity as well as the workings of permanent and intermittent, imposed and self-chosen salience in the process of identification. Chapter two compares Ozdamar's and Philip's writings in relation to the women's historical, social, political, and legal positions in the German and Canadian models of the nationstate and immigration. Building on this context, chapter three then discusses their public and critical-academic reception in Germany and Canada, their exclusionary position within mainstream literature, and their politics of resistance as "excentric" German and Canadian writers. Chapter four is most text-related as it specifically relates to the writers' intersecting strategies of lingual hybridity, embodied language and body-memory in Mutterzunge and She Tries Her Tongue. The conclusion re-evaluates the writers' "ex-centric" and yet integral positions at the border of single-nation literary studies, positions from which Ozdamar and Philip relocate literary, lingual, and cultural belonging in the German and Canadian nation-state respectively. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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A collection of poems by Abigail Stallings

This dissertation unites two seemingly unrelated fields, writing centers and technical writing, to study the feasibility of creating an online technical writing resource. Despite prolonged attention to multiliteracies and collaboration in both subfields, writing centers and technical writing do not commonly implicate one another in their shared mission of shaping students to become savvy writers with an awareness of rhetorical concepts and situations. This dissertation establishes how complementary these two fields are based upon their shared pedagogies of collaboration and multiliteracies. I suggest that a service design approach is beneficial to writing center research. Similarly, the technical writing field has little research and scholarship dedicated specifically to online writing instruction and pedagogy. Historically, writing centers have served students from all disciplines, but research demonstrates the effectiveness of specialist over generalist writing support. Taking a specialist perspective, I use service design methodology to gather input from student and instructor stakeholders about how online writing tutoring and web resources can address their needs. Using survey and interview data, I designed and piloted an online tutoring service for students enrolled in the Technical Writing service course at Virginia Tech. In student and instructor surveys, participants reported that they were highly unlikely to use online tutoring sessions but were more likely to use a course-specific website. Additionally, student interviews revealed that the Writing Center is not necessarily a highly-used resource, especially for upper-level students. Instructor interviewees indicated some misunderstandings and limited views of the Writing Center's mission. Nevertheless, a small number of participants in both groups spoke to a need for specialized tutoring in the Technical Writing course. In terms of feasibility, integration of online services for this course poses the greatest challenge because it relates to the amount of change needed to successfully integrate online tutoring or web resources into the curriculum. With some attention to how OWLs and synchronous online tutoring can be an asset to teaching technical writing online, I argue that the pilot project described in this study is relatively feasible. / Doctor of Philosophy / A feasibility study addresses whether or not an idea or plan is good. In the case of this dissertation, the idea is whether or not to offer online writing services—such as tutoring and a repository website—to students enrolled in Technical Writing at Virginia Tech. In order to study the feasibility of this plan, I first argue for bringing together the fields of writing centers and technical writing. Two strong reasons for uniting these fields are based upon their shared methods and practices of teaching collaboration and multiliteracies. Multiliteracies in this dissertation refers to critical, functional, and rhetorical computer literacies; each literacy is important for Technical Writing students to develop as they enter their future careers. Historically, writing centers are places on a college or university campus where students from all disciplines can go for tutoring; this is known as the generalist approach to writing tutoring. However, research demonstrates the effectiveness of a specialist approach—where a tutor is familiar with a student’s discipline—to writing tutoring over generalist writing support. Therefore, I take a specialist perspective in this study. I use service design system of methods to gather input from student and instructor stakeholders about how online writing tutoring and web resources can address their needs. Service design is commonly used in the service economy, such as restaurants and hotels, in order to design or redesign services. In particular, service design focuses on people and their needs. Using survey and interview data, I designed and piloted an online tutoring service and a website for students enrolled in the Technical Writing service course at Virginia Tech. In student and instructor surveys, participants reported that they were highly unlikely to use online tutoring sessions but were more likely to use a course-specific website. Additionally, student interviews revealed that the Writing Center at Virginia Tech is not necessarily a highly-used resource, especially for upper-level students. Instructor interviewees indicated some misunderstandings and limited views of the Writing Center’s mission. Nevertheless, a small number of participants in both groups spoke to a need for specialized tutoring in the Technical Writing course. In terms of feasibility, integration of online services for this course poses the greatest challenge because it relates to the amount of change needed to successfully integrate online tutoring or web resources into the curriculum. With some attention to how online writing labs and synchronous online tutoring can be an asset to teaching technical writing online, I argue that the pilot project described in this study is relatively feasible.

In the past ten or fifteen years, the subject of homelessness has been the topic of countless studies, newspaper and magazine articles, and personal interviews with both homeless people and the professionals in the various fields that explore the issue. Although I have always found them interesting, informative, and heart-wrenching, it has almost always been from the perspective of the subjects- the homeless people- that they have been presented; I cannot remember ever having been informed about the subject by anyone else, except for brief statements by family members whose loved one 'hit the streets' and has not been heard from since. This had a limited impact on me until, for several reasons, my own son became a member of the homeless population living on the streets of Orlando. This paper is my attempt to give my perspective, through prose and poetry, as a parent who has had to cope with, and is still coping with, my son's homelessness due to circumstances both beyond and within his control. It delves into the biological and psychological aspects of his mental illness as well as the environmental factors of his upbringing that most certainly have had an impact on his life, recounts the early attempts of our family to name the problem and find a solution to it, and details some of the present day agony and trauma that comes with having a loved one walking the streets day and night.

Head Above Water demonstrates how cultural roles and changing societies affect the identities of young women struggling through moments of adolescent angst and solitude. Value systems inform cultural identity, and it is important to study, recognize, and challenge them so that we may be enlightened about the human condition. In the formative stages of my thesis, I read fiction by writers from a range of cultural backgrounds who used motifs to signify the complexity of the issues central to their stories. In my stories symbols are juxtaposed as dichotomies-the mask as an obstructer and demonstrator of identity, water as a symbol of fertility as well as oppression, ugliness and beauty both internally and externally, and power versus weakness. In order to achieve an accurate portrayal of industrial and village life in Nigeria, I conducted primary and secondary research. I learned about the verve, flavor, and culture of Nigeria through literature, media, and interviews, and I studied the ways published writers employ voice, physical and material landscapes, and cultural details. My research has informed my thesis, which ultimately centers not only on Nigerian women as mothers and daughters, but on the human condition itself.

This collection of short memoirs explores the dynamics of a family affected by alcoholism and abuse, a family that has survived with a mixture of hard work, bullheadedness, and resignation. Each essay addresses a specific family member and delves into my relationship with that person while touching on larger themes such as marriage, abuse, and family communication. These memoirs deal with some of the marital relationships in my family-what type of husbands the men in our family have been and what type of men the women in our family choose. The first piece in the collection is about my grandfather, a man who drank regularly on weekends and holidays and who could become violent when drunk. The essay about my grandmother deals with how she met and married my grandfather, and one essay addresses my mother's first marriage, which was to an abusive alcoholic. The collection is a link between my present and my family's past, a way of examining the complexities and contradictions of the lives of my mother, my uncle, and my grandparents.

Flannery O'Connor wrote, "It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have." The characters herein come from middle-class to affluent backgrounds and they all have problems. Their stories are about identity, value and choice in an age of casual paranoia and subtle dehumanization through mediation and distance. The main buffers between humans and reality are images and language, which, when incorporated into our psychology, allow us to things both horrible and laughable.

When a woman is hurt in a relationship, she may engage in different behaviors to deal with this pain. She may seclude herself, convinced her wiles will bring the man back. She may become detached and run from man to man without second thought. She may shut men off completely and run to females for solace. Or she may rid herself of what caused her pain to begin with. These are some of the possibilities I explore in this thesis - a collection of fiction and poetry from a female perspective that examines a woman's position in a romantic relationship. These characters have been hurt in the past and thus have different ways of coping. Despite their vulnerability, they intentionally put themselves in degrading situations in the hope that they will find a genuine connection. Because they have lowered their standards, they assume they will have an easier time finding someone. They know they are in the wrong places, but ignore that notion to achieve the connection they are looking for, often using sex to achieve that goal. While I make no claims to explain these women's mentalities, I do attempt to show different sides of such women as they struggle through such relationships. Each of these characters wants the same thing from these relationships, flawed or no: love. They merely have different ways of pursuing that goal. It isn't until they realize they've been looking in the wrong places that they begin to analyze themselves and discover who they are. This collection shows how these women move through the progression of their relationships until the point of fracture, when they are forced to make certain decisions. Finally, the relationships fall apart, and the stories and poems show how each character deals with the loss.