Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item Beyond Scraps: Narrating Traumatic Health Experiences Through Scrapbooking(2010) Reynolds, Dawn M; Struna, Nancy; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)For centuries, women have served as the primary storytellers of domestic life. In volumes known as scrapbooks, women collect family snapshots and memorabilia for generations to enjoy. Traditional scrapbooking tends to highlight cheerful familial themes, such as weddings, births, and other life milestones. Contemporary online iterations of the age-old artform have begun publicly incorporating stories of traumatic health experiences. In this dissertation, I attend to the scrapbooking projects created by a selection of women who address personal health issues. I examine narrative and rhetorical strategies employed in health trauma scrapbooks, contending that women use the craft to preserve a sense of self while also publicly voicing social concerns. I combine feminist textual analysis and ethnographic-inspired observation to illustrate how scrapbooking comprises a form of knowledge production narrating women's collective wisdom about survival. The scrapbook projects I explore demonstrate techniques crafters use to manage cultural memories by reformulating their self-image as social change activists rather than as mere enthusiasts engaging in a trite hobby. This dissertation explores a selection of health concerns women raise through the craft, with a particular emphasis on breast-cancer themed scrapbooks. Applying breast cancer scrapbook pages as a case study, I illustrate how women deploy online scrapbooking in the service of health narration, thereby claiming a public voice about the illness experience. As I show in the final part of the dissertation, scrapbookers coalesce in activist communities, carving out a platform from which to press for social justice. I conclude by revealing ways that scrapbookers utilize the World Wide Web to facilitate health activism and public narration of traumatic health experiences. This dissertation is designed to elevate the place of contemporary scrapbooking in American Studies scholarship. Because the scrapbook has been both poorly preserved and grossly understudied, the earnest task of my project is to offer a useful model for analyzing women's trauma scrapbook pages that resonates for future scholars. I seek, above all, to raise awareness about the scrapbook as a relevant cultural artifact that contains richly contextual narratives of self and society.Item Narrating Tragedy: From Kennedy to Katrina, From Sports to National Identities(2007-11-26) Gavin, Michael; Struna, Nancy L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)On September 11, 2001, Major League Baseball commissioner Allan 'Bud' Selig postponed the baseball season to offer proper respect to that day's terror victims. On September 16, 2001, when the major league season resumed, sports columnists across the nation-state referred to the New York Yankees as 'America's team.' When the Yankees made their run to the World Series, many columnists argued they 'healed the wounds of the nation.' Likewise, as water settled in the French Quarter after Hurricane Katrina, columnists suggested the New Orleans Saints were 'capable of healing the nation' and referred to them as 'America's team.' When the Saints returned to the Superdome in 2006, many columnists suggested the region and nation were both healed. This dissertation uses discourse analysis to reveal the constructions of and contestations for dominant versions of national identity and memory in which sports columnists engaged in the context of tragedies like the John F. Kennedy assassination, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. In examining sports columnists' work over five decades, I offer a historical overview of sports columns and their relationship to dominant discourses of race and national identity. In the process, I contend that the voices comprising mainstream sports columnists through the 1960s generally constructed a mythological national identity that privileged whiteness. By the late 1990s, however, the voices comprising mainstream sports columnists included both those who constructed and confronted white hegemony. Interestingly, some of those columnists supporting whiteness were minorities; and some of those confronting whiteness were themselves white. Hence, I argue that whiteness is a standpoint, not a condition of skin color. Likewise, I contend that mainstream sports columnists confronting whiteness work within a system often identified as producing hegemony in order to dismantle it, and potentially exert a great amount of cultural power.