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This dissertation analyzes contemporary American literature, which includes novels, graphic novels, film, and television of the last forty years, to deconstruct the critical relationship between lived space, institutional power, and trauma. It examines literary representations of traumatic moments in recent American history--the attacks on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina,

This dissertation analyzes contemporary American literature, which includes novels, graphic novels, film, and television of the last forty years, to deconstruct the critical relationship between lived space, institutional power, and trauma. It examines literary representations of traumatic moments in recent American history--the attacks on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, the emergence of the Homeland Security state, and the introduction of the "new metropolis"--to demonstrate that collective trauma at the turn of the century is very much a product of the individual's complex relationship to the state and its institutional auxiliaries. As many philosophers and social critics have argued, institutional forces in contemporary America often deprive individuals of active political engagement through processes of narrative production, and this study discusses how literature both represents and simulates the traumatic consequences of this encounter. Looking to theories on urban, domestic, and textual space, this dissertation explores and problematizes the political and psychological dimensions of space, demonstrating how trauma is enacted through space and how individuals may utilize space and exploit narrative to achieve critical distance from institutional power. Literature as a narrative medium presents vital opportunities both for exposing the machinery of institutional power and for generating positions against the narratives produced by the state.
ContributorsPattison, Dale (Author) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Ayanna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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ABSTRACT Since 1910, Mexico has been a supplier and path for the migrating people, including Central Americans, in search of better living conditions. In fact, the flow of currencies from immigrants to their native country constitutes a lure for the dependent economic systems that they leave behind. During several migratory

ABSTRACT Since 1910, Mexico has been a supplier and path for the migrating people, including Central Americans, in search of better living conditions. In fact, the flow of currencies from immigrants to their native country constitutes a lure for the dependent economic systems that they leave behind. During several migratory waves, men, particularly young ones, constituted the great migratory exodus. Beginning in the 1970s, women and children joined the waves of immigrants, and since 1994, the number of migrant children and adolescents has risen substantially. This latest immigration phenomenon is symbolized in the collection of short stories El oro del desierto (2005) by Cristina Pacheco (2005) and the documentaries Two Americans (2012) by Daniel DeVivo and Valeria Fernández and Sin país / Without Country (2011) by Theo Rigby, among others, where migrant subjects experience trauma, disappearance, and death. In addition to a sociohistorical context, these phenomena are revealed by the theoretical approaches in the works "The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma" (1995) by Bessel A. van der Kolk, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (1996) by Cathy Caruth, and Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (2011) by Rosi Braidotti. The reference work Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Dsm-5. (2013) by the American Psychiatric Association was also helpful. Cited examples of literary and cinematographic representations show the psychological effects on children and adolescents migrants whose nomadic condition is shared with all human beings. To interpret this particular condition, we offer the history of immigration waves from Mexico and Central America into the United States and a psychological approach to interpret child and adolescent immigration experiences as presented in the literary and cinematic texts. Related to the migrant subjects, the selected texts highlight nomadism, traumatic event (including PTSD), and death. In addition, an identity emerges related to the nomadic subjects and those characters that live on the periphery and are framed by the hegemonic power.
ContributorsMuñoz, Aurora (Author) / Hernández-G, Manuel Jesús (Thesis advisor) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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“Trauma, Typology, and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern England” explores the connection between the biblical exegetical mode of typology and the construction of traumatic historiography in early modern English anti-Catholicism. The Protestant use of typology—for example, linking Elizabeth to Eve--was a textual expression of political and religious trauma surrounding the English

“Trauma, Typology, and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern England” explores the connection between the biblical exegetical mode of typology and the construction of traumatic historiography in early modern English anti-Catholicism. The Protestant use of typology—for example, linking Elizabeth to Eve--was a textual expression of political and religious trauma surrounding the English Reformation and responded to the threat presented by foreign and domestic Catholicism between 1579 and 1625. During this period of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, English anti-Catholicism began to encompass not only doctrine, but stereotypical representations of Catholics and their desire to overthrow Protestant sovereignty. English Protestant polemicists viewed themselves as taking part in an important hermeneutical process that allowed their readers to understand the role of the past in the present. Viewing English anti-Catholicism through the lens of trauma studies allows us greater insight into the beliefs that underpinned this religio-political rhetoric.

Much of this rhetorical use of typology generated accessible associations of Catholics with both biblical villains and with officials who persecuted and executed Protestants during the reign of Mary I. These associations created a typological network that reinforced the notion of English Protestants as an elect people, while at the same time exploring Protestant religio-political anxiety in the wake of various Catholic plots. Each chapter explores texts published in moments of Catholic “crisis” wherein typology and trauma form a recursive loop by which the parameters of the threat can be understood. The first chapter examines John Stubbs’s Discovery of a Gaping Gulf (1579) and his views of Protestant female monarchy and a sexualized Catholic threat in response to Elizabeth I’s proposed marriage to the French Catholic Duke of Anjou. The second chapter surveys popular and state responses to the first Jesuit mission to England in 1580. The final chapters consider the place of typology and trauma in works by mercantilist Thomas Milles in response to recusant equivocation following the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and in Thomas Middleton’s A Game at Chess (1624) as a response to the failure of marriage negotiations between the Protestant Prince Charles and the Catholic Spanish Infanta.
ContributorsKimbro, Devori (Author) / Hawkes, David (Thesis advisor) / Fox, Cora (Thesis advisor) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Irish, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015