Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, Communication Studies (Communication)

Master narratives of substance use and recovery in Appalachia have been largely dictated and stigmatized by outside entities, leaving little room for the complexity and nuance of the individual voices of those most intimately familiar with the topic. This dissertation explores the individual and collective stories that create the narrative of Wisdom River, a women's transitional recovery house in Appalachian Ohio, in an effort to elevate the lived realities of those experiencing substance use disorder (SUD) and recovery in Appalachia. By centering these stories, the overarching goal of this research is to move away from homogenized, stigmatizing narratives of substance use and recovery in Appalachia and toward a new narrative that honors localized knowledge and creates space for new definitions of success in SUD and recovery organizing. Data for this dissertation were created through intentional participant observation at Wisdom River (attending weekly dinners, driving residents to and from work, participating in recovery events) and through semi-structured interviews with nine members of the organization. I also engaged autoethnographic methods to explore my own role in this narrative as the child of a parent with SUD. The research questions that guided this dissertation are rooted in narrative and identity: What narratives are at play in the narrative ecology of Wisdom River, and how do those connected to Wisdom River narratively construct their identities? As participants shared their stories with me, they explored pieces of their own narratives and identities that reify, complicate, and rebut their understandings of master narratives of SUD and recovery. By confronting master narratives of what it means to experience SUD and recovery, who deserves access to safe and dignified recovery spaces, and what it looks like to be successful in recovery, Wisdom River employs what I identify as a narrative feminist approach to 12 Step recovery. While I remain committed t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Brittany Peterson (Advisor); Risa Whitson (Committee Member); Jerry Miller (Committee Member); Lynn Harter (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, EDU Teaching and Learning

Although studies in higher education have paid attention to the complexities of learning disciplinary language and discourse, little attention has been given to learning professional discourse in a second language (L2). Recent studies on language socialization have addressed this gap by focusing on L2 students' emerging communicative competence in disciplines. However, these studies have primarily paid attention to language and considered the role of embodied actions and objects peripheral in employing the field-specific practices. This dissertation aims to complement this prior research on disciplinary socialization and professional vision by incorporating those two lines of inquiry. This study addresses the following questions: (1) How does an instructor use imagination to engage novice students in disciplinary discourse? And (2) how do L2 students change how they use disciplinary discourse practices and spatial repertoires to construct their telling over time? Taking a language socialization approach, this semester-long video-enabled ethnographic study focuses on desk critiques, or repetitive one-on-one instructional conversations about student design, in a college architectural design studio as a locus of one's learning and socialization. I recruited two instructors and two L2 international students as the focal participants for this study and video recorded all desk crit interactions between a focal instructor and student. To address the first research question, I mapped a desk crit using an advice-giving activity frame to understand how a desk crit is organized and how both parties mutually oriented each other within a crit. Within the schematized desk crit interaction with seven steps, I identified two steps, identifying a student's design problems and offering advice to address the issues, when an instructor (Mr. J) embedded an imagined scenario in telling their design narrative to co-construct perception with their students. Then, using multimodal intera (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Leslie Moore (Advisor); Melinda Rhoades (Committee Member); Caroline Clark (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture; Education; English As A Second Language; Higher Education; Language; Sociolinguistics; Teacher Education

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2017, Communication Studies (Communication)

This dissertation explores organizing strategies surrounding rural food insecurity. Through ethnographic and interview-based research, I worked alongside Rural Action, a social enterprise that seeks to foster sustainable food systems for the people of Appalachia Ohio. Guided by poststructural feminist and narrative sensibilities I worked with this organization over the course of one year. I volunteered as a clerk at a produce auction, worked in community gardens, and attended planning meetings. Over the course of these activities I collected discourse, including participant observation field notes, semi structured interviews, promotional materials, and participatory sketching. Three research questions guided my research: What mobilizing narratives about food are composed and circulated by Rural Action? How does the communicative labor of Rural Action foster stakeholders' capacity to act? How does the communicative labor of Rural Action foster social movement outcomes? I present my analysis in chapters four, five, and six. In chapter four I argue that organizational origin stories have the ability to both mobilize for action, as well as moralize bodies. For organizations centered around a food-based mission, this becomes even more complicated. In chapter five, I present discourse that supports how our assessment of risk, in terms of the food we consume, is impacted by how we aesthetically evaluate that food. Finally, in chapter six, I present a theoretical concept that I term narrative resilience. This framework is built upon a pragmatic orientation towards social problems. I demonstrate in this chapter how Rural Action demonstrates such an ethos. I conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications.

Committee: Lynn Harter PhD (Advisor); Laura Black PhD (Committee Member); Michael Butterworth PhD (Committee Member); Joseph Bianco PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures

This dissertation is an examination of how St. Petersburg punks create and sustain their culture through social practice and talk-in-interaction. This study examines how punks in the scene build (both literally and metaphorically) communities of svoi [one's own] that support positive ideologies like mutual-support, mutual-respect and openness. Yet, while this dissertation discusses the positive ways that the community impacts those within the scene, this work also brings to the fore practices of gender inequality within the scene that perpetuate patriarchal social norms. As such, this dissertation represents the first detailed, long-term examination of punk in Russia. Punk in Russia gained international notoriety with Pussy Riot's rise to prominence in 2009; however, their ascendance also exposed our limited understanding of what punk is and is not in the Russian scene. This dissertation aims to address this gap and explore precisely what Russian punk is and is not from the vantage point of Russian punks themselves. In order to do so, I conducted nearly two years of fieldwork, interviewed 32 punks and analyzed over 6 hours of spontaneously occurring talk-in-interaction. This holistic approach helped facilitate a description and analysis of punk culture in Russia that presents a detailed account of my informants' full lives. My findings show that the primary punk ideologies operating within the St. Petersburg punk scene are: mutual-respect, mutual-help and a focus on action and agency through Do-It-Yourself (DIY) enterprises. Yet at the same time as I draw on interview data for explicit characterizations of punk ideology, I also examine and analyze punk practice and discourse. This approach helps to elucidate not only the `point of punk', but also helps to connect interview data to actual discursive practices. Exploring the connection between interview data and real-life practice reveals a contradiction between explicit ideologies of equality within the punk scene (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jennifer Suchland Dr. (Advisor); Gabriella Modan Dr. (Advisor); Galina Bolden Dr. (Committee Member); Yana Hashamova Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; Linguistics; Russian History; Slavic Studies; Social Research

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Art Education

The fulcrum of this dissertation is the exhibition, THIN - a collection of photography from the renowned chronicler of girl culture, Lauren Greenfield. THIN is a powerful assemblage of Greenfield's work, compiled while she documented the lives of in-patients at an eating disorder recovery facility. Greenfield spent over six months at the Renfrew Center, earning the trust of the hospitalized women, so that she could tell their stories through photography and shed light on the deadly mental diseases that are eating disorders. THIN is a testimony to the struggles of these women as the exhibition details their experiences. Greenfield includes the women's narratives as didactic labels for THIN and, in this way, this dissertation mirrors the exhibition by using narrative and auto-ethnography as research methods. In the first part of this dissertation, I examine how visitors experience THIN at the University of Notre Dame and at Smith College, two locations where the exhibit was displayed. At each site, the public was encouraged to write comments about THIN in a logbook. I analyzed each logbook, looking specifically at visitors' remarks on the socially educative nature of THIN and in how community learning was a part of the exhibition. I also write, auto-ethnographically, about my experience as a witness and participant in the two different stagings of THIN at Notre Dame and Smith. In my narrative writing, I continue to ask how these university art museums have encouraged or discouraged social education and community learning. Part Two of this dissertation is a more personal examination of THIN's impact. With the help of nine other women and myself, we write our narrative interpretations of three works of art from THIN. Using the semiotic tools of denotation and connotation, we express what we see versus what we know by looking at the photos, which have been stripped of their explanatory labeling. The result is a blank photo that is ripe for our own decoding. Through the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Patricia Stuhr (Advisor); Christine Ballengee-Morris (Committee Member); Karen Hutzel (Committee Member); Jennifer Eisenhauer (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Criticism; Art Education; Museum Studies; Museums