Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2015, Communication Studies (Communication)

My dissertation seeks to explore the experiences, existing narratives, and the role of intertwined stories of the Roma/Gypsy community in Bodvalenke, in the economically and socially most underprivileged region of Hungary. Bodvalenke is a unique place, where contemporary painters of Roma/Gypsy origin have created large murals on the back walls of the houses in the frame of a permanent outdoor exhibition. In the visual storytelling of these murals about the Roma/Gypsy mythology, past and present uniquely work together, entwined with oral narratives and everyday stories in the village. My research examines the nature of storytelling in Bodvalenke in its many layers and performances, and analyzes its effects as well as probing the relationships between the stories told by the Romani people and stories circulated by others about Roma/Gypsy peoples in Hungary and Europe.

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2012, Industrial, Interior Visual Communication Design

This thesis explores how narrative is constructed within a single image composition and how it can inform contemporary approaches using the tools of 3D computer graphics and interactive technologies. Through a contextual review of classical painting and sculpture, a set of design principles is developed for a better understanding of the process for constructing complex narrative in purely visual form. These principles focus on how spatial relationships can influence a viewer's understanding of the temporal structure of a story. The review continues with an exploration of how these principles can be adopted and augmented in new forms of digital media. The second stage of research was to develop a project that presents a narrative in a digital 3D space that allows viewers to actively participate in the process of observing and reconstructing the narrative. By focusing on story and utilizing the design principles of single image complex narrative, a real-time 3D composition was created with a new system for engaging the viewer called the Reactive Frame. The result is a hybrid work that creates a dialogue between classical traditions of narrative in composition and modern techniques using computer graphics and real-time reaction to the viewer.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, English

More Than Reading: Narrative, Medial Frames, and Digital Media in the Contemporary Novel explores the narrative effects of medial experimentation in contemporary American and British novels. This project argues that the production and reception of many recent novels are influenced by a range of forms and practices common in digital media, and that these influences have a profound impact on contemporary storytelling techniques. Through analyses of novels by Kate Atkinson, Salvador Plascencia, Steve Tomasula, and Mark Z. Danielewski, I consider how (sometimes subtle) shifts in authors' use of media is changing the way that the novel form operates, reflecting audiences' familiarity with new media even as the novel remains a vital literary form in the twenty-first century. In order to study these issues, I introduce the new analytical category of the medial frame, a particular type of social frame used to identify and describe the conventionalized rules and expectations that readers apply to specific uses of media. Medial frames, developed from a diverse set of linguistic and phenomenological approaches, are defined as social contexts that pair technological materials with the wealth of conventions that govern how those materials are used as part of communicative acts. Medial frames can be employed as interpretive tools to analyze how a text's use of medial technologies (e.g., printed text, images and color, page layout, paratextual materials) prompts audiences to apply certain reception practices over others. I show how medial frames are particularly suited to examining the complex medial environment of twenty-first-century storytelling, in which creators often use a diversity of technologies to communicate with audiences. The print novels of this era ask readers to adopt surprising medial frames, such that persuasive interpretations of these texts are only available to those who are prepared (whether implicitly or self-consciously) to adopt and adapt digital and (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2022, Sociology

Previous research indicates that the experiences of family members of the condemned warrants further exploration, as comparatively very little sociological analysis has been conducted on this population. This project further examines an element of their experience which has not yet been fully explored – the ways family members of death row inmates experience the U.S. criminal justice system. Further, this research aims to explore the potential of these family members as victims, through an analysis of the formal definition of victimhood as characterized by victimologists. The research for this thesis is conducted using qualitative methods, including interviews and content analysis. I code these interviews to develop a set of theme categories established by family members; the coding method utilized is informed by Polletta's (2011) narrative criminology literature. Implications for resources to provide family members of the condemned, as well as suggestions for adaptations to the interactions between family and the criminal justice system are explored

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, EDU Teaching and Learning

This study examines the big and small stories of faculty at a small, internationally-focused graduate school in New England during a time of change in higher education. A macro-micro perspective enables both an aerial view of faculty experience over time and a view of how faculty work with students at the ground level. The landscape of higher education has been shifting, a story which has drawn the interest of researchers looking at change at the institutional level. In the literature, and in the media, stories are told in broad strokes: the rise of the neoliberal university, the wave of campus internationalization, and an increasing reliance on a contingent faculty workforce. However, in spite of faculty's central position within these phenomena, stories of faculty experience during this era of change mostly remain untold. Narrative research has primarily focused on the professional development and situated learning of novice educators as they find their footing and balance a range of commitments. Considerably less attention has been given to veteran faculty whose stories are situated at the confluence of broader changes in higher education. This study addresses this gap and, in its synergy of big and small stories, contributes to the dynamic field of narrative research in educational contexts. Retrospective big stories told in life history interviews capture the life-span of faculty careers, from entering the field to experiencing challenges and change through working with diverse groups of students over several decades. Analysis of these stories produced two key metaphors which are the focus of Chapter 3. Through the use of bedrock stories, faculty preserve shared values and an institutional narrative in the face of change. In faultline stories, faculty make sense of unsettling or unresolved experiences. The findings suggest that these stories of critical events are important sources of institutional narratives and faculty learning. Compared to well-order (open full item for complete abstract)

EdD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Special Education

A personal narrative intervention package was used to teach macrostructure within participant-generated personal narratives. The effects of the personal narrative intervention package were assessed using a combined single-subject, multiple-baseline, and an A-B-A-B design across four adults with ASD and ID. During the initial baseline phase, participants included few macrostructure elements in their personal narratives. When the intervention package was introduced, there was an immediate increase in the number of macrostructure components included in participant-generated personal narratives. A withdrawal of the intervention yielded results similar to those of baseline. Following the reintroduction of the intervention, macrostructure scores immediately increased back to levels similar to those of the initial intervention. The skills taught to participants were maintained across three weeks post-intervention, however, generalization was not demonstrated. This personal narrative intervention package allowed adults with ASD and ID to share personal stories and more meaningful social experiences with others. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Arts and Sciences: Romance Languages and Literatures

The aim of this research is to explore the existence of a Latin American literature on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, more specifically in Spain. A tradition that has its origins in the figure of the Inca Garcilaso; which was consolidated at the beginning of the last century and whose evolution has increased in the present. This migratory literature together with other internal triggers has brought about an alteration of the traditional Latin American canon throughout the 20th century and its overcoming in 21st by a literature “en espanol”. This panorama leads me to glimpse a large number of young Latin-American writers with a presence in Spain during the last ten years, stimulated by the publishing world and by a long tradition endorsed by the vanguardias (avant-garde) first, later by the boom, and finally by the "Bolano phenomenon", and already consecrated within a concept of literature in Spanish, aspects that I cover in the first two chapters of this dissertation. Using the terminology of Dagmar Vandebosch, I have organized the literary production of these authors, through three narrative movements: cosmopolita (cosmopolitan), migrante (migrant) and radicante (radicalizing); which I have developed over three subsequent chapters and illustrated with the literary analysis of six novels : Monasterio of Eduardo Halfon, La pena maxima of Santiago Roncagliolo, Una tarde con campanas of Juan Carlos Mendez Guedez, Paseador de perros of Sergio Galarza, Un jamon calibre 45 of Carlos Salem, and Hablar solos of Andres Neuman. Finally, I consider relevant the contribution of all these aspects to the academic field with the clear objective of helping a better understanding of certain areas of study such as: migrant narrative, transatlantic studies, transnational narratives, the relevance of the publishing world, the Spanish-language narrative of the 21st century, the Hispano-American narrative of the 21st century and the narrative written in Spain in the 21st centu (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, English

“From Private to Public: Narrative Rhetoric in Composition Pedagogy” argues for a rhetorical revision of narrative in composition studies. Informed by the interdisciplinary narrative turn, this project aims to move past counterproductive debates surrounding ‘personal' writing in order to attend to the rhetorical nature and uses of narrative. To this end, I draw upon a year's worth of classroom-based qualitative research at The Ohio State University in which students analyzed and composed autobiographical texts in multiple genres and modes. Based on this research, I suggest that narrative rhetoric offers an ethical, dialogic orientation toward communication with significant benefits for composition pedagogy and promise for public use. The introductory chapter establishes the exigency offered by the narrative turn and suggests that composition studies has an opportunity to redress a neglect of production in these conversations. I then briefly rehearse the history of personal writing in composition studies, wherein scholars and teachers have debated the merits of narrative in terms of student-centered pedagogies, academic discourse, and critical consciousness. Without diminishing the value of these conversations, I suggest that they have resulted in a terministic screen that emphasizes psychological and personal concerns to the relative neglect of the rhetorical uses of autobiographical composition. To more fully attend to the richness of narrative communication, I propose an alternative set of terminology gleaned from humanistic and social scientific rhetorical theories of narrative. This narrative communication model becomes both a heuristic for analysis and heuretic for production of multimodal narratives in the composition classroom. Building upon this foundation, the three case studies approach autobiographical narrative through different genres and modes. In the course documented in Chapter 2, students analyzed and composed graphic memoirs, examining comics' capa (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, English

This dissertation probes into three contemporary fictional stories about dementia, two of which are not traditionally seen as examples of the genre of “illness narratives.” The first of these two (Edwidge Danticat's “Sunrise/Sunset”) is an intergenerational story about a mother and daughter pair, and the second (Alice Munro's “The Bear Came over the Mountain) is a redemption story of a husband whose wife becomes afflicted with dementia. The third story, Lisa Genova's Still Alice is a proper “dementia narrative,” but previous discussions of it have focused on its representation of the progress of Alice's dementia rather than on her exercise of agency. By analyzing the three primary texts in a fashion of literary analysis, I not only contend that narrative resources of focalization, progression, and intersubjectivity can be employed to make moving stories about illnesses such as dementia but demonstrate they can also serve as resources for dementia narrative identities' (re)formation during the illness's progress, with or without the help of other agents. By highlighting the insights into dementia identity offered by these stories—and by literary fiction more generally—this study can benefit specific groups of actual audiences such as professional and family caregivers, patient advocates, and narrative medicine scholars. In this way, the study can enrich critical conversations about dementia within the medical humanities, whether those conversations focus on its nature, its treatment, or its effects on caregivers and loved ones.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Medical Humanities and Social Sciences

In this thesis, I use a close reading of two memoirs by existential psychiatrist Irvin Yalom to develop a narrative approach to psychiatry. This approach treats each patient's story as a unique work of literature. It involves the psychiatrist's listening for literary elements such as tone, incongruity, and figurative speech in patient stories. It also requires the psychiatrist's engagement in cooperative acts of storytelling and interpretation, which, I suggest, provide insight into the patient's inner and outer life. This insight helps the psychiatrist to understand the patient's needs, whether these needs are psychosocial, neurobiological, medical, or otherwise. Ultimately, I argue that this approach prepares psychiatrists to respond creatively to the complex challenges of mental illness.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, EDU Teaching and Learning

This study offers a framework to scholars, educators, parents, librarians, and other book professionals to critically engage with and evaluate picturebooks, which they, in turn, could employ to facilitate sensitive reading practices with children. My framework juxtaposes theories of rhetorical narratology (which views narrative as a medium of communication between authors/illustrators and their audiences); narrative ethics (which is concerned with the ethics of what is being told in the narrative; of storytelling; and of the audience's response to characters and situations in the narrative), and narrative empathy (which examines how strategic formulation of narratives could evoke empathy). I argue that this schema is beneficial to our understanding of empathy as a response that needs to be critically investigated, especially with regards to literature for children that features diverse characters. Using picturebooks about the current refugee crisis set in the Middle East, I demonstrate how this framework can be employed to analyze representations of refugees and events of forced displacement, and more broadly, to examine the production, mediation, and consumption of these texts. My work calls for scholars, educators, and readers of picturebooks to view the verbal and visual narratives as a medium of communication among authors/illustrators and audiences. It illustrates how picturebooks are rhetoric; constructs crafted for particular purposes by authors and illustrators to convey specific ideas to their audiences, and questions the ethics of what is being told, how it is being told, by whom it is being told, and the audiences' responses to these three aspects of storytelling. My research illustrates that picturebooks on refugees are purposefully designed with the aim of eliciting empathy from child and adult readers while simultaneously distancing them from the conflict and/or the refugee characters not only in the main visual and verbal narratives, but also in th (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2018, Communication Studies (Communication)

This dissertation explores communication about mental illness and other sources of emotional distress inside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though often untrained, religious leaders are the most sought-after source of support for mental illness and emotional distress in the United States. I used interviews, autoethnography, participant observation, and the analysis of cultural documents to gather and analyze discourses which illuminated how several local LDS communities understood mental illness and other forms of emotional distress. I interviewed thirteen Mormon bishops and ten professional mental health care providers who worked with LDS dominant populations about their experiences providing care for members in distress. Three main questions guided my research: What narratives do Latter-day Saints use to make sense of mental illness and other forms of trouble and how does this sensemaking enable or constrain emotional wellness? How does the LDS culture's habitus foster inclusion or stigmatize difference? How does silence around stigmatized issues like mental illness, human sexuality, and gendered violence enable or constrain religious leaders' and communities' ability to appropriately make sense of and respond to trouble? I present my analysis in chapters four, five, six, and seven. In chapter four I outline the spectrum of silence inside LDS communities and situate mental illness along it. I argue that overly programmed life scripts which I term brittle narratives lead some members to stigmatize trouble, have unrealistic life expectations, live by absolutes, and strive for perfection. In chapter five I discuss LDS discourses about human sexuality which I describe as existing in a narrative desert, a discursive landscape that only partially tells a dominant story and uses institutional and social power to police and silence counternarratives. In chapter six I discuss discourses about sexual violence which fall under a category I named narra (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, EDU Teaching and Learning

Children with disabilities began to appear with increasing frequency as characters in children's books following the United States Congress's passage in 1975 of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the precursor to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Researchers have done important work over the past forty years by examining these books while thinking about the effects that this literature can have on its readers and their understanding of disability and disabled people, addressing elements including characters, plot, and representations of specific disabilities, pointing out problematic tropes and titles. In this dissertation, I built on this research and brought together concepts in rhetorical narrative theory, specifically narrative progression, and disability studies in order to offer an even more in-depth analysis of the designs and effects of this corpus of children's books. By engaging in a close reading of 178 picturebooks featuring disabled characters from a rhetorical narrative theory approach, my research illuminated how the rhetorical choices that an author makes in both her text and illustrations have consequences for the way that disability is presented to her readers. Specifically, my dissertation undertook a two-step analysis of those rhetorical choices. The first step was to read the books on their own terms and the second was to assess those terms through the lens of disability studies. Each of my five chapters examined the use of one kind of narrative progression, centered around one or more disabled characters—and occasionally non-disabled characters— attending to how this progression situated its readers ethically and affectively. Each chapter also assessed the potential effects, positive and negative, on the reader's understanding of disability, its contexts, and its consequences. I argued that readers need to be more cognizant of authorial purpose, because while many authors attempt to create narratives about (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, Communication

The model of interactive narrative effects was developed in order to expand upon and enhance previous theories of interactive narrative effects. This was accomplished by synthesizing Green and Jenkins' (2014) model of interactivity effects with elements of Sundar and colleagues' (2015) theory of interactive media effects, with the aim of expanding Green and Jenkins' definition of interactivity and disentangling the presence of an interactivity feature from the various psychological experiences and perceptions of interactivity. Two studies were then conducted to test the propositions of the newly developed model within the context of skin cancer and the Health Belief Model. The first study examined the impact of source interactivity and sourcefulness, while the other examined the impact of message interactivity and perceived contingency. The studies largely supported the MINE's propositions regarding the relationships between interactivity features, perceptions of interactivity, and narrative mediating variables, such as story engagement. Both studies also saw impacts on health beliefs, with perceived benefits and severity being influenced across both studies. The implications of these results for narrative research, interactive media research, and health communication research are discussed.

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2008, Psychology

The rising popularity of narrative techniques in psychotherapy (Advi & Georgaca, 2007; Foa, Molnar, & Cashman, 1995; Neimeyer, 2006) calls for careful research investigations of the efficacious properties and outcomes of narrative work. Narrative theory suggests that clients benefit from focusing attention on the construction of their life stories, and the sense they create from their life experiences (White & Epston, 1990). Narrative theory has been applied in the treatment of trauma, as it has been found that clients' explication of trauma narratives can aid in emotional processing of their intense emotional experiences, which can facilitate progress toward a sense of acceptance or resolution of the trauma (Elliott, Watson, Goldman, & Greenberg, 2004). The present study investigated a specific narrative intervention for trauma: the Process-Experiential (PE) Narrative Retelling Task (NTR), using a multi-stage, mixed-methods, task analytic research design. This study identified the PE NTR task components (client actions and therapist facilitating responses) that distinguish high-resolving task performances from low-resolving task performances. This analysis was conducted via the application of the second stage of task analysis: mixed-method categorical, qualitative, and quantitative process analysis. In this investigation, 35 Narrative Trauma Retelling (NTR) task events were analyzed: 16 high-resolving cases and 19 low-resolving cases. Task samples were drawn from archives of two process-experiential psychotherapy research data sets. Thirteen task components were found to distinguish high and low task resolvers. These results offer valuable information about the mechanisms of psychotherapeutic change in narrative trauma retelling task work, and provide information for therapists to use in optimal task facilitation. Study results, including key task components, are consistent with PE theory, which asserts that treatment for trauma requires the presence of a caring o (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2012, Communication Studies (Communication)

Medical school is a formative time when future physicians learn what it means to care for patients and how to practice medicine in complex health systems. As students progress through school, they encounter significant challenges, risks, and expectations. Guided by a narrative perspective, I explore one experiential component of the professional education of medical students in the U.S.—standardized patient labs. Standardized patients are hired by medical schools to follow scripts and act as patients with various ailments and health problems. Medical students interact with standardized patients to practice diagnostic skills and prepare for clinical interactions beyond medical school. In this dissertation, I observe and analyze ways that standardized patient interactions prepare students for the narrative nature of clinical work. I also identify and interpret value sets that are maintained and disrupted through standardized patient interactions. I outline a rationale for the project in Chapter One by exploring contemporary challenges facing the health care industry and medical educators. In Chapter Two, I illustrate the theoretical importance of the project by situating the project within scholarly literature on the narrative nature of medicine and the experience of uncertainty in medicine. I detail my inquiry practices in Chapter Three, a research design that crystallized data gathered through multiple methods including observations, in-depth interviews, and the collection of documents. Chapters Four and Five offer complementary analytic representations of the SP lab at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OUHCOM). To begin, I take readers through a creative narrative vignette representing a typical and realistic medical student encounter in a SP lab. This story offers readers an ethnographic glimpse of the communication processes composing this pedagogy. Then, in Chapter Five, I present a traditional thematic representation developed throu (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2013, Philosophy (Arts and Sciences)

This thesis addresses the role of so called nondiegetic film music, also known as background or score music, as it pertains to the overall structure of processes involved in cinematic presentation. Some of the questions that are normally asked here are: Where is this music supposed to be coming from? Who is responsible for it? What is it really doing? In addressing this common filmic feature we will clear up several foundational concepts in film, provide a rough categorization of film music, critique Jerrold Levinson's recent attempt to answer the above questions, and ultimately arrive at a consideration of nondiegetic film music as a kind of narrational extra dimension. We will ultimately reject the view that music is instrumental in building narrative facts, in favor of one that holds music to be significant to the very processes of film narration, affecting how a film is presented.

EDD, Kent State University, 2024, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies

This Dissertation in Practice (DIP) explores the experiences of Black male faculty at Kent State University, a predominantly White institution, employing counter-narrative, a tenet of Critical Race Theory (CRT). Using qualitative narrative inquiry and autoethnography, the study investigates how race, gender, access to resources, and preparedness intersect and impact Black male faculty members' professional identities, sense of belonging, and pursuit of success. By centering the voices of five Black male faculty members, this research uncovers systemic barriers such as racial bias, isolation, and lack of mentorship that impact their career trajectories and overall wellbeing. The dissertation aligns with the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) principles by focusing on issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), generating new insights into institutional practices that could affect recruitment, retention, and advancement of Black male faculty. Key findings underscore the importance of tailored support systems, recognition of invisible labor, and the establishment of community as mechanisms for fostering resilience and empowerment. The study concludes with actionable recommendations for academic institutions to enhance DEIB initiatives and support Black male faculty members, ultimately contributing to a more inclusive and equitable higher education landscape.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 0, English

In this dissertation, I consider a range of texts from the nineteenth century including novels, personal essays, and diaries in which authors attempt to narrate experiences of illness in light of the shifting cultural perceptions of how the physical body and the concept of “self” relate to each other. The Diary of Alice James, Robert Louis Stevenson's “Ordered South,” Harriet Martineau's Life in the Sick-Room, and Henry James's The Wings of the Dove are the main texts analyzed. In each of these examples, I examine the ways that authors compose texts to understand the self alongside the “nerves and fibres” of bodily lived experience. Of primary interest to this dissertation is considering how the texts I examine can be fruitfully analyzed when concepts gleaned from the realm of medical humanities are applied to illness stories. This is a necessary intervention because much of the recent work in the broader field of medical humanities seeks to present illness narratives as artifacts of patient experiences that can be approached as acts of testimony or as evidence of therapeutic exercises. The primary concept that I rely on throughout my dissertation is the “corporeal gap” taken from the work of one of the founders of the practice of Narrative Medicine, Dr. Rita Charon. I use this concept as my way of accounting for some of the ways the texts I examine invent approaches to the difficult work of talking about how sickness disrupts the relationship between bodies and selves. The “corporeal gap,” functions as both feature and analytical tool throughout my dissertation. Primarily, I use the corporeal gap as an interpretive tool that allows me to attend to the various ways the texts I examine deal with the interruptive and disruptive experience of illness.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Communication

Perceived character depth is a concept relevant for understanding and predicting audience responses to narrative media, yet it has been largely unexplored in the field of media psychology. Through a careful review of diverse literatures, the current work offers a formal conceptualization of character depth as the extent to which a character's textual exposition evokes a detailed and multi-faceted mental conception of a character's psyche, behavior, and experience. After devising a series of items to measure character depth, this work then presents a series of experimental studies designed to test various aspects of validity of the proposed measurement scale and to test a causal path model of the relationship between character depth and processes specified by affective disposition theory (see Zillmann, 2000). Study 1 uses a known-groups approach and confirmatory factor analysis to test the predictive validity and measurement model of a 20-item proposed perceived character depth scale. Selective item retention results in a 6-item scale with excellent model fit. Studies 2 and 3 lend additional support to the validity of this 6-item scale's measurement model through tests of the scale in two different narrative contexts, both of which result in excellent model fit. Across Studies 1-3, evidence emerges of the convergent and discriminant validity of the scale in relation to other character perception variables. Study 4 applies this new measure in a 2 X 3 between-subjects experimental design that manipulates both character depth and character moral behavior independently. Results show that character depth impacts disposition formation and anticipatory responses above and beyond audience reactions to moral behavior. This finding has important theoretical implications for affective disposition theory (Zillmann, 2000), indicating that perceived character depth may serve as an additional predictor of disposition formation not specified in the original theory. Future research d (open full item for complete abstract)