Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2018, English (Arts and Sciences)

Patient narrative is often an undervalued or dismissed genre of writing in the field of literary criticism, largely because the hermeneutics of suspicion leads critics to see these texts as “misery memoirs,” as Ann Jurecic suggests. In this thesis, I argue for a new approach to reading and to criticism that moves away from the hermeneutics of suspicion and instead seeks to find conversations between patient narratives, case narratives, and popular or dominant medical and scientific texts. This shift would have readers focusing not on the ways in which an author might manipulate a story but instead on what the reader might learn from intently examining the resulting conversations. In doing so, I do not argue for a switch in the hierarchy—from doctor-patient to patient-doctor—but instead argue that both patient and case narratives have value; without both texts, we cannot have a full picture of what it is like to live with illness. Making my argument through historical examination, I prove that by examining Charlotte Perkins Gilman's patient narratives—those found in her letters, her diaries, and her autobiography as well as in “The Yellow Wallpaper”—alongside medical and scientific texts from her time, we can not only deepen and nuance current interpretations of these texts but we can also uncover motivations that may not be immediately apparent. While “The Yellow Wallpaper,” for example, has been considered as a critique of patriarchal medicine, a horror story, and a liberation text—among others—it has never been explicitly examined as a patient narrative. This focus allows us to delve deeper into the conversation created between “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Gilman's nonfiction narratives; I focus particularly on how we can see the eugenic arguments within “The Yellow Wallpaper” and how these arguments are connected to Gilman's anxieties about marriage, motherhood, and her usefulness in society. While ignoring patient narratives makes literary critics and histor (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Thomas Scanlan (Committee Chair); Mary Kate Hurley (Committee Member); Myrna Perez Sheldon (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Literature; American Studies; Families and Family Life; Gender; Gender Studies; Health; Health Care; Health Sciences; History; Literature; Medical Ethics; Medicine; Mental Health; Philosophy of Science; Psychology; Rhetoric; Science History; Womens Studies

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2006, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Art History

American Impressionist Frederick Carl Frieseke (1874–1939) lived and worked in France for approximately forty years and achieved international success with his paintings of women in domestic interiors and gardens. In this thesis I examine three themes in Frieseke's oeuvre – women at rest, women reflected in mirrors, and the female nude – and explore how his reception in both the French and American art markets influenced his work. I decode the pictorial meanings in these images and demonstrate how they document and construct notions of womanhood around the turn of the twentieth century. This thesis contributes to the ongoing scholarly discussion of images of women in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art. The study also augments current scholarship on Frieseke, placing his paintings of women within a socio-historical context.

Committee: Dr. Theresa Leininger-Miller (Advisor) Subjects: Art History

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2010, English

Women's Rhetorical Interventions in the Economic Rhetoric of Neurasthenia analyzes how turn-of-the-century American women writers used the rhetoric of neurasthenia to negotiate their disabilities and argue for renewed understandings of women's work. At this crucial moment, neurasthenia was a commonly diagnosed disease, most common amongst elite intellectuals and women, writers and other cultural producers, “brain-workers” rather than muscle workers. In order to describe neurasthenia to doctors and the larger American public, Dr. George M. Beard, a prominent neurologist, constructed an economic metaphor, in which individuals possessed a finite amount of “nerve-force” that could be saved or spent, reinvested or wasted. When stores of nerve-force were low, individuals could experience “nervous bankruptcy.” This metaphor formed the basis for what became, according to scholar Tom Lutz, a “discourse” by which individuals could negotiate their reactions to the large-scale changes taking place during this historical moment. Alice James, Jane Addams and Charlotte Perkins Gilman were each diagnosed with and treated for neurasthenia and used neurasthenic rhetoric to discuss their disabilities. This rhetoric allowed them not only an “available means” by which to understand and negotiate their ailments but also the language to think about women and economics as well as make arguments about women's disability and women's work. This study asks how these women used this language to talk about their disabilities in ways the larger culture could understand and challenge medical assumptions about women with disabilities at a time when most doctors were male and the prescribed treatment for women involved isolating them in houses or bedrooms for six to eight weeks just as they were rallying for opportunities for higher education and public work. There is no single pattern of how this rhetoric was used; each woman used the language in her own way. James used the economic metaphor to s (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson Dr. (Committee Chair); Katharine Ronald Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Timothy Melley Dr. (Committee Member); Carolyn Haynes Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature