Feeling our way: academia, emotions and a politics of care

This paper aims to better understand the role of emotions in academia, and their part in producing, and challenging, an increasingly normalized neoliberal academy. It unfolds from two narratives that foreground emotions in and across academic spaces and practices, to critically explore how knowledges and positions are constructed and circulated. It then moves to consider these issues through the lens of care as a political stance towards being and becoming academics in neoliberal times. Our aim is to contribute to the burgeoning literature on emotional geographies, explicitly bringing this work into conversation with resurgent debates surrounding an ethic of care, as part of a politic of critiquing individualism and managerialism in (and beyond) the academy. We consider the ways in which neoliberal university structures circulate particular affects, prompting emotions such as desire and anxiety, and the internalisation of competition and audit as embodied scholars. Our narratives exemplify how attendant emotions and affect can reverberate and be further reproduced through university cultures, and diffuse across personal and professional lives. We argue that emotions in academia matter, mutually co-producing everyday social relations and practices at and across all levels. We are interested in their political implications, and how neoliberal norms can be shifted through practices of caring-with

Why it felt wrong to remove the glass – investigating site and site-narratives at Regjeringskvartalet, Oslo, Norway

The aim of this thesis is to find out in what ways site narratives emerge in the interaction between the human and the site, with Regjeringskvartalet (the site of the July 22, 2011 attack) in Oslo as case study. The purpose of the investigation is to shed light on how immaterial aspects can affect the understanding of the specific site. I argue that while immaterial aspects can affect design decisions in relation to the specific landscape, they are often ignored by the designer. The investigation and interpretation of the site are accomplished by a site visit applying the approach of the travelling transect in combination with Gadamer’s hermeneutic aesthetic theory. Resulting in six main parts systematically presenting various site-narrative. Thereafter, these narratives are discussed in relation to key concepts of landscape studies and Gadamer’s concepts of play, festival and symbol. The site-narratives and the following discussion exemplifies the extended thought process of a landscape designer in the early stages of a design project, showing that subjective and intersubjective aspects of site-thinking hold a significant role in the understanding of site. The paper ends with a reflection on how the knowledge obtained can be applied in design practice and future research, presenting the concept of photographic locality. However, the paper foremost presses the advantages of applying Gadamer’s spectatorial participation to design practice, indicating that designers themselves play an important role in the construction of site and therefore also in the understanding of site

Black and white and read all over: An analysis of narratives in the O.J. Simpson murder trial

The thesis examines the O.J. Simpson murder trial and analyzes the racial narratives that affected its outcome and the way it is perceived by the American public. By examining four books about the trial written by lawyers who served on the case, the analysis focuses on how race functions within each of the reconstructed narratives, as well as within the framework of the U.S. criminal justice system. The author argues that racial narratives affect how and why people can see the same event differently, a prime example of which is the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Representations of Mark Fuhrman, his role in the O.J. Simpson trial, and how these are affected by racial narratives are also discussed. The author concludes that the O.J. Simpson murder trial presented an opportunity in which issues concerning race, race relations, and ideologies about race could be openly discussed

The Politics of Testimony and Recognition in the Guatemalan and Peruvian Truth Commissions: The Figure of the ‘Subversive Indian’

This text analyzes the politics of testimony in the Truth Commissions in Guatemala (the Historical Clarification Commission – CEH) and Peru (the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – CVR) and its effect on the narratives contained in their respective final reports. Recognition for victims involves taking into consideration the narratives established to interpret the process of violence, which decisively influence the production of ideas and practices of citizenship central to the discourse of both Commissions. In these narratives, ideological representations of the “subversive Indian” directly affect the status of the main victims/individuals affected by the conflict (the indigenous peasant populations) as well as the role which ethnic and racial inequality, and racism in particular, plays in the interpretation of the armed conflicts offered by the Commissions. Thus, the work of both Commissions and the preceding academic debates reveal the complex relationship – deeply rooted in history – between Indian-ness and politics

Emotion in Adoption Narratives: Links to Close Relationships in Emerging Adulthood

An adopted person develops a narrative or story to help make sense of his or her adoption. This narrative provides a window into how the adoptee understands the role of adoption in his or her life and articulates feelings and thoughts about it. Adolescent and emerging adult adoptees’ data from the Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project (MTARP) were examined. MTARP longitudinally followed 190 adoptive kinship networks, with varying levels of openness in the adoption, from childhood to emerging adulthood. The current study sought to understand how emotion (affective valence and specific emotions), as identified in the adoption narratives during adolescence and emerging adulthood, related to qualities of their closest emerging adult relationships. It was expected that reflections of early relationships would impact the current evaluation of relationships. The emotions described in these narratives were used to predict relationship qualities (attachment related anxiety and avoidance, relationship satisfaction, and intimacy maturity). It was expected that more positive affect and less negative affect would predict higher levels of attachment security, intimacy, and relationship satisfaction. The change in affect over time (from adolescence to emerging adulthood) and average affect over time were also examined. Specific emotions of affect were explored and evaluated for their contribution to emerging adulthood relationship qualities. Results indicated associations of both negative and positive affect with attachment style in emerging adulthood. Findings of this study will help to assist research and practitioners understand the application of the adoption narrative in their work, and the translation of adoptive identity into relationship concepts

Narrative Space and Serialized Forms: Story-Spaces for the Mass Market in Victorian Print and Contemporary Television

Despite Bakhtin\u27s notion of the chronotope and recent advancements in spatial theory by David Herman, Marie-Laure Ryan and Susan Friedman, narrative space is arguably still one of the most under-researched elements in narrative theory, taking a back seat to its corollary of narrative time and plot. This oversight can be largely attributed to the structuralist separation of text types exemplified by Genette\u27s assertions that description and narrative were distinctly different forms. Recent approaches such as David Herman\u27s rejection of such a separation in Story Logic, however, argue that spatial reference plays a crucial, not optional or derivative role in stories (264), and that spatial reference is, rather, a core property that helps \u27constitute\u27 narrative domains (296). In response to this gap, this dissertation examines the relationship between textual constructions of narrative space and the material forms of serialized narratives across specific medias. By looking at the intersection of the textual construction of storyworld space, the serialized form, and the materiality of media, this project argues that in both literary and televised contexts, the serialized form plays a key role in shaping the configurations of narrative space in these storyworlds and in constructing their rhetorical and ideological effects. Specifically, the project explores how the textual aspects of serial narratives affect the structure of storyworld spaces and how this affect is crucially tied to rhetorical and interpretive implications in final configurations of the narrative audience. As a result, this project makes connections between the serialized literature produced between 1830-1860 in Victorian England and that of televised narratives produced during the last decade in both Britain and the United States. Each case study is carefully historicized and examines the intersection between the materiality of the texts, their status as mediated objects, and the spatial structure of the narrative they construct

Narratives of and in urban change and planning: whose narratives and how authentic?

Lieven Ameel's book The Narrative Turn in Urban Planning offers a critical examination of the role of narratives and story-telling in questions concerning urban planning in future deliberations of urban change. The discussion provides an excellent way to identify, define and construct our understanding about narratives in and of planning, including the construction of a typology for the first time. But narratives of and for planning tend to mask wider meta-narrative issues that will affect how places are shaped and are changed in the future. These drivers of change not only encompass a range of socio-economic and environmental challenges. They will also have profound implications for our use of technology, and for the way our democratic processes operate. Such dramatic changes will impact on the context and form of planning, wherever you are in the world. And we are likely to see greater polarisation in attitudes toward urban and regional change, some of which may not only be proactive, but deeply reactive, subjective and selective. If the narrative turn will become more prominent in planning, we need to be ready for the likely proliferation of disruptive and insurgent narratives that will emerge and reflect the deep-seated vested interests that possess stakes in how and whether places change on their terms

Divining the Southwest: Liminality, Pragmatism, and Regionalism in Death Comes for the Archbishop

This work aims to explore the themes of pragmatism and liminality, particularly as they pertain to spirituality, in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. By taking an interdisciplinary critical approach to the novel, I will synthesize its spiritual affect into a sensibility called “pragmatic liminality.” Finally, I will connect this sensibility to other works in the Southwestern literary canon and elucidate the foundational importance that pragmatic liminality has to the Southwestern “sense of place” and its role in the larger narratives of regionalism in American literature

The Effects of Sex Role Stereotype Endorsement and Work-Family Conflict on Emerging Adult Aspirations

Workplace and household inequality remain prevalent in the United States and sex role (e.g. breadwinner and caregiver) stereotypes affect the roles that individuals seek out. This research used a mixed-methods approach to investigate the effects of sex role stereotypes and expected work-family conflict on the work and family aspirations of emerging adults. A racially diverse sample wrote freely about their future selves for ten minutes then completed measures to evaluate their sex-role stereotype endorsement, expected work-family conflict, and personal preferences for career and family roles. Results indicate that endorsement of stereotypes predicts increased expectations of work-family conflict, for both men and women, possibly because sex-role stereotypes do not allow for a harmonious unification of both roles. Multiple mediator analyses revealed complex relationships, including findings that time-based and stress-based work-family conflict partially explain the link between stereotype endorsement and value of familial and occupational roles. The narratives produced by participants demonstrate how caregiver and breadwinner stereotypes are conceptualized by individuals and integrated into their descriptions of their future lives. The narratives suggest that women who reject sex role stereotypes may also reject traditional family compositions and may not feel that assuming traditional roles and behaving in nurturing, “feminine” ways are mutually exclusive

EXPANDING DEICTIC SHIFT THEORY: PERSON DEIXIS IN CHUCK PALAHNIUK\u27S FIGHT CLUB

Deictic shift theory (DST) was developed as a model of the construction and comprehension of all types of fictional narrative. With respect to the participant structures of texts, however, DST researchers have focused their attention on deictic shifts in third-person narratives, leaving first-person narratives unanalyzed from this theoretical perspective. As a result, DST in its present form does not adequately account for the variety of manipulations of a range of perspectives that may be achieved in first-person narratives. Nor has DST been systematically applied to texts whose participant structures undergo extensive reorganization as the result of a surprise ending or other narrative twist. By analyzing the deictic and referring expressions that create the participant structure of Chuck Palahniuks novel Fight Club, this thesis tests DSTs potential to account for authors and readers cognitive experiences of first-person narratives with plot twists. The analysis establishes a wider range of linguistic cues that may affect readers mental representations of characters. It identifies interactions between elements in the participant structure, including those that permit the representation of non-narrating characters subjective perspectives, as well as the linguistic features that enable these interactions. The thesis examines the effects of an authors violations of traditional narrative perspective constraints, and it underscores the importance, especially in DST-motivated analyses, of recognizing the potential for interplay between general narrative constraints and the narrative structure of a specific text. The thesis revises DSTs account of the nature and extent of deictic shifts in first-person narratives and describes the role deictic shifts play in fictional narratives that contain plot twists