Terrorism in Context: The Stories We Tell Ourselves

With no universally accepted definition of terrorism, the process by which the media labels an act as terrorism becomes inherently variable. In Western media, such variance is unilaterally skewed towards coverage of Islamic terror. This paper examined the similarities and differences in newsprint coverage of two unique terrorist attacks: The Boston Marathon bombing and the Charleston Church mass shooting. Data included 64 articles from The Wall Street Journal that were published in the seven days following each attack. Data were analyzed using grounded theory, which revealed three primary themes: construction of the attack, construction of the attacked, and construction of the attacker. Important differences within and across each theme were found in the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of each attack. This paper argues that these differences manifest, in part, due to the construction of Islamic terrorists and non-white victims as an “other” while white terrorists and white victims are constructed as “us” or more relatable and sympathetic. This paper concludes with a discussion on the power of media representations of terrorism, and the implications of policy towards such coverage

The Music Identity Project

At MayDay Group Colloquium 24 in East Lansing, MI, Sandra Stauffer (2012) charged that: If we want change, we need to start telling different stories . . . we work with beginning teachers, and we worry about teacher identities. We tell them a story...one that does not serve them well. A story that they will be prepared. Maybe we should tell stories of self-making, of re-making and replacing ourselves. Of preparation as a constantly evolving teacher story. Maybe then transformation can be the norm. Sandy’s comments of transformation resonated strongly with the very project I was presenting at the same colloquium on the lived-experiences and music identities of six preservice teachers in a Secondary Music Education Methods course during the spring semester of 2012. This paper emerged out of my presentation and it is my hope that by sharing the stories of these six preservice teachers, as well as my own, that we can show the type of self-making, re-making and replacing ourselves for which Sandy was advocating. [excerpt

Introduction

From the margins, we find ourselves well positioned to tell other stories -- life histories, traditions, and cultural myths which typically go unheard in dominant society.[2] As illustrated in the lead article, A Pattern of Possibility: Maxine Hong Kingston\u27s Woman Warrior, by Thelma J. Shinn, such stories are meronymic -- mero from the Greek meaning part -- because our unique social location allows us to see beyond the dominant mythos and tell other parts of the story. Telling these stories is not only empowering to those whom we name, but it also changes and transforms the official storyline itself. Life stories of marginalized peoples demonstrate time and again that there is no one story, no one way of seeing, thinking, or feeling. Moreover, the core of these stories and identities reveal multiple parts of a more inclusive story, a more inclusive way of thinking. Further, meronymic stories unveil the complex operations of power and domination which have denied and suppressed other voices. This special issue of Explorations in Ethnic Studies on race, class, and gender is devoted to telling the other parts of the story

The stories we tell ourselves: Joan Didion on the romantic fantasies of reality

This dissertation attempts to showcase the ways in which Joan Didion employs metaphoric prose to expose the “romantic fantasies” in the creative nonfiction works of Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) and The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). I propose that a reading of these romantic fantasies is dependent on the distinction between “romantic” (lower case) and “Romantic” (capitalized). While Didion explores “romantic” fantasies of contemporary American existence that consist of society's idealized notions of reality, happiness and morality, I simultaneously argue the extent to which she borrows sentiments from the Romantic period in her writing, further strengthening her thematic content that deals with the notion of disorder. I showcase her use of literary techniques as well as popular ideologies essential to Romanticism, such as the emphasis on introspection and the imagination. This dissertation departs from J.R.R. Tolkien's (1947) theories on fantasy which portrays the imagination of an individual as a reflection of one's desires. This serves to offer some justification underlying the basis of romantic fantasies, illustrated by Didion's own personal account of her subjection to magical thinking — a type of thinking rooted in James George Frazer's theoretical framework of Sympathetic Magic (1911). The significance of this is to demonstrate what Sara Ahmed (2010) rationalizes as society's estrangement from happiness in the pursuit of an idealized version of happiness that is only accessible through one's imaginative capacities. Through a literary analysis of Didion's metaphoric prose, I employ Mark Muggli's (1987) analysis of Didion's use of emblem as extreme in its power to transcend the confines of her narratives in a process that demands a cognitive interpretation from her reader. I argue that her metaphoric prose, embedded in emblematic imagery, affords the reader a sense of agency in contributing their own perspectives in the decoding of her language that she leaves, at times, quite ambiguous, allowing for the reader to form their own deductions. Through this, I offer an alternative perspective to reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The Year of Magical Thinking, arguing that Didion's writing is inherently “Romantic” in its quest to make sense of the world and of the human condition. I suggest that readers of Didion should dissect her sentences, question her meanings and contribute towards her narrative with their own opinions, while using her emblems as a reference to relate, contrast and compare their own life experiences

Cucumber Island and After: On Trauma, Memory, Writing, and Healing

This thesis, a collection of creative nonfiction essays, explores the ways in which writing can be used to confront traumatic memory and-find healing. The essays range from stories of growing up on Bainbridge Island, the chronicle of a backpacking trip through South America, and memories from a summer spent working on a farm. As the introduction of the thesis explains: In the opening lines of her acclaimed collection of essays, The White Album, Joan Didion tells us that we tell ourselves stories in order to live. This line is as much the reason why to this thesis as any other explanation I could come up with. We tell stories - to ourselves and to others - in order to live, and in order to live better. That is the sum result of this writing project. That I had stories to sort through and make sense of and share. That I had a desire, and still do, to live and live better

Klipsun Magazine, 2019, Volume 49, Issue 03 - Spring

Being ourselves takes courage. Courage to be honest and courage to be vulnerable. I chose authenticity as the theme for this issue of Klipsun because I wanted genuine and honest stories. What I received were stories about fighting for identity, what we can learn about ourselves through the lens of cross-cultural psychology, confronting the past to better understand who we are now and more. When we muster up the courage to tell honest, authentic stories like these, it can remind us we’re not alone. Sometimes that’s all we can ask for. When we’re honest with who we are with each other, we can find what it truly means to be ourselves.https://cedar.wwu.edu/klipsun_magazine/1270/thumbnail.jp

The stories we tell ourselves: local newspaper reporting and support for the radical right

Rising support for the radical right has become a hallmark of the current political landscape. A lot of attention has been devoted to the reasons influencing individual voting decisions, with some progress in understanding within-country variation in the vote. But these studies usually assume that perceptions coincide with objective reality. This article addresses this shortcoming, using quantitative text analysis and spatial econometrics to show that local narratives – sometimes more than contextual statistics – can drive spatial differences in the populist vote. Taking Spain as an example, I train a machine learning algorithm to determine the prevalence of given news topics across the national territory based on how many related articles local newspapers published on Twitter in the year before the last national election. I then use spatial econometric techniques to link these results to local divergences in support for the radical right party VOX. The analysis sheds some light onto the economic anxiety - cultural backlash - geography of discontent debate. The empirical evidence supports the notion that narratives about economic anxiety and regional gaps matter, but also shows that narratives about separatism played a key role in the rise of the radical right in Spain

Life Review In Aging: A Primer

Humans are narrative beings. We understand and speak of ourselves and the events of our lives in the context of stories. The stories we tell are influenced by our lived experiences, the quality of our memories (what’s recalled and forgotten), relationships, personality styles, values, accomplishments, regrets, spiritual beliefs, and a host of other factors. Telling our stories from the vantage point of old age is reflective of a maturational process of introspection and discovery called life review