The lived experience of Palestinians under occupation reflects the stories of a people in a continuously subordinate position. My recurring questions were how would they construct the experience of such subordination? How would they define, discuss and describe what they did to …
The events of September 11, 2001 dramatically changed the lives of Arab Americans. Some lost loved ones in the attacks while others, Arab Americans, became targets of discrimination and differential treatment because they had names and faces similar to the hijackers or they shar…
This dissertation examines the place of difference in black women's writing of the African diaspora. Afrodiasporic women writers since the late 1960s have subverted generic conventions to foreground complex black female identifications. These writers develop what I term a "poeti…
The volatile dynamic between radical Islamists and Western society is well established, often revealing itself through violent acts of terrorism. This ongoing conflict has prompted a spike of critical interest in the communication between extremists and the outsiders they percei…
This dissertation explores how popular domestic beliefs regarding the meaning and value of disputed lands contribute to the protraction and resolution of international territorial conflict. Using comparative historical analysis and artefactual field experiments, I find in Israel…
The present study explores the impact of Isaiah's vineyard story (Isa 5:1-7; 27:2-6) on the language, imagery, and theology of John 15:1-17. The study seeks to provide an exercise in biblical theology by way of a case study text, John 15:1-17. In so doing, the study seeks to con…
Based on seventeen months of ethnographic fieldwork over three years in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Mombasa, Kenya, this dissertation examines the significance of everyday practice and shared narratives in response to mass crisis. Elaborating on established elements of trauma re…
This dissertation examines how the English-language prestige press and media represented the Lebanese Shi`a during a critical period in the group's history. Focused attention on three of the most prominent newspapers in the English-language media (the New York Times, the Times (…
This study examines the interplay of narrative and other factors in the rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood during the Egyptian Revolution. I hypothesize that narrative played a major role in the Muslim Brotherhoods rise to power, and that failure to adapt their narrative in…
God does not appear often in the stories of the Hebrew Bible. As the primary national history progresses from Exodus through Kings, God's appearance becomes less and less common and eventually ceases completely. This trend is evident both within small narrative units and over th…
The study narrated here involves an interdisciplinary inquiry which attempts to understand identity in terms of the intersection of multiple discourses. Using a reflexive stance, several theoretical frameworks guide the author's search for a personal meaning of Jewish identity. …
As post-colonial theory notes, women's lived-experiences, particularly women of the “third world,” have not been present in the narratives of nation-states. By listening to and reading stories of decolonization, narratives of legitimacy, and narratives of the inheritance of cult…
In the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the reemergence of a specifically Palestinian nationalist movement coincided with an explosion in the popularity of the Arabic novel. The writers highlighted within these pages were deeply involved, from varying positions, in the struggl…
Those who study the cognitive development of Homo sapiens maintain that our specialized communication skills evolved from the desire to narrate. Societies define themselves through their histories and their traditional stories; the socio-political significance of narrative in an…
The Black Rock Forest is a 3,785-acre wilderness area whose richly forested landscape represents the splendor of the Hudson Valley Region of New York State. Although originally intended to become the home of wealthy banker James Stillman, it was his son Ernest whose love of cons…
This dissertation analyzes experiences of self and identity in “modern” Central Java, Indonesia, through narratives of mental affliction and healing. These stories of individual and social suffering reveal how personal desires and public ideals are expressed and contested in an …
This dissertation is an analysis of the disjunctive clause in the biblical Hebrew portions of the Pentateuch. A disjunctive clause is defined as have three distinct elements. The first element is the conjunction. The second element is a non-verbal, nominal element. The third ele…
In a contribution to the study of biblical narrative and the analysis of the Primary History (Genesis-Kings, Jewish canon), I argue that three biblical texts are mises-en-abyme. Mise-en-abyme is a term used by literary critics to refer to a part of a literary work that duplicate…
This dissertation advances the narrative work of Robert Polzin (1980) and Jean Pierre Sonnet (1997) with a narratological reassessment of Deuteronomy's embedded book of the law. Concerned for the long-term viability of his people, Moses invites Israel to engage hermeneutically a…