Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Communication Studies

First Advisor

Erin Willer

Second Advisor

Christina Foust

Third Advisor

Joshua Hanan

Fourth Advisor

Frédérique Chevillot

Keywords

Arabs, Gender, Grief, Well-being

Abstract

We all have fought on grief’s battleground; some of us started at early ages, while others during their developmental age, teen’s years, or later in their adulthood. All of them are valuable resources and sites of knowledge that need to be explored. Yet, recent studies reduced grief into clinical psychological well-being. However, as I lived these experiences, trauma, loss, and grief impact all well-being dimensions. Grief intersects with large structures (e.g., social, economic, cultural, locations, etc.); all these components impact our way of grief how socially displayed (mourning). This dissertation encapsulates my personal experience elevating it to an academic work that centers Fisher’s (1984) narrative paradigm, acknowledging its limitation by proposing Burner’s (1991) framework.

It is an account and an analysis of a human endeavor to overcome grief and losses to chronicle how human beings survive tragedies. It concerns the literature on autoethnography since it is a personal narration of significant events in my life. Autoethnography uses the disciplines of anthropology and cultural studies to sharpen the research focus of its contents into how to form a learned encounter to harness the themes of life and death, failure, and success. It contributes to literature because it fashions a literary value expressed in the documentation of the lives of many individuals.

Thus, it employs a multi-disciplinary approach to the field of humanities to extract the essence of how writing can elevate the meanings of human life into philosophical discourse. It is rife with statements on how to help human beings extract elegantly – despite their ordeals – the essence of human norms. It has its academic uniqueness. It is an original act on how different religious underpinnings and various ethnic backgrounds embody different ethical orientations and psychological dispositions toward life and its challenges.

It reaches conclusions culminating in the evolution of the research polemics, discoveries, and debates. The argument is balanced since it utilizes the student’s personal memoirs juxtaposed to a heavy consultation of major scholarly writings.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Salman J. Alzowibi

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

414 pgs

Discipline

Communication, Gender studies, Cultural anthropology

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