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Graduation Term

2017

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of English: English Studies

Committee Chair

Ricardo C. Cruz

Abstract

“The Laundry Tub Contortionist: A Differently-Abled Memoir” is a bendy narrative in-progress and a laundry tub in-process. This dissertation consists of two parts—a book-length spectrum disordered memoir that is followed by a pedagogical pivot, a chapter on the Rhetorical Genre Studies’ theory of uptake and transfer that serves to redefine diversity in creative writing workshop. Inspired by intersectional feminism, I aim to critically and creatively destabilize the borders constructed around ability and disability, particularly within autism discourses that disregard aggression and the need for a model of safety, and explore how differently-situated writers confront and disrupt unworkable norms and oppressive systems via experimental writing across genre domains. While the narrative of contortion offers but one way to reconstruct the processes and practices of differently-situated writers, it serves to contribute to the production of marginalized authorship as an ensemble of contortion writing practices, which transfers across genres and domains, celebrating the multiplicity, intertextuality, and the polyvocality.

Access Type

Dissertation-ISU Access Only

DOI

http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2017.WrightDottore.M

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