Sarah Lawrence College
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A Book of Uncommon Haunting
Get PDFA Book of Uncommon Haunting is a cycle of linked lyric essays on the poetics of grief that assumes different forms: the travelogue, the commonplace book, the academic talk, and the instruction manual. It is a portrait of a place, a queer intellectual history, a family genealogy, and an inventory of obsessions. Through personal, literary, and historical observation, I meditate on affectively charged “tokens” that contour my imaginary: the ruins that inspired Wuthering Heights, ghost stories, a cabin in Maine, Woolf’s “On Being Ill,” my parents’ possessions, and the Old Quaker Cemetery in Nantucket. Each essay distills insight into the destabilized subjectivity and ambivalent chronologies of a life spent mourning. The manuscript embraces a collaged chorus of diverse voices that have shaped how I perceive my fractured past, including Melanie Klein, Anne Carson, and Marcel Proust. Writing against a narrative arc that culminates in closure, I explore the reparative potential of loss as the very thing that kindles creativity and survival
Ass Backward
No full textThis is my first time writing a thesis, so I’m not exactly sure what the conventional expectations are for an Abstract. That said, I think that even if I was familiar with what a standard MFA writing thesis Abstract looks and sounds like, I’d most likely ignore it. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned during my time in this program, it’s that I do my best work when I do my own work. In the fall of 2020, my first semester in the program, I enrolled in Jake Slichter’s nonfiction workshop “The Situation and the Story.” At the time, I was not familiar with Vivian Gornick’s literary Ur-Text on how to analyze the components of personal narrative as both a reader and a writer. I mean, I think that’s what it’s supposed to be about. If you dear Reader, happen to be Jake Slichter, (HI JAKE!), then perhaps you can attest to how consistently and energetically I resisted absorbing and incorporating Gornick’s approach into my own process. My energy was fueled by impatient distaste that the metaphysical process of self-exploration via narrative be subjected to the wrenching of stringent parameters defining its breadth and depth.
Or perhaps maybe I’m completely missing the point, and I couldn’t wrap my head around Vivian Gornick’s Concrete Abstract Approach to Narrative because I’m just a touch stupid (as we all are sometimes). All of these things may be true. I deny nothing. I accept the possibility that you, Reader (Jake or not), may judge me by my work, and find it lacking, overwrought or in desperate need of an editor, etc. I also accept the possibility that you find my work mildly drolly amusing and/or enjoying the experience of hanging out with me here on the page enough to keep going. And last but not least, I accept the fact that I don’t have control over any of those possibilities. I’m serious. I understand it, and at this juncture in time, I find myself okay with that.
I’m feeling pretty proud of myself, because I think I figured out that this here Abstract is a great place to do some throat clearing of the writing variety. An opportunity for me to flex my adoration for long, twisty setup sentences, a meandering stroll over to the point of what I’m writing about, dilly-dallying before I reach the place where it all connects and I get at the emotional core of this thing, that Point of Emotional Evocation, aka place of outreach to you, Reader. I am proud of myself because it means I have absorbed the wisdom generously shared with me by Victoria Redel in the spring of 2021, when she told me about the sign she used to have hanging over her desk that read, YOU HAVE PERMISSION. “And that can mean whatever you need it or want it to mean,” she said. I tell it to myself when I’m thinking and creating: you have permission, and my gosh, it’s like twisting the hydrant just enough that the water comes gushing. Also, the thing that T. Kira said, which is to write for the sake of writing, not write for the sake of publishing, and to write as though no one is ever going to read whatever it is you’re writing and just let it fucking rip. (I added the F-word.) Also, Jake’s allegory about not holding drumsticks too tight is a big one…I tell that one to lots of people because it’s so beautifully elegantly simple and comprehendible and makes people go, “Huh…” and that’s the best, I love when they let their mind really absorb what you’re sharing with them.
So…to recap: Practicing being honest and true to my artistic impulses whenever possible? Check. Releasing myself from the prison of obsession with how others may judge me? Check. Giving myself permission to push boundaries and try new things and maybe fail but maybe not, and just to write and write and write and write? Check.
I guess now I’m ready to move on from here. Bittersweet, of course, but you can’t stay in one place forever, not in real life, and not in the Abstract
Returning Home: Dance/Movement Therapy, Transitional Grief, and Embodied Memory
No full textTransitional grief in its simplest form is growing pains. It is the grief and loss of growing up, the grief that accompanies everyday life and the varying goodbyes that an individual faces day-to-day. It is the realization that yesterday has passed and with it the moments it was made of. For many looking back on these moments of transition, nostalgia arises. Nostalgia, defined by the characteristics of bittersweetness, and longing for the past, supports an individual’s narrative identity, as it can be instrumental in grounding and establishing benchmarks to measure individual development. Just as nostalgia is informed by an individual\u27s past, embodied memory is gathered and stored through lived experiences. Dance/movement therapy can offer individuals experiencing transitional grief the opportunity to use the symptoms of their nostalgia and grief that have been absorbed into their embodied memory to inform treatment. It would give individuals the space to use pieces of their life experiences to foster and strengthen an authentic, holistic, and autonomous creation of self-identity
Moving Beyond the Banking Method and Scripted Curricula: Creating Confident Teachers
Get PDFThis thesis is an exploration of the role of scripted curricula in contemporary classrooms and its adverse impacts on students and educators alike. When scripted curricula are put into conversation with Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and his description of the banking method of teaching, the oppressive nature of both are revealed to be deeply intertwined. Political contexts, such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, led to a proliferation of scripted curricula in classrooms serving low-income and nonwhite children. These scripted curricula, which often deny students agency and center whiteness, heavily restricted teacher autonomy, treating educators as “robots” to read a script rather than as experts in their profession. Play was eliminated or heavily minimized in early school settings, with scripted curricula that ignored student voices taking center stage. Freire’s concept of praxis is discussed as a potential mechanism to transform education into a liberatory, rather than oppressive, environment. This thesis concludes with practical steps towards recentering and valuing both children and educators in the classroom
Carrier Screening in the Middle Eastern Population: A Study of the Qatar Genome Programme
No full textCarrier screening is used to identify individuals who are at-risk of having a child with a genetic condition. The goal of carrier screening is to allow individuals or couples without a known personal or family history of autosomal recessive (AR) conditions to learn about potential risks that may affect their offspring and to take the steps needed to mitigate such risk. Many countries define preconception and reproductive screening in different terms and screen for different conditions. In 2021, ACMG released its carrier screening practice resource for AR conditions and recommended offering carrier screening during pregnancy and preconception for 97 conditions with a carrier frequency of 1/200 and above in the Genome aggregation database (gnomAD) v2; however, the Middle Eastern population was not represented in the gnomAD v2. Furthermore, genome data from only 158 individuals were included in the 2021 updated version of gnomAD v3. This study aimed to interrogate the rate of carrier frequency for AR conditions based on the genome data from 14,392 individuals included in the Qatar Genome Project. Carrier frequency for pathogenic/likely pathogenic variants in 2,987 genes associated with AR conditions obtained from ClinVar were calculated in the Qatari genomes. Genes with carrier frequency of ≥1/200 were subject to further curation for being associated with moderate to severe clinical presentations. We identified 69 genes with a carrier frequency of ≥1/200 and moderate to severe presentation, of which only 16 genes were shared with the ACMG list of suggested genes for carrier screening. The study also discovered certain genetic conditions with high carrier frequency within the Qatari population, such as immunodeficiency due to CD25 deficiency, spinocerebellar ataxia, combined deafness and blindness, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and Niemann-Pick disease. This study highlights the importance of incorporating population-specific data into the development of carrier screening programs. Our findings in the Qatari population emphasize the limitations of relying on generalized, global datasets and the need for targeted, population-specific research to accurately identify the genetic diversity and disease prevalence within specific ethnic and regional populations. We propose further research on the implementation of a population-specific carrier screening panel for the Qatari population based on the results of this study that could have a significant impact on reproductive health and care in the Middle East region
