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Meltem Oztan-Dissertation - Last.pdf (1.24 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

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Indelible Legacies: Transgenerational Trauma and Therapeutic Ancestral Reconciliation in Kindred, The Chaneysville Incident, Stigmata and The Known World

Oztan, Meltem
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1375031855

Abstract Details

2013, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English.
Despite the extensive amount of research that has been conducted on the long-term consequences of the inheritance of the psychological impact of the Holocaust, little has been investigated about the transmission of transhistorical memories of the Middle Passage and enslavement to African American populations. In addition, while current trauma studies mainly focus on the inheritance of trauma observed across a single generation, the transmission of the original trauma across multiple generations deserves closer examination. This project extends beyond the question of intergenerational transmissions by investigating unconscious transfers of memory and images that cannot be situated within a singular temporal frame, but span multiple ones. In particular, this study explores the psychological dimension of trauma that is transmissible and demonstrates the ways in which the initial trauma of enslavement reinvents itself in Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred (1979), David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident (1981), Phyllis Alesia Perry’s Stigmata (1998), and Edward P. Jones’ The Known World (2003). By examining the traumatic transfer of painful memories across temporal boundaries in these narratives, this study contributes to an ongoing dialogue about the unconscious transmissions of the original trauma of African American slavery, opening up a multitude of possibilities for further research in representations of transgenerational trauma in other contemporary texts of African American literature.
Willie H. Harrell, Jr. (Committee Chair)
Babacar M'Baye (Committee Member)
Vera Camden (Committee Member)
Elizabeth Smith-Pryor (Committee Member)
Richard Adams (Other)
197 p.
African Americans; American Literature; Ethnic Studies; Literature; Minority and Ethnic Groups
transgenerational trauma; neo-slave narratives; transgenerational haunting; ancestral reconciliation; race and psychoanalysis; 20th century African American literature

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Oztan, M. (2013). Indelible Legacies: Transgenerational Trauma and Therapeutic Ancestral Reconciliation in Kindred, The Chaneysville Incident, Stigmata and The Known World [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1375031855

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Oztan, Meltem. Indelible Legacies: Transgenerational Trauma and Therapeutic Ancestral Reconciliation in Kindred, The Chaneysville Incident, Stigmata and The Known World. 2013. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1375031855.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Oztan, Meltem. "Indelible Legacies: Transgenerational Trauma and Therapeutic Ancestral Reconciliation in Kindred, The Chaneysville Incident, Stigmata and The Known World." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1375031855

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1375031855
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© 2013, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.