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Finding Way Just Like An Ant

Diri-rieder, Youmna
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531841972488204

Abstract Details

2018, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, EDU Teaching and Learning.
Abstract This study is about reading and writing the body as a site of literacy practices through an examination of the ways that transnational Saudi women read and write their bodies, and thereby, carve out a space of belonging within a context that reads and writes their bodies in ways that are incongruent with their own. By employing friendship ethnographic methods and an understanding of literacy practices that view the body as a site of literacy practice, I traced four participants’ stories about how their lives and educational experiences have been shaped by the ways they write themselves through their bodies and the ways in which they see their bodies read and written upon in the context of the United States. I examined the participants’ stories in four ways. First, I examined diverse ways in which the women wrote their bodies through apparel and language. Second, I examined how the ways they wrote their bodies through apparel and language differed from one another. Third, I examined the stories of how the participants felt their lives and educational experiences have been impacted by the ways their bodies are read within the context of the United States. Finally, within their stories, I focused on how the participants responded to the ways in which they are being read and written upon in diverse ways. In my analysis of the findings, I took the position that the body is a site of literacy practices where it is read, written upon, and reads and writes itself through multiple modalities. The findings affirm that the body, like other literacy practices, has modalities that signify multi-contextual meanings, that is, (1) the name of the body; (2) what is on the body; and (3) language and the body. In analyzing the body through the frames of these modalities, the findings of this study reveal incongruence between how the women write themselves and how they feel their bodies are read and written upon. The participants’ stories further reveal that Saudi women’s bodies are read and written upon through the practices of a racializing dominant gaze that reads and writes upon them, creating a one-dimensional archetype conflating Arab and Muslim women and signifying them as oppressed. This dominant gaze submerges the diversity of these women’s experiences and the ways they write themselves. Furthermore, the findings highlight the creative ways in which the women wrote themselves in response to the ways they have been racialized. While the women remain hyper-visible in relation to the modality of what is-on-the-body, their subjectivities remain invisible and submerged in relation to language and the body. While the dominant gaze imposes similar realities on the Saudi women in this study, each one of them found ways to carve out a writing unique to her. In writing their bodies in unique ways, the women’s writings reveal their perceptions of the dominant gaze that racializes them, as a gaze that is unable to read and write upon their bodies in meaningful ways. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the body within critical literacy paradigms, and as such, suggests ways to anchor and engage students and researchers alike within the multiplicity of contexts that transnational students of color occupy in general, and those of transnational Arab and marginalized immigrant students of color in particular. Furthermore, this dissertation highlights the importance of anchoring the modalities of the body in the meanings of these contexts in order to engage in meaningful research and literacy practices. The research also contributes to bilingual research methods as well as to those of intimate ethnography.
Mollie Blackburn (Advisor)
280 p.
Education
Radical Intimate Ethnography, Transnational Saudi Women, Critical Literacy, Research as Homeland, Bilingual Research, Arabic, Women Groups, Orientalism, Education, Arab women, dominant gaze, body, and literacy practices

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Diri-rieder, Y. (2018). Finding Way Just Like An Ant [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531841972488204

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Diri-rieder, Youmna. Finding Way Just Like An Ant. 2018. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531841972488204.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Diri-rieder, Youmna. "Finding Way Just Like An Ant." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531841972488204

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1531841972488204
91
© 2018, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Finding Way Just Like An Ant by Youmna Diri-rieder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.