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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until January 08, 2026

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Illness Tattoos: A Study of Embodied Traditions and Narratives

Sims, Martha Caroline
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607035065105844

Abstract Details

2020, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
The focus of my dissertation research is illness-awareness tattoos, specifically, tattoos related to Multiple Sclerosis (MS). As a folklorist, I am interested in examining these tattoos through a performance approach, and as a material culture scholar specifically, I am interested in scholarship about everyday aesthetics and their implication not only as they help us understand the tattoos, but also, as folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett directs us, to consider how everyday aesthetics (which I propose as the way we most fruitfully can understand tattoos) give form to value. To that end, my dissertation provides an overview of the conversation of material culture as folklore scholars have approached it, setting my work with tattoos in the larger context of material culture and more directly among works by scholars’ studies of adornment, bodily adornment, and adornments as a type of collection. In addition, because MS illness-awareness tattoos are a form of illness-narrative, my project considers some of the conversation of narratives from disability studies. My discussion ends with a chapter in which I bring together folklorists’ ideas about aesthetics in an attempt to create a conversation among those scholars that helps us better understand the powerful role aesthetics plays in everyday life and, in particular, a discussion of the problem of binaries in discourse on art and aesthetics.
Amy Shuman, PhD (Advisor)
Evonne Halasek, PhD (Committee Member)
Dorothy Noyes, PhD (Committee Member)
Merrill Kaplan, PhD (Committee Co-Chair)
222 p.
Folklore
tattoos; illness narratives; illness-narrative tattoos; aesthetics; everyday aesthetics; performance theory; body modification; material culture

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Sims, M. C. (2020). Illness Tattoos: A Study of Embodied Traditions and Narratives [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607035065105844

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Sims, Martha. Illness Tattoos: A Study of Embodied Traditions and Narratives. 2020. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607035065105844.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Sims, Martha. "Illness Tattoos: A Study of Embodied Traditions and Narratives." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1607035065105844

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1607035065105844
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.