“Something isn’t right here”: American exceptionalism and the creative nonfiction of the Vietnam War

In this thesis, I argue that few attempts were as effective in correcting the exceptionalist ethos of the United States than the creative nonfiction written by the veterans and journalists of the Vietnam War. Using critical works on creative nonfiction, I identify the characteristics of the genre that allowed Paul John Eakin to call it ‘a special kind of fiction.’ I summarise a brief history of creative nonfiction to demonstrate how it became a distinctly American form despite its Old World origins. I then claim that it was the genre most suited to the kind of ideological transformation that many hoped to instigate in U.S. society in the aftermath of Vietnam. Following this, the study explores how this “new” myth-making process occurred. I use Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone and Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War to illustrate how autobiography/memoir was able to demonstrate the detrimental effect that America’s exceptionalist ideology was having on its population. Utilising narrative and autobiographical theory, I contend that these accounts represented a collective voice which spoke for all Americans in the years after Vietnam. Using Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie and C.D.B. Bryan’s Friendly Fire, I illustrate how literary journalism highlighted the hubris of the American government. I contend that while poiesis is an integral attribute of creative nonfiction, by the inclusion of extraneous bibliographic material, authors of the genre could also be seen as creating a literary context predisposing the reader towards an empirical interpretation of the events documented within. Finally, I claim that oral histories were in their essence a synthesis of “everyman” experiences very much in keeping with the American zeitgeist of the early Eighties. Focussing solely on Al Santoli’s Everything We Had, I demonstrate how such polyphonic narratives personalised the history of the Vietnam War.

Career choice in medicine

Background: Career Choice in Medicine is an important and problematic topic. Medical education has been framed as professional identity development, yet career choice has not been viewed as a matter of identity. My primary aim was to offer new insights by exploring career choice using Figured Worlds theory, a socio-cultural theory of identity. Graduate retention is a challenge for many countries, including Ireland. My secondary aim was to address a gap in the data on postgraduate trainees in Ireland and to use the Irish case to illustrate points transferable to other contexts. Methodology & Methods: This was a predominantly qualitative Mixed Methods programme of research. My qualitative studies were oriented towards social constructionism. I collated existing data from the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) and HSE-MET to describe trainees and their career paths. I surveyed Basic Specialist Training trainees (n=333) about their career plans. I surveyed new trainees (n=527) about their expectations of training and all RCPI trainees about their experiences of training (n=1246). I conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 medical students and doctors. A subgroup (n=6) provided longitudinal data. Figured Worlds theory and Gee’s discourse tools were used for analysis. Results: I have used the case of medical training and career choice in Ireland to explain how social, political and cultural context, and day to day experiences in the cultural world of medicine, shaped doctors’ career choices. My qualitative findings described a unifying model of career choice, consisting of priming, exposure, positioning and open-endedness, which can guide the design of interventions to shape and support career choice. Conclusion: My original contribution has been to demonstrate the fruitfulness of framing career choice in terms of identity development. This represents a turn in the conversation about career choice, which brings new starting points and moves the dialogue forward.

Psychosocial well-being of African migrant children in Ireland: a cultural orientation

This thesis explores the psychosocial wellbeing of sub-Saharan African migrant children in Ireland. A sociocultural ecological (Psychosocial Working Group, 2003) and resilience lens (Masten & Obradovic, 2008; Ungar, 2011) is used to analyse the experiences of African migrant children in Ireland. The research strategy employs a mixed-methods design, combining both an etic and emic perspective. Grounded theory inquiry (Strauss and Corbin, 1994) explores the experiences of African migrant children in Ireland by drawing on multi-sited observations over a period of six months in 2009, and on interviews and focus group discussions conducted with African children (aged 13-18), mothers and fathers. An emically derived ‘African Migrant Child Psychosocial Well-being’ scale was developed by drawing on data gathered through rapid ethnographic (RAE) free listing exercises carried out in Cork, Dublin and Dundalk with sixty-one participants (N=21 adults, N=28 15-18-year-olds, N=12 12-14-year-olds) and three African community key informants to elicit local understandings of psychosocial well-being. This newly developed scale was used alongside standardised measures of well-being to quantitatively measure the psychosocial adjustment of 233 African migrant children in Cork, Dublin and Dundalk aged 11-18. Findings indicate that the psychosocial wellbeing of the study population is satisfactory when benchmarked against the psychosocial health profile of Irish youth (Dooley & Fitzgerald, 2012). These findings are similar to trends reported in international literature in this field (Georgiades et al., 2006; Gonneke, Stevens, Vollebergh, 2008; Sampson et al., 2005). Study findings have implications for advancing psychosocial research methods with non-Western populations and on informing the practice of Irish professionals, mainly in the areas of teaching, psychology and community work.

From the demise of theory to its resurgence. A retrospective on the postmodern turn to rethink the 'desire for narrative' and the sublime untimeliness of emancipation

Cultural Marxist Theory, commonly known as theory, enjoyed a moment of extraordinary success in the 1970s, when the works of leading post-war French philosophers were published in English. After relocating to Anglophone academia, however, theory disavowed its original concerns and lost its ambition to understand the world as a whole, becoming the play of heterogeneities associated with postcolonialism, multiculturalism and identity politics, commonly referred to as postmodern theory. This turn, which took place during a period that seemed to have spelt the death of Marxism, the 1990s, induced many of its supporters to engage in an ongoing funeral wake designating the merits of theory and dreaming its resurgence. According to them, had theory been resurrected in historical circumstances completely different from those which had led to its rise, it would have never reacquired the significance that had originally connoted it. This thesis demonstrates how theory has survived its demise and entirely regained its prominence in our socio-political context marked by the effects of the latest crisis of capitalism and by the global threat of terrorisms rooted in messianic eschatologies. In its current form theory does no longer need to show allegiance to certain intellectual stances or political groupings in order to produce important reformulations of the projects it once gave life to. Though less overtly radical and epistemologically bounded, theory remains a necessary form of enquiry justified by the political commitment which originated it in the first place. Its voice continues to speak to us about justice ‘where it is not yet, not yet there, where it is no longer’ (Derrida, 1993, XVIII).

“Love American Style”: Race, Cuban identity and cultural tyranny in Showtime’s Dexter

This article focuses on representation of Cubans in the television series Dexter, paying particular attention to episode 1.5, ―Love American Style‖ with some brief references to other episodes. Assimilation, the American Dream, nationalism and crisis of identity are among the themes and issues that this article investigates. Border theory provides the dominant theoretical framework of the article.