READING AND RESPONDING: FINDING AND MAKING MEANING IN THE LIFE WRITING OF DIASPORIC IRANIAN JEWISH WOMEN

This project investigates the English-language life writing of diasporic Iranian Jewish women. It examines how these women have differentially imagined their diasporic lives and travels, and how they have in turn been imagined and accepted or rejected by their audiences. In the first chapter, I use “home” as a lens for understanding three distinct life writing texts, showing how the authors write about what it means to have a home and to be at home in contrasting and even contradictory ways. I show how, despite potential hegemonic readings that perpetuate unequal relationships and a normative definition of the ideal home, the texts are open to multiple contestatory readings that create spaces for new formulations and understandings. In the second chapter, I look more closely at the intersections between trauma stories and the life writing of Iranian Jewish women, and I argue that readers use life writing texts about trauma to support an egocentric reconstruction of American democracy and dominance. I also show how a critical frame for understanding trauma can yield interpretations that highlight, rather than ignore, relationships of power and privilege. In the final chapter of the thesis, I present a case study of two online reading groups, and I show that communal reading environments, though they participate in dominant discourses, are also spaces where resistance and subversion can develop.

A Study of the Development of the Ability of the Archives Department of the Hudson's Bay Company to Carry Out Document Repairs

The objective of this thesis was to determine whether the establishment and operation of an archives services by the Hudson's Bay Company had an effect on the company's ability to carry out document repairs. Data collection methods included reviews of published material, archival records of the Hudson's Bay Company, and semi-structured interviews. The study found that the Hudson's Bay Company's commitment to operating a modern archives service in accordance with accepted archive administration practices had a substantial effect on its ability to carry out document repairs. The principled approach to repair, as practiced by the Public Record Office, was a major influence. A review of secondary sources placed this development squarely within the context of archival developments in 20th century England. Overall, the thesis findings add to the growing conversation about conservation history in England, in particular, archive conservation history as it occurred outside of the Public Record Office in the 20th century, by discussing how some methods of repair that were devised, adopted and extended by the Public Record Office in the 19th and 20th centuries were adopted and applied in the 20th century by a well-established business corporation.