The Ghost Town: An Autoethnographic Study on the Effects of Loss and Trauma on a Saudi Arabian International Student’s Well-Being

<p>We all have fought on grief’s battleground; some of us started at early ages, while others during their developmental age, teen’s years, or later in their adulthood. All of them are valuable resources and sites of knowledge that need to be explored. Yet, recent studies reduced grief into clinical psychological well-being. However, as I lived these experiences, trauma, loss, and grief impact all well-being dimensions. Grief intersects with large structures (e.g., social, economic, cultural, locations, etc.); all these components impact our way of grief how socially displayed (mourning). This dissertation encapsulates my personal experience elevating it to an academic work that centers Fisher’s (1984) narrative paradigm, acknowledging its limitation by proposing Burner’s (1991) framework.</p> <p>It is an account and an analysis of a human endeavor to overcome grief and losses to chronicle how human beings survive tragedies. It concerns the literature on autoethnography since it is a personal narration of significant events in my life. Autoethnography uses the disciplines of anthropology and cultural studies to sharpen the research focus of its contents into how to form a learned encounter to harness the themes of life and death, failure, and success. It contributes to literature because it fashions a literary value expressed in the documentation of the lives of many individuals.</p> <p>Thus, it employs a multi-disciplinary approach to the field of humanities to extract the essence of how writing can elevate the meanings of human life into philosophical discourse. It is rife with statements on how to help human beings extract elegantly – despite their ordeals – the essence of human norms. It has its academic uniqueness. It is an original act on how different religious underpinnings and various ethnic backgrounds embody different ethical orientations and psychological dispositions toward life and its challenges.</p> <p>It reaches conclusions culminating in the evolution of the research polemics, discoveries, and debates. The argument is balanced since it utilizes the student’s personal memoirs juxtaposed to a heavy consultation of major scholarly writings.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Year dc:date.available

2021

Author dc:creator

• Alzowibi, Salman J.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Erin Willer
• Christina Foust
• Joshua Hanan
• Frédérique Chevillot

• Arabs
• Gender
• Grief
• Well-being
• Anthropology
• Communication
• Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• Social and Cultural Anthropology

Statement dc:rights

• <p>Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.</p>

Language dc:language

en

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1895

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.du.edu:etd-2883