Jessica Mehr

proposals

Copyright Jessica Mehr, 2018
 

grant proposal

Bilsland Fellowship
Purdue University
2012

Disability Studies at Purdue
Disability studies is a growing interdisciplinary field that aims to explore disability as a complex social, political, and cultural phenomenon, rather than an exclusively individual impairment.  At Purdue, there are currently no convenient avenues for graduate students to pursue interdisciplinary research in disability studies; students are scattered over a number of departments and Colleges with no means to identify or contact one another.  At the same time, there is little dialogue between Purdue’s disabled students and those researching disability-related topics.  “Disability Studies at Purdue:  A Network for Interdisciplinary Graduate Collaboration” aims to create a network to facilitate collaboration among graduate students and faculty whose research directly or indirectly relates to disability, as well as Purdue students who identify themselves as disabled.  The first step of this project entails identifying graduate students and faculty with an interest in disability studies; assembling this information into a contacts database; and creating an email list-serve to promote events, share collaborative research opportunities, engage in discussions on issues, etc.  These contacts will then be used as a jumping-off point for organizing two Disability Roundtable Discussions.  These sessions will tackle disability-related issues and be led by discussion leaders who represent multiple disciplines and perspectives.  In addition, emphasis will be placed on attracting members of Purdue’s disabled community to serve as both discussion leaders and attendees.  The primary goals of this network are to foster interdisciplinary graduate education by creating opportunities for collaborative research, and to promote diversity by not only accommodating disabled students, but integrating their perspectives into Purdue’s research and curriculum.  The project also seeks to increase Purdue’s awareness of an emerging and diverse interdisciplinary field. 

conference proposal

Winner, Promise Award Grant, Purdue University
2015

Postpartum Psychosis as a Disability in Emily Holmes Coleman's The Shutter of Snow

For over two thousand years, postpartum psychosis (PPP) has affected 1-2: 1000 mothers, causing paranoid delusions, mood swings, confused thinking, and bizarre behavior.  Considered a risk to both themselves and their children, mothers with PPP are often subject to forced treatment in the form of antipsychotics, electroshock therapy, and/or hospitalization.  At the same time, they must bear the intense stigma of being unfit mothers, a stigma that is augmented by high-profile, though statistically rare, cases of infanticide (4% of PPP sufferers).  Positioned at the crossroads of psychiatry, gender, and law, postpartum psychosis provides a fascinating point of entry to a number of issues in Disability Studies, including medical versus social construction models of psychiatric impairment, the disabling stigma of diagnostic labels, eugenics, and the politics of forced treatment. 

Drawing on disability studies theory and primary medical research from the last 150 years, this paper will analyze Emily Coleman’s modernist novel, The Shutter of Snow (1930), which delves into the mind of Marthe Gaile, a young mother institutionalized for postpartum psychosis.  I will argue that rather than negating mental illness as a feminist metaphor or socially-constructed myth, The Shutter of Snow supports the existence of psychiatric impairment, while situating a social construction element within its diagnosis and treatment.  Coleman aesthetically constructs psychiatric impairment as the breakdown of the narrative filter that separates Marthe’s interiority (thought) from her external characterization (behavior, speech, appearance).  Since what constitutes “sane” speech and behavior differs based on class, gender, and education, the novel undermines the medical objectivity of psychiatry’s diagnostic labels and the field’s authority to classify and incarcerate patients.  At the same time, I will demonstrate that Marthe is socially disabled by the stigma of her diagnosis, maternal failings, and genetically “tainted” bloodline, raising potential eugenic consequences that linger at the novel’s close. 

paper proposal
& Bibliography

Victorian Literature Course
Purdue University
2010

Phoebe and the Craft of Lady Audley’s Secret

The role of servant characters in Victorian fiction has been well-criticized by literary scholars over the years.  Since their function as the “eyes and ears” of the private sphere represented a real-life concern, it is not surprising that “so many nineteenth-century novels feature servants prominently as snoops, voyeurs, and blackmailers” (McCusky 360).  The status of servants as surveillants is especially critical in sensation novels, since the plot is so often driven by mystery.  As Kathleen Tillotson points out, the best sensation novels are “novels with a secret,” a device that forced authors to develop new narrative strategies that “tantalize the reader by withholding information rather than divulging it” (Brantlinger 1-2, quoting Tillotson).  The “secret” knowledge possessed by servants in sensation novels is more than mere fodder for gossip; it is a matter of life and death, essential to the novel’s inevitable crimes and the public record that strives to reconstruct/rectify them.   As surveillants, the servant characters wield the power to determine the villain’s fate, are called upon by the “detective” to reveal their knowledge on the public record, or disseminate misinformation that sets tragic events (such as murder and adultery) in motion.  Despite their importance to the plot, however, the servants in sensation novels (like their realist counterparts) often lack depth of character.  Bruce Robbins discusses the lack of accurate working-class characters in his book, The Servant’s Hand, which demonstrates how 19th-century novelists still relied on “the much repeated master-servant tropes and devices” from Elizabethan and Restoration comedy (Robbins xi). 

One exception to this is the character of Phoebe Marks in Lady Audley’s Secret.  While Phoebe’s knowledge of the eponymous secret does serve as a plot device that drives the narrative tension, her character is much more than an “accessory used to complicate or resolve the action” (Robbins x).   Unlike Joyce in East Lynne or the Jeffsons in The Doctor’s Wife, Phoebe is a fully-realized, round character, crucial not only to the novel’s plot, but its craft.