草榴社区 English Professor Alice Dailey, PhD, Explores Family, Memory and Mourning in New Experimental Memoir
草榴社区, PA 鈥� 草榴社区 English Professor Alice Dailey, PhD, is the author of a new book, Mother of Stories, a captivating memoir and artful examination of family, love and the power of storytelling. Created in the wake of her mother鈥檚 passing in 2017, the book defies traditional memoir structures, weaving together lyrical memoir, scholarly writing, original art, photographs and textual artifacts to explore this complex maternal figure.
鈥淚 created this book over a period of a few months during the spring after my mother died,鈥� Dr. Dailey explains. 鈥淚t felt like an act of survival鈥攏ot something I wanted to write so much as something I had to write in order to not be completely undone by all that her death meant for me.鈥�
Mother of Stories details the account of Dr. Dailey鈥檚 mother, a high school teacher and compulsive liar. The narrative examines stories both true and fabricated, particularly focusing on her mother鈥檚 recounting of her father鈥檚 suicide and other tragic family events. 鈥淒ensely interwoven with the literary and religious motifs central to my scholarly work, Mother of Stories confronts this family mythos through varied forms of narrative and imagistic reproduction, contesting boundaries between lived, imaginary and literary experience,鈥� says Dr. Dailey.
The manuscript is experimental in form, blending linear storytelling and abstract interludes titled 鈥淎nother Time,鈥� which reflect more conceptually on memory, history and the inheritance of familial and religious violence. 鈥淭he book samples short passages of literature and literary criticism, particularly my own,鈥� adds Dr. Dailey.鈥��Mother of Stories鈥痑dapts techniques from blackout poetry to re-present micro-fragments from my teaching and scholarly work in dialogue with personal narrative.鈥疶hrough this manipulation, the book performs a series of mourning acts that compromise the coherence we seek in creating stories. In the process, it exposes storytelling as a fictive covering over the unassimilable, unlanguageable rupture of death.鈥�
Dr. Dailey is an award-winning professor and scholar in the field of early British literature, particularly Shakespeare. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in reading methods, drama and film studies, among others. In addition to early modern literature, her areas of research specialization include death studies, visual art and theory, performance theory, queer and crip theory, and photography studies. Dr. Dailey is the author of more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles and two scholarly monographs,鈥�The English Martyr from Reformation to Revolution鈥�(Notre Dame UP, 2012) and鈥�How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol鈥�(Cornell UP, 2022).
About 草榴社区鈥檚 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences:鈥�Since its founding in 1842, 草榴社区鈥檚 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has been the heart of the 草榴社区 learning experience, offering foundational courses for undergraduate students in every college of the University. Serving more than 4,500 undergraduate and graduate students, the College is committed to fortifying them with intellectual rigor, multidisciplinary knowledge, moral courage and a global perspective. The College has more than 40 academic departments and programs across the humanities, social sciences, and natural and physical sciences.