Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

 

Diabetic Aesthetic: from Stigmatizing Diabetes to Acknowledging the Lived Experience on Stage Public Deposited

https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/6969z089x
Abstract
  • This dissertation provides the first systematic study of representations of diabetes in U.S. theater from 1949 to 2018. According to the Center for Disease Control’s 2017 National Diabetes Statistics report, 30.3 million people in the U.S. live with diabetes. The World Health Organization identifies diabetes as a chronic disease, which manifests in four different ways: type 1, type 2, gestational, and pre-diabetes. For a disease impacting 9.4% of the U.S. population, diabetes is surrounded by an alarming amount of stigmatizing rhetoric and misinformation. Focusing primarily on dramatic literature and solo performance work that depicts diabetes, this study identifies two stigmatizing narratives rooted in the medical model of disability that commonly occur in dramatic literature. The case studies of these narratives included plays such as Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, Bekah Brunstetter’s The Cake, and Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias. This study then examines Robbie McCauley’s Sugar and Irma Mayorga & Virginia Grise’s The Panza Monologues through the social model of disability as these performances draw attention to systemic factors that produce and impact diabetic bodies. Drawing on theories of complex embodiment, the last case studies include the representation of diabetes in Marina Tsaplina’s The Invisible Elephant Project and G. William Zorn’s Lucille. Ultimately this project identifies a new framework, a diabetic aesthetic, to understand representations of diabetes on the stage that depict the lived experience of people who have diabetes. Diabetic aesthetic brings together an awareness of the role of social forces combined with the emotional and physical ebb and flow of the diabetic body. It draws on the benefits of the medical model for people with chronic illness, the recognition of social barriers presented by the social model of disability and utilizes theories of embodied disability identity to imagine a new way of viewing and expressing this non-visible chronic illness in performance.
Creator
Date Issued
  • 2019
Academic Affiliation
Advisor
Committee Member
Degree Grantor
Commencement Year
Subject
Last Modified
  • 2019-11-16
Resource Type
Rights Statement
Language

Relationships

Items