Jorie Hofstra

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Narrating the Neurally Disrupted Self 

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In my dissertation research, I studied discourses of the brain-self relationship: specifically, how the narrative negotiation of selfhood proceeds when the brain has been injured in a way that produces disruptive socio-emotional events. Anger stands out as especially challenging to the construction of a recovered or recovering self, and so analyzing accounts of post-injury anger by people with brain injuries allowed me to elaborate our knowledge of illness representations, to intervene in the debates over the degree to which brainhood dominates our conception of selfhood, and to contribute to our understanding of anger, one of the least-studied emotions. For this project, I conducted interviews, a diary study with prompts for writing and drawing, and analysis of published memoirs of brain injury. 

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See a publication from this project here.

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I continue to work on the neuro- through collaborations with students on projects analyzing how researchers construct their relationship with neurologically vulnerable subjects, and how horror films construct neurology  and neurological harm. ​​​​​​

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