Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 1-31-2014 Diffuse Connections: Making Sense of Smell in Canadian Diasporic Women's Writing Stephanie Oliver The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Pauline Wakeham The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Stephanie Oliver 2014 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Oliver, Stephanie, "Diffuse Connections: Making Sense of Smell in Canadian Diasporic Women's Writing" (2014). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 1892. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1892 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. DIFFUSE CONNECTIONS: MAKING SENSE OF SMELL IN CANADIAN DIASPORIC WOMEN’S WRITING (Thesis format: Monograph) by Stephanie Oliver Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Stephanie Oliver 2014 ! i Abstract This dissertation explores the crucial, yet often unacknowledged, role smell plays in Canadian diasporic women’s writing. While some critics discuss scent in their work on taste, memory, and diasporic nostalgia, I argue for considering scent in its specificity and suggest that smell shapes diasporic subjectivities differently than taste.