Madness, Monstrosity and Grievability in Canadian Media Representations of Ashley Smith

dc.contributor.advisorHalifax, Nancy
dc.contributor.advisorHaller, Beth
dc.contributor.authorReid, Amber
dc.date.accessioned2017-05-18T13:54:03Z
dc.date.available2017-05-18T13:54:03Z
dc.date.issued2015-12-08
dc.descriptionMajor Research Paper (Master's), Critical Disability Studies, School of Health Policy and Management,Faculty of Health, York University
dc.description.abstractUsing a sample of six articles from Canadian News sources, this paper looks at how the death of nineteen-year-old Ashley Smith at the Grand Valley Prison for Women near Kitchener Waterloo was framed by the Canadian print news media in 2007 (the year of her death) and between 2012-2015 when her mother Coralee Smith attempted (and eventually succeeded in) having the initial ruling of suicide overturned by a jury who found Smith died by homicide. I attend to whether themes of monstrosity, grievability, and mental illness were present in media coverage of the case affecting the extent to which Ashley is framed as a person whose life and death are of consequence. The terms, images, and frames used by the media to describe Smith have the capacity to participate in infantilizing, Othering, and discounting the validity of Smith’s suffering within the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) (Wahl 343). Conversely, the media also has the capacity to emphasize the systemic devaluation of criminalized and incarcerated people, thereby calling not only on state actors, but also on readers to consider how we are implicated in the categorization of some lives as worthy of care during life and grievable in death, and others as threatening and dangerous being in life, and ungrievable in death (Cohen Visions 5-6; Baun 31).en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/33120
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.rightsThe copyright for the paper content remains with the author.
dc.subjectframeen_US
dc.subjectmonstrousen_US
dc.subject(un)grievableen_US
dc.subjectexceptionally devianten_US
dc.subjectdebilityen_US
dc.subjectlabelingen_US
dc.subjectmentally illen_US
dc.subjectsocial deathen_US
dc.subjectslow deathen_US
dc.titleMadness, Monstrosity and Grievability in Canadian Media Representations of Ashley Smithen_US
dc.typeMajor Research Paper

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