Digital Commons Network^™

Recollection, Shelby Ann Theis-Lukenbill

MSU Graduate Theses

My work is inspired by life's transient nature and objects' enduring capacity to house memories. The delicate sculptures I create combine second-hand objects with paper to capture the essence of moments and possessions that define personal histories. The objects I use represent more than their form or chemistry; they are imbued with fragments of history and memory that I am driven to preserve. In this work, the sentimental nature and purpose of my belongings hold an equal or greater value than the physical nature and purpose of those belongings. I illuminate an object’s sentimentality by combining its form with painted …

Domesticity And Religion: Women In Italian American Literature And Culture Of The 1930s, Madeleine J. Kirkpatrick

MSU Graduate Theses

The lives of Italian American women of the early twentieth century have been documented in fragments in histories of immigration and in the literature written by the children of first-wave immigrants. This documentation often leaves an incomplete picture of how Italian women lived and moved in their new American context in the first decades of the twentieth century. This thesis examines Pietro Di Donato’s portrayal of Annunziata in his 1939 novel Christ in Concretealongside the journals of Elba F. Gurzau, a real-life, second-generation Italian woman living in New York City during the 1930s. By holding these women up next to …

The Good, The Bad, And The Unspoken: Complex Layers Of Motherhood, Casaundra R. Beard

MSU Graduate Theses

This body of work represents my frustrations about domestic life, by

communicating the raw, unfiltered side of how sometimes my anxiety and

motherhood coincide. By addressing the harsh stigmas society has towards both

anxiety and motherhood, I hope to normalize the reality rather than continue the

cycle of these idealized notions of what motherhood is supposed to be. Each piece

represents a small seemingly insignificant moment from my average day, but it is

when they start to accumulate together that results in an anxiety attack. The titles

of each piece are the positive mantras I repeat endlessly to convince myself …

Ghetto Birds And Other Things That Lurk, Mary Frances Henn

MSU Graduate Theses

This collection is comprised of poetry critically introduced by a narrative essay. The pieces included explore place, trauma, and the female experience: what modern domestic life looks like, what life looks like in the urban core, how substance abuse impacts familial relations, and especially, what it means to be female in relation to these things. Often, the intersection of these themes becomes central to a poem; the borders of these subjects blur, leading to overlap in the record of personal experiences and observations.