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Kept Things, Caroline J. Tuss
Kept Things, Caroline J. Tuss
Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts
The things that occupy our lives tell human stories. They often go beyond literal interpretation, leaving space for places, people, desires, dreams, and ideologies to be signified and examined. Personal history is a well-traveled source of inspiration, and it provides significant, meaningful symbols for the concepts I’m engaging with in my newest collection. My project, titled Kept Things, is a collection of three nonfiction pieces examining why and how things are kept, lost, and discarded, whether we have a choice in the matter or not. The significance of symbols to identity and memory acts as a through-line between each …
Inheritance: A Memoir, Jennifer Skoog
Inheritance: A Memoir, Jennifer Skoog
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
I was born and raised on a small farm in central Minnesota, the youngest of nine. Our lives centered around a dogmatic faith that banned sex education and birth control in any form. The consequences of these teachings put my life on a tragic course, and I paid dearly for my ignorance. With the help of a therapist and a deep commitment to myself, I left the faith. After I earned a college degree in my early 40s, I began to critically examine my upbringing. Through my educational journey in Black studies, I saw deeply troubling ways in which my …
The Natural Mother Of The Child, Krys Belc
The Natural Mother Of The Child, Krys Belc
All NMU Master's Theses
The Natural Mother of the Child is a memoir-in-essays about Belc’s experiences as a transmasculine birth parent. These essays use text and images to explore parenting on the margins of both motherhood and fatherhood. They also examine the ways in which legal and identity documents are limiting in their ability to describe gender and family. Topics explored include pregnancy, birth, lactation, masculinity, top surgery, medical transition, the meaning of biological relationships between parents and children, and microaggressions against transgender people.
Latchkey: A Memoir In Essays, Nicole C. Pendleton
Latchkey: A Memoir In Essays, Nicole C. Pendleton
Honors Undergraduate Theses
"Latchkey: A Memoir in Essays" is an essay collection that follows the narrator through her childhood as it relates to being raised a latchkey kid in the 1980s. The lack of published academic studies that follow children through their experience as latchkey kids and into adulthood leaves personal exploration as the primary means through which a child, specifically a young girl, can seek understanding as to how her view of the world develops. Each of the five essays explores issues of autonomy, self-efficacy, sexuality, addiction, and familial bonds. It is through her reflection of specific events – the loss of …
The Quality Of Mercy, Kerry Mcnamara
The Quality Of Mercy, Kerry Mcnamara
English Theses & Dissertations
The Quality of Mercy is a hybrid of memoir and reportage, the story of a daughter’s love and her father’s journey through his vocation to the Catholic Church, his entry in the priesthood and his years of missionary work. Not many people discover in their teenage years that their father had been a celibate Catholic priest. Not many have the opportunity to trace their father’s story through diaries, interviews, and recollections. The Quality of Mercy is both a window into the world and a mirror into the soul, a daughter’s attempt to tell her father’s unique tale.
Open Doors, Meagan R. Baccinelli
Open Doors, Meagan R. Baccinelli
University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
This memoir is about community, family and race relations as the author experiences them in New Jersey, where she grew up, at University of Maryland, where she went to college, in Washington, D.C., during Barack Obama’s presidency, and in New Orleans, where she lands in her late twenties. It is meant to shed light on the possibilities and beauty to be found in diverse, close-knit communities, where people share in each other’s joys and sorrows. It also speaks to the importance of romantic partnerships in which both people share the same values, and explore and grow together.
If You Don’T Want To Talk About Food, Don’T Sit Next To Me, Judith L. Polk
If You Don’T Want To Talk About Food, Don’T Sit Next To Me, Judith L. Polk
Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones
If You Don’t Want to Talk About Food, Don’t Sit Next to Me has as its main characters the same qualities taken from the new philosophy of Le Cordon Bleu: “Aspire, Discover, Flourish, Delight, and Thrive,” and the memories made while a full-time student.
According To The Gospel Of Haunted Women, Judith Roney
According To The Gospel Of Haunted Women, Judith Roney
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
According to the Gospel of Haunted Women is a collection of seventy-five poems divided into four sections. The voices speaking within, are, indeed haunted by varying definitions. They bespeak complex, troubled emotions such as guilt, shame, and anxiety, yet work towards expressions of courage. The dead and the living are cajoled and accused, while others are provided a format through which they may be heard long after their mouths have closed. The poems are arranged in four sections. Section I, “We Begin,” consists of memoir pieces from the poet's early life. Section II, “We Speak,” is a dedicated space for …
What We Hide, Ashley Bowcott
What We Hide, Ashley Bowcott
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
What We Hide is a collection of memoir essays that explores the themes of mystery and deception in personal relationships, specifically within familial and romantic ones. Though the essays in the collection explore the decades from early in the narrator's childhood through her move to Florida for graduate school, the narrator's keen discernment of the world around her and her curiosity for what experiences shape a person's character remain constant. Many essays explore the extent of her father's alcoholism and the consequences of it, as well as the narrator's obsession over the possible sources of his addictions. Other essays examine …
How “True” Is True Enough?, Teresa O. Klotz
How “True” Is True Enough?, Teresa O. Klotz
Departmental Honors Projects
As a culture, Americans are obsessed with “truth,” or with the idea of truth. We are also prone to demanding tidy resolutions of complex matters. We vilify public figures that get caught lying while minimizing our own dishonesty. Our attachment to the notion of cultural binaries reveals our discomfort with continuums. This project is a collection of five essays which explore this contradiction: one critical essay and four creative works. The critical essay in the collection considers the subject of “truth” in memoir: how published memoirists have approached and resolved the matter of truth telling in their work; how they …