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Hattie: A Twin Territories Matriarch, Madison P. Brown May 2023

Hattie: A Twin Territories Matriarch, Madison P. Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Hattie: A Twin Territories Matriarch” is a creative novel of vignettes in the vein of historical fiction set at the turn of the 20th century in Oklahoma/Indian Territory exploring the complexities of love and betrayal through generations of one Muscogee family as they battle the legal and personal implications of white-settler encroachment. With societal criticisms and Indigenous methodologies, this thesis aims to explore land ownership, resource allocation, and the complex governance of Oklahoma tribal reservations. The research of this novel focuses on primary documents from National Archive probate records, Dawes Commission enrollments, newspapers, and a familial collection of photographs, letters, …


Blend It Like Beckett: Samuel Beckett And Experimental Contemporary Creative Writing, Sam Nicole Campbell May 2020

Blend It Like Beckett: Samuel Beckett And Experimental Contemporary Creative Writing, Sam Nicole Campbell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Samuel Beckett penned novels, short stories, poetry, stage plays, radio plays, and scripts—and he did each in a way that blended genre, challenged the norms of creative writing, and surprised audiences around the globe. His experimental approach to creative writing included the use of absurdism, genre-hybridization, and ergodicism, which led to Beckett fundamentally changing the approach to creative writing. His aesthetics have trickled down through the years and can be seen in contemporary works, including Aimee Bender’s short story collection The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves[1]. By examining these works …


Choking Hazards, Tessa Hathaway May 2018

Choking Hazards, Tessa Hathaway

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The following manuscript is a creative writing thesis in poetry. The goal of the thesis was to expand my abilities as a poet and find a cohesion in my work. I wanted to utilize some skills gain in a fiction workshop and apply them to poetry, as well as gain influences in various fields of expertise through the other courses I’ve been taking in the English department. Essays for a poetics class, novels for an American literature class, and short stories for a fiction workshop gave me a base from which to work from and draw inspiration. Not only was …


The Backs Of Leaves, Shelby L. Colburn May 2018

The Backs Of Leaves, Shelby L. Colburn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a novella that explores themes of emotional abuse, grief, toxic masculinity, sexuality, and gay violence. The author deploys a frame narrative that encompasses short stories that are tied by a narrator in the novella. The narrator’s stories create a continuity between “real,” realistic, and surrealist fictions. These explorations of fiction create a conversation between the frame narrator’s “real” life and that of her stories. As the novella’s plot progresses, the frame narrator’s sanity deteriorates, which allows her to become increasingly grotesque. The grotesque situates how macabre the frame plot is, creating a connective tissue between the “real” …


Master Buddha & The Jolly Golly Fun Time Gang., Todd Edward Evans May 2016

Master Buddha & The Jolly Golly Fun Time Gang., Todd Edward Evans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is the first two chapters of a novel. The novel parodies the capitalist and consumerist United States of the 21st Century in the tradition of Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, and Donald Barthelme.


Is This Fire, Gregory Sherl Jan 2015

Is This Fire, Gregory Sherl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Is This Fire is a collection of poems dealing with the themes of faith and loss. In one section, "The Third Testament," parts of the Bible have been reimagined. There are poems about Joan of Arc, as well as poems that touch on miscarriages, as well as the Columbine massacre. There are, of course, also love poems.


Wild & Wonderful: A Collection Of Stories, Thomas Bennitt Jan 2012

Wild & Wonderful: A Collection Of Stories, Thomas Bennitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis is a collection of literary short stories, many of which spring from my life experiences: people I've known, places I lived, jobs I worked, or subjects I have researched. Some stories are more "realistic," where landscape and geography—often West Virginia, or my native Pennsylvania—is an essential part of the narrative. Other stories are more experimental, blending realism with other styles like satire, metafiction, and historical fiction. Yet the narrators in these stories share a comtrait: they are somehow isolated, alienated, or marginalized. Some are physically confined—a lobsterman who works alone on his boat, coal miners working underground, office …


A Little Slice Of The Moon: Stories, Fatima Rashid Jan 2005

A Little Slice Of The Moon: Stories, Fatima Rashid

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Little Slice of the Moon: stories is a collection of short stories that explore the struggles of various characters to find their place in the world. And the world, despite its familiarity, can be a hostile place. The characters in this collection learn that families are a fragile lot, that every desire contains a paradox, that the Road of Life can seemingly be grasped by the horns, but that the future twists and turns, yet never escapes the past. And it is the past that haunts these characters' lives. One word, one act, impacts a lifetime. In A Little …


The Meaning Of The Moment: A Collection Of Short Stories., Jonathan David Benton Dec 2004

The Meaning Of The Moment: A Collection Of Short Stories., Jonathan David Benton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of three short stories in very different genres but tied together by a intensely personal look at the lives of its protagonists culminating in epiphanies. One of these epiphanies is intended solely for the reader, but in two cases, the reader and character gains the insight. “The Tears of Angels” looks at the effect one person in a moment, even a stranger, can have on the protagonist’s life. “Climbing Heaven and Gazing on Earth” focuses on the haunting power of history and the need we as humans can feel to share a story, to make sense of …


Waiting For Mary Jane: A Collection Of Modern Appalachian Short Stories In The Joycean Tradition., Lorie Ann Wright Aug 2002

Waiting For Mary Jane: A Collection Of Modern Appalachian Short Stories In The Joycean Tradition., Lorie Ann Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of a collection of short stories stylistically reminiscent of the works of James Joyce yet with an Appalachian and feminist voice. Waiting for Mary Jane should appeal to readers interested in experimental styles as well as feminist and Appalachian literature. The protagonist of the collection is Mary Jane, a female from present day East Tennessee. The reader experiences her life from age three to thirty. The introduction to the collection explores the link between James Joyce, Appalachia, Feminist writing, and the short stories. Structurally and thematically the collection reflects the works of James Joyce by using the …