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Mrs. Blackbird And The Visiting Chair, Taylor Barnhart
Mrs. Blackbird And The Visiting Chair, Taylor Barnhart
MSU Graduate Theses
The following thesis is a middle grade novel exploring the events of one summer in the lives of two siblings, Susannah and Sawyer. The siblings are grieving the recent death of their mother and, at the same time, attempting to navigate the emotional withdrawal of their father. During the summer, the siblings get to know their eccentric neighbor, Mrs. Blackbird, who communicates with the spirit of her dead husband through an old armchair which is rumored to have magical powers. The novel deals primarily with the theme of grief and its pervasive nature in people’s lives. The story looks at …
Reading In Place: Ordinary Language Philosophy, Wendell Berry, And Post Critique, Calvin L. Coon
Reading In Place: Ordinary Language Philosophy, Wendell Berry, And Post Critique, Calvin L. Coon
MSU Graduate Theses
The twenty-first century, marked by neoliberalism and suspicious, visibly violent far-Right politics, has presented new challenges to critical and literary theorists. In response, some theorists advocate for a postcritical turn, challenging both the surface/depth picture of language and the privileged status of suspicion in interpretation in order to explore alternative pictures of language and reading that can better address the challenges of our own day. In this thesis, I connect one of these alternatives, Toril Moi’s use of Ordinary Language Philosophy in literary studies, to Wendell Berry’s prioritization of place in environmentalist activism. In connecting these two thinkers, I contend …
Yes, Baby: Essays, Amy Gault
Yes, Baby: Essays, Amy Gault
MSU Graduate Theses
This creative thesis includes thirteen flash nonfiction pieces and one fiction short story exploring emotions and experiences that have changed who I am today. These writings are personal experiences or are inspired by personal experience. These creative works interrogate deeply transformative events and situations, such as familial relationships, trauma, poverty, living in the Midwest, patriarchy, and the beauty in existing. In the thesis’s critical introduction, I examine how my flash nonfiction pieces employ Milan Kundera’s theory of the appeal of play and Charles Baxter’s concept defamiliarization. I analyze how the succinct form of the flash essay allows my nonfiction writing …
Invisible Monsters: Chuck Palahniuk’S Transgressive Look At A Hyperrealized Society, Jordan R. Trevarthen
Invisible Monsters: Chuck Palahniuk’S Transgressive Look At A Hyperrealized Society, Jordan R. Trevarthen
MSU Graduate Theses
By critically analyzing Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters, I was able to conclude that the transgressive portrayal of hyperrealized consumerism warranted a close examination into the value American society places on an individual’s ability to replace authenticity for consumer obedience. Palahniuk’s dangerous representation of the body throughout the novel serves to highlight numerous ways in which a consumer transgresses against their own physical and mental well-being to achieve happiness constructed by capitalistic agendas. By using French theorist Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality in connection with gender, disability, and feminist theory and ecocriticism, I attempt to deconstruct the neoliberal ideology to which …
Revisiting History: Anti-Racialist Afrofuturism In Octavia Butler's Kindred, Brad C. Kelly
Revisiting History: Anti-Racialist Afrofuturism In Octavia Butler's Kindred, Brad C. Kelly
MSU Graduate Theses
Popular understanding of history is dominated by racial binaries that suggest the Black past and the white past are wholly antithetical to one another. In Kindred, Octavia Butler uncovers interconnections between Black and white Americans that complicate this understanding by having her characters travel to the antebellum period. By uncovering these interconnections, Butler is able to envision a future in which Black and white Americans are reunited through the recognition of their shared, yet vastly differing, sufferings under white supremacy. I have termed this idea anti-racialist Afrofuturism because Butler seeks to dismantle the social construct of race through her illumination …
Queering Job: Inverted Liberation In Boy Erased And Other Conversion Trauma Narratives, Harrison Beau Palen
Queering Job: Inverted Liberation In Boy Erased And Other Conversion Trauma Narratives, Harrison Beau Palen
MSU Graduate Theses
This thesis explores conversion trauma narratives with the goal of transforming—inverting The Book of Job’s holy resolution to instead entail queer liberation apart from Evangelicalism. Analyzing Conley’s bestselling memoir, Boy Erased, I discuss Conley’s suffering and how his liberation is not found by means of repressing or converting his attraction to the same gender. I also analyze Emily Danforth’s novel, The Miseducation of Cameron Post to highlight how fictional accounts of queer liberation from conversion therapy help to increase awareness of the harms of conversion therapy. Throughout my thesis, I incorporate my own story of queer suffering, survival, and …
"What Camelot Means": Women And Lgbtq+ Authors Paving The Way For A More Inclusive Arthuriana Through Young Adult Literature, Jeddie Mae Bristow
"What Camelot Means": Women And Lgbtq+ Authors Paving The Way For A More Inclusive Arthuriana Through Young Adult Literature, Jeddie Mae Bristow
MSU Graduate Theses
Arthurian literature has long been regarded as the domain of “dead white men,” dominated by Thomas Malory and Lord Alfred Tennyson. However, since medieval times, women have also been producing Arthurian literature that not only treats the women characters of the story more equitably, but makes social commentary on how the marginalized of their societies are treated. More recently, women and LGBTQ+ authors (basically, authors who are not cisgender white men) have answered the call for more diverse Young Adult literature with an Arthuriana that has a place for all, both creating a more diverse and equitable Camelot and giving …
Self-Portraits Of The Byelingual Immigrant, Sujash Purna
Self-Portraits Of The Byelingual Immigrant, Sujash Purna
MSU Graduate Theses
The following poems chronicle the journey of a contemporary Bangladeshi-immigrant poet living in the United States of America. Divided in three sections, the poems serve as self-portraits that peek into the complex psycholinguistics of the immigrant writing in a second language. The poet offers sketches of different aspects of his immigrant life through self portraits. While mostly autobiographical, the collection offers poems that serve as commentary on the socio-economic reality of workaholic American life. Through exploring the self as a bilingual poet, the poems serve as critiques of the socio-political systems of this country. “Self-Portraits of the Byelingual Immigrant” also …
Billion-Dollar Bride: Book 1—Godric's Academy For Young Ladies, Kaylin N. Stickley
Billion-Dollar Bride: Book 1—Godric's Academy For Young Ladies, Kaylin N. Stickley
MSU Graduate Theses
This thesis contains the first five chapters of a young adult romance novel featuring a young woman named Theadosia Lee. The plot is heavily influenced by Cinderella, and the biblical braiding technique is heavily influenced by that of Kiera Cass and C. S. Lewis. The piece was inspired by my desire to create more young adult romance novels that contain the biblical values that are sorely lacking in most modern young adult literature. I seek to write a love story that is based on mutual respect, a strong foundation of friendship, and an intentional decision to avoid sexual activities …
Between The Lines: Reflexive Misogyny And Remediated Forms In A Secret Online Group Of Women Poets, Rae Elizabeth Snobl
Between The Lines: Reflexive Misogyny And Remediated Forms In A Secret Online Group Of Women Poets, Rae Elizabeth Snobl
MSU Graduate Theses
This thesis examines an online, secret writing community for 1,800+ women-only poets called “The Retreat.” Analysis of two years of Facebook posts and interviews with group members revealed a noticeable membership split between those publishing through conventional literary venues, the “traditional poets,” and social media poets. These “Instapoets,” as labeled by popular media each had between 10,000 to 125,000+ followers on sites like Instagram and Facebook—significant numbers when seen in the context of readership and monetizing. Yet, their digital, snippet poems did not hold to the literary norms of poetry, both in form and publishing method. This led to a …
The Unlimited Absorbs The Limits: Analyzing The Religious And Mystical Aspects Of Virginia Woolf's Work Through The Lens Of William James, Zachary J. Beck
The Unlimited Absorbs The Limits: Analyzing The Religious And Mystical Aspects Of Virginia Woolf's Work Through The Lens Of William James, Zachary J. Beck
MSU Graduate Theses
Commentators on the work of modernist author Virginia Woolf have frequently remarked upon the “religious” and “mystical” aspects that appear throughout Woolf’s oeuvre, but have found it difficult to reconcile these aspects of Woolf’s work with her self-expressed atheistic beliefs. For those who have sought to resolve the tension between the “religious” and “mystical” features of Woolf’s work and Woolf’s (lack of) personal religious beliefs, the work of American psychologist and philosopher William James has proven to be a starting point for investigations into selections of Woolf’s oeuvre that seem to exhibit “religious” and “mystical” characteristics. There continues to exist, …
My Poetry Writing, My Defeat Of Illusion, Binghui Jin
My Poetry Writing, My Defeat Of Illusion, Binghui Jin
MSU Graduate Theses
Poetry writing is a valuable treasure of literacy. As an international student from China, I created this poetry collection as an illustration of my own understanding, internalization, and admiration of poetic expression in English between American and Chinese cultures. This cultural collusion mainly focuses on human relationships, especially romantic relationships and family love, as well as personal emotions, and the meaning of life. In order to do that, I returned to the work of classic Chinese poets, especially Su Shi, whose work is the basis for my sense of poetry. His poetic style of rhyming and creating images rooted in …
Fire To Vellum, Jessica L. Warren
Fire To Vellum, Jessica L. Warren
MSU Graduate Theses
Oswic’s simple life changed the day his mother died from poison. After finding a strange cache of trinkets and books in the loft of the barn, he begins to question everything and everyone he has known, including reality. Forced from his land and his home, Oswic takes his plough horse, the few fragments of truth from his life, and leaves Hægelfirth in search of the one person he believes can tell him of his past, the storyteller. But, it won’t be his past he needs to worry about when he starts to slip in and out of reality; seeing the …
“We Carry These Conflicts, These Ruptures Of History:” The Hybridity Of The Self In The Conflict Between Tradition And Modernity In Laleh Khadivi’S The Age Of Orphans, Karwan Karim Abdalrahman
“We Carry These Conflicts, These Ruptures Of History:” The Hybridity Of The Self In The Conflict Between Tradition And Modernity In Laleh Khadivi’S The Age Of Orphans, Karwan Karim Abdalrahman
MSU Graduate Theses
This study presents a postcolonial reading of Laleh Khadivi’s The Age of Orphans based on the theories of Edward Said and Homi Bhabha. The project offers specific answers to several questions: can this novel be read through the lens of Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, and, if so, what does such a reading reveal about culture and identity in The Age of Orphans? The hybrid self is an experience wherein the postcolonial self holds the shades of two identities and cultures, namely the colonizer and the colonized. In other words, the protagonist Reza lives in a space that represents the …
“Mr. Nobody From Nowhere”: Ethnocentric Nationalism, Cultural Cosmopolitanism, And The Reinvention Of Personal Identity In F. Scott Fitzgerald’S The Great Gatsby And Mohsin Hamid’S The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Hana Mohammed Smail
MSU Graduate Theses
This study examines the quest for the American Dream in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, in light of the politics of ethnicity and national identity and cultural cosmopolitanism. The two novels are analyzed in the context of the city in early twentieth-century America and post-9/11 America, respectively. I interpret the texts’ quest for the American Dream as a quest for an inclusive national identity that is consistent with the cosmopolitan principles of coexistence and individual obligation toward others—beyond the social boundaries of ethnicity and culture and beyond the political boundary of citizenship. …
Ship Of Fools, Kevin Grzybowski
Ship Of Fools, Kevin Grzybowski
MSU Graduate Theses
In this collection of stories, the absurd deterritorializes characters, plots, and ideologies throughout a combination of full-length narratives and flash fiction. In the process of reterritorialization, new meaning is added to archetypical narratives (The Bible's creation myth) and to familiar characters (the impoverished man, the cruel industrialist). Through these narratives, humanity is explored through unconventional means as characters find themselves at odds with supernatural forces, whether it be reincarnation, interaction with deities, or being haunted by the grotesque rat king. While this is a far cry from realism, the absurdism allows the reader unusual ways of seeing the same world.
Dinner At Eight, Anastasia M. Berkovich
Dinner At Eight, Anastasia M. Berkovich
MSU Graduate Theses
This creative thesis is comprised of six short stories of fiction in various styles and lengths, as well as a critical introduction wherein I discuss the various influences on my work, ranging from Charles Baxter and Karen Joy Fowler to Doležel and John Gardner. All of these stories share a theme of family and loss. Each story also grapples in some way with changing times and places. I have endeavored, by using rhyming action, repeating images, and melodrama, to give each story a great sense of emotion, a feeling both specific to the story but connects to the wider reading …
Breaking Expectations: Deviations From Genre, Gender, And Social Order In The Clerk's And The Merchant's Tales, Rachel Lea Combs
Breaking Expectations: Deviations From Genre, Gender, And Social Order In The Clerk's And The Merchant's Tales, Rachel Lea Combs
MSU Graduate Theses
Breaking Expectations: Deviations from Genre, Gender, and Social Order in the Clerk's and Merchant's Tales seeks to reconcile deviations in traditional form and representations of marital authority in both tales by understanding Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as existing in and responding to a shifting social hierarchy. After establishing that the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and John Wyclif's heretical tracts signified drastic challenges to received systems of social, political, and religious authority, I assert that the disruption of genre and medieval models of wifehood in the Clerk's Tale and the Merchant's Tale is a recognition-celebratory for the Clerk and bitter for …
An Idol Of The Old Errors, Amy Kaye Lafferty
An Idol Of The Old Errors, Amy Kaye Lafferty
MSU Graduate Theses
This work is a collection of short stories exploring the religious, social, psychological, and relational consequences of territory and isolation. Though not necessarily within the same world, they are set in modern times and exemplify similar commentaries on religious structures in rural, Midwestern America.
Valkyrie, Eric Philip Yanders
Valkyrie, Eric Philip Yanders
MSU Graduate Theses
My thesis is a science fiction novella, entitled Valkyrie. My novella focuses on the character Valerie Byrne and her mission to save a utopian city, created in the wake of a third world war, from a megalomaniac android named Dr. Viper. Valerie witnessed her parent's death when she was nine years old, at the hands of the tyrannical government that was responsible for the war. During the conflict, she willingly transformed herself into a cyborg so that she may enact her revenge, and helped overthrow the tyranny that murdered her family. The novella follows her twenty years after the war …
Mementos: A Collection Of Essays, Linda S. Foster
Mementos: A Collection Of Essays, Linda S. Foster
MSU Graduate Theses
This thesis begins with a critical introduction about my journey from fiction student to nonfiction writer. I use quotes from Michel de Montaigne, Lee Gutkind, Phillip Lopate, Joan Didion, Mark Doty, Jo Ann Beard, and others, to discuss nonfiction writing as a genre. I develop the idea that the nonfiction writer is influenced by past experiences or memories, and uses those memories to create a work of nonfiction. The research and reflection necessary to the writing of nonfiction often allows the writer to be shaped by the narrative she is attempting to shape. This often results in a journey of …
Swamp Boat, Gravy Boat: Memory And Place In Fiction, Kaycie Surrell
Swamp Boat, Gravy Boat: Memory And Place In Fiction, Kaycie Surrell
MSU Graduate Theses
The importance of memory to place is of particular interest to me and forms the basis for the bulk of my work. In my critical introduction I explore the work of authors and essayists who inspire my fiction work through their focus on place and memory. Specific authors include Sandra Cisneros, David Sedaris, and Pam Houston. Through my short fiction pieces I weave together the stories of my childhood from Florida to Missouri into a quilt that covers the important pieces of my life thus far. I am interested in how people are motivated by fear to write around their …
Eastern Flames In The Mind On Fire: A Study Of Eastern And Qur’Anic Influences On Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mohammed Qays Khaleel Alqaisi
Eastern Flames In The Mind On Fire: A Study Of Eastern And Qur’Anic Influences On Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mohammed Qays Khaleel Alqaisi
MSU Graduate Theses
Ralph Waldo Emerson's interest in the east is evident throughout his essays, poems and lectures. He shows his fascination with the eastern cultures, religions and poetry when he quotes from eastern texts to strengthen his ideas, such as the notion of the Over-Soul, illumination, knowledge and nature. He regards the east as an ignored territory of knowledge that contains invaluable wisdom waiting to be explored by western thinkers. As the world witnesses an increasing gap between the east and the west, Emerson represents the universal way of thinking, as he believes in seeking knowledge in every part of the world …
Gravities, Sierra Faye Sitzes
Gravities, Sierra Faye Sitzes
MSU Graduate Theses
This thesis is an attempt to explore, through the genre of literary fiction, the influence of hometowns and childhood friendships and how the power of these entities result in either an escape or capture. My thesis is the first two parts of my three part novel, Gravities, and introduces the non-linear structure of the narrative as well as set up the antagonist, Charlise Rosengren, for her both literal and figurative fall. The novel's three protagonists—Mae Silva, June Silva, and Anna Spence—are each given a perspective in their own sections containing scenes that exemplify the power both Charlise and their hometown …
Patsy Sings For Me: Stories, Brenna Elizabeth Womer
Patsy Sings For Me: Stories, Brenna Elizabeth Womer
MSU Graduate Theses
This thesis begins with a critical introduction about the function of place in works of fiction and creative nonfiction. I use quotes from Joan Didion, Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy Allison, and others to support the idea that, though many hold to the belief that people are shaped by place, really it is people who prescribe meaning to landscape and location, not the other way around. Place is at the mercy of memory and language. After the critical introduction, you will find short stories, flash fiction, essay, short memoir, and flash nonfiction. These works were not written with a specific theme in …
Education Policy And Practices Of English As A Foreign Language (Efl) In Iraq, Ihab Razzaq Altufaili
Education Policy And Practices Of English As A Foreign Language (Efl) In Iraq, Ihab Razzaq Altufaili
MSU Graduate Theses
English is the language of trade, finance, science, education, and politics, and several countries have an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) policy to improve their ability to compete. Accordingly, many countries have placed emphasis on EFL and have established an effective teaching methodology as part of that policy. Currently, the Ministry of Education in Iraq has changed their educational policy to start EFL in the first grade and has adopted new textbooks using the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach. The purpose of this research is to study the Iraqi EFL education policy and practices after 2014 by assessing instructor …
Identifying Facebook-, Twitter-, And Instagram-Specific Rhetoric And Interaction: A Case Study, Sharon Kathleen Jones
Identifying Facebook-, Twitter-, And Instagram-Specific Rhetoric And Interaction: A Case Study, Sharon Kathleen Jones
MSU Graduate Theses
A great deal of research has examined social media best practices; however, there has been a gap in looking at nonprofits to examine the efficacy of Facebook-, Twitter-, and Instagram-specific rhetoric to engage stakeholders. This study examined a small, local nonprofit's posts on each of the above platforms, and used surveys and interviews to find which types of rhetoric create the best dialogue between the nonprofit and stakeholders. This study found that for Facebook, the best rhetoric to use are pictures and videos; for Twitter, the best rhetoric to use are retweets; and Instagram, the best types of rhetoric are …
Modern Myth And Ideology In David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, Matthew Ryan Stewart
Modern Myth And Ideology In David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, Matthew Ryan Stewart
MSU Graduate Theses
The purpose of this study is to analyze David Foster Wallace's novel The Pale King through the critical lenses of Lubomir Dolezel's Heterocosmica and Louis Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" to arrive at a theory of the heroic in the novel. The Pale King features multiple characters experiencing various crises in the face of an invisible, adversarial force that can be understood through Dolezel's modern myth formulation, in which an invisible domain oppresses characters. This study analyzes three themes of the novel in which this interaction is most observable: the religious, the supernatural, and the civic themes. Althusser's work …
Apocrypha, Robert Taylor Supplee
Apocrypha, Robert Taylor Supplee
MSU Graduate Theses
APOCRYPHA is a poetry portfolio which explores the relationship between knowledge and pain through the examination of Platonic epistemologies, Christian theologies, and Neoplatonic poetry. These poems are inspired by a crisis of faith which necessitated the telling of this story. Pain is then extrapolated into a state of suffering as delineated by theorist Eric Cassell, which then affects the intactness of the authentic self. Official Christian ideology and Christian folk knowledge compete within the foregrounds of knowledge for control over the authentic self of the individual whose pain necessitates the telling of stories, specifically health narratives as described by theorist …
The Need For Neal: The Importance Of Neal Cassady In The Work Of Jack Kerouac, Sydney Anders Ingram
The Need For Neal: The Importance Of Neal Cassady In The Work Of Jack Kerouac, Sydney Anders Ingram
MSU Graduate Theses
Neal Cassady has not been given enough credit for his role in the Beat Generation. This paper discusses Cassady's importance on the life and work of Jack Kerouac, especially focusing on his most famous novel, On the Road. Cassady lent himself as the hero of On the Road and supplied Kerouac with the spontaneous prose style that made him famous. This look at Cassady puts him into the context of the time period in which he lived and in which On the Road was written. Cassady is compared to the ideal American male of the day and those traits are …