Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Woman Flytrap, Brianna Jo Hobson

Student Theses and Dissertations

Woman FlyTrap is a short story zine collection that explores the topic of sexual violence through the perpetrator and victim relationship with an explicit lens. Replete with cultural and entomological themes and motifs, Woman Flytrap seeks to remind survivors that we are not alone. In our bodies or in our lives. Neither in the world. There are over a million insects to every human, proving that there is strength in numbers. All five stories in the collection present different abstracts: revenge, transformation, justice, healing, body image, self-harm, mourning, etc. There is also a playlist and a section about the author. …

The Meaning In The Music: Music And The Prose Of Chopin, Joyce, Baldwin And Egan, Colin Perry

Senior Theses

Kate Chopin, James Joyce, James Baldwin, and Jennifer Egan are collectively gifted in the art of prose, yet each author also experiments with music in their literary works. An analysis of Chopin's The Awakening, Joyce's "The Dead," Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," and Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad reveals a trend of authors utilizing music to enrich their texts and convey major themes.

Ghosts Of Madmen: A Generational Tale, Kristen Leigh Olin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A family story depicting an immigrant family that must deal with the horrors of the past while delving through the psyche of the present. One woman's look into the deepest reaches of her American family and their generations of alcoholism and abuse and her resolution to the ghosts that haunt the family's women.

"Becoming" David Foster Wallace: Media, Metafiction, And Miscommunication, Gordon Hugh Willis Iv

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

The Lightbringer: A Novel, Brett L. Butler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Lightbringer is about a collision of two worlds: the world of a contemporary South Florida town and the magical world of Zariel, bringing with it the universal threat of the Terra. Childhood friends, Breck and Tom, are thrown into the middle of an ancient conflict between the Terra—a collection of alien races that have been transformed by darkness—and the forces of good. After an encounter with a magical pool of golden water, the boys must learn to use their new abilities to protect against the growing Terranox army. In the midst of their struggle, however, a mysterious companion—the Lightbringer, …

: : Poof : :, Caleb Nelson

Graduate Masters Theses

Storytellers have an interdependent relationship with their narratives. If you have ever told a lie, you understand. Stories take on a life of their own, as you consider the potential ramifications of each contingent piece. Definite sets of things happen as results of specific other things. If you throw an ax at me, only a few things can immediately happen, and our relationship will be forever changed. Events evolve. When we create or discover a narrative, we live by its logic. Upon consideration, a moment compels a series of moments modulated by a voice, a single perspective, a personal narrative, …

The Escape Artists, Daniel Gene Hernandez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My thesis, “The Escape Artists”, is a collection of short fiction that represents most of the work I did as a creative writing master’s student. The title is taken from my longest story, a narrative about a young man’s struggle to avoid violence in a federal prison. As a title, “The Escape Artists” also captures major themes in my other stories; characters often pursue emotional escapism or literally seek to evade predators in my fiction. As a writer, I often explore breakdowns in social order, so my stories tend to be set in turbulent, oppressive political climates or else inside …

Las Vegas Paperboy, Matthew O'Brien

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

I’m an author and journalist who has lived in Las Vegas since 1997. My first book, Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas, chronicles my adventures in the city’s underground flood channels. My second book, My Week at the Blue Angel: And Other Stories from the Storm Drains, Strip Clubs, and Trailer Parks of Las Vegas, is a creative-nonfiction collection set in off-the-beaten-path Vegas. These two books grew out of my eight years as a writer and editor for Las Vegas CityLife alternative-weekly paper.

I enrolled in UNLV’s MFA creative-writing program in the fall of …

In The Flesh: Fiction As An "Incarnational Art", Marissa Thornberry

Honors Theses

My goal in this paper is to support O’Connor’s claim that fiction is “incarnational” by providing additional evidence and addressing implications that she doesn’t. I am professing that fiction-writing is indeed “incarnational,” in even more ways than O’Connor directly expresses. If this thesis holds true, then it is difficult for Christians to rightly make light of the art of story-writing. Contempt for creative writers is tempered in our time more by a trend toward tolerance than by public or personal conviction of the human need for storytellers. Even in an environment where making money and tending to physical needs and …

A Public Duty: Medicine And Commerce In Nineteenth-Century American Literature And Culture, Heather E. Chacon

Theses and Dissertations--English

Using recent criticism on speculation and disability in addition to archival materials, “A Public Duty: Medicine and Commerce in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture” demonstrates that reform-minded nineteenth-century authors drew upon the representational power of public health to express excitement and anxiety about the United States’ emerging economic and political prominence. Breaking with a critical tradition holding that the professionalization of medicine and authorship served primarily to support and define an ascending middle class, I argue that the authors such as Robert Montgomery Bird, Fanny Fern, George Washington Cable, and Pauline Hopkins fuse the rhetoric of economic policy and public …

Ten Klicks South Of Whiskey : A Play In Three Acts, Ryan Jeffrey Smithson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Ten Klicks South of Whiskey is a stage performance in three acts, consisting mostly of monologues from soldiers of various backgrounds. It follows the trials of 4th platoon, Delta Troop, 463rd Cavalry Squadron, a fictional unit that achieves a near-mythic reputation of heroism and invulnerability in Iraq. As the monologues begin to reveal, however, not every tale about the 463rd can be substantiated. The audience is first challenged to search for truth and then to understand that truth is not the ultimate--or even the desired--goal of war stories.

Straight Record And The Paper Trail: From Depression Reporters To Foreign Correspondents, Magdalena Bogacka-Rode

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Straight Record and the Paper Trail: From Depression Reporters to Foreign Correspondents engages with Martha Gellhorn's The Face of War (1959), Virginia Cowles' Looking for Trouble (1941) and Josephine Herbst's The Starched Blue Sky of Spain and Other Memoirs (1991) as documentaries of struggle. Documentary as a mode of writing and image making reveals dissonance, contradictions and varied perspectives which undermine the official historical record. The three writers, I argue, by republishing their Spanish Civil War (SCW) journalism in book form intended to set their record straight. This was motivated by their commitment to the 1930s struggle and the need …

Still Circling The Sun, Stefan Rafael Delagarza

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work is a collection of traditional and experimental short stories that explore dynamic human relationships in a variety of settings: a bunker, a beach, and a family home, to name a few. Each character is on a journey to find deeper meaning in his or her life, and oftentimes, this means finding a path to forgiveness.

Dead Dad Project, Adrian Mcbride

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A creative work of fiction centered around two friends. The work takes place during their senior year of high school, and investigates how their friendship is changed during the course of that year.

Modern(Izing) Burial In Interwar American Literature, Victoria Marie Bryan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation aims to study literary representations of interwar American deathways as reflections of modernity. The study of burial in United States history tends to focus on mid- to late-nineteenth century movements that distance the dead from the living. This dissertation argues that these practices left Americans ill-equipped to process the influx of death from the conflict areas of World War I, keen to allow the further development of the funeral industry during the interwar period, and anxious about the certain rise in death tolls that would result from World War II. Interwar literature, therefore, exhibits a difficulty in meaning-making …

Mossy Bottom Golf And Hunt Club, Andrew Joseph Albertson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is the story of Greg Goforth and Rick Hale, the owner and director of golf, respectively, of the Mossy Bottom Golf and Hunt Club. Greg and Rick work together through many comic mishaps in attempt to bring the 2015 U.S. Open to Mossy Bottom, Mississippi.

Two For Confidence, Antonio Shaw

All Theses

In this comedic short story, Jamez Wythazee (pronounced 'James With-a-Z') has just left a house party after being rejected by his dream girl, Monique Nettles. Lost in his thoughts of inadequacy, jealousy, and intra-racial conflict, he does not notice that he is being followed. Before he knows it, Jamez finds himself attacked by a mysterious assailant who possesses razor-sharp claws and inhuman speed. Even more amazing, Jamez somehow survives the assailant's attacks with little effort and completely unscathed. The mysterious attacker turns out to be a desperately hungry vampire named Maximilian Marvis. After a humorous exchange of insults and a …

Mother Of Three Drowns Children And Other Stories, Laura L. Stubbins

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A collection of short stories depicting fictional characters facing what is absent from their lives.

Six City: A Novel, Leah Bailly

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Six City is a 93 000 word voice-driven novel that traverses six countries as it follows its protagonist, a woman known only as S---, after she is reported missing by her family. A lingerie-shop owner and politician's wife, S--- reinvents her identity from Barcelona to Morocco, through Mauritania, Senegal and Mali, and eventually into Sierra Leone. S--- is hotly pursued by a devoted "Following," but when search efforts descend south into sub-Saharan Africa, the Following discovers that S--- has been found dead in the outskirts of Freetown. The result: a massive chase across multiple continents, tracing the steps of a …

Seven Fictions, Stephen Leech

All Theses

A collection of seven short stories focusing on issues of reality and unreality, particularly such issues as they arise in America, both as a political ideal and a manifest nation. The collection uses genre fiction as a means to illuminate these issues in new and relevant ways.

The Parties Quarrae, Michael E. Malone

Institute for the Humanities Theses

During Thomas Jefferson's educational days in Williamsburg, Virginia, he was fortunate to have the association with three learned men, William Small, George Wythe, and Lt. Governor Francis Fauquier. The men met often at the governor's palace during the years 1760-64. Jefferson referred to their association as the "parties quarrae."

Most historians agree that the time spent with Small, Wythe, and Fauquier had profound influence on the establishment of Jefferson's "enlightenment" philosophy. Little, however, is known about the details of the regular meetings in the palace.

The focus of this creative project is the fictional discovery of Jefferson's "lost" Autobiography, finished …