Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Greeley Variations, Mary Haidri

Dissertations and Theses

Inspired by the works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, European snake folklore, and "wished-for child" fairy tales, "The Greeley Variations" features several generations of women and the Victorian house they live in. The novel explores prospective parenthood, maternal legacy, and repeated patterns (visual, genetic, and psychological) as haunting experiences.

Communion Anthropoid, Joshua Stanek

Dissertations and Theses

In National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation, a man of good will offers all he has to a dear brother-in-law--recognizing the snakes he keeps as toys, the camper, the stones, dirt, and arid shrubbery are likewise dear to him. They go out to the desert at night and dig shallow holes, seemingly at random. Their imprecision is surprisingly fruitful. Imagine the constellation they made for the stars. In Communion Anthropoid, I am digging shallow holes in the dark with a mind to unearth what I believe I have lost. The dearness, I suppose. These poems vary in form from eight …

The Myths They Make Of Us, Kaitlin Stone

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis seeks to examine the relationship between myth and personhood. The societal constructs placed on us all, but specifically women, appear throughout cultures as mythology. How do these myths impact our identities? How can we utilize mythos and storytelling to reject, disrupt, or complicate those myths?

You Will Be Loved: A Mixtape, Ariana M. Rosales

Dissertations and Theses

The following mix-genre portfolio represents my work in literary translation, nonfiction, and fiction writing. These poems, essays, and stories explore the role of gender and sexuality in familial and interpersonal relationships in the social, historical, and political context of contemporary Bolivian and American cultures. The characters inhabiting this collection experience alienation while seeking belonging and meaningful connections in the face of an uncertain political future. These pieces explore themes such as marginalization of queer people, the subjugation and closeting of the indigenous in the face of mestizaje, and the colonial legacy shared by Bolivia and the United States.

Great Sand Sea, Nada Sewidan

Dissertations and Theses

This is a collection of essays regarding land and identity tied with the personal experiences of my family's immigration from Egypt to America.

Nine Times Out Of Ten, You Don't Die, Patrick Ronald Wensink

Dissertations and Theses

My novel, "Nine Times Out of Ten, You Don't Die," is the story of Layla Wisnewski and her quest to write a book about her famous father. In the 1970s, "Big Dan" Wisnewski was a motorcycle stuntman who broke more bones than anyone living. He jumped cars and buses and rivers atop a white Harley Davidson. Big Dan was considered an American Hero.

Fast forward forty years, Big Dan has been dead for decades, and his daughter Layla is writing a book about his life. While researching the book, she learns she was kidnapped as a baby. This …

Murmuration, Braeden Dillenbeck

Dissertations and Theses

The poems that comprise Murmuration are an act of vigilance in the face of loss. At certain moments in the distorted timeline of grief one searches the remaining world around them for signs of the beloved, signs that they are not simply gone but instead transformed or dispersed into another way of being. In this looking one's relationship to the external world undergoes a radical transformation of its own and demands a sustained attention from the bereaved that often draws from, but ultimately outruns cataloguing acts of memory. These poems attempt to render the movements of that attention as it …

Lady Grimm, Tessa Livingstone

Dissertations and Theses

Lady Grimm is a conceptual assemblage. A substrate of fairy tales, fables, and nursery rhymes provide a basis for transformative and macabre frames, specifically concerning a stillbirth in 1940s Scotland. The collection utilizes the folklore genre to navigate a world of uncertainty and realities too difficult for its speakers to face. It further critiques the assumption of voice being restricted to human cognition. Animalistic totems as sea lions, peacocks, rabbits, and iguanas are some of the spirits summoned in order to explore themes such as motherhood, irreversible loss, abandonment, and choice within choicelessness. The collection begins in tragedy but gestures …

You Are D. B. Cooper, James Bezerra

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is a novel about the 1971 skyjacking of a plane out of Portland Airport. The novel is structured in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure book. It investigates the nature and identity of the skyjacker, who is known as D. B. Cooper.

Lighter Than I Remember, Shane Hayden

Dissertations and Theses

It is pointless to track one's progress along the energies of the cosmic sea, when independent of the immensely malleable sonic waves, and erase the cessation of elevation. The release never reaches the essence and the static repels them when they are devoid of the white dwarfs or their spiral arms: there is nothing tangible in not exploiting the mind/body connection. At last the summit is exalted. Miniscule solar rays expand into darkness, unhinged and must be nurtured, thought by thought, until magnified in nerve impulse and then put to rest by the still water, thus more quickly compiled, constricted …

At The Trail's End, Naomi Marshall

Dissertations and Theses

Oregon City lies at the base of Willamette Falls. It was one of the few known points in the Oregon Territory, as the destination for thousands coming overland to lay claim to the acres upon acres of forested land. Presently, Oregon City is known by its proximity to Portland. The two neighboring settlements were considered "long-distance," when on a spring evening in 1889, energy generated from the falls was carried through 14 miles of recently-laid copper wire to power streetlights in downtown Portland's Chapman Square. It was the first ever long-distance transmission of electricity. Oregon City, the oldest incorporated settlement …

Animals Coupling: Stories, Corey Robert Millard

Dissertations and Theses

We find ourselves at a unique place in American history: language is losing its value; decency--or "political correctness"--is becoming taboo; and our future is legislated by those who feel they have been left behind. The stories in Animals Coupling don't attempt to explain contemporary America, but they do attempt to demonstrate (through language, character, style, and circumstance) an expressive rendering of what it looks and feels like to live in the here and now. There is a sense of detachment threading through these works, along with absurdity, loneliness, humor and anomie. But though a minor key may ring loudest, Animals …

To Disappear, Rachel Chenven Powers

Dissertations and Theses

This is a selection of linked lyric essays, covering explorations of memory, experience, nature, transcendence, insignificance, orientation, boredom, privilege, vocation, and more.

Time Spent Away, Andrew Mitin

Dissertations and Theses

After the death of his father, Joshua Klein drops out of college and moves to Chicago. Alone in the city and with nothing of consequence to do, he attempts to justify to himself the ways of God, the sense of an early death and what is the good to do in life.

In this excerpt of Time Spent Away, Joshua seeks out the hidden aspects of the city and his spirit. Guided by his father's Bible and the formative texts of his undergraduate coursework, he sets out to complete his own education. During a tour of The Auditorium Building …

Stellar Works: Searching For The Lives Of Women In Science, Jennifer Elizabeth Woodman

Dissertations and Theses

While women have had a profound impact in the world of science, they struggle to gain an equal foothold in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields today. This has led to considerable public and private sector efforts to recruit women into these arenas. In order to understand how schools and nonprofits engage today's young women in STEM studies, this account includes time spent both in high school science classrooms and with ChickTech -- a Portland-based organization that works to provide a pathway into tech careers for high school-aged girls.

A historical perspective reveals that modern women aren't treading …

Untitled, Alexander Scott Dannemiller

Dissertations and Theses

Deeply concerned with body politics, sexual slavery, identity, and technology, this work takes a serious and brutally honest route through the close perspectives of those living it moment by moment. With influences from science fiction, horror, weird, and literary fiction, the untitled novel blends genres for a disturbing account. This novel also plays with constraints in the spirit of many constraint-based writing movements, without the inclusion of names, few identifying markers, and in publication the removal of title, chapter numbers, page numbers, and author name.

Ordinary Women/Extraordinary Lives: Oregon Women And Their Stories Of Persistence, Grit And Grace, Shannon Moon Leonetti

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis tells the stories of five Oregon women who transcended the customary roles of their era. Active during the waning years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, each woman made a difference in the world around them. Their stories have either not been told or just given a passing glance. These tales are important because they inform us about our society on the cusp of the twentieth century.

Hattie Crawford Redmond was the daughter of a freed slave who devoted herself to the fight for women's suffrage. Minnie Mossman Hill was the first woman …

Being Human: How Four Animals Forever Changed The Way We Live, What We Believe, And Who We Think We Are, Jocelyn Mary Brady

Dissertations and Theses

Our lives would not be what they are today without animals. From the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, animals provide tangible evidence of their importance every day. But more than that, animals have shaped who we are and what we believe. Often in ways we don't see.

That's what inspired me to write Being Human. This work began as an examination of how humans have altered animals to better match our imaginations and ideals, and too, the way these animals have irrecoverably altered how we live and look at the world. Consider, for example, that before they …

All Begins To Bloom: Stories, Daniel Drew Schlegel

Dissertations and Theses

A collection of short stories, All Begins to Bloom follows a range of young protagonists living in the greater Los Angeles area. In a time when even the most underground lifestyles are commodified, when Independent media is just another genre, when every mode of living has seemingly been exhausted, these characters struggle to forge an identity in the face of adulthood.

From a group of surfers reeling from a careless death ("The Pier") to a young artistic couple brought together by the will to overcome an eating disorder ("All Begins to Bloom"), these stories explore the hollow promises among various …

Phantom Islands A Collection Of Short Stories, Marie Buckner

Dissertations and Theses

This collection of short stories takes its name from various islands historically believed to exist and at one time or other located on maps, sometimes remaining on them for centuries, but later removed after they were proved to be illusory. Reports of these islands usually came from sailors as they explored new realms, mistaking actual islands for imaginary ones or by geographical error. Illusions can persist unchallenged for ages. A similar yet modern illusion is the persistence of vision, a phenomenon by which an afterimage, say, on a screen, is thought to persist on the retina for approximately one twenty-fifth …

Dance Lessons, Kaitlyn Burch

Dissertations and Theses

August Diamond is left lost after the sudden death of her father. The stories in Dance Lessons explore the themes of loss and grief, retreat and return, and finding your true self. The collection is a novel in stories, each story exposing another layer of August's past, her family, and their complicated relationships.

American Cuerpos, Devan Schwartz

Dissertations and Theses

On election night 2008, a child is conceived by two Barack Obama campaign staffers--Daniel from Seattle, Anza from Honduras. American Cuerpos is a novel about the body and the body politic, about what it means to give birth through the eyes of both mother and father.

Dazai's Women: Dazai Osamu And His Female Narrators, Jamie Walden Cox

Dissertations and Theses

Dazai Osamu (born Tsushima Shûji) was a post-WWII writer who wrote a number of works using a female narrator. This thesis research focused on the reasons as to why Dazai may have written using female narratives, taking into consideration the time period and social milieu in which he was writing, as well as his own personal history with women. In addition, the history of male authors utilizing female narratives was explored, as well as the ideas of gender in the Japanese arts. Dazai works were also compared with Tankizaki Junichirô's to see how the roles of women in their works …

On Family And Fences: Tracing Melungeon Roots In The Blue Ridge Mountains Of Virginia And Tennessee, Ron Horton

Dissertations and Theses

The Melungeons are a group of indeterminable origin living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southeastern Tennessee and Southwestern Virginia. This thesis describes characteristics of these tri-racial isolates and gives theories as to their mysterious origins. Being darker skinned, the Melungeons were pushed into more mountainous regions by European colonists in the early 1700’s. While multiple hypotheses exist as to the origin of the Melungeon people, there is no single theory that is accepted by all scholars.

Dr. Brent Kennedy’s The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People, served as a catalyst for my Melungeon research. Kennedy is my …

At Home In The World : The American Middle-Class House As A Twenty-First Century Public Square, Kathleen Holt

Dissertations and Theses

Using personal narrative, interviews, and research, this thesis project looks at how the middle-class American home has been transformed, by people like me, into a modem-day public square.

Luminous Days, Mitchell S. Jackson

Dissertations and Theses

Luminous Days is a representation of my artistic vision, literary goals, and social influences. Artistically, I intend to create fiction that is aesthetically appealing. This aesthetic appeal includes the presence of a distinct narrative voice, realistically rendered settings, multidimensional characters, meticulous attention to diction, and sentence construction. The literary goal I hold in the highest regard is the creation of a body of work that demonstrates continued growth in my craft.

What I intend to render in my thesis is an accurate portrayal of the effects that drugs on the lives of my characters, and more specifically the relational strains …

Breadcrumbs: New And Selected Poems, Jonathan Kirk Ellis

Dissertations and Theses

These poems are grouped as they are in order to reflect a progression, a trail at the end of which my own spirituality is not found, but revealed. A subtitle might be Dilemmas and Destinations, for each poem can also be viewed individually as a struggle or desire to reach this goal. In fact, I label my two sub-sections in precisely these terms. I have organized them not to build upon one another, but to act as "snapshots" that describe my beliefs. My poems begin with family issues and/or characters that have shaped a belief in a multi-faceted God. Several …

The Bone Yard, Katherine Bartolomucci

Dissertations and Theses

This novel explores the everyday lives of two blue-collar workers Levi and Cressida -over the course of one summer in a rural fruit processing plant. The main protagonists exhibit contrasting forms of faith and courage, which drives their divergent fates.

Levi is a soul-searching twenty-five-year-old high school dropout who feels extraordinary obligation to family and is engaged to his pregnant girlfriend. Although Levi's father wants him to stay home and take over the family's strawberry farm, he intends to amass the courage to return to school and get a degree in agronomy.

In contrast, Cressida is a twenty-year-old senior in …

Habitats, Sydney Jean Thompson

Dissertations and Theses

A collection of original poetry exploring the theme of landscape as metaphor for human experience. The collection explores the regions of Oregon in three sections entitled, "Pacific," "Skeleton Caves," and "Cascades." Landscape is interwoven with human emotion and personal experiences. Nature becomes an objective participant and teacher in the struggle to understand the nature of grief, loss, love, and life.

The poems included in "Pacific" primarily pertain to relationships. The primary image is water, whereas the the poems in "Cascades" are mountainous, relating to trial, the possibility of volcanic activity, and the promise of unseen vistas. "Skeleton Caves" is named …

Fire Ants, Joyce Marie Riha

Dissertations and Theses

Loss is a fundamental part of the human experience, from the loss of security and innocence that comes with the necessary separation of child from parent to the ultimate loss of life. Along the way, there are the losses of jobs, of incomes, of homes; the losses of friendships, of family members, of lovers; the losses of direction, of control, of hope. As cognitive and caring beings, humans struggle to cope with these losses, to greater and lesser degrees of success. This is the theme at the heart of this thesis. Fire Ants is composed of ten short stories, fictive …