Arts and Humanities Commons^™

How Medical Cannabis Took Root In Mississippi, Loral Winn

Honors Theses

How Medical Cannabis Took Root in Mississippi

(Under the direction of Dr. Iveta Imre)

How Medical Cannabis Took Root in Mississippi is a multimedia journalism piece that follows the timeline of medical cannabis’ legalization in Mississippi through the lives and lenses of characters from each sector of the medical marijuana industry. Written in a journalistic style with hints of narrative methods, the article tells the story of medical cannabis advocates, current patients, state registered practitioners, dispensary owners and employees, and a family-owned cultivation facility while also providing concrete evidence and facts about the legislation and regulations included in the state’s …

Women Without Bodies: Autonomy, Empowerment, And Embodiment In Southern Women, Martha Peyton Ford

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between rural, upper-class, Southern, white women and their bodies. In my attempts to understand this relationship, I analyze sources from the fields of gender studies, philosophy, and psychology, utilizing concepts such as the Cult of True Womanhood, the newly-emerging field of body memoirs, and the long-lasting but elusive idea of Southern ladyhood to make sense of cultural expectations of Southern women and their bodies. This research, alongside my use of autoethnography and oral history, serve as an anchor for my analysis of women’s relationships to their bodies, in which I use myself, my mother, and …

Lessons From The Aisles: A Collection Of Short Stories, Drew Jones

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of short stories, each set in a separate aisle of Walmart. By exploring the relationships and conflicts of these characters, I hope to illustrate that life’s complexity can be shown in a place as simple and mundane as Walmart.

Black-Eyed, Abigail Sipe

Honors Theses

Black-Eyed tells the story of Rowan Mae Baker, a ten-year-old girl dealing with too-big-for-a-ten-year-old problems. In the past year, Rowan moved from Jackson to Winona after the unexpected arrest and sudden death of her father. Then, almost a year later, Rowan is sexually assaulted by an older boy from her school. Rowan understands neither of these things. Throughout Black-Eyed, Rowan spends twelve hours running away from home while trying to figure out how to talk to her mom about the assault. Alone for the first time, she begins to observe and question the world around her, to process her …

To Be Haunted: A Collection Of Short Stories, Kallye Smith

Honors Theses

This thesis is a work of collected pieces of fiction that seek to explore what it means to be haunted. By exploring the concept of ghosts, the pieces in this collection attempt to take a fresh approach to the traditional paranormal story.

Chickens In Texas: A Farce In One Act, Lawson Marchetti

Honors Theses

Herein lies a one-act farce written by Lawson David Marchetti, an English major in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi. His emphasis is in Creative Writing, and his minors are in Theatre Arts and in Music. This farce was written as his senior thesis, for the completion of requirements of the Honors College. The play was conceived in August of 2020, and completed in April of 2021. The play itself is set in modern times, sans pandemic, and is highly whimsical in style. It requires a cast of twelve comedic actors, and several complicated technical …

The Legend Of Neptune: A Portrait Of Enslavement And Emancipation In 18th-Century Worcester County, Massachusetts, Brigitte Lewis

Honors Theses

“The Legend of Neptune” tracks the life of a man named Neptune, who was enslaved at my childhood home in Still River, MA 01467 for fifteen years during 1742-1757. The general topic of this undergraduate thesis is slavery in seventeenth and eighteenth-century central Massachusetts; the main topic is uncovering the voice, history, and stories of an identified enslaved and then free Black man named Neptune. The project uses a vast array of primary sources to construct a narrative that centers Neptune’s life and experiences, supported by secondary historical research. This project also tells a counternarrative to the official history of …

20 Things, Reann Parker

Honors Theses

20 Things is a short young adult novel that explores a variety of topics and themes, from mental health, recovery, and self discovery to race, love, and friendship. Beginning with a high school girl named Halle waking up in a hospital after a suicide attempt, the novel is a coming of age story about the help Halle receives and what she goes through in trying to find reasons to keep living. The novel is divided into ten chapters: “Waking Up,” “Going Home,” “Arriving,” “Being Honest,” “Keeping the Faith,” “Soul Searching,” “Willingness,” “Maintaining,” “Checking In,” and “Living.” Each chapter represents the …

You Were There : An Exploration And Analysis Of The Filmmaking Process, Regan Emfinger

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the process of writing, shooting, and editing my short film You Were There. My process involved scriptwriting with several revisions, shooting with a cast and crew, and editing the raw footage. This paper will not only serve as a timeline leading up to the final product of the film but also will explain the function of each artistic choice. This paper will also outline the biggest lessons I learned about fictional narratives, and discuss the successes and failures of the film as a whole. I also plan on discussing how those lessons will further my academic and …

That Belongs To Me, Ellie Anne Greenberger

Honors Theses

A collection of fictional short stories and a novella that explores family relationships, specifically female family relationships that span across generational lines and what we inherit from our families whether intentional or unintentional. (Under the direction of Tom Franklin)

The Marduk Archives: A Take On Thresholds, Christopher Melton

Honors Theses

A fictional screenplay exploring the relationship between absurdity and convention as it pertains to the shifting cultural paradigms of our society. (Under the direction of Beth Spencer)

The Red Swimsuit: Essays, Jacqueline Knirnschild

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of creative non-fiction essays that offers a collage of ethnography, reportage and memoir. The Red Swimsuit blurs the lines between what is considered social science, journalism and art. These essays will become part of a book- length work of creative non-fiction that will explore what it’s like to grow up as a woman in a globalized world wrought with social media, hookup culture and cross-cultural interactions. The Red Swimsuit provides first-hand experience, reflexive narration, and reflection on life as a member of Generation Z, also known as iGen.

Beat The Church Crowd, Evelyn Alston Tyer

Honors Theses

Beat the Church Crowd is a collection of poems that explores a variety of topics and themes, from personal family legacy and natural disasters to bestiary, ekphrastic, and southern locale poems. It is divided into four sections: “Blue Danube,” “Anecdotes,” “Urban Legends,” and “Something Worth Protecting.” While the subject matter and forms of the poems vary, the common thread weaving each poem to the next is the slight touch of the macabre.

Basements Below The Sanctuary: A Story Of The Church School, Rachel Winstead

Honors Theses

This is the story of belief in a southern Mississippi town and how that belief mirrors the national conservative counterrevolution that took shape at the same time. Hattiesburg’s segregation academy and church school were founded in the context of broader social movements. As the political power of the Citizen’s Council faltered and white moderates’ voices became louder, practical solutions to retain segregation within the boundaries of law grew to be the new focus of white communities. The conservative counterrevolution exploded in the South as Christian morality and “family values” became the rallying cry of former staunch segregationists and white moderates …

The Hair You Wished To Comb, Sarah Barch

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of poems exploring gender and trauma in Greek mythology by retelling classical stories in a female voice.

A Rhapsody Wild, Corey Davis

Honors Theses

This thesis is a fictional novel which explores themes of morality and tragedy within the society of a crime-and-murder-ridden city called Spekender. The mayor, Ev Edison, has become a disgraced recluse as a result of the tragic deaths of his wife and unborn child a year and a half prior to when the story takes place. His remaining children (three boys and a girl named Nimble) are left to navigate their disaster-torn worlds in isolation from their father and from each other. All of this changes one day when Nimble encounters a dangerous supernatural character that seems to know everything …

Personal Space: Explorations Of Environment, Surroundings, And Sense Of Place, Maggie Smith

Honors Theses

This thesis is a mixed collection of prose poetry and creative nonfiction focused on the author's relationship to her surroundings and environment. The poems and essays that make up this thesis are divided into three separate sections based on a shift in environment: childhood in Madison, MS, college in Oxford, MS, and travels outside of the state of Mississippi. While much of this thesis concerns natural environment and landscape in terms of its relationship to the author, the term environment also includes relationships with friends, family and lovers, abstract environments of educational institutions like Catholic school and public university, and …

Pilgrimage In The Modern World: Collected Stories, Catherine Page Lagarde

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to creatively explore various aspects of the modern pilgrimage in a collection of two nonfictional personal essays and one fictional short story, all of which are thematically linked. It is a study of faith, doubt, journey, and their intersection and manifestation in the modern world. It is inspired both by personal experiences as well as the works of various authors, most notably Carlos Eire, Walter Macken, Dodie Smith, Sharon Creech, Sigrid Undset, St. Thomas More, and St. Thomas Aquinas. This work seeks to give modern context and understanding to traditional understandings of pilgrimage, as described in The …

Voices, Anna Kennedy Shock

Honors Theses

Voices is a creative collection of fictional short stories based on perspectives from people residing in various locations worldwide. Research by way of historical documentaries, literature, and personal observation contributed to the completion of this project. Within this collection, multiple social justice issues are explored. These include but are not limited to the following: poverty, sex trafficking, educational opportunities, and malnourishment. Each individual story possesses its own set of characters, plot, and theme, but there are continuous thematic and structural consistencies throughout the collection. A few of these themes are desperation and survival, pain and suffering found in the human …

Surrendering To The Tangle: Essays, Caroline Abide

Honors Theses

A collection of creative nonfiction essays exploring the author's gender and sexuality, changing worldviews, and coming of age (under the direction of Kiese Laymon).

The Milk Carton Age, Dalton Huerkamp

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of poetry that examines masculinity and violence in the contemporary American South. Taking place in the states of Arkansas and Mississippi, these poems gather memories, voices and vistas to develop an understanding of place and identity that challenges traditional narratives about the region. Note: names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

Pretty Things Around The Sun, Alaina G. Newby

Honors Theses

The following thesis contains six short stories written from July 2016 to March 2017 in Tupelo, Mississippi and Oxford, Mississippi.

Sans Fin: Language Of Loss, Lane Jennings Proctor

Honors Theses

This is a hybrid collection of creative pieces that I have written in order to try to capture the feelings associated with loss and oppression. These pieces are only loosely related thematically and are not one single narrative. I especially wanted to focus on female characters who become disillusioned with their lives, find they have no real agency, or that they cannot truly write their own narratives. Through research on the Middle East, mostly focusing on Syria, and a close friendship with a Syrian refugee while I was studying abroad in Paris, I found the inspiration and ideas for many …

A Few Good Things, Rachel Byars Tran

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of poetry dealing with depression, the body, love, family, poverty, and the slow ache of memory.

Restraining Order, Michael Martella

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of poetry and creative non-fiction that examines the intersection of place and environment with personal identity. Here are pieces written about sex, anxiety, beauty, death, masculinity, violence. But ultimately, this is a collection derived from and dependent on love.

Dreams About Food, Benson R. Ingram

Honors Theses

The stories contained in this collection are entirely fictional, and any resemblance to reality is just your imagination. The source materials for these stories were dreams I had. Most of my dreams are about food

The Person You're Waiting For: Stories, Charles Ramsay Mccrory

Honors Theses

This collection of short fiction explores family, grief, and trauma from a variety of perspectives. Other themes spanning these five stories include parent-child bonds, addiction and recovery, and sexuality. Two pairs of stories (The Parents and The Painter, and Johnnie Walker and Staying Late, respectively) are linked in terms of character and setting; the middle story, Limits, is linked only tenuously to the last two stories through a common character. As stated in my introduction, I wrote each story on its own terms; I did not consider each story's placement in a collection until I had written and edited them …

Strange Gospels, Emily R. Duhe

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of poetry and short stories dealing with different kinds and perspectives of strangeness, particularly with the concept of the Other.

No Such Thing As Happiness, Megan Lindsay

Honors Theses

This thesis contains a collection of short stories I have written over a two year period. Major themes include loss, healing, nature, mental health issues, and the ways in which relationships (familial, companionate, etc.) strengthen characters.

The Wlbs: Women Of Whimsy, Rachel Ellen Banka

Honors Theses

This thesis is an entirely fictional novel about the five members of a women's book club in a small Mississippi town. It is told from three alternating perspectives and spans the course of one month, November, 2013. It is a story of lies, literature, love, and loss; of identity, community, friendship, and betrayal; and of hidden treasure, whatever form that takes.