Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Arts and Humanities Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 21 of 21

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Nonduality And Identity: An Exploration Of Form, Genre, And Perspective, Hannah Ritter May 2024

Nonduality And Identity: An Exploration Of Form, Genre, And Perspective, Hannah Ritter

Honors Theses

This thesis utilizes hybrid forms of poetry and prose to examine questions of nonduality, perspective, and identity, simultaneously testing the boundaries of genre and form as a whole. The opening craft essay offers a more specific analysis of form and genre, particularly those of poetry / prose and fiction / nonfiction, while the creative writing demonstrates how such differentia are relevant to the art of creative writing.


Tales Of The Keyworld: An Examination Of The Study And Application Of Craft Theory For Writers, Lauren Bruce Dec 2023

Tales Of The Keyworld: An Examination Of The Study And Application Of Craft Theory For Writers, Lauren Bruce

Honors Theses

The following consists of a craft essay focused on character and close third-person narration and a novel excerpt. The craft essay begins with a discussion of what craft theory is and how it is useful to writers when used together with reading analysis. It then synthesizes the conversation around close third-person narration and character and applies it to a close reading analysis of Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas. The novel excerpt comes from the middle of a work in progress and concerns members of the Keyworld, a fantastical sub-layer of the modern world unknown to most humans.


The Immortal Laugh Track: 20th Century Technology And Media Monoculture, Benjamin Sanford May 2023

The Immortal Laugh Track: 20th Century Technology And Media Monoculture, Benjamin Sanford

Honors Theses

The movies, music, and TV shows of the late 20th century have far more staying power than the media that came before and after them. In the 21st century, we consume more media than ever, but we do not gather around the same small group of movies and TV shows in the way that people did decades ago. The M*A*S*H finale in 1983 was viewed by 121.6 million people, over half the population of the United States at that time; the finale of Game of Thrones, one of the most popular shows of the past decade, received around 15 million …


A Tale From Esterad: An Examination Of The Political Power Of Fantasy, Koy Skinner May 2023

A Tale From Esterad: An Examination Of The Political Power Of Fantasy, Koy Skinner

Honors Theses

The following is a short craft essay on the political nature of the fantasy genre followed by an original short story. The craft paper situates the reader in the discourse of fantasy being political or apolitical before shifting into a discussion of how Tolkien, Le Guin, and Sapkowski explore political ideas through their works. After, there is a brief section where the thought process going into the short story is explored before launching into the creative piece. The piece is five chapters long and explores a refugee crisis caused by a civil war in the fantasy world of Esterad.


Identidem, And Other Lyric Essays, Jude Keef May 2023

Identidem, And Other Lyric Essays, Jude Keef

Honors Theses

In Randon Billings Noble's introduction to A Harp in the Stars, she writes "Lyric essays require a kind of passion, a commitment to weirdness in the face of convention, a willingness to risk confusion, a comfort with outsider status. When I’m writing a lyric essay, I’m not worried about what it is or what to call it." I seek to play with this commitment, confusion, and comfort in my own work. This collection of lyric essays revolves around gender identity, the love and fear of labels, and how we, as queer people, can still feel nostalgic for our past.


Something Holy, Madison Silva May 2023

Something Holy, Madison Silva

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis contains two parts: a craft paper on interiority and seven chapters of a young adult social realism novel. The craft paper explores different strategies for “showing and telling” as a means of conveying interiority in faith-based characters, and it analyzes these strategies in two YA novels, Let’s Call it Doomsday by Katie Henry and Autoboyography by Christina Lauren, both of which center around queer, Mormon characters. The novel chapters in the thesis are from Something Holy, which follows Beck Taylor, an eighteen-year-old, mostly closeted bisexual boy who only has a few months until he leaves on a two-year …


Aboutness: The Lyric Essay, Alicia Gladman Aug 2022

Aboutness: The Lyric Essay, Alicia Gladman

Honors Theses

In “Structure: Lifeblood of the Lyric Essay,” Lesh Karan writes: “I had discovered a prose genre where the writer leans on form… to eloquently hold the inexpressible aboutness, to let meaning dance in the spaces between its juxtaposed parts.” The lyric essay engages us in a search for an elusive truth, and attempts to give definition to things that, while hanging heavy above us, may have been unclear until put to paper. This form provides a powerful medium through which an author can explore their own conflicting perspectives, giving voice to emotions and experiences that illuminate our paradoxical and imprecise …


Young Adult: A Poetic Exploration Of Modern American Life, Ellie Bixler May 2021

Young Adult: A Poetic Exploration Of Modern American Life, Ellie Bixler

Honors Theses

Adrienne Rich, in her 1993 essay “Someone Is Writing a Poem,” writes “In a political culture of managed spectacles and passive spectators, poetry appears as a rift, a peculiar lapse, in the prevailing mode.” In this collection, I make my own attempt to part with the prevailing mode. I use my poetry as a means of engaging and contending with the American socio-political dialogue that often feels both deeply pervasive and largely inaccessible. Grounded in the thematic conventions of political and ecological poetry, this collection is an exploration of what it means and how it feels to come of age …


Reparations, Jhedienne Adams May 2021

Reparations, Jhedienne Adams

Honors Theses

This collection of original poems is a testament to the tenacity of Black American women. It deals with the connection between personal and collective identities, and attempts to make tangible the pervasive themes of racial oppression, familial tension, societal vulnerability, and hope that are uniquely found in the experiences of southern Black women. This collection began as an exploration of transgenerational trauma, and while the final project addresses that theme, it is primarily an exercise in grappling with the modern manifestations of a complex history, a process with an importance that grew exceedingly more obvious as the nation faced a …


American Sissy: Original Poetry, Jonah Stokes May 2021

American Sissy: Original Poetry, Jonah Stokes

Honors Theses

The creative art of poetry is a complex form, yet the fundamental aspect of the poetic form is of experience. The experience of the poet as well as the experience of the reader reading a poem is what is defined as the crucial element of poetry in this creative endeavor. This study analyzes works of contemporary poets who successfully portray the art of experience in their work. Looking at Romantic and marginalized poets, this study seeks to understand the complexity of poetic experience. The introduction is followed by a series of poem's that emphasize the experience of the author.


Entre Países, Jared Steiman May 2020

Entre Países, Jared Steiman

Honors Theses

This collection of original poems deals with the unique experience of transnational family, particular to the international and interracial tensions of the years 2014-2020. The works focus on intimate portraits of life in the United States South, the Mexican South, and the relationship between. Love and loss feature prominently. Injustice is sewn throughout. Accompanying the original poems are a number of translations of Octavio Paz and Rosario Castellanos, as well as a craft essay detailing the process of creating this body of work.


Living Document: An Exploration Of “Self” Through Lyric & Hybrid Forms, Shannon Sweeney May 2020

Living Document: An Exploration Of “Self” Through Lyric & Hybrid Forms, Shannon Sweeney

Honors Theses

In the famously confessional field of creative nonfiction, the question of preserving one’s privacy is perhaps best explored by means of lyrical or hybrid essays; an explorative piece found at the intersection of poetic form and prose, between objective fact and creative presentation, which “sets off on an uncharted course through interlocking webs of idea, circumstance, and language - a pursuit with no foreknown conclusion, [and] an arrival that might still leave the writer questioning,” according to Noam Dorr. This pursuit without strict purpose allows for writers to dissect and discover the intricacies of seemingly straightforward topics: truth, memory, even …


The Rule Of Contraction: A Manuscript Of Sequential Prose Poems With An Introduction, Bonné A. De Blas May 2016

The Rule Of Contraction: A Manuscript Of Sequential Prose Poems With An Introduction, Bonné A. De Blas

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The prose poem is a hybrid form firmly rooted in 19th century French literary tradition, and later adopted by British and American poets. Questions as to genre arise when critically assessing possible formulaic divisions demonstrated by various techniques and tropes within fiction and poetry. The creative portion of this thesis consists of the complete manuscript of sequential prose poems constituting Bonné A. de Blas’s chapbook, The Rule of Contraction. The introductory essay discusses the history of the modern prose poem, as well as the questions of genre surrounding its form, and describes the influences of the New Prose Poem and …


A Negotiation In Meaning: Identifying American Cultural Touchstones, Jayne Jaya Todai May 2015

A Negotiation In Meaning: Identifying American Cultural Touchstones, Jayne Jaya Todai

Honors Theses

How can discussing a poem lead to a meaningful conversation? What if Americans used common poems as their nation's cultural touchstones? In my essay, I will explore how poems that serve as American cultural touchstones might develop better communicators within the United States. I will propose a template that determines which poems would qualify as these national touchstones.


Impact Of Ekphrastic Poetry Upon My Writing, Lacy C. Snapp May 2015

Impact Of Ekphrastic Poetry Upon My Writing, Lacy C. Snapp

Honors Theses

This thesis contains an introduction in which I will define ekphrastic poetry and provide an explication of some ekphrastic poetry written throughout history, followed by a conclusion in which I will include my own poetry, both ekphrastic and non, followed by an explication of my progress. The first section will be about questioning how the selected poets use their chosen image to enhance their own writing, and the true purpose of ekphrastic poetry. The second section will show how my poetry has developed since this project began and I started focusing on ekphrastic poetry. When I write ekphrastic poetry, not …


Heathens And How They're Made, Garret Crowe May 2012

Heathens And How They're Made, Garret Crowe

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis contains 23 poems with an introduction in which I explain how I craft my poetry. In the introduction, I use examples from both critical and creative sources to identify tools I utilize during the craft process of a poem. The subject matter of the poems within this thesis ranges from speakers pondering childhood moments to mature voices examining domestic relationships. Some of the poems may be considered confessional poetry as the works are immensely personal and the speaker is I, the writer. Other poems apply literary styles that are commonly associated with Dirty Realism and Southern Gothic.


Out Of The Body, Benjamin Louis Duvall May 2012

Out Of The Body, Benjamin Louis Duvall

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis contains four original pieces of short fiction and one short essay on the craft of writing fiction. The short stories range in topics from a young man who doesn’t want to work in his father’s business to a writer who comes face to face – and often shares bodies – with his own characters. Two of the stories are literary fiction, one is metafiction, and one is science-fiction. All four stories are written in the first-person point of view. The craft essay examines the prevalence and implications of the self-aware first-person narrator in fiction. This particular narrative style …


Not Knowing The Days, Jennifer Davis May 2010

Not Knowing The Days, Jennifer Davis

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis consists of a collection of three short stories and the chapter of my first novel, as well as a critical introduction addressing the literary and creative contexts of the work. The pieces encompass a range of themes, but I have paid particular attention to perspective, perception, and a feeling of displacement or incongruity with society. In the introduction, I discuss the Southern Gothic genre in literature and how several of its characteristics have shaped the stories in my collection as well as my writing in general, especially verisimilitude and the grotesque.


Starkin, Rebecca W. Miller May 2010

Starkin, Rebecca W. Miller

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

In traditional fantasy novels, as established with J.R.R. Tolkien‘s Lord of the Rings, the main character embarks on a heroic journey. As defined by Joseph Campbell, who was the author, editor and translator of books on mythology such as The Hero with a Thousand Faces a heroic journey is an epic quest that leads the hero physically to an internal rebirth. Within Campbell‘s study of the monomyth, using those conventions outlined by Campbell, I will show how Tolkien elements uses Campbell‘s conventions in Middle Earth, where a simple young hobbit ends up saving his world. In traditional fantasy, the stories …


Low Water: A Collection Of Short Fiction, Charles Conn May 2010

Low Water: A Collection Of Short Fiction, Charles Conn

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The craft of fiction evolves and progresses alongside other pursuits in the humanities. This thesis project represents a culmination of study in the process of creating fiction from standard practices which are fundamental to creating fiction that “works” to innovations in the field and how they have shaped the craft through its history. The creative thesis project is an attempt to apply some of these fundamental and experimental concepts to my own creative work and thereby develop a collection of short fiction representative of my abilities as a writer and my training as a writing student. A brief look into …


That Almond Smell: Seven Short Stories, John J. Mccormack Aug 2009

That Almond Smell: Seven Short Stories, John J. Mccormack

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

No abstract