Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Yardbirds, Joshua A. Brewer

All NMU Master's Theses

Novel-length fictions, when at their best, deeply complicate themes, characters, events or situations using the form’s lengthy narrative arc. Yardbirds aims to employ the long narrative arc to engage a fictional west Arkansas mountain community, Ink, and the contemporary post-mill economy evoked. Yardbirds attempts to disorient the traditional notion of point-of-view to recognize the multifaceted power of the land. This work features a multi-racial, bilingual and multicultural community which confronts the longstanding black-white binary that has dominated literary depictions of the American South. This work aims to disrupt that notion—the South as monolith—by presenting bioregional communities as central to individuals’ …

Finding Tuwaqachi, And Other Essays, Cory G. Ferrer

All NMU Master's Theses

This thesis is a collection in four parts, divided by genre with the exception of the titular essay series, Finding Tuwaqachi. Insecurity, affirmation, and our need to connection emerge as the primary themes of this work. The essay series, Finding Tuwaqachi, takes a close look at intentional community and center for alternative therapy located in southern Michigan during the 1970s, by examining several lives caught up in this project. Part two of this collection comprises a series of lyric essays which explore the need to be heard, as well as the ultimate fallibility of our attempts to understand and …

With The Light Caught Between, Albert M. Jacoby

All NMU Master's Theses

Although Henry and Claire Lumens are twins, their high school lives couldn’t be more opposite. Henry enjoys sketching, looking at handsome boys, and reading about fantastical places, but his shy and pensive nature means he battles demons of his own every day in the gym locker room. Claire, however, loves the world she lives in, which is easy because she’s bossy, clever, and stunning. On their seventeenth birthday, their grandmother gives them a gift that will take them to a fantastical world. Despite their ignorance of the world’s existence, their grandmother insists it’s their birthplace, and the only way they …

All Feathers And Attitude, Virginia Macdonald

All NMU Master's Theses

This collection of essays and prose poems seeks to examine the elements of an identity: how memories, culture, work, place, family, and brain chemistry simultaneously create and undermine a sense of self. How the sense of self is not contiguous, or smooth. How hope and regret wrestle.

While deeply personal, All Feathers and Attitude is not a memoir, but rather an assemblage of interpretations based on actual events. The individual pieces are gathered into sections that correlate somewhat to the themes mentioned above, but the sections are not labeled as such. The readers may draw whatever conclusions they wish regarding …

Past The Edge Of The Forest, Emily M. Suess

All NMU Master's Theses

This fictional work traces the superstitions around No Name Forest as members of the town just beyond the forest begin to disappear. While set in present day, the piece draws on the way fairy tales use the inexplicable and strange to engage readers in questioning the human experience. The story details the disappearances of several people from the town of Little Haven. While each of these disappearances are presented in individual tales, they are linked together through the voice of a girl who has been tracking the disappearances. In search of the father who abandoned her, Gwynn Halpert is interested …

16-Bit Ghouls: A Novella, Alyssa M. Bersine

All NMU Master's Theses

This novella follows twenty-something phone psychic and recluse, Jane, whose dead brother haunts her Super Nintendo. When he prompts Jane to find his killer, she must learn how to navigate a world where he is absent. Jane struggles not only with the ghost, but also with letting go of the nostalgia and anxiety that prevent her from moving on with her life. 16-Bit Ghouls is a story about grief and growing-up.