Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Land Of Entrapment, Scott M. Anderson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

“Land of Entrapment” is a colloquial pun on the state motto of New Mexico, “The Land of Enchantment.” Though not every story is set in New Mexico, all of these stories examine characters trapped by something. In some cases, it’s drugs or terminal disease, while in others, characters are manacled by their emotions and feelings. In almost every case, the characters are haunted by their past, an inextricable part of their story, their existence. The narratives explore how these characters cope with their inescapable past while under some kind of duress, and find that the space between acceptance and despair …

Bleach, Cream, And Other Dolls, Elizabeth Diane Mackness

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Bleach, Cream, and Other Dolls questions current rape culture and the political power plays that take place behind it. As a whole, this work also investigates how the positioning of a speaker affects the ability to communicate, build and participate in relationships. Through this problem each speaker’s identity becomes skewed and the speakers struggle to find their identity through various mediums—revenge, death, penetration, definition, nature, skin and disintegration (among other possibilities).

Comedown, Lacey Daley

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

These stories examine the private spaces we keep within ourselves, and the people we claim to know best. The characters are not connected by place or time, but rather their struggles to learn the same lesson: the body is bound to fail us. “Comedown” explores love and loss beyond what is expected and each story ends with the discovery that these emotions are not always visceral.

Auto/Aura, Michael Wanzenried

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

I will make the poems of materials, for I think they are to be the most spiritual poems, And I will make the poems of my body and of mortality

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, section 6

Auto/Aura attempts to follow through on Whitman’s project by literally using materials from the world to create a situation that challenges the traditional reader-poet relationship. The poems here diverge from the page into a three-dimensional setting to continue in a largely personal and arbitrary lineage (as all poet-historical lineages tend to be according to Jerome Rothenberg) of 19th and 20th century poetic …

Kania, Indrani Sengupta

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Kania begins as a poetic revision of fairy tales, an attempt to extract the potential female narratives buried within the source texts, in their stifling archetypes. In the spirit of Angela Carter, it attempts to manipulate the most recognizable fairy tale motifs in order to explore issues of violence, deviant desire, sexuality, and monstrosity. As the text evolves, the archetypal “monster” shifts in location, becoming increasingly internal to the woman/speaker. First “he” is the abuser, then “she” is the errant woman, then finally, “it” is the interior anxiety, the self”s nightmare, ungendered and constantly in flux. The manuscript strives, through …