Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Arc, Lisa Fountain

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My collection, Arc, is about the struggle to become a human being and to find one’s own identity. Also, it is about how humans fall apart and come together on a regular basis – that we must find forgiveness – we must learn to love in even the most difficult circumstances – and we must, above all, continue to grow, and challenge our personal limits. Life does not contain us –it welcomes us – and that is part of the message I seek to convey through my writing. The imagery in my writing is grounded in my memories of my …

Treasure, Karen M. Perkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Long after a brutal series of events resulted from her power exchange relationship, Treasure Montgomery’s recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder is hampered by relationships with family members and the legal difficulties of her foster daughter.

Thinking Before You Act: A Constructive Logic Approach To Crafting Performance-For- Development Narrative, Angela Duggins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this thesis was to test the feasibility of constructing performance-for-development narrative using a constructive logic approach. I created an equation which expressed the sum of non-human-elements as the sum of a narrative with each element serving as a variable. I used a review of persuasion literature to provide insight into the selection and manipulation of each variable. I provided my family as a hypothetical example and used my knowledge of their preferences and communication styles in conjunction with the literature and the equation to craft a narrative which might increase pro-school attitudes in other families like my …

Only The Earth Remains: Exploring The Machine In Selected Lyric Poetry Of Robinson Jeffers, Mark Hutton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Idea in America, Leo Marx “evaluates the uses of the pastoral ideal in the interpretation of American experience” (Marx 4). While Marx explores ways that pastoralism has been impacted by factors such as industrialism, it is the purpose of this project to explore Marx’s assertion regarding the presence of the figurative and literal machine within the poetry of Robinson Jeffers.

Jeffers’ poetry is generally located within the landscapes of California. His lyric poetry has a distinct connection to the land and is driven by inhumanism, which works to shift …

Retellings : A Collection Of Nonfiction Essays., Jennifer Kiefer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of nonfiction essays, extending both into the realms of journalism as well as into more traditional creative nonfiction essays. While each piece is based in true stories, each piece has its own style. As such, this collection is an exploration of different forms of and takes on the nonfiction essay. It is divided into four chapters, one for each essay. The first half encompasses journalistic pieces previously published in Louisville Magazine, one in the August 2016 issue and one in the February 2017 issue. The first piece is a literal retelling of three medical stories, …

Short Stories., Karley Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My creative thesis consists of a number of short stories. Each individual story stands alone, though all pieces in the project are doubtless connected by setting and syntax. Perhaps due to my own lack of imagination the stories take place, at least to some extent, in a small town. Though this may not be made explicit in every story, it can be deduced. Small town life, and particularly small town folk, are of interest to me; they are also what I know best. For example, Tom of “Neighbors” is a man living in a small town. The old man next …

Eight Pieces Of Pie., Maggie E. Cassaro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As a studio artist and a creative writer, I contemplated what would happen if I utilized the principles of fine art in the application of the written word. If I became the subject of the written word, could I formulate the telling of my story in such a way that a reader could find themselves sculpted within its pages? Eight Pieces of Pie tells my story, that as a single woman at the age of forty-three years, eight months and six days, I discovered I was unavailable. I delved back to my first memories to discover how my emotional unavailability …

His Scent Of Sandalwood., Lujain Almulla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This creative thesis is a collection of fictional stories, connected by a common geographical and cultural thread: Kuwait. The stories unravel across a span of four thousand years. The poetic-prose style of the opening vignette is a nod to the earliest form of writing that makes up the bulk of Kuwait’s literature: poetry. The abstractedness of the two opening pieces reflects the lack of a deep-rooted national identity, and a brevity in Kuwait’s historical record. The remainder of the thesis explores the evolution of this national identity, as well as the infiltration of Western culture into modern Kuwait, and its …

I. In The Time Of The Others : A Novel ; Ii. Out Of East Pakistan : Postcolonial Colony Bangladesh As A Case Study Of Postcolonial State And Postcolonial Nation-State From East Pakistan To Independence Through The Liberation War Of 1971 : A Critical Analysis., Nadeem Zaman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a combined creative and critical project consisting a novel and a theoretical component. The novel entitled In the Time of the Others is a fictional account set during the true event of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Using the war as a backdrop, the novel tells the story of one man trying to manage his family, marriage, and financial situation by returning to an inheritance he never claimed. The journey brings him from his home in southern East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) to the capital city Dhaka, to the home of his maternal uncle and aunt under …

Don't Go Unless You Mean It : A Novel With Critical Afterword : Heteronormative Masculine Performance In Contemporary Fictions Of The Rural American South., Nathan N. Gower

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of a full-length novel for an adult audience as well as a substantial critical afterword to elucidate and complicate germane thematic concerns of the creative artifact. The novel, leaning on the rich traditions and many genre conventions of fictions of the American south, tells the story of an unlikely underground coal miner in Blue Banks, a fictional southern town set in the caverns and rolling hills of the western Kentucky coal fields. The narrative follows its fish-out-of-water protagonist, Cody Culver, a fledgling academic who thought he had escaped his fate as a third-generation coal miner when he …

The Sleepless Ouroboros, Grant Bohl

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The poems in The Sleepless Ouroboros are about the obsessions which come to define a person. These obsessions are memories, dreams, objects or ideas that cannot be separated from the whole. Poems such as "Thinking of Big Moe" and "It Begins with a Fox" grapple with the limitations of memory, while poems such as "The Python" and "Heirloom" counterpoint memory's weakness with the supposed permanence of physical artifacts. Depression and anger, the anxieties of identity and displacement, and representations of the people and animals that leave lasting impact on a life are all addressed as vital components of the completed …

Moving Water, Alexandra Arend

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Moving Water is a novella in which the characters must reckon with grief, time, the divine, and the mysterious bonds forged and broken with each other. Phoebe and her family come to terms with the death of Jason, Phoebe's older brother, and with themselves. Around them, the universe moves in ambivalent splendor, dying and being born anew.

When Our Cities Hollowed, Hana Al-Harastani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

When Our Cities Hollowed is an interrelated collection of short fiction that follows an extended family's everyday lives before and during the Syrian Civil War. In efforts to combat current media narratives regarding Syrians, this collection presents a complex counter-narrative, following characters of a typical Sunni Muslim, middle-class family, some of whom support the government, others of whom support the opposition. War, in these stories, is a looming shadow, often acting as a catalyst to many of the characters' conclusions about love, family, and what it means to be alive.

Heavy Hit Me, Shauna Basques

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Heavy Hit Me is a memoir series linking obesity to sexual desire and its corresponding fear, linking fantasy to the lived loneliness of a girl too distrusting of her own body and attractions to live outside her own head. Told through essay, found letters, and shifting points of view, Heavy Hit Me explores the breadth of its protagonist's chosen isolation. It shows how the many itches of insecurity craft a young woman never challenged to really know and love herself—until now.

Modern Arcana, Kaitlin Kolhoff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Modern Arcana is a collection of eleven short stories, totaling 124 pages, and was written in pursuit of a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. This collection was written through multiple stages of planning and revising work in response to the feedback of peers and instructors. Through writing this thesis, I explored my own relationship to the craft of creative writing and composition, as well as the familiarized myself with the current work being published in my field and genre. This collection is made unique through the sharing magical elements between pieces and the themes of agency in relation …

Only The End: A Collection Of Connected Short Stories, Lucy Sneeringer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In a series of connected short stories, the author explores the funeral industry by following a body as it is prepared for its final resting. The EMTs, mortician, funeral director, and cremators offer their unique perspective on the many faces death can take. However, it is the eyes of the mourners and Benny himself that see the deeper impact of his passing. By uncovering who Benny was in life, a man struggling with marriage and fatherhood, the author shows just how far the impact of his death reaches.

Blood Moon, Brendan Stephens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Blood Moon is a collection of short stories that explore friendship, addiction, and punk subculture. Centered around a hardcore band called Dead Phoenix, the three members—Eliot, Noah, and Josh—go on tour, live in a punk house, and plunge headfirst into opioid addiction. The stories explore their lives before they played together in the band, while touring with the band, and after the band's controversial breakup. These stories attempt to show that music, identity, and temporary bonds forever alter the trajectory of a person's life.

(In)Tangible Things, Ryan Skaryd

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

(In)Tangible Things is a collection of memoir essays and poems that examines loss, pain, and identity. Many pieces explore familial ties through separation, secrecy, and divorce, while other stories and poems observe the author's connection to drag culture, sexuality, eating disorders, and time itself. Using techniques such as framing devices, backwards storytelling, and delineated narrative, the author invites the reader to experience memories and moments from his past that show consistency and change, betrayal and forgiveness.

Because You Are Beautiful And Dead, Yvonne Amey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The poems in Because You Are Beautiful and Dead deal with dysfunctional people, substance abuse, loss, and death and dying. The poems also highlight the struggle of the poet/speaker finding her place in a hideous world, which, paradoxically, she really doesn't want to belong. The poems are influenced by the playful and sad imagery and subject matter of poet Matthew Dickman. These poems, like Dickman's, are assessable and quirky. Michael Earl Craig and Terrance Hayes are two other influences. Hayes' work is artistic and experimental. Michael Earl Craig's poems have a brilliance that isn't fueled in its complex or radical …

Natural Disasters, Rebecca Cobb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Natural Disasters is a collection of twelve short stories that feature a variety of narrators as they interact with the ones they love. In these stories, characters experience puberty, friendship, love, loss, trauma, and the everyday magic of living as they fight to master their own failings. Those lucky enough find solace in the forgiving beauty of nature, while others succumb to the untamable power of its disasters. This thesis is useful, important, and unique as it focuses on the stories of a variety of characters, mostly women and children, and displays the beauty and fearsome power of nature as …

In The Shadow Of God, Gothataone Moeng

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work of fiction comprises a collection of stories exploring the lives of women in post-Independence and contemporary Botswana, as they navigate love, relationships, traditions disease, caretaking and grieving in a rapidly changing world.

Meet And Greet, Matt Kessler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A collection of original short stories.

Poetry Is Dead, Jeffrey Lance

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Poetry is dead and I'm a fucking necromancer.

Stories, Marc David Inman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is a work of fiction.

Reflection And Acceptance: Small Town Ghosts Represented In Poetry, Adam Junker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the theories of ethnography and ethnographic verse and applies these two theories in an original narrative in verse. Ethnography and ethnographic verse have a complicated relationship when it comes to a poet’s authority representing a certain place. Yet authenticity is never obtainable, since perceptions of a place are always subjective. That subjectivity allows a poet creative expression, as he or she shapes his or her relationship with a place and the people within it. The poet then must rely on elements like unifying imagery, dialect, surrealism, and empathetic insights. With these elements, a poet can identify with …

Twinless, Molly Mccully Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This manuscript is concerned with the loss of my identical twin sister, who died when we were infants. The collection as a whole uses biographical experience to engage with issues of identity, grief, sisterhood, and selfhood. It’s interested in the ways that spiritual experience is borne out in the body, and in interrogating the manner in which we’re all made and marked by our own particular hieroglyphs of loss.

Speak'st, Art Sound: The Material Voice In Early Modern England, Nathaniel Philip Likert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that early moderns conceived of speech as a material phenomenon; voice struck out from bodies into environments. Early modern voices thus participate in what sound studies scholars call the soundscape, which I link to current new materialist and ecological theories of network and assemblage. Within this soundscape, I pay special attention to the role of language as a semantic system of meaning. Current ecological criticism takes for granted the utter “flatness” of ontology, and as such discards the question of human language so central to previous deconstructive and discursive scholarship. My thesis attempts to account for the …

Yesterday Lesson, Samuel Aaron Milligan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is a work of fiction describing a special education boarding school in Southern Illinois.

Everyday Monsters: Stories, Brian Druckenmiller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

These seven short stories explore characters either at war with themselves or living in a delusion, unaware that their skewed sense of self projects a subjective version of the universe. When one operates in a world that doesn't quite exist, their real world is destined to crumble, and, for many of these characters, the challenge is understanding the mirage's existence before it's too late. By slightly bending the parameters of reality as well as inviting these characters and conflicts into absurdity, Everyday Monsters offers wholly unique commentary on familiar struggles, including marriage, occupation, grief, destiny, and societal expectations.

Some Girls, Sabrina Napolitano

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This novel in stories explores the viewpoint of an unnamed, agender narrator as they navigate their life from childhood into early adulthood. Through the narrator's unique lens, the stories explore gender, sexuality, mental illness, family, and loneliness. The narrator's struggles with belonging and overarching feelings of abandonment intertwine with the sometimes isolating and dangerous landscape of Florida. From their interactions with both Florida and the people who pass through their life, the narrator begins to learn how to accept who are they are, without apology.