Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Thylacine Dreams: The Vernacular Resurrection Of An Extinct Marsupial, Daisy M. Ahlstone

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis explores the folk resurrection of the thylacine through artwork and symbolic interaction. The thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, is a marsupial that suffered a government-sanctioned massacre leading to its extinction in 1936. The thylacine’s status as a hidden animal has inspired what folklorists call “ostensive practice”; people not only actively seek out the thylacine in the wilderness of Tasmania today and share their sightings online, but they have also incorporated the thylacine as a symbol of hope and perseverance into various forms of folk art.

There have been upwards of five thousand documented sightings of the …

The Legend, The Madman, And The Prophet A Memoir About Fathers And Sons, Erik K. Thalman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Legend, the Madman, and the Prophet is a memoir about fathers and sons, about the experience of being a son of a man of the Rocky Mountains, a legend grown old. The narrative centers around my struggle with the fact that my father had grown old and sick while I was still young, and my consequent search for other fathers, employing two primary examples—a martial-arts instructor from my high-school years who was later exposed as a pedophile, and the eccentric figure of my ex-girlfriend’s wealthy and traditional Egyptian-American father. The memoir relates the story of my father’s impact on …