Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Three Thingness: A Critical Introduction To The Collection, Kasey Peters

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The following project, "Three Thingness," consists of a critical introduction and craft essay on short story writing, and a sample of the collection Very Light in the End. The critical essay "Three Thingness" introduces a framework for evaluating short stories, and then evaluates a few key components undergirding the collection: gender, plot, and comic relief. Part postmodern realism and part absurst-lite^tm fiction, the collected stories depict characters as they navigate prescriptive narratives about bodies, gender, queerness, and illness.

Advisor: Chigozie Obioma

Women Of The Wolf, Rosemary Sekora

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This is a creative thesis that introduces the novel Women of the Wolf and discusses the writer’s influences and research progress. Themes within the novel will include women relationships, cult culture, religious influences, and Native American (mis)representation. The sample included is the first ten pages from the novel.

Advisor: Timothy Schaffert

College Slasher Novel, Jeff Hill

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This project was completed in hopes of creating a new novel that combines the research and craft worlds of composition and creative writing while merging the social worlds of teaching and campus Greek life, as well as making relevant contemporary commentary on the genres of satire and horror. In preparation, beyond necessary course work completion and time to outline, write, workshop, and revise, I read numerous novels and articles and watched dozens of films and television episodes as well as conducted research regarding current campus demographic to compose the best novel I could write in my time within the program. …

The Evans Family: Familial Relationships In George Eliot's Life And Fiction, Hailey S. Fischer

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Biographers of George Eliot, when writing about her childhood, have focused on her close and complicated relationships with two of the most important men in her life, her father Robert Evans and brother Isaac Evans. Less discussed are Eliot’s relationships with her immediate female family members, her mother Christiana Pearson Evans and her sister Christiana (Chrissey) Evans Clarke. This thesis reviews the predominant interpretations of Eliot’s relations with her father and brother. It also pulls together the known information about Christiana and Chrissey from several major biographies and adds new insights from Eliot's letters in combination with two of her …

Ghosts In The Wood Pile, Susannah Rand

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

GHOSTS IN THE WOOD PILE is a creative thesis comprised of an artist statement, statement of creative influences, and five short stories. The artist statement serves to depict my goals in writing this collection—namely, to provide investigatory, critical, and joyful fantasies for a young queer audience—and addresses what work still needs to be done to complete this collection. The collection itself explores dystopian and fantastical alternate realities in which characters struggle with desire, selfhood, and societal expectation. A sample of the collection is included here.

Advisor: Jennine Capo Crucet

Them Ribbons Were Gold, Lucas Thompson

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

A short story titled Them Ribbons Were Gold by Lucas Thompson in UReCA: The NCHC Undergraduate Journal of Research and Creative Activity, 2021, pages 142-149.

Holding Up The Sky: Research-Based Fiction Writing, Madelynn Stuart

UCARE Research Products

Holding Up the Sky is the culmination of dedication and research to create a series of eleven vignettes detailing the narratives of immigrants through a work of fiction. The goal of this project is to bring to light the people who may not always be visible— those who have left their homes to travel somewhere strange, whether in search of better opportunities, lost loved ones, or a renewed hope in humanity. These immigrants, though unknown to many, deserve to be seen and to have their stories told so we can better understand the world around us. Through fictional vignettes strongly …

Dungeons And Drafting, Talitha Greaver, Paige Doland

Honors Expanded Learning Clubs

No abstract provided.

Deliberate Practice, Writing Self-Efficacy, And Self-Regulation Among Internet Novelists In China: A Phenomenological Approach, Shuangshuang Cai

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The focus of this study was the role of deliberate practice, writing self-efficacy and self-regulation in the lived experiences of Chinese internet literature novelists. This qualitative, phenomenological study presented the shared perceptions of this phenomenon drawn from interviews of Chinese internet novelists. The psychological aspects of these novelists were previously unexplored and this study helps to address the gap in the literature. The phenomenological method captured the experiences of the Chinese internet novelists and added this rich detail to the existing research literature.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with fourteen Chinese internet novelists, and related documents from other Chinese internet novelists’ …

The Only Way Forward, Michael Reed

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Only Way Forward is a creative thesis with a combination of Poetry and Fiction. There is a short introduction that shows the form and styles Michael has used as well as his back story into the creative writing world. He talks about many different authors that have helped him through his journey as well as many other peers and mentors. His biggest take away with his education is to “Just Keep Writing.”

“Marie” And “An Unusual Recourse”: English Translations Of German Early Romantic Stories, Meghan Leadabrand

Honors Theses

This project consists of English translations of two German early Romantic stories, “Marie” (1798) by Sophie Mereau and “Seltner Ausweg” (1823) by Luise Brachmann, as well as an introductory discussion of the authors, their significance in the Jena Circle of Romantic writers, and the translation process. The introduction incorporates research on both Mereau and Brachmann and German early Romanticism, as well as some research on translation theory. Overall, the project aims to make “Marie” and “Seltner Ausweg,” which have not previously been translated, available to an English-speaking audience and to highlight the work of two little known Romantic women writers. …

A Critical Analysis Of History’S Best Wishes, Jeffery Keene Short

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This is a critical, reflective analysis of a work of fiction by the author Keene Short, as a means to assess and analyze the artistic and creative development of the project as a whole. The creative work is collection of nine historical fiction short stories, some connected by characters and others standing alone in the collection. The analysis actively explores and engages with several facets relevant to the author’s creative goals, including theory, influences, background, motive, form, genre, and content. The analysis is divided into a summary, critique, and sample of one story from the collection, History’s Best Wishes.

Advisor: …

The Creation Of A Novelist, David Henson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Some notes on writing, a brief bibliography of current influences, and an excerpt from the novel Went Out Laughing by David Henson.

Advisor: Timothy Schaffert

Engl 352: Intermediate Fiction Writing—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Chigozie Obioma

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

Absent the elements of effective writing, there has been a strong debate on whether or not other aspects of creative writing can be taught. Many practicing writers like myself who teach have concluded that a student writer can be guided towards fully actualizing their talent, and this “guidance” is what mostly constitutes teaching. How then do we evaluate the effectiveness of this teaching, and to what extent do students’ individual talent help or stand in the way of effective instruction? How do we plan various learning outcomes and test the success of such strategies over the duration of the ENGL …

"In The Land Of Tomorrow": Representations Of The New Woman In The Pre-Suffrage Era, Natalie B. O'Neal

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This digital anthology explores feminism in selected short fiction by women writers from the 1911 run of the popular women’s magazines Woman’s Home Companion, Ladies’ Home Journal, and The Farmer’s Wife. This fiction furthered the women’s rights movement by allowing women to imagine a world similar to their own with a heroine who voiced their desires and enacted change. Rather than the more experimental, inaccessible literature of avant garde high modernist writers consumed by the upper class, popular fiction reached a wider, middle class audience and was more effective at producing a progressive zeitgeist following the stilted Victorian …

Symptoms Of The Virus, Emily Haase

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

SYMPTOMS OF THE VIRUS BY DR. HENRY ESQUIRE III MD CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER 1. Severe hunger, often voicing their distress. 2. Chronic moodiness, confusion, sullenness. 3. Irritability, otherwise emotionally unstable. Paranoia. 4. Homicidal tendencies – full takeover of the disease. Handle with caution.

“Making a list of symptoms of the zombification virus. Like, Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 … except I don’t know what to say about how it’s spread, which is probably what’s most important. Through the air, d’you think?”

Redwoods, John Joseph Hill

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

To the outside world, Northern California might be trees, granola, hippies, rivers, snowboarders, environmentalists, farming, beaches, diverse wildlife, and wealth. Through a series of loosely interlocking fiction stories, this thesis explores the Northern California below the surface where people work as garbage collectors by day and attend community college by night, where teenage girls scam people in the park for free alcohol, where lovers spend their date night as part of a nude human-chain to protect an old growth redwood from being cut down, and where animal rights activists smoke cigarettes and seek love. Informed by personal experience and a …

Scenes From The Gaijin Life, Ian Rogers

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Scenes from the Gaijin Life contains eight interconnected stories about foreigners (gaijin in Japanese) living and working as English teachers in urban Japan. It recounts their daily lives and initial struggles, their jobs and their nights out, their formal conversations and their personal ones. The first five stories use a detached, neutral narration that forces readers to interpret sensory details on their own, while the latter three use an omniscient narration that helps readers understand the characters’ interactions with Japan. Though the eight scenes are all different, they’re connected by estrangement, longing, uncertainty, and the characters’ ever-present dissatisfaction with …

Laurus: After Dark. Fall 2014, Daley Eldorado, Sarah Benal, Emily Burns, Kirsten Clawson, Eric Holt, Sam Greenfield, Sean Stewart, Lori Nevole, Kayla Punt, Alexa Horn, Nicole Mosby, Abie Rohde, Michael Page, Dizzy Roberson, Samuel Lee, Emily Tran, Leonardo Casabella, Scott Sampson, Katie Cooley, Alec Kaus, Hannah Eads, Madeline Cass, Nicholas Wilkinson, Haley Heesacker, Mina Holmes, Evan Pillle

Laurus: Undergraduate Literature Journal of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Contents

Dizzy Roberson
“The Devil Is Just Left of the Spleen”...6

Samuel Lee
“Sonnet - To Punk”.....9
“Sonnet, Again”......26
“Sea of Trees”......42

Emily Tran
“Bloody Eyeballs”.....10

Leonardo Casabella
“The Broken Frame”.....11

Scott Sampson
“Packed”.......18

Katie Cooley
“Shades”.......19

Alec Kaus
“Warrant”......20
“Waiting”......25
“When the Night”.....44

Hannah Eads
“Blessed Be!”......21

Madeline Cass
“Scrimshaw”......23

Nicholas Wilkinson
“The Hunt”......27

Haley Heesacker
“The Lonely Pink Flower”.....35

Mina Holmes
“Sugar and Spice”.....36

Evan Pille
“To the Desk of Edgar L. Brandbum”...45

Contributor Bios......59

Editor Bios......62

Getting Away: Three Chapters Of A Novel Draft, Martin M. Chaffee

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis consists of three chapters of a novel in progress. Getting Out is the story of Joel and Sarah Bauer, a couple in their mid-twenties who teach at an international school in Maracaibo, Venezuela. They are struggling to break the news to Sarah’s conservative Christian parents, Bill and Cindy, that they are planning to make a career as international teachers instead of returning home as previously planned. Anticipating that Bill and Cindy will receive the news poorly, Joel and Sarah have decided to fly her parents to Maracaibo to break the news. But on the morning of her parents' …

Cumberland [Abstract], Megan Gannon

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Set in a fictional town on the coast of Georgia in July of 1972, Cumberland is the story of two fifteen-year-old twin sisters, Ansel and Isabel (“Izzy”) Mackenzie, who have lived with their frugal, eccentric grandmother since the age of eight when their parents were killed in a car accident and Isabel was paralyzed. Over the years, the burden of caring for her sister has fallen increasingly on Ansel. However, as Ansel cultivates a romantic relationship with a local boy, as well as an artistic apprenticeship with a visiting photographer, her growing desires for selfhood and independence compromise her ability …

Wind Through The Buffalo Grass: A Lakota Story Cycle, Paul A. Johnsgard

Paul Johnsgard Collection

Wind Through the Buffalo Grass: A Lakota Story Cycle is a narrative history of the Pine Ridge Lakota tribe of South Dakota, following its history from 1850 to the present day through historical events and through the stories of four fictional Lakota children, each related by descent and separated from one another by two generations. The ecology of the Pine Ridge region, especially its mammalian and avian wildlife, is woven into the stories of the children. Illustrated by the author, the book indudes drawings of Pine Ridge wildlife, regional maps, and Native American pictorial art. Appendices indude a listing of …