Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Nine Times Out Of Ten, You Don't Die, Patrick Ronald Wensink

Dissertations and Theses

My novel, "Nine Times Out of Ten, You Don't Die," is the story of Layla Wisnewski and her quest to write a book about her famous father. In the 1970s, "Big Dan" Wisnewski was a motorcycle stuntman who broke more bones than anyone living. He jumped cars and buses and rivers atop a white Harley Davidson. Big Dan was considered an American Hero.

Fast forward forty years, Big Dan has been dead for decades, and his daughter Layla is writing a book about his life. While researching the book, she learns she was kidnapped as a baby. This …

You Are D. B. Cooper, James Bezerra

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is a novel about the 1971 skyjacking of a plane out of Portland Airport. The novel is structured in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure book. It investigates the nature and identity of the skyjacker, who is known as D. B. Cooper.

Animals Coupling: Stories, Corey Robert Millard

Dissertations and Theses

We find ourselves at a unique place in American history: language is losing its value; decency--or "political correctness"--is becoming taboo; and our future is legislated by those who feel they have been left behind. The stories in Animals Coupling don't attempt to explain contemporary America, but they do attempt to demonstrate (through language, character, style, and circumstance) an expressive rendering of what it looks and feels like to live in the here and now. There is a sense of detachment threading through these works, along with absurdity, loneliness, humor and anomie. But though a minor key may ring loudest, Animals …

To Disappear, Rachel Chenven Powers

Dissertations and Theses

This is a selection of linked lyric essays, covering explorations of memory, experience, nature, transcendence, insignificance, orientation, boredom, privilege, vocation, and more.

Time Spent Away, Andrew Mitin

Dissertations and Theses

After the death of his father, Joshua Klein drops out of college and moves to Chicago. Alone in the city and with nothing of consequence to do, he attempts to justify to himself the ways of God, the sense of an early death and what is the good to do in life.

In this excerpt of Time Spent Away, Joshua seeks out the hidden aspects of the city and his spirit. Guided by his father's Bible and the formative texts of his undergraduate coursework, he sets out to complete his own education. During a tour of The Auditorium Building …

Untitled, Alexander Scott Dannemiller

Dissertations and Theses

Deeply concerned with body politics, sexual slavery, identity, and technology, this work takes a serious and brutally honest route through the close perspectives of those living it moment by moment. With influences from science fiction, horror, weird, and literary fiction, the untitled novel blends genres for a disturbing account. This novel also plays with constraints in the spirit of many constraint-based writing movements, without the inclusion of names, few identifying markers, and in publication the removal of title, chapter numbers, page numbers, and author name.

All Begins To Bloom: Stories, Daniel Drew Schlegel

Dissertations and Theses

A collection of short stories, All Begins to Bloom follows a range of young protagonists living in the greater Los Angeles area. In a time when even the most underground lifestyles are commodified, when Independent media is just another genre, when every mode of living has seemingly been exhausted, these characters struggle to forge an identity in the face of adulthood.

From a group of surfers reeling from a careless death ("The Pier") to a young artistic couple brought together by the will to overcome an eating disorder ("All Begins to Bloom"), these stories explore the hollow promises among various …

Phantom Islands A Collection Of Short Stories, Marie Buckner

Dissertations and Theses

This collection of short stories takes its name from various islands historically believed to exist and at one time or other located on maps, sometimes remaining on them for centuries, but later removed after they were proved to be illusory. Reports of these islands usually came from sailors as they explored new realms, mistaking actual islands for imaginary ones or by geographical error. Illusions can persist unchallenged for ages. A similar yet modern illusion is the persistence of vision, a phenomenon by which an afterimage, say, on a screen, is thought to persist on the retina for approximately one twenty-fifth …

Dance Lessons, Kaitlyn Burch

Dissertations and Theses

August Diamond is left lost after the sudden death of her father. The stories in Dance Lessons explore the themes of loss and grief, retreat and return, and finding your true self. The collection is a novel in stories, each story exposing another layer of August's past, her family, and their complicated relationships.

American Cuerpos, Devan Schwartz

Dissertations and Theses

On election night 2008, a child is conceived by two Barack Obama campaign staffers--Daniel from Seattle, Anza from Honduras. American Cuerpos is a novel about the body and the body politic, about what it means to give birth through the eyes of both mother and father.

Dazai's Women: Dazai Osamu And His Female Narrators, Jamie Walden Cox

Dissertations and Theses

Dazai Osamu (born Tsushima Shûji) was a post-WWII writer who wrote a number of works using a female narrator. This thesis research focused on the reasons as to why Dazai may have written using female narratives, taking into consideration the time period and social milieu in which he was writing, as well as his own personal history with women. In addition, the history of male authors utilizing female narratives was explored, as well as the ideas of gender in the Japanese arts. Dazai works were also compared with Tankizaki Junichirô's to see how the roles of women in their works …

Luminous Days, Mitchell S. Jackson

Dissertations and Theses

Luminous Days is a representation of my artistic vision, literary goals, and social influences. Artistically, I intend to create fiction that is aesthetically appealing. This aesthetic appeal includes the presence of a distinct narrative voice, realistically rendered settings, multidimensional characters, meticulous attention to diction, and sentence construction. The literary goal I hold in the highest regard is the creation of a body of work that demonstrates continued growth in my craft.

What I intend to render in my thesis is an accurate portrayal of the effects that drugs on the lives of my characters, and more specifically the relational strains …

Breadcrumbs: New And Selected Poems, Jonathan Kirk Ellis

Dissertations and Theses

These poems are grouped as they are in order to reflect a progression, a trail at the end of which my own spirituality is not found, but revealed. A subtitle might be Dilemmas and Destinations, for each poem can also be viewed individually as a struggle or desire to reach this goal. In fact, I label my two sub-sections in precisely these terms. I have organized them not to build upon one another, but to act as "snapshots" that describe my beliefs. My poems begin with family issues and/or characters that have shaped a belief in a multi-faceted God. Several …