Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ships In Houston, Nadia Villafuerte, Julie Ann Ward

Undiscovered Americas

Ships in Houston by Nadia Villafuerte, translated by Julie Ann Ward, is a harrowing and heartrending collection of fifteen stories that bring to life characters who, though they exist independently from one another, inhabit the same world: Mexico’s southern border. Using acute attention to language, such as various dialects and slang, to create a nuanced and varied mood and setting, Villafuerte’s stories track exotic dancers, sex workers, truck drivers, drug dealers, immigration officials, and even a mayor’s daughter to create compelling fictions rooted in the harsh realities of borderlands that many choose to overlook. While the US’s southern border with …

The Uses, Understandings, And Values Of Student Strucutral Assisting Metatexts In College First Year Composition Courses, Joseph Ryan Dundovich

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a look into the perceptions, views, and experiences of first-year composition students into being offered a large amount of choice/agency in their major summative writing projects, but also accountability and guidance during their process in the form of resources called ‘structural assisting metatexts’. The major question that guided this study is the following:

- How do first year composition students use, understand, and value forms of structural assisting metatexts during the writing/creation process?

The two parts of the writing process that were specifically researched in conjunction with their correlating metatexts are the topic selection (with the Proposal …

Treading The Winepress; Or, A Mountain Of Misfortune, Clarissa Minnie Thompson Allen, Gabrielle Brown, Eric Willey, Jean Macdonald

Undiscovered Americas

“Every life hath its chapter of sorrow. No matter how rich the gilding or fair the pages of the volume, Trouble will stamp it with his sable signet.”

So begins the novel Treading the Winepress; or, A Mountain of Misfortune by Clarissa Minnie Thompson Allen, which, had it appeared in book form in 1885–1886 instead of serialized in The Boston Advocate, would have been the second novel published by a black woman in the United States. Instead, Allen has been mostly forgotten by literary history. Now, thanks to the painstaking efforts of editors Gabrielle Brown, Eric Willey, and Jean …

Identity In Life Writing: Fact, Fiction, And Memory, Bridget Langdon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of excerpts that explores the lives of a Midwestern family who are forced to cope with a new reality following the AIDS diagnosis and eventual death of Bruce, the son and brother. The stories are meant to examine the way new identities are created posthumously through memory as well as identities that result from social expectations. Additionally, this collection explores the concepts of truth and fact on individual and social basis within the fiction and non-fiction aspects of memoir.

Mimola Or The Story Of A Casket, Antoine Innocent, Susan Kalter

Undiscovered Americas

Appearing for the first time in English, Antoine Innocent’s 1906 novel Mimola or the Story of a Casket weaves the story of Mimola, daughter of Madame Georges, who suffers from an incurable nervous disease, with an investigation of the traditions of Haitian Vodou. Desperate to end her daughter’s affliction, Madame Georges goes on a pilgrimage across Haiti to Ville-Bonheur to help her ailing daughter. Along the way, she meets a woman whose son, Léon, suffers from a similar disorder. Will their mothers’ devotion be enough to ensure the children’s recovery? Will the suffering Mimola and Léon embrace Vodou beliefs and …

Old: A Personal Essayist’S Reflections Of An Aging Adult, Marcia Irene Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation opens with a critical introduction that examines the role persona, reader, and implication play in the composition of the personal essay. Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory is then applied as a tool in an essayist’s exploration of how one’s communication choices impact life experiences. This section is followed by an explanation of the subject matter of the essays. The pedagogical chapter addresses the author’s experience with the student-centered teaching of a first creative writing class, lessons learned, theorists who affected the process, and suggestions for improvement as the author moves forward in postsecondary teaching. The dissertation concludes with …

On My Grind: Freestyle Rap Practices In Experimental Creative Writing And Composition Pedagogy, Evan Nave

Theses and Dissertations

My work is always necessarily two-headed. Double-voiced. Call-and-response at once. Paranoid self-talk as dichotomous monologue to move the crowd. Part of this has to do with the deep cuts and scratches in my mind. Recorded and remixed across DNA double helixes. Structurally split. Generationally divided. A style and family history built on breaking down.

Evidence of how ill I am.

And then there’s the matter of skin. The material concerns of cultural cross-fertilization. Itching to plant seeds where the grass is always greener. Color collaborations and appropriations. Writing white/out with black art ink. Distinctions dangerously hidden behind backbeats or shamelessly …

All Hands Bury The Dead, Summer Qabazard

Theses and Dissertations

All Hands Bury the Dead is a collection of poetry, salted with creative non-fiction, and images, exploring trauma, memory, time, nostalgia, mental health, and love in the backgrounds of the Gulf War in Kuwait (1990-1991), domestic violence, relationships, and academia. The dissertation includes a critical preface that theorizes how racist, sexist, and colonialist ideologies can be reproduced in and supported through the uncritical application of theory to practice. The dissertation also includes an exploration of the assumptions about the innateness of creative writing ability that utilizes psychological theories of creativity to build a pedagogy to support the creative potential of …

Queer Horizons: Queer Assemblages And ( Re ) Visioning The"Coming-Out"Trauma Narrative In Fiction, A Critical Introduction, Eric Jason Pitman

Theses and Dissertations

The experience of many queer subjects in "coming-out" often results in a great deal of continued adversity over the course of their lifetimes, in spite of what popular, exceptionalized narratives such as the "It Gets Better" campaign might suggest. "Coming out" often entails a great deal of trauma, thus making the need to continue "coming out" a source from which anguish continues to emanate and affect queer bodies. Unfortunately, there are few fictional texts dealing specifically with "coming-out" trauma narratives. Queer subjects who continue to endure trauma through the act of "coming out" often discover that the written worlds of …