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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Small Nothings, Leah Washburn
Small Nothings, Leah Washburn
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Small Nothings is a collection of ten short stories exploring the connection between place, friendship, and family. Set in Missouri's capital, a variety of characters grapple with different types of separation and loneliness. Couples struggle with emotional distance, children try to reconnect with their parents, and an old woman faces the loss of her independence. Through small conflicts and choices, these stories revolve around isolation, disconnection, and absence. How do missing presences affect family and friendship? How do people deal with change through everyday choices?
What Remains, Michael Leavitt
What Remains, Michael Leavitt
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Grief is a personal thing, as unique as it is ubiquitous, and each character in What Remains approaches their grief in a different way and handles it with differing degrees of success. The collection blends both realist and fabulist stories in its efforts to explore these themes, from the eponymous "What Remains," in which a man attempts to reconcile his feelings about the death of his abusive, absentee father, and what that means for his relationship with his own son; to "Convoy," a story of a Marine who confronts the culture of violence into which he's been indoctrinated, and which …
The Neighborhood & Cat Eyes: Stories, Brad Barth
The Neighborhood & Cat Eyes: Stories, Brad Barth
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The Neighborhood & Cat Eyes: Stories is a collection of short stories dealing with themes related to isolation, otherness in the modern world, and suburban dread. These two sets of stories deal with different variations on these themes. In the "Cat Eyes" collection of stories, isolation becomes a more prominent thread. These four stories each center on a different individuals afflicted with having cat eyes in place of normal human eyes. Through the lenses of childhood, adulthood, and someone not afflicted with the cat eye condition, otherness and isolation are explored. Each individual offers a unique glimpse into the lives …
Red Tide And Other Stories, Heather Vazquez
Red Tide And Other Stories, Heather Vazquez
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Red Tide and Other Stories is a fictional collection of eleven short stories in which characters react to their struggles with loss, frustration, regret, loneliness, and love. Each story presents a strong sense of place and moment, while examining how characters are influenced by these elements. While individual stories present new characters and scenarios, they are connected by elements of water and include aspects of coasts and shorelines in the setting of the real world. The commonality of water in the stories works to demonstrate a connectivity between all people and cultures because water is shared and linked between continents …
Broken Toys, Robin Eliot
Broken Toys, Robin Eliot
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This novel is about a character, Felicity Gourd. She's Cinderella, but she lives in twenty-first century Boston and knows the Cinderella story as well as anyone else. She's also one of a small number of people who are able turn into the creatures represented by their childhood toys. Felicity's toy was a mouse. Her godmother's was, of course, a fairy. Through her godmother, Felicity enters the community of Toys, where she finally finds a home. But the Toys are the only people who stand in the way of Clarity, a secret organization that wants to place humanity under the rule …
Jindo, Iljeen Jo
Jindo, Iljeen Jo
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Jindo is a novel that incorporates drawings, photos, symbols, and comic panels in collaboration with visual artists, Minna Moon and Myungee Jo. In addition to the drawings, the novel integrates Korean folktales and family mythology into the narrative. The hybrid work also weaves elements of speculative fiction, fantasy, realism, horror, and comedy game theory. The novel is told in the first person voice of Korean American, Jindo Cho. In the wake of a nationally televised humiliation, Jindo Cho leaves the world of competitive figure skating to attend state college. When, at the beginning of the semester, his childhood best friend …
Moving Water, Alexandra Arend
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
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.
Modern Arcana, Kaitlin Kolhoff
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 …
Everyday Monsters: Stories, Brian Druckenmiller
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.
Only The End: A Collection Of Connected Short Stories, Lucy Sneeringer
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
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.
Some Girls, Sabrina Napolitano
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.
Natural Disasters, Rebecca Cobb
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 …
Cold Snap, Jonathan Phin
Cold Snap, Jonathan Phin
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Cold Snap is a collection of short stories that details the breaking down of self by those closest to us and the rebuilding process necessary to continue on in this diverse world. The sometimes autobiographical short stories attempt to explore the different stages of psychological and/or physical abuse and their aftermaths. Three short stories revolve around a singular family and include themes of cultural division, LGBT coming-of-age, neglect, and acceptance. The other short stories focus on themes including but not limited to self-worth, fear, desire, and survival. All characters revolve around the Buddhist idea that to want is to suffer …
The Clockman Movement, Allison Martin
The Clockman Movement, Allison Martin
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
As a genre of Neo-Victorian fiction, Steampunk is largely identified by Victorian aesthetics and technology centering on clockwork and steam power. The novel The Clockman Movement seeks to emphasize the "punk" in "steampunk" by exploring the social concerns of colonialism, including sexism, racism, and classism, while embracing the more fantastic and entertaining aspects of steampunk. Before all other labels—Nordlunder, daughter, woman—Eve Traugott is a machinist. Or she would be, if one of the machinists in the capital would hire her as an apprentice. She thought it would be simple to find a machinist willing to take a chance on her …
The Flats Of Paradise, Pamela Baker
The Flats Of Paradise, Pamela Baker
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The Flats of Paradise is a collection of personal essays exploring the interconnectivity between humans, land, identity, and belonging. Through the perspective of my experience as a nurse, these essays probe the friction created when borders rub up against each and the comforts gained through connections both spiritual and physical. "Avoiding the Stepladder," for example, examines a near lightning strike on a mountain in relation to the potential pain caused by the human need for touch. "The Dust Trail," a meditation upon various traditions for disposing of the placenta (burning vs. burying), also looks at the problem of finding home …
The Eight-Dollar Bill, Wendy Stiles-Tardieu
The Eight-Dollar Bill, Wendy Stiles-Tardieu
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
"The Eight-Dollar Bill" is a collection of tales that explores human isolation and displacement accented by the backdrop of magic and mystery. The characters are often cynical and disenchanted while harboring deeply suppressed longings. They are guided by strange events and circumstances that ultimately transform their world-views. Each story provides a window into an ordinary life at the moment it slips into the extraordinary. The common thread of loneliness and loss runs throughout the collection, explored with multiple points of view and interconnected plots that link characters and places. The title story follows a divorced, detached banker who is jolted …
A Little Slice Of The Moon: Stories, Fatima Rashid
A Little Slice Of The Moon: Stories, Fatima Rashid
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
A Little Slice of the Moon: stories is a collection of short stories that explore the struggles of various characters to find their place in the world. And the world, despite its familiarity, can be a hostile place. The characters in this collection learn that families are a fragile lot, that every desire contains a paradox, that the Road of Life can seemingly be grasped by the horns, but that the future twists and turns, yet never escapes the past. And it is the past that haunts these characters' lives. One word, one act, impacts a lifetime. In A Little …
Trackers, Robin Rozanski
Trackers, Robin Rozanski
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Trackers is a collection of short stories that attest to the oddities and complexities found even in the non-exotic middle-class American suburbs. The characters in these stories experience disappointments that result from the physical and emotional distancing of families. In "Tokens," a woman's attempts at revenge on her cheating husband are unsatisfying because she ends up feeling more alone than before. In "Trackers," eleven-year old Richard hunts for Bigfoot as he and his family cope with the emotional aftermath of his sister's suicide attempt. In these stories people struggle to maintain normalcy in their lives--sometimes through inappropriate means. When their …