Creative Writing Commons^™

A Thesis, Or Digressions On Sculptural Practice: In Which, Concepts & Influences Thereof Are Explained, Set Forth, Catalogued, Or Divulged By Way Of Commentaries To A Poem, First Conceived By The Artist, Fed Through Chatg.P.T., And Re-Edited By The Artist, To Which Are Added, Annotated References, Impressions And Ruminations Thereof, Also Including Private Thoughts & Personal Accounts Of The Artist, Jaimie An

Masters Theses

This thesis is an exercise in, perhaps a futile, attempt to trace just some of the ideas, stories, and musings I might meander through in my process. It’s not quite a map, nor is it a neat catalogue; it is a haphazard collection of tickets and receipts from a travel abroad, carelessly tossed in a carry-on, only to be stashed upon returning home. These ideas are derived from much greater thinkers and authors than myself; I am a mere collector or a translator, if that, and not a very good one, for much is lost. I do not claim comprehensive …

Call And Response : Experiments In Storytelling, Deanne Fernandes

Masters Theses

Being part of RISD's inaugural Masters of Illustration cohort has been an immense honor. This journey has been nothing short of transformative and healing, as it has allowed me to unearth layers of self-discovery through my creative practice.

In my thesis, I introduce a fresh research methodology rooted in the principles of call and response, with adaptability, creativity, and storytelling as its foundational pillars. Through the lenses of visual storytelling, experimental animation, graphic journalism, and fictional world-building, I demonstrate how these techniques can effectively bridge the gap between theory and practice. This dynamic approach fosters meaningful connections among diverse perspectives …

Patchwork: 76km Between Juárez And El Paso, Naheyla Medina

Masters Theses

Located at the western edge of Texas where the Río Bravo ~ Rio Grande, becomes the border between México and the United States. Resides a spectacle of misconceptions that, along with an expansive corten steel border wall embedded into the earth, live to suppress the histories, culture, and environment entangled together like patchwork along this border space. The built environment influences our daily experiences, and our daily experiences can often influence our built environment. This project seeks to leverage, murals as a medium, creative writing, and architectural representations, to rework the mapping between Mexico and the US. Honing in on …

Memories Of Hope And Loss: “Kerhi Maa Ne Bhagat Singh Jameya”, Sheher Bano

Masters Theses

My Masters thesis focuses on socialist Indian freedom fighter Bhagat Singh’s memory in contemporary Pakistani Punjab. I use the analytical category of memory to argue that Bhagat Singh is invoked by various groups and individuals, specifically those who identify as leftists or Marxists, in contemporary Pakistan to serve a range of political purposes. My analysis particularly sheds light on how activists and writers use the figure of Bhagat Singh to highlight the erasure of regional and lingual identities in Pakistan. Their remembrances underline a perceived historical injustice; the imposition of a national identity based on Urdu language and Sunni Muslim-ness, …

New Commandments, Jacob Sussman

Masters Theses

I reach into the earth, pull out mud-encrusted objects, and recombine them to define new meanings. With every object transposed, the past breaks down; new potentials form. “New Commandments” recombines historical symbolism through an intuitive building, destroying, and merging to reimagine or re-establish meaning.

The work critiques rites of passage, masculinity, and stereotypes by deconstructing how histories, ideologies, and preconceptions form.

As a queer person raised in-between Judaism and Christianity, social preconceptions and religious expectations festered my formation. Our choice is taken away at this moment of conception. To take back autonomy, I reimagine historical, and religious symbolism and transmute …

Soul Furnace / فرن الأرواح, Isa Ghanayem

Masters Theses

“This is the good washing, this is (the washing) which separates the dirty body from the pure body. This is like silver mixed with lead, it is separated from it by this (process): one makes for it a cupel of bones, which is what is called the “head of the dog” and of which the common name is kūja-which is the crucible—and this must be made of burnt bones. One melts the silver in it, one gives it a strong fire: the cupel will absorb and receive the lead, the fire will make its subtle (part) fly away and extirpate …

A Presence Of P____ And W__Th, Riley Wilson

Masters Theses

This body of work examines the involvement of association as it relates to our cultural interpretations of natural phenomena. Flowers and animals, both real and imagined, have been used as symbols for human morality since the beginning of human history. Two sources with which I drew inspiration from are medieval bestiaries and the Victorian practice of flower language. By combining elements from these references, I aim to pair this idea about the human need for classification with my own considerations about my identity. In combination, I also aim to highlight the responsibility that is intrinsic to curiosity. When faced with …

Making Then Meaning, Ben Denzer

Masters Theses

This is an artist talk contained within a book. It is 816 pages and 49 minutes long. Closed captions run across the spreads. A video of this talk can be watched on bendenzer.com/making-then-meaning

At RISD, I’ve been prompted to expand the scope and tools of my practice and to reflect on questions of meaning in my work.

I spend my days making things, but I’ve never really had good answers to questions of why I make the things I make, or what their meaning is. I don’t think there are simple answers to these questions.

I think meaning comes from …

Moretheless, Abdelghani Alnahawi

Masters Theses

material investigations becoming questions with interjections

Margins (I Nvr Needed Acceptance From All U Outsiders), Jahi Lendor

Masters Theses

A comedian said, “American pie isn’t made out of apples, it’s made out of whatever you can get your fucking hands on.”1 With that, my work seeks to provide an honest representation of the infinite value of the everydayness and behavior of blackness ranging from trauma to beauty. Various mediums explore culture, class, collective memory, identity, and erasure. While resisting institutional and systemic boundaries between disciplines my practice actively seeks fluidity between media. The work often translates to (social) poetic-bricolage visualizations that combine gestures of assemblage, sculpture, installation, and painting. The work focuses on reflecting on how I see life …

In-Between Spaces: Atmospheres, Movement And New Narratives For The City, Paul Alexander Stoicheff

Masters Theses

We often think of architecture as distinct buildings, yet as we move through the city we continuously pass through a built environment that is a collage of buildings. These spaces between buildings are underestimated as influences on our experience of everyday life in the city. Considering architecture as linked existential experiences through spaces rather than confined to individual buildings is more in line with our experience of the city as a series of interconnected spaces and places. Rather than describing a single, static architecture through words, how can we express this linked experience of spaces dynamically through narratives? Can writing …

Twenty-Nine Delusions Concerning Love, Jackie Donaldson

Masters Theses

Twenty-Nine Delusions Concerning Love is the story of my relationship. I narrate the relationship's unfolding through the contexts of philosophy and cultural theory, and through artifacts of my own work rendered since the relationship's inception in December of 2020. The purpose of this project was to identify a gap in the autotheory genre, and to fill that gap with my own meaningful contribution -- a book which hybridizes life writing with prose and poetry. This piece is both a narration of my own experience, and an investigation into hookup culture and the way technology has redefined the modern romantic relationship. …

Surrender Dorothy: A Battle With Alzheimer's, Rebecca Lynn Lawson

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Baby Fat -- A Legacy, Brandi M. Gard

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Transit, Christopher Janke

Masters Theses

This written thesis, transit, accompanies an exhibition by the same name and serves to contextualize the exhibit. The written portion begins with an inquiry into the nature of the contextualization itself, questioning the nature of the relationship between the written thesis, the exhibit, and the University which explicitly requires and connects the two, especially the ways that the written word as granted authority through an institution of higher education might undermine the exhibit’s intent to provoke thought into other forms of knowledge and other avenues of legitimacy than those presented by this institution.

The thesis discusses the philosophic question sometimes …

Things Miraculous And Strange: A Poetic Interpretation Of The Death And Afterlife Of Agnes Sampson, Ann Mary Hart

Masters Theses

In this collection of poems, I tell the story of Agnes Sampson's 1591 trial for witchcraft, her torture and death, and her response to these events from the afterlife. Using persona perspectives and utilizing a variety of poetic forms, I reveal the voices, thoughts, and feelings of Agnes and others involved in the trials in hopes to give a full and well-rounded account of the events in a compelling and creative way. Included in the collection are erasures on some of James VI' s poems with the goal of turning them into responses to his actions from Agnes. Using this …

Songs Of Ishq, Freedom And Rebellion: Selected Kafis Of Bulleh Shah In Translation, Zainab Sattar

Masters Theses

Abdullah Shah (1680-1757) was the birth name of the boy who would later become one of the most eminent Sufi poets of South Asia, and the master of Sufi lyrics in Punjabi—Bulleh Shah. Living during times of strife and major conflict between the Sikhs and the crumbling Mughal Empire, Bulleh Shah wrote poetry with an underlying humanist and tolerant philosophy that challenged the turmoil of his times. Blind to the bounds of religion and caste in an increasingly divided India, Bullah’s spiritual philosophy and his message of equality found voice in his kafis—a genre of poetry indigenous to the …

Interaction Between Human Experience, Landscape , And Coffee Production In The Blue Mountain Region Of Jamaica, Shohei Yoshida

Masters Theses

In today's coffee industry, individual farmers’ identities are hardly visible from the products we buy. Each coffee farmer has different lifestyles and methods of coffee farming. Such information about farmers can make each cups of coffee potentially unique in consumers’ experience. However, there are barriers which make consumers blind from the identities of the farmers making their coffee. I will explain about the barriers, and introduce the way to make consumers associate individual farmers' identities with each cup of coffee they drink. This thesis mainly consists of two parts: a theoretical part and a poetry part. There is a small …

Woodlawn: A Collection Of Working Class Poems, Anthony Travis Shoot

Masters Theses

This thesis includes a collection of working-class poems that explore such issues as poverty, work, racism, family, and substance abuse through the lens of class. It also includes a critical introduction that gives a brief overview of the history and current state of working-class studies, specifically poetry. In this thesis I relate the work of contemporary poets such as Jim Daniels and Simon J. Ortiz to my own work, while explaining the themes of contemporary poets compiled in anthologies such as Working Classics: An Anthology and American Working Class Literature.

The Lyric And The Lathe: Dreams Of Perfect Poetic Efficiency, 1800-1917, Steven A. Nathaniel

Masters Theses

This study examines patterns of efficiency in the poetry and theory of William Wordsworth, Hilda Doolittle, and other figures from the Modernist and Romantic periods. I begin by defining perfect efficiency as occurring when energy transforms, without loss, inside a closed energy system, and I offer perpetual motion machines as hypothetical examples of this impossible state. I then demonstrate the process of efficiency in William Wordsworth's poetry, which begins with circumlocutory poetic cycles but contracts into terse repetitions. Since technical efficiency is calculated by the formula output/input, poetry's subjectivity makes poetic efficiency difficult to measure. However, I suggest that repetitions …

Growing Pains: The Good, The Nasty, The Ugly, Sarah Porter-Liddell

Masters Theses

This thesis includes a collection of Slam and performance poems that examine issues of race, sexuality, religion, family, and life choices; including a critical introduction briefly explaining the oral roots of slam and performance poetry in which I relate the work of contemporary poets such as Alix Olson and Hattie Gossett to my own work, while explaining the effects of reading the work of contemporary poets in anthologies such as ALOUD: Voices of the Nuyorican Café, and how my poetry develops through the language of the poets included in these anthologies.

The Hungover Romance Of "We", Jonathan Joseph Brehm

Masters Theses

This collection of poems attempts to capture the author's inner life through a specific perception of his own generation as energetic, ambivalent and lost. The poems, while sometimes personal and autobiographical, portray dreamlike and surreal conceptions of twenty-first century twenty somethings and their landscapes: rocky deserts, expanses of water, and the vibrating city. The poems track the speaker's transitioning in and away from a hectic life of drinking and celebrating unspoken and unconventional forms of beauty. The collection concludes with a meditation on the video game Hotline Miami, which reflects the collection's interest in alchemical imagery by transacting this …

Overgrowth, Anna Laura Reeve

Masters Theses

This collection of poetry explores themes ranging from ovarian cancer and inherited disease to the fertility of the natural world, discovering the vitality of both wanted and unwanted growth. The author uses a variety of poetic forms, from prose poems to free verse, experimenting with aerated and dropped lines, employing vivid and striking images as she writes of her local ground, tensions between native and non-native flora and fauna, the spiritual life, and the female body.

Understanding Reflection, David Michael Moutray

Masters Theses

understanding reflection is a collection of poems which examines reflection both as an element of memory and self-image. The thirty-six poems represent devices and conventions employed by Philip Larkin, Donald Justice, Kamala Das, and Adrienne Rich. The style and voice mastered by these four poets served as an inspiring force in my creative efforts. The thesis introduction examines the voices of these poets and their influence on my work -- particularly in respect to my exploration of sexual, cultural and familial tensions.

The introductory essay, in essence, introduces my progression through reflection. Throughout the course of my progression, Larkin and …

This Man's Heart: Masculinity In The Poetry Of E.E. Cummings, Willis John Whitesell Iii

Masters Theses

"This Man's Heart: Masculinity in the Poetry of E.E. Cummings" explores changing masculinity in the life and poetry of E.E. Cummings. The relationship between Cummings and his father, his first male role model, became strained when Cummings was a teenager finding his own male identity. As he rebelled against his father, a Unitarian minister, he began writing poetry in a modernist style under the direction of a new mentor, Ezra Pound.

Cummings' early modernist poems criticize conventional male roles and configurations of masculinity as outdated. As Cummings continued to grow as a man and writer, he confronted new realities which …

Gary Snyder's Path, Jason Dockter

Masters Theses

Early in Gary Snyder's life, he lived a rootless existence in pursuance of gaining spiritual satisfaction through a more harmonious relationship with nature. This rootlessness that dominated this period of Snyder's life originated in Snyder's European ancestors lifestyle, which valued exploiting the natural world for a profit. Through exposure to Chinese landscape paintings, Snyder found Buddhism and began to practice it as a means to reconcile his own humanity with the natural world, which his cultural heritage has alienated himself from. Through Buddhism, Snyder realizes the importance of reuniting humanity with the natural world.

Upon gaining this knowledge, Snyder assumes …

Warren's Audubon: A Vision Revisited, Sylwia W. Zechowska

Masters Theses

This thesis consists of a Polish translation of a volume of Robert Penn Warren's poetry: Audubon: A Vision accompanied by an introductory essay focusing on historical, cultural and psychological aspects of the poems. As a novelist, Robert Penn Warren is well known to the Polish reading public. All his major novels have been translated into Polish and received with great acclaim, which has been confirmed by numerous editions. Warren's popularity among Polish readers may be attributed to the fact that his fiction is permeated with a peculiar sense of melancholy and a profound awareness of tragic national history, features inevitably …

A Journal Of Poetry: The War In Croatia, Diana Katarina Matijaš

Masters Theses

A poet must find some sort of ground to stand on and must incorporate what the poet sees into words that can relay a message. The topic becomes the muse as the poet looks for a school of poetry that it can lead him or her to. I chose the war in Croatia as my muse, and looked to it to help me find my way to belonging to the school of war poets and to lead others to the truth about this war, which in turn inspired the poetry that forms my thesis.

The war affected me because I …

Country Of Thieves, Jennifer A. Moro

Masters Theses

Country of Thieves is a collection of poems which examines the many faces of loss through voice and point-of-view. The thirty poems represent devices and techniques employed by American poets from Colonial times up to the present which include Anne Bradstreet, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath. The thesis introduction examines the voices of these poets and the collection demonstrates new viewpoints concerning age-old themes like love, anger and despair.

The introductory essay explores the similarities and differences between my poems and the works of poets already mentioned. These poets each represent different …

"Childhood And Other Disabilities", Sandra Beauchamp

Masters Theses

This creative thesis, a collection of personal poetry and critical analysis, explores the experiences of women and children who have grown up in mentally and physically abusive environments, and examines the ramifications such abuse has on their subsequent adulthood. Each poem focuses on one particular individual's struggle to cope with violent or abusive circumstances in her past or present existence. Since the poems are arranged sequentially, mapping a woman's transition from childhood to adulthood, the works deal with various stages in the lives of women. While some of the poetry finds its genesis in my own personal experiences, like the …