Creative Writing Commons^™

Honeysuckles & Irises: Effigies Of The Land, Ami` L. Hanna-Huff

English Creative Writing Theses

Here is a memoir of my paternal line through the lens of my Great-Grandmother and myself. A reclamation of the land I hail from and a connection to a history previously felt distant, this examination of race and gender explicitly focused on the African American Southern female experience; I try to make sense of the juxtaposing positions in our lives. The culture built from its creation through Tennessee personified. Here, I integrate history and theory with lyrics and prose to experience the eighty-one years of progress brought between our births and the lingering anxiety of slavery. My great-grandmother, Hazel Irene …

What The Unburied Said, Katharine Rees

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

"What the Unburied Said" is a short collection of documentary poetry written during the waning years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In conversation with T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, it seeks to exalt the beauty of humans who help each other live within an often-tragic, always-fascinating world.

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, …

A Critical Phenomenological Inquiry Into Disabled Embodiment And Identity, Heather Twele

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis uses critical phenomenology to investigate disabled embodiment and identity. I argue that (in)accessible subjective accounts of disability experience reveal disability to be a unique form of ever-changing embodiment: disability is the lived experience of a critical phenomenology. I turn to eclectic art, film, and poetry case studies involving a medical, surgical gaze to explore how ableist, sexist, and racist systems structure daily experience, forcing disabled people who “misfit” to analyze and confront systems of oppression, exclusion, and stigmatization. Disability experience challenges and resists ableist binaries of ability/disability, well/unwell, subject/object, mind/body, and inside/outside. The interdependence of these fluid, intertwining …

Doc/U/Ment: Affinities In 20th And 21st-Century Documental Poetics, Katherine Payne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents, analyzes, and builds on the existing literary genealogy of documental poetry. In 2020 Michael Leong proposed the term documental poetry to describe the turn toward source materials in 21^st-century North American poetry, seen in longform research-based poems that explicitly incorporate documentation and seek to intervene in cultural memory. Using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance, I argue that there are clear affinities between 21^st-century poets and their 20^th-century literary forerunners, also that an expansion of the scope of documental poetics is needed. The three nodes of connection I examine are works …

Double Play, Matthew J. Anticev

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Abstract Sport has an intrinsic function to embrace the differences of all human beings that uncovers the similarity that we all truly share. This thesis project addresses the ways in which sport goes beyond fields of play, courts of performance, and lanes of winning and losing to inform connections that build upon the structures of meaningful life. This collection engages a unique poetic framework through the idea of choice. A poet makes countless decisions as he writes, just as the athlete makes intentional and spontaneous decisions as he competes. Each situation presents its own level of autonomy that has been …

Why Not Be Free: The Black Worldmaking Praxis, Research Method, & Manifesto For Developing Music Interventions Against Stress In Black Youth, Armond Epps Dorsey

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Why Not Be Free? is an interdisciplinary exploration of music intervention development demonstrating the application of my integrated research and artistic practices through an outlined antiracist method for designing music to reduce stress in Black college youth and a manifesto detailing the compositional process. I draw from Black feminist and womanist thought, music cognition, and public health literature to outline a framework for designing music interventions to reduce stress among Black populations: the Music Medicine Critical Race Praxis. I situate my work among Black speculative artists reimagining experiences in everyday Black life as well as music intervention researchers integrating …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

How To Grow Blurry: Poems, Nathaniel Metz

Canterbury Scholars

In this collection of poems, Nathan D. Metz explores the distance between the word for a thing and the touch or feeling of a thing. Using a variety of forms both established and innovative, as well as free verse and ekphrastic response, these poems are a celebration of art, color, and the sounds of words. After the collection is a series of poems translated both from the original Japanese and Haitian Creole.

There’S No Space In History: Affiliation, Eros And Colonial Entanglements In North American Nuclear Poetry, 1945-Present, Marguerite Daisy Atterbury

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates “affiliation” as a socio-spatial poetics and spatial ontology, a departure from the past and future to the material, landed present. The author’s experience growing up proximate to federally ordered uranium mining and nuclear weapons research on Indigenous land and at Los Alamos National Labs drives this work’s aim to render visible the economic, social, and ideological structures governing social-spatial dynamics in the North American context. This dissertation argues for a poetics of affiliation as a methodology, to move beyond theoretical and discursive questions in scholarship to negotiations of the social at scales that affect systems beyond the …

Mourning In Eco-Poetics & Cellar As Linguistic Category, Gwen Moon

University Honors Theses

These poems are informed by ecopoetics as defined by Forest Gander: "If natural processes are already altered by and responsive to human observation, how does poetry register the complex interdependency that draws us into a dialogue with the world?" Because the backdrop of our lives is changing with increasing signs of eco-collapse, our bodies are constantly sensing fear and loss. These poems merge the personal with the global in an attempt at a corporeal language that conveys meaning as a felt sense over a cerebral relationship. To quote William Wenthe, "…there is something physical, corporeal about our experience of syntactic …

Eco-Interoception: What Plants, Fungi And Protista Have Taught My Body, Sara Riley Dotterer

Art Theses and Dissertations

To me, ecology is the relational, full-body awareness that I am made up of and deeply connected to everything around me; and for better or worse, this is reciprocal. I form ecotones, an ecological transitional zone between two ecosystems, with the world around me. I use this ecotonal lens to blur binaries and dissolve boundaries between me and the world “outside my body.” During my Masters of Fine Arts at Southern Methodist University, I have continuously explored and represented the lives of various more-than-human species outside of my body, including plants, fungi and protista through an ecotonal lens. Although these …

Goddess Of., Megan Childs

Student Research Submissions

My chapbook, “goddess of.”, is a compilation of poems that channel the larger-than-life personalities of the Ancient Greek gods and goddesses. I completed this project over the course of a semester in my ENGL470 course, Seminar in Creative Writing: Poetry. Professor Bylenok, who sponsored this project, was instrumental in the development of my poetry into a fully-fledged collection. My chapbook explores disillusionment, love, loneliness, and fear. At its core, it’s about having to live with yourself – even if it’s embarrassing, ugly, or painful. It’s a chance to feel as powerful as the gods themselves, or as pathetic as their …

Gardening Lessons, Auden Eagerton

Poetry MFA Theses

A poetry collection centered on the poet's childhood trauma and reclamation of body and gender identity through transition.

The Body Seeking Magnificence, Taylor Franson Thiel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis focuses on how my time as a college athlete, my relationship with my mother, and my experience of an abusive relationship have intersected to impact my personal relationship with my body as I have fluctuated between trying to make it perfect, trying to ruin it, and trying to love it. The collection of poems examines how these forces collided in various ways to change how I thought about myself and my identity. After dealing with the idealized version of what a college athlete should look like and act like, inherited trauma from a mother, and trauma from a …

There Could Be Light Here, Audrey Bowers

Graduate Thesis Collection

Poems about healing and hurting. The journey begins with a 14-year-old who is struggling with suicidal thoughts and ends with a 25-year-old learning how to live with bipolar 1 disorder. The poems focus on finding light in the darkness, one poem at a time.

Sue, Heath Joseph Wooten

All NMU Master's Theses

Sue is a collection of poetry investigating the cyclical nature of grief through the lens of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s schemas of paranoid and reparative readings. The poems employ motifs such as hunting, disease, and human remains to capture the temporal disorientation experienced in the wake of loss. Via an extensive use of metaphor and recurring poem titles, Sue exploits the multivalence of language to conjure a dense field of meaning, meant to capture the undecidability of language noted by philosopher Jacques Derrida. This collection also employs several vectors of derivation, including erasure of text lifted from the 2002 strategy video …

Naturally: Memory In Verse, Heather L. Drouse

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of free verse poetry that I have written that share a common theme of nature and family. This is a creative work that explores my personal memories and the feelings associated with them with the intention to spread joy and cause readers to reflect upon similar experiences they might have had as children. It consists of four major sections -- mother, father, love, and bridges -- and 18 poems, with "love" having 7 minor sections.

A Journal Of Those Times, Alexander Wolff

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Alexander Lazarus Wolff Poetry. Based on confessional poets

Confessional Poetry And The Human Experience: When Art Imitates Life, Caroline Winnenberg

Honors College Theses

The year is 1959. America sits in silent fear at the constant threat of nuclear warfare. The Red Scare had hit its peak just five years earlier with Joe McCarthy’s Communist witch hunt. Neighbors no longer trusted neighbors and marginalized groups have had enough. The LGBTQ+ community begins to unify, people of color march for civil rights, and women march for equal rights. The people are using their voices, but the fight for social justice is draining. The constant feelings of anger and depression are boiling over, searching for an outlet. Enter the author Robert Lowell and his volume Life …

At Least Eight Poems, Stone Mcdonald

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This reflective essay displays the super thematic theme that's clearly present on this project. It is at least eight poems, and you cannot dispute that claim. This project clearly was made to satisfy those college requirements, but I will admit that its theme is merely the theme of Stone. It is a sample of my perception, a slippery path that directs readers into my creative process and brisk way of thinking. If you ever get confused about what you’re reading, just remember, it all falls under the theme of stone; the rock without surface, clearly with depth. It’s a theme …

The Pinocchio Boy: A Collection Of Queer Creative Written Work, Lucas Olvera

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The Pinocchio Boy is a series of short stories/memoirs and poems about my experiences as a Transgender and Gay man. Structured in five parts, I explore my childhood, young adulthood, and adulthood. My collection offers me an insight into what made me who I am today. There are drastic tonal shifts between the poem segments and the memoirs, I intended to act as the narrator of my story in which the poems and dialogue act as the characters in motion and the memoirs as my direct narration. A tongue-in-cheek fairy tale tone, but coming from a sincere place. My intent …

Lazarus Taxa, Natalie Mau

Poetry MFA Theses

Lazarus Taxa explores the process of extinction in various forms-- physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually, and more. However, this thesis also explores the idea of extinction being less of an end and more of a rebirth or rediscovery.

Salzburg's Baroque Architecture: A Historical Analysis And Poetic Response, Rebecca Malzer

Honors Projects

Salzburg, Austria is a city full of history. During the Baroque era from about the mid sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg designed and modeled the city with Rome, Italy in mind. Their loyalty to the Holy Roman Empire and with the Reformation in full swing, these Italian influences helped to build a pro-Roman Catholic style throughout the city. The Prince-Archbishops and their architects demonstrated Salzburg’s loyalty to Rome through the structures of Schloss Mirabell, Schloss Hellbrunn, and the Franziskannerkirche. In addition, these structures make for great inspiration for creative work, to which …

Music Lessons, Cecilia-Rose Louise Bender

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

music lessons is a digital chapbook that explores the relationships between James Baldwin’s writing and Beauford Delaney’s paintings through music. From Delaney’s “Composition 16” (1954-56) to Baldwin’s “The Uses of the Blues” (1964), their collaboration with the core elements of jazz music gives their work rhythm and melodic contour that any/body can vibe with. Absorbing the influences of artists Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and putting them to paint and text, music lessons demonstrates how music not only transforms the ways we experience and move our bodies but also the ways that we perceive space, relationships, and time. What’s …