Creative Writing Commons^™

Georgia Ghosts: History, Folklore, And The Roots Of The Southern Gothic, Katherine M. Mcdowell

Master's Projects

There is something quintessentially human about ghost stories, yet particular regions tend to be more powerfully associated with haunted folktales than others. One of the regions is the southeastern United States. In fact, these oral traditions appear to have influenced the area's best-known literary subgenre: the Southern Gothic.

Why is the South considered haunted? Are there particular qualities in historical events that make them more likely to engender ghost stories? What makes the South's folkloric spirits so powerful that they appear even in modern literature? Most of all, what connects the region's history and folklore with the Southern Gothic? By …

The Words. Or Holes. Or Both: Writing As An Integrative Methodology For Trauma, Daniel A. Castle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to identify methods authors have used to integrate their traumatic experiences. My work will analyze the genre of War Literature and specific authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and Kurt Vonnegut to explore the way writers describe the trauma of combat. Using insights from neuroscience and psychology, I will expand the field of Cognitive Literary Studies from a focus on the reader to a focus on the writer by linking neurological functions with narrative tools.

Adoration Above Objectification: The Promotion Of Other In Black, Mexican And Arabic Love Poetry, Joycelynn L. Baker

Honors Projects

This paper analyzes the philosophical fundamentals of sexual objectification and presents opposing literature, written in the 20th century, by Black, Mexican and Arabic male poets in contrast. In vigorous patriarchal environments that provide more opportunities to practice sexual objectification, the poets reframe male metaphysical perception and behavior in romantic or sexual contexts by promoting the autonomy and agency of women above themselves, and displaying their enjoyment of that situation. This paper will discuss how Western metaphysical philosophy impacts self-perception and belief in contemporary romantic contexts.

An Interdisciplinary Approach: Schizophrenia Derails Heteronormative Expectations In Psychological Narratives 2021, Bobbie Jo Weaver

Master's Theses

Required introductory psychology courses teach students a general and oversimplified version of the immense number of subfields within Psychology studies, much like introductory literature classes compress different genera throughout history into a miniscule number of “representative” texts. Nevertheless, these footholds generate an entryway into a whole new world of (specialized) exploration. Reading a text such as The Quiet Room: A Journey out of the Torment of Madness by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett provides a window for many students to crawl into one of Psychology’s darkest shadows, the field of abnormal psychology. Schiller’s non-fictional memoir, The Quiet Room, tells readers …

Sampling The Hors D’Oeuvres: Exploratory Poetics In Archives And Special Collections, Patrick Williams

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

This lesson plan engages students with primary materials as ingredients for creative work, with attention to the ways researchers read and notice in archives and special collections. This hands-on creative activity helps students to identify and analyze many facets of materials in a special collections setting, and it allows students to explore those materials together. Students create found poems based on a prompt distributed by the librarian-instructor and then engage in reflective sharing of the poems. The prompt draws students toward the textual, paratextual, and metadata elements of materials, and the sharing of poems among students highlights the variety of …

Recontextaulizing Literature: A Podcast Project Dedicated To Celebrating And Broadcasting The Voices Of Indigenous Authors And Storytellers, Xavier Hickey

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project is conducted with intention of exploring the sociocultural implications of a decentralized canon. Designed with Indigenous authors and storytellers in mind, this project perceives the way that literature and storytelling are improved by abandoning the universalized and Eurocentric literary canon and replacing it with complex and unique personal cultural contexts. As part of the overarching podcast project, this document looks to lay out a reading list that represents and enforces the power of recontextualized literature.

Writing Disaster Wrt 3xxg, Jim Kinnie

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Complete Issue

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

The complete issue 1 of volume 8, Landscapes Journal.

Somos Tierra Floreciendo: El Surgimiento De La Literatura Kichwa Como Herramienta Política Y Cultural, Kaia Heimer-Bumstead

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este proyecto de estudio independiente examina el papel de la literatura escrita en la resistencia cultural y política de los pueblos kichwas de la sierra ecuatoriana. Analiza la manera en que la historia de colonización influye en la expresión cultural y lingüística de los pueblos originarios, en particular la fuerte tradición de oralidad y los niveles bajos de alfabetismo en la propia lengua que caracterizan a la actual producción cultural de la sociedad kichwa. Dentro de esto contexto, discute las implicaciones de adoptar y utilizar recursos y códigos occidentales, como la escritura alfabética, para preservar, fortalecer y revitalizar la lengua …

Behind Valencia: A Contemporary Play, Emily Charbonneau

Honors Projects in English and Cultural Studies

SYNOPSIS The purpose of this play is to highlight the length that modern females go to in order to maintain a desired appearance, especially across social media. These desired appearances are influenced by the glamorous and unrealistic looks and physiques that are prevalent in the media. Essentially, the primary goal of these characters is to attract the attention of their male counterparts because of the gender roles society promotes. This shallow lifestyle can be completely consuming for impressionable, young females.

Write What You Know: The Process Of Writing A Young Adult Novella, Grace Morgan

Honors Projects in English and Cultural Studies

One tragedy, two lives changed forever. This novella follows the paths of two characters coping with the death of loved ones. It examines the themes of grief, friendship, family, self-discovery and inner strength. Specifically, how these things manifest and change after experiencing extreme loss. The dual narrative compares and contrasts the varying ways people react to grief. This project on creative writing followed the writing process from brainstorming to final draft.

Niche By Basma Kavanagh, Vivian M. Hansen

The Goose

Review of Basma Kavanagh's Niche.

Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Important Places (2005), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

The author talks about his time and associations with the University of Massachusetts Boston. He also describes Ireland and his family's roots there and how it connects with Boston as well as his life in New York.

Reprinted from New England Journal of Public Policy 20, no. 2 (2005), article 10.

Damas Y Caballeros, Guadalupe Mendez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Collected Poetry - Manuscript over socio - political and culturally relevant context.

De La Littérature Beur À La Littérature De Banlieue : Un Changement De Paradigme, Mireille Le Breton

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article traces the history of “beur” literature and shows the evolution of the literary production emerging from the “banlieues”. Mapping out the itineraries of these two literary trends, the article highlights both the genesis and the thematic and æsthetical articulations of Beur and Banlieue literatures. This article therefore foregrounds a paradigm shift, refl ected in the sensibility of a new wave of novelists.

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …

Wisdom From A Lost Friend To A New Friend, Veronica Murphy

Common Reading Essay Contest Winners

Third Place

There Is No Normal, Meghan Donohoe

Common Reading Essay Contest Winners

Honorable Mention

Dear Christopher, Abby Shelley

Common Reading Essay Contest Winners

Second Place

A Person Of Interest, Jesse Lepre

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Presents a drama-based screenplay which explores the stereotyping of the modern Italian-American male in contemporary American society.

Kindness: Two Stories, Art Middleton

Honors Projects

Presents two stories that, while differing in style, share themes of identity and loss and explore grotesque characters at critical points of change and acceptance in their lives. "I Go There Too" is a bildungsroman piece; "Did I Live" is a work of historical fiction, set in 1865 at the scene of the burning of the Barnum Museum and featuring Anna Swan, the giantess of Nova Scotia.

You Gotta Move: Three Short Stories, Lori Freshwater

Honors Projects

A collection of three short stories -- My Daddy Could Have Been Mac Davis, Petrichor, Going to See the Blues -- set in the South. Though thematically tied through the symbolic importance of food and the senses, the stories feature characters of different ages and from very different backgrounds. Nonetheless, all three characters are faced with a point in their lives when they must choose to break free in a search for identity or to remain where they are.

Y = Mx + B(Eauty), Chris Dollard

Honors Projects

A collection of twenty poems that are thematically concerned with family dynamics and history, childhood, relationships, addiction and rehabilitation, wanderlust, mortality, and the concepts of ugliness and beauty. These motifs and themes are framed by a speaker who is coming of age in contemporary America. While largely informed by the free verse narrative, this collection attempts to form a synthesis of contemporary American poetic styles.

Car Trouble And Other Stories, Adam R. Charpentier

Honors Projects

A collection of four short stories which examine the connection between awareness and emotional, psychological, and geographical identity. "Car Trouble" is a first person narrative of a hit & run accident and the events that follow. "Ten More Minutes" follows the recollections of a narrator detailing his admittance into and release from a mental hospital. The protagonist of "Islander" recounts his investigations of his lodgings on Tinian, an island far removed from his past life. "Little Black Dress" chronicles the impact the protagonist's lifestyle choices make on his marriage.

Un Autre Monde Est Possible: Création Et Résistance Dans L’Oeuvre D’Ousmane Sembène, David Murphy

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

During an artistic career that spanned half a century, Ousmane Sembène often played a pioneering role. However, although the many awards he received constitute recognition of the artistic quality of his work, his literary and cinematic output is best known for its denunciation of colonial and neo-colonial injustices. This article argues that Sembène’s importance is not solely political, and nor should it be limited to his role as a pioneer of African cinema. Sembène was also a great artist who developed a profound refl ection on his practice both as a writer and as a filmmaker. The article will trace …

Ordinary Apocalypse, Anthony Villella

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Work of short fiction, in which a young man, struggling with contempt for his family and himself, makes a terrible mistake and is forced to deal with who and what he has become.

American Suburban, James Michael Ashworth

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

A collection of poetry that examines contemporary American suburban life through the author's reflections on his own working class consciousness and aspirations for a middle class lifestyle.

Waking Life, Dionne Irving

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Collection of short fiction dealing with themes of isolation and self-discovery. Contents include: Waking Life, Rice and Peas, Weaving, and Collage.

Problèmes Et Enjeux De L’Adaptation En Algérie, Mehana Amrani

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

As in all postcolonial societies confronted with the question of illiteracy, in Algeria, film adaptations pose a political and cultural stake. Due to the phenomena of political and moral censure and self-censorship, only ten novels were carried over to the screen during one 36-year period. However, with the rebirth of Algerian cinema in the Nineties, screenwriters are once again interested in setting Algerian novels in images. These new adaptations, which are often done in co-production with France and Belgium, introduce the new problems of language. The audience for these films, which are expressed mainly in French, is thus likely limited …