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 Oracle Of The Pig's Head, Taylor L. Denton

LSU Master's Theses

The Oracle of the Pig’s Head is a collection of two poems, a short story, and a novel centered around themes of the role of the feminine body in society, monstrosity, disgust, divinity, and human impact on the environment. Inspired by other works of eco-criticism, gothic literature, surrealism, Appalachian folklore, and Greco-Roman mythology, this collection explores how marginalized bodies interact in a world forever altered by climate change.

Denton is primarily interested in how severe climate change has influenced not only human’s overall relationship to the environment, but also how writers are meant to engage with a world riddled with …

The Beast Lives Here, Kelli Kirkland

Honors Theses

A staple of the bildungsroman, or coming-of-age, genre is a loss of innocence, often through trauma, so it is only natural for our protagonist to grasp at whatever coping mechanism may offer them comfort. As a coming-of-age novel, The Beast Lives Here asks: How does folklore and the supernatural interact with young, impressionable protagonists who are desperate to find explanations for their pain? The Beast Lives Here follows teenage narrator August (Aggie) Cain as she and her best friend move from junior to senior year of high school. Her excitement, however, is cut short by her best friend's lengthy trip …

Radical Folk Heroes: Anansi & Br’Er Rabbit’S West African Origins & Their Forced Pilgrimages, Sage Adia Swaby

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

The Leatherman And Other Short Stories, Sophia Joy Slezak

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Folklore: Rescuing Black America From Its Erroneous And Stereotypical Depictions In Literature, Samantha Brooke Shields

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Folklore: Rescuing Black America from Its Erroneous and Stereotypical Depictions in Literature is a Thesis written to reconnect the Black Community's tether to the foundational truths of the Black American story that were systematically severed. Unfortunately, because of slavery, the deliberate erasing of records that would help identify the origins of persons brought to this country, the selling/separating of parents from children, and Jim Crow laws that prevented blacks from reading, writing, or congregating, vast portions of our story remain missing. SaMantha (SaM)Shields employs newly created folklore based on oral histories, interviews, and other first-hand accounts to tell Black America's …

The Resurrection Of Nora O'Brien, Abigail Elizabeth Benson

MSU Graduate Theses

There is a cave, hidden in the hills, that brings the dead back to life. Its power is the driving force behind the blood feud between the Walshes and the O’Briens that lasts for generations. Jeremiah Walsh, a young boy growing up just after the civil war, is entrusted with the location of the cave and its secrets. But when he kills to protect his family legacy, he is stricken with guilt and questions his loyalties. His story parallels Nora O’Brien’s, a teenage girl who moves to the Ozarks with her family after the death of her grandfather. As she …

"La Llorona": Evolución, Ideología Y Uso En El Mundo Hispano, Raquel Sáenz-Llano

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis studies the evolution, ideology and use of the myth of La Llorona through time in the Hispanic World. Considering this myth as one of the most known traditional narratives of the American continent, I begin by providing visual, ethnohistorical and ethnographical insights of weeping in Mesoamerica and South America and the specific mention of a weeping woman in some Spanish chronicles to say how western values were stablished in “the new continent” through this legend. I suggest that during the postcolonialism the legend did not tell anymore about a mother that cries and search a place for their …

New Year, Old Blues, Joy Bowman

Theses and Dissertations--English

This collection aims through the use of folktale and familial history to investigate the bounds of gender and memory against a rural Appalachian landscape. The work utilizes superstition, myth, and the commonplace to search the shadows for the forbidden and unspoken, in an attempt to redefine and reconcile personal dissonance through an observational and at times, voyeuristic lens.

Backwaters, Tamika L. Edwards

LSU Master's Theses

Backwaters is a novel heavily steeped in the supernatural. It chronicles the lives of a mother and son who have been disconnected from one another through a series of curses. Unaware of the other-worldly forces propelling their lives into chaos, each loses themselves to madness and isolation. Their only escape is in loving others too hard, and not each other enough.

Teisho Of A Tree In Light: A Collection Of Poems, Samuel Arizpe

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

No abstract provided.

The Red Hawk's Cry, Malaika Anne King

Institute for the Humanities Theses

The Red Hawk's Cry, a collection of twenty-eight poems, is arranged in three sections. "Calling It Back," the first section, consists of eight poems. The title and the poem rely on the concept of resurrecting people, the past, and pieces of the self in order to release them. Several of the poems' subjects are childhood and the personal mythology one weaves growing up. "Dialogue" has nine poems which revolve around relationships with lovers and friends. Though there appears to be a chronological order, the poems are placed more for interplay than for a constructed time line. The final section, "The …