Creative Writing Commons^™

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 …

The Brothers Grimm Fairytale Cookboook, Grace Therriault

Graphic Communication

Modern technology and the Internet have made cookbooks relatively obsolete. Nowadays you only see them as coffee table decoration, something to flip through but not actually use. Designing a creative and fun children’s’ cookbook based on some of the famous Brothers Grimm fairytales, will encourage kids, ages 5-12, to have some fun in the kitchen and use their imagination to whip up some incredible edibles. This opportunity creates a window for children to get excited about a book and translate what they read into the real world. Lastly, this project is important to me because it the impact experimenting in …

Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay promotes the writing and illustrating of middle grade literature that mirrors the wonder-inducing experiences of leafing through an illuminated manuscript and stepping into a Gothic cathedral. An examination of Catholic medieval visual culture moves into a discussion on its underlying philosophy and theology, which are profoundly centered on relational healing and the dignity of the human person. Christian writers including St. Pope John Paul II, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Josef Pieper, Madeline L’Engle, Dr. Bob Schuchts, Makoto Fujimura, and Andrew Peterson inform an exploration of mercy, forgiveness, and love as self-gift in the context of illustration and storytelling …

Amplifying Tutor Voices: A Qualitative Analysis For Improving Writing Center Tutoring Practices And Pedagogy, Leah Washko

English Department Masters Theses

Within the walls of university writing centers, tutors and tutees collaborate. They discuss writing, but even more than that, they communicate about ideas and theories bigger than themselves, all while discovering their identities. Exploration of how tutors define their authority and agency, while also highlighting the importance of tutors’ voices, is necessary for the continuation of writing center studies. Writing center tutors’ roles may be understood by some, but the mental hurdles, the questioning natures, and the care-giver roles they are emersed into need to be further investigated. Through a study conducted at Kutztown University’s Writing Center, tutors were surveyed …

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 …

Brave Spaces, Radical Openness, And Youth Loneliness, Taylor Curry, Mariah Thomas, Riese Munoz

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

It is no secret young adults, no matter where in the world they come from, face social pressures with the potential to be isolating. For today’s youth, not only are they feeling the commonplace anxieties about fitting in, finding success, and uncertainty of the future, but these anxieties are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Young adults from all over the globe report feeling more anxious, more depressed, and more lonely. However, it is also no secret that deliberate community building, creation of art and writing as a means of self-exploration, and participation in spaces designed for acceptance fend off these …

Writing Young Adult Fiction: Reflections On Narration And Theme In Young Adult Literature, Kimberly Davidson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to Young Adult Library Services, “Young Adult Literature is a genre that is separate from Children's Literature. It emerged in the twentieth century when teenagers became a powerful force of the economy in the 1930s and gained prominence in the sixties.” Various sources list common elements that make YA literature a distinct category. 1) YA books appeal to the interests of readers from ages twelve to eighteen. 2) YA books typically explore a teenage character’s entry into an unfamiliar “world.” 3) YA books usually feature a protagonist’s self-reflection on events that influence their forays into the adult world. 4) …

Coup De Grâce, Violet Rea Mass

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This project, composed of an introduction and a fiction piece, explores the complex power dynamics at play on the university stage put into perspective of the Human Rights study. The fiction follows young Olive as arrives for her first term at a university in a secluded valley where she must come to terms with a darkness greater than she had ever imagined.

“My Purpose Is To Assist”: How Chatgpt Can Push Liberal Arts Institutions To Think Critically About Themselves, Clare B. Martin

Scripps Senior Theses

Since its release, ChatGPT, a chatbot specialized in writing content and answering questions in response to user prompts, has posed an unclear threat to liberal arts institutions. Can it serve as an effective tool for cheating? Can its responses replace work done in the liberal arts? This thesis argues that ChatGPT’s limitations—particularly its inability to think critically—prevent it from replacing real liberal arts work, which involves questioning, critique, and re-examination. If anything, this thesis suggests, ChatGPT can push liberal arts institutions to better promote critical thinking by serving as a litmus test for liberal arts-level work.

All Along The Ivory Tower: Black American Identity As Voiced By Poetic Youths, Jeremy D. Greene

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to help amplify and analyze Black American elementary student voice in a post-2020 world. Discussions and writings were conducted at the students’ charter school in spaces where students voiced what it meant to be a Black American youth through both verbal and written means. The current qualitative study focused on using discussions and creative writing to help participants make sense of their identity in their school, community, and the United States. This research provided students’ counternarratives regarding stereotypes associated with being Black American students and focused on how such spaces can positively impact …

Pause And Possibility: Pre-Service Teachers’ Perspectives On Creative Writing Clubs, Stephanie Altier

Honors Projects

Creative writing clubs can enrich the lives of writers and facilitators. These clubs provide many opportunities to enrich their members’ academic, social, and personal development (Clifton, 2022; Siskel & Jacobs, 2011; Lawton, 2021). This project uses a focus-group study of five pre-service Integrated Language Arts teachers to explore the teachers' perspectives on advising creative writing clubs. Their insight informs a web-based teacher resource, Creative Writing Club Hub. Major findings are that participants harbor low self-efficacy towards creative writing and that the most effective method for encouraging them to advise these clubs may be to create a creative writing community …

A Ruff Day On The Road: How Relocation Affects Children Pre-K Through Third Grade And How A Picture Book Can Help, Bryant Miller

Honors Projects

Moving their home from across town, a couple of states away, or overseas is something most will experience at least once in their lifetime. For all, moving is a big change, but for children, it can have lasting effects. Presumably, social skills, academic development, and family dynamics are all impacted when children move. But how and to what length are these factors influenced? This led to the original research question, how does relocation affect children and how can this transition during relocation be eased? After the first portion of the research was done to answer these questions, the research then …

Finding Their Chrysanthemum: Linguistic Representation In Children's Literature, Marielena Zajac

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Children in America today struggle with finding themselves in the books they read due to societal expectations. From an early age, children are dictated on the correct way to speak and write in “American,” which can leave children and their home languages feeling unseen and dismissed. To help further the conversation and promotion of linguistic diversity in American society, this capstone analyzes dialectal representation in children’s books, with a heavy focus on attitudinal linguistic principles rather than prescriptive mechanics. The secondary research explores current literature and resources that discuss literacy acquisition in adolescents, trends in dialects in America, and childhood …

Social Emotional Learning In An Elementary School, Abigail Cook

Master's Theses

This action-research study used a mixed-methods approach to help determine and observe the benefits of social emotional journaling in the classroom, specifically its impact on a students ability to recognize their personal emotions and self-concept. Data was collected both quantitively [sic] and qualitatively in a fifth-grade classroom to note the changes before implementing social emotional learning and after implementing it. This study discusses the term “social emotional learning” and provides a discussion on the impact of journaling for the students and any other implications observed. Although the results are mostly positive, the research discovered during the study concluded …

Quickwrites And The Quest To Reverse Writing Reluctance, Jenna Dunn

Honors Projects

Current research suggests that students’ enjoyment of writing will positively impact their writing achievement (Graham, 2007; Bulut, 2017). Given this trend, the following study explores the extent to which quickwriting, a teaching strategy developed extensively by Linda Rief (2003, 2018) as well as Donald Graves & Penny Kittle (2005), impacts the attitudes of reluctant writers. A total of nineteen eleventh-grade students were interviewed in three focus groups. All of the students within the study experienced three weeks of regular classroom quickwriting along with one week of a quickwriting extension workshop prior to participation in the focus groups. Students were asked …

How Social Media’S Rhetoric Shapes The Social Identity Of Online Groups: Forming, Confirming And Reinforcing And The Algorithmic Role, Crystal Rose

Student Research Submissions

The world has become integrated with technology at a rapid rate. The rhetoric of online platforms, due to technology integration, allows people to connect, converse, and meet others who have common character traits. Eyman (2015) defines rhetoric as an action that intends to persuade and form meaning. These platforms are referred to as "social media," which are online networks made by people who use rhetoric to form, confirm, and reinforce the connections of platform users with common character traits: Hobbies, thoughts, race, gender, or religion. These common character traits make up one's social identity. This study details the findings of …

I’M Not A Tragedy: Speaking Up About Ableist Microaggressions, Kasandra Marguerite Colwell

Communication Senior Capstones

Have you heard of ableist microaggressions? Let me tell you about them, as someone who has experienced them. I have a bi-lateral dislocating knee condition that I was born with. I can walk, but sometimes I need additional stability or reduction of pain while getting around, in which case I tend to use a cane. I have had many othering interactions while using a mobility aid in public, whether that be a knee brace, a cane, or crutches. While it often seemed the stranger didn’t mean any harm, the question is how many invasive questions and comments from strangers can …

Yo Soy Rumano (I Am Romanian): An Autobiography Exploring The Effects Of Memory And Trauma On The Formation Of The Self, Andrei Bucaloiu

Honors Theses

I came to the United States from Romania with my parents when I was two years old. This moment of cultural, linguistic, and geographic separation occurred before I was able to consciously recall it, yet it constitutes a traumatic experience, in the Freudian and Lacanian sense, that defines my positionality and serves as a primary space in which I seek to develop who I am. However, regardless of how much I have developed my ability to communicate in English, it is not the language of my emotional affect. At the same time, profound expression in Romanian is not possible for …

Anti-Racist Pedagogy: A Practical Means Of Building Bonds Between Marginalized Students And Instructors In The Composition Classroom, Santa-Victoria Pérez

English (MA) Theses

Framed by the existing scholarship in anti-racist pedagogy, this thesis is inspired by Charise Pimentel and Octavio Pimentel’s dream of building coalitions with marginalized students, Steven Alvarez’s framework for academic biliteracy, and Marcos del Hierro’s advocacy for incorporating discussions about contentious social issues in the classroom. This research draws mainly from works by rhetoricians and compositionists of color who report that working through and pushing past the discomfort and tensions of politically charged topics in the classroom are crucial for an anti-racist writing program (Prendergast, 1998; Villanueva, 1999; Clary-Lemon, 2009; Inoue, 2015; García de Müeller and Ruiz, 2017). By reflecting …

Through Critique And Beyond: Speculative Fiction As A Tool Of Critical Pedagogy, Syd Thorne

Master's Projects and Capstones

This field projects centers around the issue of hopelessness among teachers and students and examines the genre of speculative fiction as a potential tool for cultivating critical hope in the classroom and as an asset to critical pedagogy. Utopian pedagogy and critical pedagogy make up the theoretical framework of this research and project development. The research explores the use of speculative fiction in three areas: activism and identity, student engagement, and utopian performance. The review of the literature demonstrates that the use of speculative fiction in the classroom has the potential to engage students in conversations about social justice and …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Writing Not Writing: Transdisciplinary Poetics, Institutional Critique, Miriam L. Atkin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an exploration of transdisciplinary creative practice as a means of institutional critique. The artists I have chosen as my primary focus—Robert Kocik, Eleni Stecopoulos, Zora Neale Hurston, Jimmie Durham, Leslie Scalapino and Lyn Hejinian—employ multiple mediums and fields of discourse to address the presumptions and exclusions that are structurally integral to the institutions that house them. They enact “architextural” interventions through their use of forms that move between the page and three dimensional space, incorporating architecture, sculpture, drawing, painting, film, performance, poetry and prose. My work aims at a renewed understanding of critique as such, and therefore—though …

Victim Impact: The Manson Murders And The Rise Of The Victims’ Rights Movement, Merrill W. Steeg

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Approaches To Narrative Instruction For Second Language Learners, Mathew Peters

MA TESOL Collection

Narratives have reemerged as a dominant form of rhetoric over the last fifty years. This dominant use of narrative discourse has only increased with the rise of social media. Walther Fisher (1987) proposed the narrative paradigm as a unifying theory of human communication. His major claim is that people are inherently storytellers and that people use a narrative rationality and a logic of good reasons to inform their beliefs, values, and actions. This paper utilizes his theories, along with recent findings in neuroscience, to establish an argument for greater inclusion of narratives into second language teaching. Narratives can have a …

Using Creative Writing And Literacy To Dismantle The School To Prison Pipeline, Tyler N. Gross

Honors Theses

The primary purpose of this research was to elevate the voices of minoritized girls of color (those with intersecting identities such as being Black, Brown and/or gender nonconforming, and/or having a disability) through creative writing and literacy, by engaging them in a process of inquiry that allowed them to creatively express themselves and to share their experiences within the school-to-prison pipeline. Using creative writing and a curriculum that the researcher created, the young women participating in various activities that helped them share their experiences and allowed them to think about countering the narrative about young girls of color and with …

Forgotten Things: A Historian's Tale, Mary Jackson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

Forgotten Things: A Historian’s Tale is a story of a post-human world where magic and creatures of lore have taken sovereignty over the land, following the adventures of Aster, a small flower elf whose job is to travel and document the residual traces of humanity. Every crumbling building, decaying record, and seemingly useless bauble of humanity tells a story, one that Aster is trying to find the conclusion to. One day, rumors start to circulate. Whispers that there might still be humans hidden away somewhere. Aster is thrilled about this, hoping that she might be able to talk with a …

The Need For Spanish In Mainstream Classrooms: A Celebratory Reclamation Of Linguistic Identity, Keila Torres

Art of Teaching Thesis - Written

This paper is a testament to the sociocultural importance of bilingualism in mainstream U.S. classrooms, specifically pertaining to the Spanish language and communities in which there is a large percentage of Spanish speakers. Approximately 13% of Americans are native Spanish speakers, this is equivalent to 40 million people. States like Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Texas can boast populations that include over 1 million Hispanic people (United States Census Bureau, 2019). However, our school curriculums do not reflect the large percentage of Spanish-speaking students who roam their hallways. I argue that traditional …

20 Things, Reann Parker

Honors Theses

20 Things is a short young adult novel that explores a variety of topics and themes, from mental health, recovery, and self discovery to race, love, and friendship. Beginning with a high school girl named Halle waking up in a hospital after a suicide attempt, the novel is a coming of age story about the help Halle receives and what she goes through in trying to find reasons to keep living. The novel is divided into ten chapters: “Waking Up,” “Going Home,” “Arriving,” “Being Honest,” “Keeping the Faith,” “Soul Searching,” “Willingness,” “Maintaining,” “Checking In,” and “Living.” Each chapter represents the …

(Trans)Form: Spoken Word As Queer And Transgender Testimony, Kaileigh/Wesley Strobel

Undergraduate Distinction Papers

(Trans)form will explore the importance of spoken word poetry in and for the queer and transgender community. Especially underscoring the significance of public voice in a culture that often wants to conceal or minimize the lived lives of LGTBQIAP+ people. (Trans)form will be a collection of self-authored spoken word poems that are influenced by—and in dialogue with—powerful transgender spoken word authors. The project will open with an essay on the importance of spoken word poetry and voice.

The Writing For Healing And Transformation Project, Heather Elizabeth Osborn

Education Doctorate Dissertations

As a qualitative action research study, the purpose of The Writing for Healing and Transformation Project was to facilitate more inclusive writing strategies and to promote individual and collective healing on issues of social suffering and oppression (Kleinman, Das, & Lock, 1997; Pennebaker & Smyth, 2016) for diverse students at a community college located in the northeastern United States. The 18 participants in the study included students in my English II literature and composition course. The theoretical framework encompassed Pennebaker’s (2016) “writing for healing” paradigm, advocating the use of expressivist writing and “social suffering theory,” examining how power structures affect …