Creative Writing Commons^™

Dance Lessons, Kaitlyn Burch

Dissertations and Theses

August Diamond is left lost after the sudden death of her father. The stories in Dance Lessons explore the themes of loss and grief, retreat and return, and finding your true self. The collection is a novel in stories, each story exposing another layer of August's past, her family, and their complicated relationships.

American Cuerpos, Devan Schwartz

Dissertations and Theses

On election night 2008, a child is conceived by two Barack Obama campaign staffers--Daniel from Seattle, Anza from Honduras. American Cuerpos is a novel about the body and the body politic, about what it means to give birth through the eyes of both mother and father.

Dazai's Women: Dazai Osamu And His Female Narrators, Jamie Walden Cox

Dissertations and Theses

Dazai Osamu (born Tsushima Shûji) was a post-WWII writer who wrote a number of works using a female narrator. This thesis research focused on the reasons as to why Dazai may have written using female narratives, taking into consideration the time period and social milieu in which he was writing, as well as his own personal history with women. In addition, the history of male authors utilizing female narratives was explored, as well as the ideas of gender in the Japanese arts. Dazai works were also compared with Tankizaki Junichirô's to see how the roles of women in their works …

On Family And Fences: Tracing Melungeon Roots In The Blue Ridge Mountains Of Virginia And Tennessee, Ron Horton

Dissertations and Theses

The Melungeons are a group of indeterminable origin living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southeastern Tennessee and Southwestern Virginia. This thesis describes characteristics of these tri-racial isolates and gives theories as to their mysterious origins. Being darker skinned, the Melungeons were pushed into more mountainous regions by European colonists in the early 1700’s. While multiple hypotheses exist as to the origin of the Melungeon people, there is no single theory that is accepted by all scholars.

Dr. Brent Kennedy’s The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People, served as a catalyst for my Melungeon research. Kennedy is my …

At Home In The World : The American Middle-Class House As A Twenty-First Century Public Square, Kathleen Holt

Dissertations and Theses

Using personal narrative, interviews, and research, this thesis project looks at how the middle-class American home has been transformed, by people like me, into a modem-day public square.

Luminous Days, Mitchell S. Jackson

Dissertations and Theses

Luminous Days is a representation of my artistic vision, literary goals, and social influences. Artistically, I intend to create fiction that is aesthetically appealing. This aesthetic appeal includes the presence of a distinct narrative voice, realistically rendered settings, multidimensional characters, meticulous attention to diction, and sentence construction. The literary goal I hold in the highest regard is the creation of a body of work that demonstrates continued growth in my craft.

What I intend to render in my thesis is an accurate portrayal of the effects that drugs on the lives of my characters, and more specifically the relational strains …

Breadcrumbs: New And Selected Poems, Jonathan Kirk Ellis

Dissertations and Theses

These poems are grouped as they are in order to reflect a progression, a trail at the end of which my own spirituality is not found, but revealed. A subtitle might be Dilemmas and Destinations, for each poem can also be viewed individually as a struggle or desire to reach this goal. In fact, I label my two sub-sections in precisely these terms. I have organized them not to build upon one another, but to act as "snapshots" that describe my beliefs. My poems begin with family issues and/or characters that have shaped a belief in a multi-faceted God. Several …

The Bone Yard, Katherine Bartolomucci

Dissertations and Theses

This novel explores the everyday lives of two blue-collar workers Levi and Cressida -over the course of one summer in a rural fruit processing plant. The main protagonists exhibit contrasting forms of faith and courage, which drives their divergent fates.

Levi is a soul-searching twenty-five-year-old high school dropout who feels extraordinary obligation to family and is engaged to his pregnant girlfriend. Although Levi's father wants him to stay home and take over the family's strawberry farm, he intends to amass the courage to return to school and get a degree in agronomy.

In contrast, Cressida is a twenty-year-old senior in …

Habitats, Sydney Jean Thompson

Dissertations and Theses

A collection of original poetry exploring the theme of landscape as metaphor for human experience. The collection explores the regions of Oregon in three sections entitled, "Pacific," "Skeleton Caves," and "Cascades." Landscape is interwoven with human emotion and personal experiences. Nature becomes an objective participant and teacher in the struggle to understand the nature of grief, loss, love, and life.

The poems included in "Pacific" primarily pertain to relationships. The primary image is water, whereas the the poems in "Cascades" are mountainous, relating to trial, the possibility of volcanic activity, and the promise of unseen vistas. "Skeleton Caves" is named …

Concrete Poetry: The Influence Of Design And Marketing On Aesthetics, Tineke Bierma

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the past and present of concrete poetry with the purpose of finding out whether concrete poetry is still being produced in its original form, or whether it has changed.

Concrete poets were not the first ones to create picture poems and similar texts. In chapter I an overview of earlier picture poetry is given. It and other precursors of concrete poetry are discussed and their possible contributions evaluated.

Chapters II and III deal with the definition of concrete poetry of the mid-fifties and sixties (pure, classic c.p.). They focus primarily on German, Austrian and Swiss poets. Manifestos …

Die Moderne Großstadt In AusgewäHlten Werken Deutscher Lyriker, Hildegard Goranson

Dissertations and Theses

It is the purpose of this thesis to discuss the works of German poets who describe the large modern city and deal with various aspects of city life and city people.