Creative Writing Commons^™

Golden Temptresses: The Petrifying Beauty Of Pre-Raphaelite Women, Zoe Julienne Claire Manwiller

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

This project considers the tension between fear and desire, a tension that makes Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and the women they depict, dangerously powerful and alluring. Chapter One focuses in particular on the inner nature of these women using visual signs that suggest complexity beneath the surface. I use the term hybridity to think through the tension of fear and desire. Chapter Two shifts to look at the outer environments and the way in which the danger and fear are mediated by solitude, weaving, reflections, and the expectation of piety.

Return, Shasta Hecht

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This capstone project is a collection of nonfiction essays that work in collaboration to provide a profile of place. The place of focus is White Pass, the mountain the author has grown up on and experienced for the last twenty-one years. This collection is made up of essays that explore her physical, emotional, and spiritual connection to the land and community of White Pass, while also examining themes of family and identity. Each essay gives a different perspective in regards to the setting. The ultimate purpose of this project is to navigate the complexities of White Pass in regards to …

I Have News To Tell You, Jeanne M. Allison

Theses

I Have News To Tell You is a poetry collection that reckons with grief, survival, and mortality through the exploration of harrowing life experiences and contemplation through nature and relationships. The collection contends with what it means to be a human shaped by scars.

Women Without Bodies: Autonomy, Empowerment, And Embodiment In Southern Women, Martha Peyton Ford

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between rural, upper-class, Southern, white women and their bodies. In my attempts to understand this relationship, I analyze sources from the fields of gender studies, philosophy, and psychology, utilizing concepts such as the Cult of True Womanhood, the newly-emerging field of body memoirs, and the long-lasting but elusive idea of Southern ladyhood to make sense of cultural expectations of Southern women and their bodies. This research, alongside my use of autoethnography and oral history, serve as an anchor for my analysis of women’s relationships to their bodies, in which I use myself, my mother, and …

The Gender Epidemic: Intersecting Disease, Gender, And Sexuality In A Graphic Novel, Autumn Cejer

All NMU Master's Theses

For my thesis, I wrote a graphic novel set in a world where certain people possess powers that society tries to suppress by viewing them as a disease. The story focuses on two super-powered individuals on opposite sides of the law who handle this oppression very differently. Although these characters would easily be able to overpower the non-powered people in charge, they are too afraid to do so. Internalized guilt from possessing abilities they did not ask for adds an additional layer of conflict, just as women and disabled persons are constantly made to feel like they should apologize for …

Balance Check, Anne Louise Hilenski

Theses and Dissertations

This novel-length work of fiction seeks to explore the world of women’s elite gymnastics and the way it invites glory as much as it invites sacrifice, mental fortitude, physical pain, and suffering. When gymnast Rachel Wallerstein secures four gold medals at the World Championships a year before the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, her destiny as an American Olympic hero is preemptively written into the history books. What happens in the gym stays in the gym, but not for long, as the ever-present approach of the Olympics casts light on the cracks in her parents’ seemingly perfect marriage. On the …

Front Pew Reflections: Redefining The Role Of Women And Solid Theology In The Church, Yanna Telyeten

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

If we are honest, the modern Evangelical Church has struggled to find a clear answer on what the Bible says about the role of women. This ambiguity often causes women of faith to be confused or uncertain about their value, role, and function in the church. In Front Pew Reflections: Redefining the Role of Women and Solid Theology in the Church, I tell of my personal experiences and struggles as a young woman of faith growing up in the Slavic church. In this reflective piece, I share the discoveries I have made about what the Bible says about the …

Compendium, Sara E. Manlowe

Senior Projects Spring 2021

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

Strawberry Ghosts: Lore, Loss & Licentiousness In A 400-Year-Old City, Ella Wheeler Mcgrail

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Old New England towns are viewed as bastions of American History, but most narratives promoted by such places are highly selective, and tend to showcase the white, male, settler-colonial perspective. In this collection of stories, vignettes, personal accounts and historical snapshots, the city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire is portrayed through the voices of residents past and present, real and fictional. It seeks to examine the city's history through a deconstructionist, anti-colonial lens and to ultimately tell a story that reflects the true beauty, shame, and complexity of this extraordinary coastal town.

Birdcage, Mirella Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

Birdcage is a coming of age story. It is, ultimately, a story about a young woman dealing with issues that she is now barely confronting, and with the help of positive outside influences, comes to accept herself and continues her path with a new perspective. There are prevalent themes such as mental illness, sexual and romantic identity, and the confrontation of toxic parental roles and how it can affect a child as they grow up. The purpose of this Critical Introduction of Birdcage is to explain my goals and purpose with this story, as well as to explain certain themes …

Tiny Furious Circles, Ann M. Herrington

Theses

I have had time to live and time to reflect on that living. What I have found is that certain things present themselves, over and over, wearing different skins. And though they look different, there is a certain whiff of familiarity that activates the soul’s hindbrain and pulls you close. That’s how it has been for me. Because of this — my failure to learn the first time; my need to see a thing from all its sides; my constant picking at the half-healed — certain themes repeat. And because they have come to me at different times in many …

Shadows Of Yesterday, Marlene Liotti

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The year is 2020, but here we are still living in a male dominated society. We remain constantly reminded and surrounded by the mentality that certain activities and career choices are better suited for men over women. We even endure these depictions in literature, on the big screen, and on television. Action films, war movies and novels, and crime dramas show the protagonists and supporting characters as males. There are rare occasions where you may find a female actress or literary character protagonist, and when this happens, she is not depicted with the same strength, knowledge, respect, or importance. She …

Assuming We Cause The World To End, Emma Ambler

Scripps Senior Theses

Four short stories about women dealing with apocalypse in its various forms.

Eulogy, Kim T. Allison

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Particular to the three short stories in Eulogyis the importance of place, as they are set in the fictional location of Potter’s Island, which is based on my childhood sense of Florida.Contradictions, complications, and disappointments can be uniquely tied to a sense of place. My own parents and grandparents moved to Florida when I was three years old, but where they lived, how they lived and worked, and what dreams they pursued was only partially an immigrant’s story of wanting a better life.

The past has weight—a weight that must be dealt with, for real people, and for …

The Places We Called Home, Paige Peterson

Honors College Theses

An excerpt from a novel-in-progress following the lives of three related women, told via interconnected chapters. This thesis represents the stories of two women: Esther and Robin. Borrowing the technique of memoir to tell an account of their lives in the genre of fictional autobiography, these stories are finally being shared in effort to recast societal narratives and reveal empowerment in the unlikeliest places.

Basement Heart, Samantha Constance Tkac

Graduate Thesis Collection

Basement Heart is a collection of short stories with a goal of documenting the manifestations of rage and how it evolves throughout a woman’s life. In these stories, femininity is explored through the aesthetics of the grotesque. Female protagonists seek to inhabit new definitions of female sexuality that combat tired expectations made by society’s misogynistic and objectifying culture. Often, their feelings of unprovoked grief manifest themselves as pursuits of the flesh, which becomes the underlying heartbeat of each story; themes revolve around sex and obsession and explore what happens when sexual fantasies are realized and lived out in the real …

Disrupting” The Broadcast: Female Showrunners As 21st Century “Fangirl” Feminist Rhetors, Veronica Diaz

Department of Writing and Communication Theses

Despite being considered a female-driven discipline, previous scholarship and personal testimonies indicate that composition remains solidly a “boys’ club.” Popular media is male-dominated as well, resulting in on-screen representations of women that, written from the male perspective, tend toward one-dimensionality. Recently, more women are permeating Hollywood writers’ rooms and producing multi-layered stories that offset the aforementioned portrayals.

This thesis examines how showrunners Marti Noxon, Jenji Kohan, and Shonda Rhimes have redefined female representation on-screen—and subsequently, perceptions of women in real life—by crafting nuanced, female-driven narratives. Elements analyzed include: themes present in Noxon’s Sharp Objects (2018) and Dietland (2018), Kohan’s Weeds …

El Vuelo De Las Mil Mariposas: Historias Y Mitos De Mujeres, Fiorella D. Manrique Ponce

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Colección bilingüe de diez cuentos que exploran los roles de la mujer moderna en relación con mitos de mujeres de diferentes partes del mundo.

The Fiction Of Women In Contemporary American Literature : The Borderlands Of Intersectional Feminism, Postcolonial American Studies, And Creative Writing, Skye Anicca

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A collection of nine short stories entitled THE TROUBLE WITH BRIGHT GIRLS is unified by women’s diverse coming-of-age experiences in late twentieth century transnational America. The story collection relies on techniques that highlight dislocation—temporal skips and wide temporal frames, fragmented and recursive narratives, borrowed genres, absurd premise, anti-heroines and anti-epiphanies—which gesture toward collective human experiences while troubling notions of universal knowledge and values and resisting redemption or closure. The critical introduction situates the collection through the theoretical lens of intersectional feminism, informed by Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the borderlands, and in relation to field of multiethnic/transnational literature of the U.S. …

Unbecoming : A Collection Of Short Fiction, Angélica Luisa Valentín Schubert

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This collection contains nine short stories addressing various concepts and issues relating to contemporary femininity in the United States.

Women Of The South: A Creative Exploration Of The Identity Of Women In The Southeastern U.S., Catherine Sharp

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Wait For It To Bloom., Deziree Brown

All NMU Master's Theses

"wait for it to bloom." is a poetry collection of free verse poetry that examines black motherhood and womanhood in order to interrogate the sociopolitical implications of black women’s existence in a patriarchal, capitalistic society. Due to the intersections of our identities, black women face a specific type of discrimination that spans both racism and sexism, among other types of discrimination. The healing properties associated with astronomy and mythology are used as entry points to discuss this trauma, while popular culture is used to address these issues that happen daily in the media directly. This consistent bombardment of prejudice, along …

Groundhogs, Tanya Mason Smith

Dissertations

This dissertation contains a collection of stories that explore loss and grief, illness and disability, parent and child relationships, and marriage and its expectations within the gay community and the south.

Ruth Harris: Under The Prairie Moon, Mary Hays

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Ruth Harris: Under the Prairie Moon is rooted in the rural Illinois landscape and its communities. The stories follow Ruth from childhood to old age and offer multiple viewpoints on fidelity, home, forgiveness, and finally, love. Focus on one character through a lifetime allows perspective to shift as she ages.

The Geographic Center Of Nowhere, Sharon Mauldin Reynolds

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The Geographic Center of Nowhere. A collection of short stories exploring the perseverance of several women in varied situations.

To Write A Life : Three Women In History., Justy Louise Engle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This creative and critical hybrid dissertation explores the spiritual connections between three women in distinctly different time periods: contemporary America, nineteenth century America and early fifteenth century France. The overall dissertation explores the autogenealogobiography, what the author defines as the self-writings of women composed within a specific time period in relation to the current moment and generations of ancestral women. The objective of the creative texts is to record the spiritual journeys of life for the women who will come after for the purpose of encouraging careful observation of history so that women will be able to note and internalize …

A Lineage Of Black Feminist Art, Kiana Miller

Honors Theses

This Black Feminist Art thesis project displays Black lives with full representational impact and it allows a space for agency to be shown. Through an empirical literature review, original poetry and artwork this thesis expresses dimensions of Black feminist/womanist voices. The purpose of this thesis is putting real images of Black lives out into the world in order to have a positive impact, giving young girls an artistic role model that looks like them, and the ability to read a book with images and stories of lives that may resemble theirs, lastly sharing a social commentary as well as a …

Lost Women, Recently Found, Maya Moverman

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

All Feathers And Attitude, Virginia Macdonald

All NMU Master's Theses

This collection of essays and prose poems seeks to examine the elements of an identity: how memories, culture, work, place, family, and brain chemistry simultaneously create and undermine a sense of self. How the sense of self is not contiguous, or smooth. How hope and regret wrestle.

While deeply personal, All Feathers and Attitude is not a memoir, but rather an assemblage of interpretations based on actual events. The individual pieces are gathered into sections that correlate somewhat to the themes mentioned above, but the sections are not labeled as such. The readers may draw whatever conclusions they wish regarding …

Lonely Monsters, Patricia Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lonely Monsters is a full-length feature screenplay that explores the ways in which a classic damsel narrative may be reconsidered. It offers ideas on how death and girlhood may find symmetry. The characters within Lonely Monsters deal with loss, identity of the self versus the world's ideas on self-identity, place, gender, and class. Utilizing the elements of a fairy tale, the narrative seeks to complicate the roles of gender in a cautionary tale. Set in the fictional Florida town of Puerto Palmera, an economic divide between the Estates and the Glades makes for a ripe, troublesome environment for a foul …