Nonfiction Commons^™

Seattle's New Edition, Kyle Gray

Graphic Communication

My project is to create and develop the branding of the NBA's newest franchise: The Seattle Grunge. Grunge is a genre of alternative rock that emerged in the mid-1980s particularly in the city of Seattle. With my team, I am looking for seamless cohesion with other logos in the Association while establishing an emotional connection between the fanbase and its city. The project will consist of a complete creation of the team’s logo/branding, court, 3 jersey designs (home/away/city connect), merchandise, season ticket packaging, and a full marketing report (team logo exposure/connection to the city).

The Ruminating Shell : A Reparative Experiment In Dialogic Writing And Sensory Resonance, Crystal Jiayin Ren

Masters Theses

This thesis unfolds as a first-person memoir, an incomplete record of remembered dialogues, and a structural experiment that aims to get closer to what I perceive as emotional and philosophical truth. Prompted by a conversation with my father-in-law, writer and thinker Shen Hao, I began to reflect on how informal, everyday exchanges with mentors, family, and friends have continually shaped how I translate internal echoes—ruminations, confusions, emotional residues—into writing, spatial, material, and experience.

Rather than adhering to the conventions of academic analysis or formal documentation, I adopt a dialogic form—one rooted in memory, shaped by subjectivity, and open to contradiction. …

Embodied Archives, Emerging Futures, Xuân-Lam Nguyen

Masters Theses

Fifty years after the end of the U.S.–Vietnam War, this thesis reflects on the entangled relationship between the two nations, inspiring hope while challenging dominant representations of trauma and tragedy. Drawing from autobiography, family history, folk art traditions, colonial photographs, hierarchies within art history, archives of student activism, and key geopolitical events, the work explores the complex intersections of queer identity and glitchy historical narratives. Combining research-based inquiry with time- and labor-intensive processes, it reimagines historical materials to construct alternate possibilities for the future.

Feelings That Drive, Kayla M. Jackson

LSU Master's Theses

Feelings That Drive is an interdisciplinary, multimodal thesis that blends poetry, personal narrative, lyrical essays, and spiritual reflection to explore the complex intersections of Black identity, memory, trauma, resilience, and healing in the contemporary American South. Framed in five thematic sections—Worn, Anxiousness, Desperation, Hopeful, and Restored—the work traverses emotional and geographic landscapes, most notably the author’s home in New Orleans, to trace the cumulative effects of racialized trauma, familial rupture, and spiritual seeking. Through nonlinear storytelling and form-breaking verse, the thesis confronts experiences such as anti-Blackness in institutional spaces, gendered violence, economic precarity, generational silence, and the haunting …

Bellyache, Valerie Braylovskiy

Canterbury Scholars

My manuscript of poems, called "Bellyache," speaks to my experience with endometriosis and how it intersects with both womanhood, and the pain we inherit from our ancestors that becomes stored in our bodies over time. This project gave me the permission to write poems that grapple with both escaping and recreating what it’s like to be a woman inside the medical system which continues to equate pain with hysteria, and inside a world that either says you’re sick, or you aren’t.

Time Moves Slow, Joshua Hammond

Arrow Rock

No abstract provided.

Personas Issue 3, 2025, Jonathan Maiullo

Personas: Multilingual Creative Writing Journal

No abstract provided.

Poetries Of Abandonment: A Study Of Plath And Glück, Yara Abdelmoneim

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intersection between literature and trauma, which can be discerned in the key works of two poets, Sylvia Plath and Louise Glück. While offering readings of crucial poems, the thesis also examines the interrelations among trauma, memory and narrative as theorized by two contemporary psychiatrists, Bessel van der Kolk and Judith Herman. Both Plath and Glück wrote about personal and generational trauma after going through different experiences of abandonment. Absence, indirection and repetition provide the basis for literary techniques that allow their traumas to be better understood by authors and readers alike. The degree to which each …

A Crisis Of Craft: Creative Writing In The American University, Brenna E. Derbish

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this essay, I aim to analyze the changing nature of the Creative Writing MFA through the lens of the American culture that shaped it. In the 1930s, creative writing in American universities began to take shape, citing itself as a way to reform the philological study of literature into a more active field, a way for the common person to learn through creativity and self-expression. However, as the number of MFA programs in the nation continued to rise, admittance became increasingly selective, with many universities accepting only between 5 and 10% of their applicants. This increase in exclusivity, coupled …

Conversations And Educating People About Traumatic Experiences, Cynthia Ortega

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

This Capstone project focused on writing a book for young adults about the different traumas people experience, including generational trauma, domestic violence, substance abuse, and mental health struggles. These difficult topics were often discussed, yet the goal was to encourage open conversations that helped individuals recognize trauma and learn about available resources. My mother, Theresa Preciado, experienced all these challenges, and sharing her story aimed to inspire others to speak up. Her journey reflected the struggles of many, offering relatability, education, and understanding. Readers were made aware that the book included emotionally heavy content. At its core, this project sought …

Ztc Eng 151 Syllabus: College Writing, Nicolette Guida

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus provides a curriculum for an introduction to research writing. In this course, students develop introductory skills for academic research writing, work on critical thinking and analysis skills, and build an awareness of the rhetorical situation both in texts read in class and in their own writing. This course focuses on the impact that culture has in shaping behavior and life experiences. Included course texts are centered on the exploration of the different cultural groups that people occupy and the specific cultural norms, values and beliefs for each of these groups. This is zero textbook cost (ZTC) course, so …

What We Don't Say Out Loud, Antwan Bowen

Master's Projects

What We Don’t Say Out Loud is a collection of original short stories that explore themes of identity, race, family, queerness, humor, and emotional vulnerability through the lens of Black and marginalized voices. These narratives blend literary realism with elements of magical realism, satire, and personal essay to reflect the emotional truths and unspoken complexities that shape everyday life. Central to the collection is a commitment to portraying characters in their full humanity, often resisting trauma-centered tropes in favor of layered, internal storytelling. From the raw, personal account of Black fatherhood in “The Best Day and the Worst Night,” to …

Red Strings: A Collection Of Creative Works, Natalie Gumm

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of creative nonfiction and poetry exploring different aspects of my identity, including my passions, appearance, sexuality, and the places I’ve called home.

Art In Itself: The Vision Of Three Female Mississippi Artists, Jane E. Thomas

Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of longform, narrative-style journalistic profiles on artists in Northeast Mississippi. These artists include Carol Roark from Enid and Hannah McCormick and Coulter Fussell from Water Valley. Each profile highlights an individual artist’s work, from her background, inspirations, process and distinctiveness as a creator. These profiles required studio visits and extensive interviews, as well as secondary interviews with clients, gallery owners and art curators. An overarching theme between the three artists is their ability to recognize artistic potential in their immediate surroundings; Roark paints landscapes from her own backyard, McCormick paints scenes from everyday life and …

When The Siren Sounds, Madelynn H. Morgan

Persimmon Creek

Growing up being the daughter of a fire fighter was not easy. I had a very absent father growing up, and this was due to his work in the fire service. Through this reflective essay, I discuss what growing up as a first-response family was like, and how it has shaped me into the adult I am becoming.

Scramble, Jillian M. Canady

Persimmon Creek

Scramble is an exploration of resilience and the human experience, this essay centers around one powerful word, intertwining memories of family, struggle, and personal growth. It reflects on the choices we make and the messiness of life, capturing the enduring spirit that drives us to keep moving forward. Through storytelling, this piece invites readers to ponder the complexities of existence, revealing how a single word can encapsulate our deepest struggles and triumphs.

Hold It Against Your Bones: On Love, Duty, And Letting Go, Lisa Pilar Cowan

Theses and Dissertations

Hold it Against Your Bones is a series of eight linked essays on grief, duty, and letting go. They cover the author's experience of being in the care-taking role for both her mother and her children, the journey of accompanying someone as they die, and the space that is left after care taking duties subside.

Arrow Rock, Spring 2025, Full Issue

Arrow Rock

No abstract provided.

Untethered And Unraveled: Isolated Motherhood In The Liminal Stage, Ashton K. Wronikowski

All Theses

In examining Kate Chopin’s The Awakening alongside anthropologic theories of liminality, this paper examines the becoming women traverse as they transition between various social roles: girl, woman, mother. Edna is a maternal character attempting to unweave herself from her roles as mother and wife, and she finds this desire to go backwards to the freedom she experienced as a girl is proven to be impossible. The unmooring of her psyche and her subsequent suicide is indicative of a failure, not of her own accord, but in the social preparation and support she receives within her new identity. Social anthropologists further …

Book Review: Local Signs And Wonders: Essays About Belonging To A Place, Susanna R. Smith

Georgia Library Quarterly

Book Review of Local Signs and Wonders, by Richard Rankin