Creative Writing Commons^™

Fireweed, Robert Kopfensteiner

Theses and Dissertations

Fireweed is a novel following a family in the North American fur trade of the 1830’s. The son of a mixed race parentage and only surviving child of a natural disaster, the protagonist, titled only as the boy, must navigate the complex relationships his father has established between independent trappers, the burgeoning United States military, and the Anishinaabe peoples. The father’s dealings have culminated in the loss of the mysterious iron safe he possesses, which houses what each interested party desires, as well as a truth the boy fears the most.

The novel examines time and the American identity through …

That Strange Darkness, Matthew Boedy

Theses and Dissertations

This novel is about the past. It is a novel about how the past always encroaches on the present and the future. Even for those who are saved from it.

Brave Irene, Nicole Mccaffety

Theses and Dissertations

While magical realism steps forward as guiding hand within the manuscript, these poems are interested in re-purposing the myth of the rabbit in the moon in order to explore family history and legend. The organizational force is an emotional narrative that gives shape to a manuscript full of poems interested in the speaker and their personality. The speaker invites, pleads, begs, borrows, and steals all for the purpose of being both interesting and understood. Form, particularly the sonnet, is another noticeable element with the second chapter comprised of poems entirely dedicated to the reader where the speaker comes forward onto …

Stasis, Eric Pahre

Theses and Dissertations

Stasis is a collection of three short stories and a long novella. These stories examine settings parallel to our own lived reality and history.

“Verdugris” follows an infestation of vermin in a 20th century setting linked to European colonialism. Power dynamics and attitudes towards cleanliness are contrasted with natural beauty, habitat loss, parasitism, and the ‘fixed’ nature of the colonial town.

“Alpentraum” describes two foreign hospice caretakers seeing to an old woman in her small home in the mountains. This short story investigates uncertainty and acceptance, as the caretakers must change their plans when the mountain is struck by a …

Orpheus, Spring 2022: Obsolete, University Of Dayton

Orpheus: UD's Literary and Artistic Magazine

No abstract provided.

Pathos, Spring 2022, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Bret Steggell

Greenbox To Barbershops, Willie Wilson

English Theses & Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of poetry that reflects the heartbeat of the inner-city. The poems in this collection highlight the struggles and explore the tensions within but they also celebrate the tempered strength of those who traverse its streets. The meeting place is the metaphorical center of my thesis. For me, two of those places were the greenbox ( juvenile) and the barbershop setting (adulthood).

The Flowerings Project: A Library In Transformation, Jody Condit Fagan, Joanne V. Gabbin, Bethany Nowviskie, Lauren K. Alleyne, Aaron Noland

Libraries

This final report from the JMU Libraries and Furious Flower Poetry Center to the Mellon Foundation describes in detail the activities undertaken as part of a 2020-2021 planning grant, “Furious Flowerings: Developing a Partnership Model for Digital Library Support of a Living Center for Black Poetry,” funded by the Mellon Foundation. The grant explored and developed a partnership model for integrated library support of a living, academic center for the arts with archival, scholarly, digital, educational, and performance components. Nine key areas were addressed, including three overarching areas: development of cultural competencies, exploring how an exemplar project can be used …

Synesthesia, Rachel Blood

Healy Poetry Prize

No abstract provided.

Lunchtime, Kim Tran

Healy Poetry Prize

No abstract provided.

The Kind Of Fear That Can Scare You To Death, Madeline Aafedt

Healy Poetry Prize

No abstract provided.

Revolutionary Reenactment: Militant Futures Past In Rania And Raed Rafei’S “74 (The Reconstitution Of A Struggle)”, Judith Naeff

Regards

This article analyses how innovative narrative techniques operate in the movie 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle) by Rania and Raed Rafei (2012). The film is a reenactment of an historical event: the student occupation of the American University of Beirut one year before the start of the Lebanese civil war. The use of improvised reenactment, testimonials and the voiceover all strengthen the film’s approach to the event as an embodied transformative experience, even as it descends into its defeat. While a cynical spectator might argue that the focus on “revolutionary becoming” reduces collective action to individual experience, the article …

Le Cinéma Politique Et Engagé Turc, Mehmet Ozturk

Regards

This article is about Turkish political cinema. The cinema, which began with the authorization of the state during the fall of the Ottoman Empire, did not have an important political role during the construction of the Kemalist Republic. In the 1950s, it entered its golden age in pro-American Turkey. At the end of the 1960s, especially in the lead years (1970), political cinema was used on several occasions as part of the ideology of the far right and the revolutionary left. After the violence of the military coup of 1980, it remained rather cynical and disengaged. Political interpretations represented the …

Introduction – Le Cinéma Militant Dans Le Monde Arabe (Des Années 1960 À Nos Jours), Joseph Korkmaz

Regards

Le cinéma militant dans le monde arabe, des années soixante du siècle dernier à maintenant, est tributaire d’un contexte historique marqué par le conflit israélo-palestinien et, par induction, israélo-arabe. Ce contexte s’inscrit à son tour dans la Guerre froide et le bras de fer entre le bloc communiste, mené par l’URSS, et le bloc occidental, parrainé par les États-Unis...

Usages Du Ciné-Tract Dans Le Film « Demande À Ton Ombre », Camille Leprince

Regards

Lamine Ammar-Khodja's first feature film, produced in 2012, Demande à ton ombre (Ask your shadow) is part of the so-called "creation" documentary. A diary and political chronicle, this film which runs from January to March 2011 plunges us into the news of the Arab uprisings seen from Algeria. While distinguishing itself in several respects from a militant cinema, Demande à ton ombre does not deny certain processes of the tradition of cine-tracts. In order to measure this distant, even distanced, proximity to the resources of militant and engaged cinema, it is proposed here to analyze their function and …

From Classroom To Gallery Floor: A Processual Exploration Of Rene Saheb’S (Meta)Physical Engagements With Clay, Kasper Tromp

Regards

This article presents a case study detailing the creative process of Iranian artist Rene Saheb. It analyzes the various stages, developments, and challenges Saheb went through while she explored the medium of clay, which was new to her artistic repertoire. Rather than focusing on outward properties of ceramics such as style or technique, the artist’s inward experiences of her medium and creative process are foregrounded by means of interviews.
As Saheb frequently turns to Islamic mysticism and poetry as conceptual anchorage throughout her creative process, her engagements with the ceramic medium will be discussed in light of relevant Islamic discourses …

Liberating “Khatt” From Calligraphy: Samir Sayegh On Art, Religion And Spiritualit, Kristen Scheid, Hala Shoucair, Saleh Barakat

Regards

The eminent Samir Sayegh has contributed substantially to Arab modernism as a critic, historian, and artist himself.¹ His writings in Arabic are well known, through numerous journal articles, interviews, and most notably his 1988 book, Islamic Art: A Speculative Reading of Its Philosophy and Aesthetic Particularities.²
Further, his thinking impacted scores of students and colleagues in architecture or graphic design from the American University of Beirut, where he lectured from 2003 to 2007.
However, his voice has not been heard loudly in English. This transcript amalgamates multiple sittings with Sayegh, between 2009 and 2022. He kindly allowed us to …

History Or Project? The Double Life Of Islamic Art Since The 1970s, Hamed Yousefi

Regards

This article argues that since the 1970s a duality divides the concept of Islamic Art. On the one hand, we have Islamic Art as the subject matter of a modern mode of historical inquiry, invented and developed in the colonial period in Europe but then taken up by scholars from around the world, including Muslim academics. This is the Islamic Art of Islamic Art History as a field of secular scholarship.
But then, in the decolonization period, and more pronouncedly since the 1970s, we witness the birth of another concept of Islamic Art that is not focused on the past. …

The Nonidentical Identical; Or, Notes On Violence And Escape In Basel Abbas And Ruanne Abou-Rahme’S "Oh Shining Star Testify", Ruslana Lichtzier

Regards

A review of Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s installation Oh shining star testify at the 12th Berlin Biennale (2022), where the artists present Palestinian lives and deaths by disrupting the progressive chronologies of Palestine’s ongoing obliteration.
The essay considers the representation of racist epistemologies through recourse to the work of Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten, while also situating the installation within a lineage of cultural productions that respond to the histories of genocide.

"All Is Not Glitter" Review Of “Beirut And The Golden Sixties: A Manifesto Of Fragility” Berlin, Gropius-Bau, 25 March – 12 June 2022 Lyon, 14 September – 31 December 2022, Nadia Von Maltzahn

Regards

The exhibition Beirut and the Golden Sixties: A Manifesto of Fragility highlights what the curators argue is the fragility of the narrative surrounding Beirut’s “Golden Age” – the period leading up to Lebanon’s civil war.
This review traces the genesis of the exhibition and presents its displays at Berlin’s Gropius Bau and the MAC Lyon. Several works are showcased to demonstrate how the curators constructed the exhibition’s five sections, which focus on place, body, form, politics, and the Civil War.
The review offers contextualization for an exhibition rich in diverse artworks and archival materials that contain a multitude of narratives.