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A Pandemic Of Greed And A Disease Of Poverty In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque Of The Red Death", Benjamin Herrick

Master's Theses

The breakers tripped. Again. The breakers, a mandatory halt to trading on the floor of the stock exchange in response to the S&P falling more than 7% from the previous close. This was instituted after the Crash of 1987 to calm the markets before trading is allowed to resume. They are supposed to mitigate a drastic crash. They have only ever triggered once before, in 1997. Not for the tech bubble. Not even in the crash of 2008. All trading stops for fifteen minutes when the Level One breaker trips. If it drops further in the same day, the Level …

Praise, Prayer, And The Power Of God: Modern Miracles, Leslie Parker Jackson

Masters Theses

Miracles exist, and the study of them and their existence has continued for years. By studying credible, contemporary research about miracles, scholars and everyday people alike can determine this fact. The research provides definitions, although one consistent definition is not agreed upon by scholars. Examples of Old Testament, New Testament, and modern-day miracles follow these definitions to prove to those who are searching for answers that miracles happen all the time. The only requirement is for everyday people to look around them and observe the miracles taking place in their lives. In this thesis, I will convey the definitions of …

Hal : A Romance, Janna Urschel

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Hal: A Romance is a multimodal work composed of short stories, meditations, poetry, photography, and essays that together explore the great love affair of Sodium and Chloride that gives us salt. This is an ethical project concerned with expanding the voice and representation of actantcies beyond the human in the craft of writing and in the public imagination. The project intends to be a praxis that plays through a flat ontological orientation, including various strains of New Materialism and Object-Oriented-Ontology, some of the ideas from which are addressed directly in the section “Loving: A Primer.” Individually and collectively, the pieces …

Greetings From Eureka!: A Story Quartet And Critical Afterword., Roman Sauls

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

This project details the narrative decisions made within a quarter of my own stories, with special attention paid to cross-story relationships, the dynamics of linked short story collections, and the elements of craft I have honed while at the University of Louisville. The nature of narrative structure and narrative time is discussed in the first story; the crafting of dialogue and the narrative texture conjured from that dialogue in the second; the interaction between a character's psychology and a story's setting in the third; and the relevance of both sensorial and visual motifs in the fourth. This thesis also discusses …

As Above, So Below: Magical Poetics And Queer Alchemy & A Planetary Spell.., Robert Eric Shoemaker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"Words have power": no more obvious statement has perhaps ever been made in an essay. However, the nature of that power is quite complicated, with a long and contentious history. I think of poetry as magic. Poetry is magical in the sense that it has ineffable qualities to it that enable readers to experience new thoughts and feelings when experiencing poetry, but when I say magic I mean that I think of poetry as actual, practical magic. As I will argue, poetry has magical qualities to it regardless of who is weaving the words, while intentional use of a self-aware …

College Slasher Novel, Jeff Hill

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This project was completed in hopes of creating a new novel that combines the research and craft worlds of composition and creative writing while merging the social worlds of teaching and campus Greek life, as well as making relevant contemporary commentary on the genres of satire and horror. In preparation, beyond necessary course work completion and time to outline, write, workshop, and revise, I read numerous novels and articles and watched dozens of films and television episodes as well as conducted research regarding current campus demographic to compose the best novel I could write in my time within the program. …

Laughter, Mahrukh Aamir

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Set in Boise, “Laughter,” is centered on a gullible anti-heroine and an aspiring writer, who is infatuated with a poet.

The novel is about relationships with parents, friends, strangers, complete strangers. An inquiry into what it means to live an authentic life; and what to make of “other” people in fiction: people in books, films, songs.

It’s about blurriness: funniness and sadness; creepiness and devotedness; fiction and reality.

I Used To Weave Crowns: A Novel, Natanya Biskar

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This novel-in-progress explores the nature of memory, grief, and the complexities of coming of age. Through the voice of the narrator, Ada Strunsky, who is by turns both prickly and tender, we are drawn into the world of San Francisco at the end of the 19th century, a time of social and economic upheaval, when monopolists made fortunes and oyster thieves roamed the Bay. Through an associative structure, the novel seeks to capture the feeling of memory, which is often non-linear, more impressionistic than logical. As Ada seeks to untangle her complicity in crimes both literal and emotional, she takes …

The Kiss Turns: A Play On Aural Manor, Meredith Higgins

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Kiss Turns: A Play on Aural Manor is a poetic work that explores the nature of being and selfhood as they are expressed and modulated through the hearing, speaking, and writing of language. The Manor and surrounding Grounds here are presented as a fluid junk-mosaic: colorful, clamoring, thing-filled, magical, and on the move. Seven characters reside on the Manor’s property and live out their respective longings and loves, apprehending horror, tragedy, abundance, and the possibility of play through accepting and collaborating with the unknown depths of being.

That Hidden Country: The Travels Of Jacob Singleton, A Novel, James Earp

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Thomas Jefferson believed, or wanted to believe, that mammoths foraged the grasslands of the continental American interior. This was not an uncommon belief among the learned in Jefferson’s time and place, so it is not altogether remarkable that Jefferson did charge Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, when they led the Corps of Discovery to the Oregon coast, with keeping an eye out for signs of the living mammoth. This novel attempts an aesthetically viable narrative synthesis of American myths in several layers, the top layer being, in the words of cultural critic Cintra Wilson, a ‘‘ripping yarn’’ in the traditions …

Horse Loose: Essays On Fear And Attachment, Alyse Burnside

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

I began writing my thesis about my grandmother, who lived out the last few years of her life as a new age healer speaking in tongues and believing she was the channel for an ancient Lemurian shaman. We were not close until the very end of her life, and even then I felt far away from her. Not in the least because of her estrangement with the rest of my family. I tried and tried to write about her but always ran up against her mystery. She was not a woman many knew, and if you did know her, you …

Aliens, Lizbet Cantu Montiel

Theses and Dissertations

Aliens is a collection of poems exploring the concept of alienations though heavy usage of figurative language and rich, dark language. Each poem will portray a variety of issues around the author and the world around the author of the work. Other important issues as underlying themes of the work explore diversity in different means through the concept of alienation, or not belonging, in a certain circumstance. Each poem also uses a variety of literary devices, especially the heavy usage of figurative language in order to portray the issues or themes at hand revolving around the concept of alienation.

In Our Shoes, Mahogany Brim '22

Honor Scholar Theses

In Our Shoes has lived inside of me for a long time. As someone who has always been fully immersed in my own culture, I was born into this duality of identity. I realized early on that I existed in two different worlds: the one shaped by my Bajan identity and the one shaped by my American one. I wasn’t fully a Black American. I had deep ties to this tiny island in the Atlantic, famous for flying fish and Rihanna. And I wasn’t one of those immigrant children that had never set foot on the island that they were …

Chimaera: A Collection, Robert Ren

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Chimaera is a collection of short stories as well as excerpts from a novel in progress, Cassandra & Charon. While this collection bears some resemblance to a short story cycle, these selections are not intended to be published together outside of this dissertation. Nevertheless, this dissertation features these selections side by side as these stories and chapters overlap thematically and consequently create resonances that would not exist otherwise. The short stories predominately feature Chinese American characters often as outsiders or third parties to other relationships. Other stories also feature retellings of classic stories including Goldilocks, Snow White, and Dracula, at …

Alice And Me, Myself, Little David, And The Right Side Of My Brain, David Cohen

Theses and Dissertations

This is an honest and open memoir of David Cohen’s life as it fits into the 13 years of therapy with Alice. The story is of David learning about his inner child and making a deal with him through non-dominant-hand writing. The result is for David to quit drinking and for the adult part of him to finally take control of his life. The narrative reviews key experiences of his past that influence the current issues.

The background research includes concepts from five key books that support Alice, the therapist’s, theories that have over 30 years of experience have developed …

Huérfanos: A Memoir, Mauricio Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

If you look hard enough, there are stories of children in foster care. Tales of their plight, longing for love, the love of their parents, love from the foster care system, or a foster care family. However, despite their existence, so much is left in the unknown. The story of how this child’s life came into the world, what outcomes transpired for a parent to give up a child, and the journey the child may have to take for closure. Answers to the why. Why was I given up, why was I not sought out, why did my family …

Corrido Of A Returning Angel: A Collection Of Stories, Ricardo Marez Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

As a Chicano (Mexican-American), person of color with a lower-middle class, American, South Texas upbringing, the world of authors and literature has always felt out of reach and not particularly inviting towards people like me—let alone representative or celebratory. In spite of this, or perhaps owing to it, I have decided to shoot my literary shot, unremittently holding onto my unique voice and unconventional styles in this first collection of short stories. I discuss in depth my inspirations and role models in writing, including Henry Miller and Whitman, with discussion of literary style and genre that include: surrealism, absurdism, allegory, …

Live, Love And Lyft, Daniel Olivarez

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis has a critical introduction that gives a short history of creative nonfiction. I focus on Lee Gutkin’s contribution to creative nonfiction. I also gave some examples of creative nonfiction in my introduction. I included Mary Karr, Lauren Slater, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and William Shakespeare. My thesis contains twelve pieces of writing ranging from narrative nonfiction to poetry, highlighting my experiences growing up in a single parent home in a small border town. I utilize the literary aspects of totemic writing, the journey to the green world, the motif of loss and growing up in a small town, and the …

What The Dead Know By Act Three, Marianne Jay Erhardt

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Wavzine: Independent, Localized Cultural Journalism In The Digital Age, Jake Edward Davis

Journalism

wavzine (also called .WAV or colloquially known as “The Zine”) is a music, arts, and culture multimedia website and print periodical founded by Cal Poly students in the summer of 2020. Two years on, it was comprised of roughly 45 regular staff members and even more occasional contributors, all of whom are volunteers. Along with independently publishing articles, videos, podcasts, and art online, wavzine also organizes and hosts concerts for local bands, collaborates with local cultural events such as Shabang Music Festival and the San Luis Obispo Film Festival, and sells its own branded merchandise. To its 2,700 Instagram followers, …

The Screen And Development: Creative Writing And Liminality In Children’S Literature, Rebecca E. Glenn

All Theses

This creative thesis strives to research and implement the overlap of liminality found within Children’s Literature, especially those works that exist through the screen. The critical component of this thesis explores the ways in which childhood development and maturity, a theme commonly found within Children’s Literature, embodies its own “right of passage” associated with the liminal. The journey of the Children’s Literature protagonist is often wrought with this movement from familiar boundaries to a sense of new development. The critical analysis emphasizes the methods Children’s Literature genre uses emotion, familial connections, symbology, space, and even elements of the monstrous to …

Operatic Mysticisms: Mountains, Deserts, Waterscapes, Andrew Demczuk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Operatic Mysticisms: Mountains, Deserts, Waterscapes examines the ways we encounter environments as readers/viewers of operas, literature, film, and sound recordings, and how each medium requires different detail-gathering techniques. Respective to the previously mentioned mediums, Sun & Sea (2017), Mount Analogue (1952), El Mar La Mar (2017), and Energy Field (2010) are analyzed by engaging with environmental media studies and invention. Reflecting the nature of each landscape—summits of mountains, aporias of deserts, and mysteries of waterscapes—an elemental approach is taken in investigating how these spaces may be noticed, internalized, recorded, and traversed by both the artist and viewer. …

Stop And Smell The Fractals: An Exploration Into Math, Poetry, And Everything In Between, Caroline Jennings

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

Stop and Smell The Fractals is a collection of poetry written during my time at The University of Arkansas. These poems highlight the connections between mathematics and poetry, focusing particularly on their emergence in everyday life.

Indumentaria Contra La Mujer, Ines Gallo De Urioste

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A translation of Anne Boyer's Garments Against Women.

The Tinker Bell Jar, Kayla Berryman

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This poetry thesis is a collection of poems thematically linked together. Each poem revolves around characters from fairy tales and children’s books who are stuck in situations with abusive or harmful family members and crave an escape. In Part One of this collection, the poems take place in what readers might identify as the real world. In Part One, the poems have elements of fairy tales in them, and the speaker, or narrator of the poems, uses fairy tales to understand and relate the relationship between her parents and brother in a way that she can understand. The speaker of …

Sporkling, Mia Jensen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

For my thesis, I wrote and illustrated a graphic short story that captures the confusing experiences associated with aging out of childhood. My thesis, titled “Sporkling,” follows a twelve-year-old girl named Moira as she confronts her fears with the help of the recently thawed disembodied head of the quirky nineteenth-century inventor, Samuel W. Francis. The central topics of the project reflect on the unification of the body and mind. Whereas the young, naïve Moira represents the body, the disillusioned, decapitated Samuel represents the mind. As the two spend an afternoon trapped in Moira’s father’s secret laboratory, they must assist each …

La Tumba Vací­A, Yoshimar Gerardo Maceda

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

El presente proyecto consta de una serie de cuentos cuya narración principal son los crímenes cometidos en torno a una serie de eventos que ocurren en un lugar llamado La Cuadrilla. Cuando tuve la idea de comenzar a escribir estas historias, quería que cada personaje tuviera su momento narrativo por separado, aunque estuvieran ligados al mismo lugar. Relatos sin protagonistas, donde el asunto de los crímenes y las venganzas fuera el primer tema a explorar. Sin embargo, a medida que la idea se fue desarrollando en el manuscrito, las piezas comenzaron a tomar otra forma y me di cuenta de …

Remember When We Tore Each Other Limb From Limb?, Adam Ramsey

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

REMEMBER WHEN WE TORE EACH OTHER LIMB FROM LIMB? is a collection of short stories and surrealist prose poems. Most of these are not connected in terms of character or setting. However, there are two episodic stories that reoccur throughout the book, each of them grounded in real-life situations meant to offset the fantastical settings in which the majority of the other pieces are set. The first of these episodic stories is a series of vignettes about a character named Noah, a young man who is taking care of his elderly mother. The other is a series about a young …

Kaboom, Karstin Margaret Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This document is a collection of original poems written between Fall 2018 and Spring 2022.

Myth, Dream, And Resistance In Ninotchka Rosca And Emmanuel Lacaba’S Fictions, Kathrine Domingo Ojano

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Despite Ninotchka Rosca’s international acclaim as a Feminist novelist and Emmanuel Lacaba’s national renown as a martyred resistance poet, the dearth of scholarship on their collections of short stories—written from around the time of the 1970 First Quarter Storm to the early years of Martial Law—has also left unanswered how their fictions evinced a new paradigm of resistance literature as the critique and revision of modernity in the Third World. In this paper, I address this gap by looking into Rosca’s transformation of fiction into mythopoeic speculations in The Monsoon Collection (1983) and Lacaba’s experimentation with oneiric or dream-like narratives …