Digital Commons Network^™

Longlines, Morgan Tharp '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Morgan Tharp is a Senior English-Writing and Political Science double major. In her free time, she enjoys running for DePauw's cross country and track teams and reading.

Produce, Chelsea Parsley '28

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Chelsea Parsley is a sophomore Creative Writing major at DePauw University. She enjoys drawing, writing, singing, and accumulating obscure pieces of trivia.

The Ringworm Poem, Riley Hamilton '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Riley Hamilton is a Senior English Writing major and Studio Art minor at DePauw University. She loves acrylic painting, making abstract collages, and of course, reading and writing. She enjoys practicing yoga, hiking, and camping.

The Bridge, Bridgewater State University

the bridge

No abstract provided.

The Family Torn Apart - Honors Thesis Fall 2025, Hannah M. Zink

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

On July 21^st, 2015, a blast rang out from the RCE research center in St. Alban on Kennedy Island. Radiation infected the citizens in the surrounding neighborhood. For some, it gave them enhanced abilities; for others, it drained their life force. For the Elder family, it did both. After the loss of his sister, Olivia, Blaine Elder struggles with a double life. To most of St. Alban, he is known as Nightfire, the hero accountable for protecting their city. To a select few, he is Officer Elder of the 1^st precinct, a man responsible for raising his …

Reigniting Identity: Rediscovering My Teaching, Lifelong Learning, And Myself, Rachel Griffith

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

A culmination of two years of work and self-discovery represented through three different types of writing, two academic and one creative. The academic works explore communication and autism in the English classroom, as well as teaching technical writing in practice ways. The creative work is a poetry portfolio that is one of the author's proudest works from their degree track, covering a variety of topics from love to nostalgia to inner turmoil. Together, they narrate three reasons why the author writes, teaches, and lives.

Some Things Never Change, Ryely Rogers

Honors College Theses

Some Things Never Change is a coming-of-age play that explores the intersection of memory, identity, nostalgia, faith, and the process of growing up. The play follows two versions of the same character: Young Ryann and Older Ryann. Young Ryann is the eleven year old version of Older Ryan, the young woman she grows to become. This play was born from my own interest in how identity evolves and continues to shape us through adulthood. Some Things Never Change is the culmination of my own experiences, broader themes of self-discovery, and the science behind nostalgia. Through this play I uncover the …

How To Live Alone, Cora Gibson '27

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Cora is a rising senior at DePauw with a double major in pre-engineering and environmental geoscience, and a minor in math. Outside of rocks and integrals, she loves strong coffee, knitted sweaters, and a head back laugh with friends.

Silver Daylight (4 A.M.), Justine Vandenberg '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Justine Vandenberg is an Environmental Fellow at DePauw University majoring in Global (Environmental) Health and Sustainability. She is also a writer, poet, and photographer who is passionate about using artistic forms to advocate for the health of ecosystems and human communities. To Justine, nature is home, and art is activism.

Will The Demons Follow (And Other Stories), Eberechi Onyekachi Mcbride

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Will The Demons Follow (and Other Stories) is a collection of interconnected short stories that examines memory, trauma, migration, and womanhood across Nigerian and diasporic spaces. Set in both Nigeria and the United States, the stories move between villages, cities, and immigrant communities, presenting characters whose lives are shaped by cultural expectations, spiritual beliefs, family authority, and personal longing. Through multiple narrative voices, the collection considers how the past continues to shape the present. Characters struggle with family conflict, religious pressure, sexual violence, and the psychological burdens carried across borders. In the title story, “Will The Demons Follow?”, the narrator …

H.A.G.S., Erin Pinkham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

H.A.G.S (Have A Great Summer) The book transports the reader into a Y2K southern suburban landscape, influenced by Texas Megachurches, the height of the shopping mall era, and the upcoming and ever present loom of the internet. It narrates through this world by diving in and out of a younger and older voice. A voice that remains in the present tense as it searches through the speaker’s understanding and observance of the world around them and the danger looming over their young girl body. This book looks to uncover these moments where we as young girls might better understand why …

The Oncoming Light: An Experiential Approach To Psychological Exposition Through Dialogue-Driven Narrative, Benjamin G. Dewitt

Honors Theses

Narrative is a lens through which we understand ourselves, our histories, our futures, and our ties to those around us. Narrative form has undergone vast transformations over time, and in the case of “postmodern” literature, pushes the boundaries of form into the experimental, questioning the truth of knowledge itself. While these experimental works can give rise to uniquely powerful emotional experiences, some components of narrative, when abandoned, may only hinder the immersion of the reader. This thesis evaluates several experimental, dialogue-driven narrative works against these components: linguistic, literal, emotional, and intellectual significance, in a hierarchy of importance as proposed by …

Creative Nonfiction Essays, Colby S. Langley

Honors Theses

To write about the present with any authority requires a keen eye for the past. To write from our lives into meaningful creative nonfiction requires a firm understanding that experience is the composite of life experience blending into the current moment. The writing is then drawn irreversibly towards emotion: indulgent and oppressive. The extremity of emotion dictates the difficulty of transcribing the experience onto the page, and violence is a source of both extreme emotion and experience. It is important to note that I am primarily considering personal violence for this essay, while societal and institutional violence have their own …

Memory Organs, Coco Ma

Theses and Dissertations

Working across architectural sculpture, sonic works, and monoprints, this thesis explores the body as a site where memory, materiality, and cultural history converge. Drawing from muscle memory, Chinese architectural thresholds, and female narratives, it traces a body that is simultaneously physical and psychological, personal and collective, constant yet always shifting.

Lovepilled, Zhiliang Zhao

Theses and Dissertations

"Lovepilled" is a collection of essays and stories about love, the longing for it, and where it takes place.

Heirloomed: An Italian-American Daughter Weaving Past And Present, Catherine Santino

Theses and Dissertations

Amid a string of family deaths, writer and journalist Catherine Santino found herself preoccupied by the idea of lineage and inheritance. As she digs into her Sicilian heritage, she explores how the traditions and values set forth by her family’s matriarchs have shaped the woman she’s still becoming. From grappling with the shame caused by the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings of purity to examining how Italian food customs impacted her body image, Santino interrogates the complicated truth that the belief systems she was raised with offer both comfort and torment.

Internalizing Diasporic Peoples: How Do We Keep Native Hawaiians Connected?, Kallie P. Kaaihue-Paopao

Whittier Scholars Program

In the attempt to better understand the grounds for the generation culture disconnect of identity in Native Hawaiians, I study the diaspora of my people. Diaspora is the dispersion of people from their native lands. I find interest in this aspect of my people because the most common studies blame our dispersion on socioeconomic status and as a Native Hawaiian that wishes to do more for her people, I want to express that while it plays a part that there is a disconnection between the social actions and reactions of Hawaiʻi’s people. Common questions that I find unanswered are, why …

The "Evil Forest" As Threshold: A Computational Eco-Feminist Study Of The Forest In Nigerian Fantasy, Cynthia O. Mbagwu

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examines the representation of the “evil forest” in Nnedi Okorafor’s Zahrah the Windseeker and Ukamaka Olisakwe’s Don’t Answer When They Call Your Name, arguing that the forest functions as a liminal threshold that catalyses female transformation. Combining close reading with computational tools like TF-IDF keyword extraction in Ruby and sentiment analysis using VADER, the project investigates how pre-colonial and colonial connotations of the “evil forest” are re-imagined in contemporary Nigerian fantasy fiction. By segmenting each narrative into pre-liminal, liminal, and post-liminal phases, the study tracks shifts in sentiment toward the forest and correlates them with thematic developments …

The Illusion Of Absence, Abraham K. Ali

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Illusion of Absence is a collection of thirty poems with a critical introduction that examines the poetic legacy of paternal absence and the reconfiguration of family in Africa and diasporic narratives. I grew up in Nigeria without my father. His absence has shaped my understanding of love, silence, manhood, and home. This manuscript is an exploration of the lasting legacy of my father’s absence and its place within an exploration of masculinity within the broader context of the African and diasporic experience. My mother became the focal point within the home as she brought cohesion and unity within the …

Killing The Hot Vampire: Gender, Camp, And The Stakes Of Desire In Nineteenth-Century Vampire Fiction, Ella G. Kehr

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the representation and destruction of the Hot Vampire in nineteenth-century vampire fiction, focusing on Dracula (1897), Carmilla (1872), and The Blood of the Vampire (1897). It argues that these texts construct the female vampire as a figure of excessive sexuality, independence, and deviance which causes both societal (patriarchal) and narrative disruption. In the male-authored texts, the construction of the Hot Vampire is exaggerated beyond the neat bounds of gothic excess and monster theory. The destruction of these vampires also follows this unbound extravagance. The Hot Vampire’s death becomes the ritualized restoration of patriarchal order, which is often …

The Ballad Of Blorg, Isaiah Morgan '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Justus Morgan is a Song major in his senior year at DePauw. He is delighted by those places beyond the expanding frontiers of his knowledge and writes about everything from not falling in love to imaginary wetlands to that one look from Margiela's S/S 1990 runway show. He recommends skygazing.

If The Flowers Were To Wither..., Ira Satpathy '28

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Ira is a rising junior majoring in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. They work at The DePauw, and also host a podcast on feminist philosophy. Ira loves to draw portraits, play badminton, and scroll their Substack feed endlessly.

Microbes Among A Decapitated Rabbit, Isaiah Morgan '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Justus Morgan is a Song major in his senior year at DePauw. He is delighted by those places beyond the expanding frontiers of his knowledge and writes about everything from not falling in love to imaginary wetlands to that one look from Margiela's S/S 1990 runway show. He recommends skygazing.

Mondays At Moore's, Jane Duffy '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Jane Duffy is an English Writing and Studio Art double major at Depauw University. She is a painter, a creative writer, and the Editor-in-chief of A Midwestern Review for her fourth year of involvement. She enjoys hiking, drinking coffee, travelling, and creating things inspired by observation of the world around her.

Broken Nose, Addison Elliott '29

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Addi Elliott is a writer based in Indiana whose work centers on short creative nonfiction. Through concise, image-driven storytelling, they capture vivid memories and explore family experiences. Drawing from lives, their work reflects storytelling as preservation and reinvention, creating pieces that linger and reveal the quiet complexity beneath everyday moments.

The Creek And The Cave, Zoe Geltman

Student Theses

A play.

Tropical Hardware, Shane Chase

Student Theses

A collection of poetry.

Preface: In the spring of 2022 I lived in Bethnal Green, a once working-class neighborhood in East London. I grew attached to the area as it gave me a life I couldn’t have back in Florida. Everything needed to subsist was contained within walking distance. My connection to the place grew strong each time I walked through Middleton Green or passed Keeling House rising up out of the fog as I made my way to work. Gradually, I developed a sense of isolation, smelling the salt from the gulf, an ocean that wasn’t there. The threat …

Stone Pace Dog Hill, Haley Lee

Student Theses

A collection of poetry and prose.

Another Inconsistency: A Collection, Christy Luong

Student Theses

A collection of stories.

Selfown, Richard Hollman

Student Theses

A play.