Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Other Lives, Shawna J. Kennedy

Theses and Dissertations

This work is one of fiction, dealing with characters and concepts of ‘otherness’ and social displacement. This work is further sub-categorized as a work of fantasy or urban fantasy fiction where the standard rules of reality do not apply.

Private Rainbows, Mikey F. Estes

Theses and Dissertations

I make art that refers to how the self is mediated through structures, objects, and images — a kind of self-portraiture that circles around its subject, reflecting a state of simultaneous formation and disintegration. Over the past few years, I have used my iPhone as a tool to make images of everyday life. As the user of this device, I am defined by both my presence and absence. I am interested in the process of locating the self within the scattered yet ordered space of the screen.

When Angels Cry Tears Of Moonshine, Juan Flores Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

When Angels Cry Tears of Moonshine is a collection of non-fiction essays exploring and reflecting on specific experiences as a military police patrolman over the course of the author’s enlistment in the United States Marine Corps. Between the years of 2007 and 2009, more specifically, the author was exposed to multiple experiences related to masculinity, trauma, alcoholism, community and leadership that shaped his understanding of the Marine Corps as an institution. Through these personal essays, readers will identify elements of trauma, comradery, faults in leadership and alcoholism from the perspective of a Marine who did not have any combat experience …

Poison And Monsters, Jiovanna L. Perez

Theses and Dissertations

Poison and Monsters is a collection of stories that follow the same protagonist, Jiovanna, as she navigates friendships, love, loss, and hallucinations. It is a commentary on mental health and the impact that pain medication, lack of sleep, and loneliness can have on a person. Jiovanna draws on the support and understanding of her best friends, Juan and Danielle, and in one instance a rowdy raccoon to help her find her way through the Darkness that surrounds her. Insomnia, migraines, and heartache tie these four stories together, but they can also be read as standalone pieces that give a small …

The Taming Of The Bull, Mark Zavala

Theses and Dissertations

This work is an original manuscript composed of fictional vignettes compiled together to produce an interconnected novel. The works includes the effects, issues, and culture that encompass the borderland of the Rio Grande Valley. The young protagonist experiences loss, isolation, self-realization, friendship, and the importance of family and friends, all within the context of the unique culture of south Texas.

Please Be A Gatsby, Gabriel Jorge Torres

Theses and Dissertations

I use my position as a high school English teacher to teach the following books: The Metamorphosis, The Stranger, Fahrenheit 451, The Great Gatsby, selected poetry by Housman and Hardy, Lysistrata , short stories by Ernest Hemingway, and the Catcher in the Rye. These literary classics have accompanied me in my growth as a scholar and individual and comprise the major works I teach as a high school teacher. I have blended sketches of my life with these works of literature to create small narratives about the way I inspire my students to be like the characters they …

My War And What Came After, Jesus Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

My War and What Came After is a memoir that explores my personal experience with modern military life. It is my primary purpose to connect the military world with the world of writing. I am the guy that was willing to put everything on the line, including my life to become an English professor. The memoir is a detailed account of my adult life but also a coming of age experience and a successful ambitious plan to achieve my educational ambitions. It was an extreme and maybe even a crazy decision but calculated enough that it worked. It could have …

Eyes That Shut Forever, Jonathan Solis

Theses and Dissertations

For my thesis, I want to explore a part of society which is often not explored due to some controversial views while incorporating my own love and fascination with science-fiction and human nature. Imbued in each of my stories are complex characters, all of which suffer from a pronounced illness or one that is dormant. While having no connection to each other, every short story I am writing for the thesis will share a similar theme. All center on the struggle for normalcy and conformity vs. biases views and prejudism. As a writer, I am able to walk in the …

Quetzalcoatl In Aisle 5 And Other Poemas, Cesar Leonardo De Leon

Theses and Dissertations

This project is a collection of poems based on my experiences working in the retail industry along the Texas/Mexico border for over 15 years. While many people take for granted their shopping trips, for those on the inside it is a very different reality. The poems included in this project are grouped into sections that focus on aspects of retail or are inspired by it, from the seemingly insignificant, like encounters with strangers, to more profound subjects like racism, identity, immigration, consumerism, and other social issues. The sections also follow Gloria E. Anzaldúas path of conocimento, a journey from estrangement …

Old: A Personal Essayist’S Reflections Of An Aging Adult, Marcia Irene Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation opens with a critical introduction that examines the role persona, reader, and implication play in the composition of the personal essay. Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory is then applied as a tool in an essayist’s exploration of how one’s communication choices impact life experiences. This section is followed by an explanation of the subject matter of the essays. The pedagogical chapter addresses the author’s experience with the student-centered teaching of a first creative writing class, lessons learned, theorists who affected the process, and suggestions for improvement as the author moves forward in postsecondary teaching. The dissertation concludes with …

Mothers, Blaine Scovil

Theses and Dissertations

The following is a collection of fiction creative writing, including five short stories and one novella. The stories center around themes of gender and Southern culture. The novella is a work of historical fiction based loosely on an early twentieth century case of clan violence and anti-Semitism

After The Big Wind Stops I See Gentle Waves, Eunji (Jubee) Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis covers my reflections on the inspirations and the motivations behind selected works including my candidacy exhibition; Resonance and my thesis exhibition; after the big wind stops I see gentle waves. It contains my life throughout my MFA studies and the development of my art practice. Through its story-within-a-story method of narration and my describing streams of my thoughts, I am attempting to explain the processes of my development and the discoveries I have made, the little things in my daily life, and the big turning points that inspired me. My work and this document have been strongly determined …

On Nature's Prototypes: Character Design And Worldbuilding, Taylor J. Bardon

Theses and Dissertations

Nature’s Prototypes is an ongoing narrative series that blends realism and fiction to create both dialectic plot structures and image sets. For substance, the series utilizes biological inquiries into fields, like ecology, pathology, and bioengineering, to imagine action-centric vignettes, where animalistic to monstrous characters become the predominant actors in a post-dystopian worldscape. Throughout these vignettes, these characters are subjected to the trials and tribulations of the catalysts and flux that are imposed upon them. In the series’ larger scope, these vignettes are sequential events within a larger timeline and an original mythos that delve into the implications and the intrigue …

An Exploration Of The Psyche In "Era Of Black", Haley M. Karabasz

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I propose three parallel projects. The first is an introductory exploration of the narrative conventions that have become, over time, established tropes in Fantasy Fiction as a brief discussion of my conscious strategy to reject the normative structures set in modern fantasy literature in my own fiction project “Era of Black.” Second is an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, in which I deploy specific stylistic and narrative gestures that mark my effort to move beyond the received “rules” of the Fantasy mode. The third and final project here is to frame an analysis of my protagonist’s complex psychological …

Work/Death, Of Each In Their Own, Micah H. Weber

Theses and Dissertations

Writings in support of my visual thesis, including some background, and bibliographic information: Oregon/Death/Animation/Vocation and the artist as an agent of potential.

All The Blood In Love, Maya Marshall

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses poetry to explore my history and those of my matriarchs now that I find myself at the end of the line. The writing of this manuscript entailed interviewing my parents and their parents; researching Augusta, Ga and Brooklyn, NY have been particularly helpful in reconstructing the worlds my matriarchs inhabited from the 1940s to present. The work includes various characters—some amalgams representing my mother and grandmother—others, perhaps less realized currently, employ archetypes in an effort to turn their referents to unveil some truths about what it is to be an American. They include American Girl, Abiku (in …

1 Hour Ghost Visit, Charles Elizabeth Martin

Theses and Dissertations

1 Hour Ghost Visit is a collection of poems that engages with loss, as well as what can grow in the face of that loss. In “Dancing on My Own,” the poet describes being alone on a dance floor: “when the drop comes I become/a glowstick rain/downpouring fire/sprinkler bursting/with glitter/the corpse I’m/growing towards--/what will bloom in our ribcages will be deadly—” and this hunger for determination, for construction in the face of destruction, grows into a roar by the concluding poem’s call for collective celebration in the face of the end of the world.

The poems collectively sing together; they …

Everyone You’Ll Never Meet, Jonathan Dunn

Theses and Dissertations

Everyone You’ll Never Meet is a multi-perspective mystery set in the fictional southern town of Ransom, South Carolina. It follows a young woman whose boyfriend disappears, a failed megachurch pastor at personal and professional crossroads, and a young father coming to grips with the shape of his life in light of a chance encounter with a murder victim.

Uncertain Animals, Laura Irei

Theses and Dissertations

This collection includes thirteen short stories that together form a fiction collection.

Wave Of Arrival, Cathleen Bonner

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses poetry to explore the influences of space and geographical location on subjective perception and vision. More specifically, it aims to use landscape to observe the visible and invisible qualities of a geographical space, and investigate the ways in which perception of those spatial boundaries can be used to create self-portraits. It also aims to revise traditional, romanticized versions of the American West as manifested in poetry and photography in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To do so, it focuses its attention on the man-altered landscape, rather than the pure, wild landscape as a space barricaded …

Milkfish, Emylisa Warrick

Theses and Dissertations

Milkfish is a collection of poems that explores familial and generational trauma in a Filipino-American family. Primarily written in first person narrative, it gives voice to a Filipina-American who has experienced controlling behavior, verbal abuse, silencing, and colorist attitudes and behaviors from her father and mother. The collection seeks to understand why the speaker’s parents raised her this way by investigating how the parents were raised in the Philippines. These poems were constructed with the help of interviews between the author and her parents. Additionally, it explores the patriarchal structure of Filipino families and shines a light on “women’s work,” …

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

A Familiar House, William Lenard

Theses and Dissertations

The landscapes of my home in Connecticut are important to me. When I was young, I went to the woods for seclusion and comfort. While I wandered through the woods, I discovered a passion for storytelling. Now that I no longer live in New England, I miss the familiar landscapes of home. As a way to portray my sentiment, I write poetic narratives and create objects to illustrate natural landscapes.

I combine my interests of classic Americana art and literature with brutalist architecture and modern furniture to create immersive installations. I work with concrete and hardwood to materially bridge the …

Black Lives Examined: Black Nonfiction And The Praxis Of Survival In The Post-Civil Rights Era, Ariel D. Lawrence

Theses and Dissertations

The subject of my thesis project is black nonfiction, namely the essay, memoir, and autobiography, written by black authors about and during the Post-Civil Rights Era. The central goals of this work are to briefly investigate the role of genre analysis within the various subsets of nonfiction and also to exemplify the ways that black writers have taken key genre models and evolved them. Secondly, I aim to understand the historical, political, and cultural contributions of the Post-Civil Rights Era, which I mark as hitting its stride in 1968. It is not my desire to create a definitive historical framework …

Laminated Paint, Travis R. Austin

Theses and Dissertations

Though we may not perceive it, we are surrounded by material-in-flux. Inert materials degrade and the events that comprise our natural and social environments causally thread into a duration that unifies us in our incomprehension. Sounds reveal ever-present vibrations of the landscape: expressions of the flexuous ground on which we stand.