Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Trailblazin, Zahir Pineda

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

My "trailblazin" collage is just a collage of me and my brother as we grew up. It was just us two for the majority of our childhood and we were always pushed to make the most of our education here in the US. Growing up I always relied on him, and he made sure to be there to guide me and help me learn from his mistakes. Fast forward to now and we're both at LMU together, and the same way he trailblazed the path for me, I hope to do for my two younger siblings. It symbolizes what has …

Introduction

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

No abstract provided.

Family Dynamics In Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, Isabell Lachinpour

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

This paper was originally a submission for my general psychology final. The prompt for it was to analyze any topic covered in class and connect to any form of fictional media. I chose to study the social psychology behind the relationships of immigrant parents and their children, connecting it to the movie Everything, Everywhere, All At Once by Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan. I especially picked this movie because of how connected I felt to the characters in the movie as I have gone through some of the same experiences they have and know many immigrant children that have felt …

The Batiandi Li Family, Xifu

Zea E-Books Collection

The novel tells the story of six generations of the Li family over the course of nearly a century and a half, a legendary saga. The protagonists of the Li family in various historical stages of the book are searching for their own identity and the position of the family on the road of life. Sometimes they seize opportunities and create temporary brilliance for the benefit and glory of the family, while at other times they submit to fate and follow the tide of history, content to live ordinary lives like common people.

In 1832 the second brother of the …

The Last Werewolf: An Interactive Narrative About Bipolar Disorder, Rebecca Kerr

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

The Last Werewolf is an interactive narrative game exploring lived experiences of bipolar disorder through metaphor and emotional design. Drawing on the creator’s personal perspective, the game uses cyclical transformation as a lens for understanding mood episodes and identity fragmentation. The showcase presentation examined how mechanics and narrative structure were used to embody bipolar experiences, aiming to foster empathy and nuanced mental health representation in games. By integrating creative practice with research, The Last Werewolf demonstrates how independent games can meaningfully communicate complex psychological realities through interactive storytelling.

Cemented Republic: Infrastructure And Slow Violence In Jun Cruz Reyes’S Ang Huling Dalagang Bukid At Ang Authobiography Na Mali: Isang Imbestigasyon, Jonah Leigh E. Ramos

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

To read the novel is to read history from a vantage point, and to read Jun Cruz Reyes’s metafiction novel, Ang Huling Dalagang Bukid at ang Authobiography na Mali: Isang Imbestigasyon (2011), is to read unaccounted-for experiences of violence in spaces that house the spectacle of national infrastructure. Informed by concepts from environmental humanities and urban studies, this paper explores the intersection of infrastructure and violence in Ang Huling Dalagang Bukid. It interrogates the choice experimental form of the novel, close reads descriptive passages about infrastructure, and highlights corresponding manifestations of slow violence impacting humans and nonhumans alike. The …

Grandma's Rocking Chair, Roberta Harman Ford

Old Elbows

Step into a world of gentle memories and timeless love with Grandma's Rocking Chair, a beautifully illustrated children's book that celebrates the magic of family traditions.

From crawling up the stairs to playing hide-and-seek under air mattresses, Brittney's visits to Grandma's house are filled with joy. But nothing compares to the comfort of Grandma's rocking chair-a place where stories are shared, giggles echo, and love is felt deeply.

As Brittney grows, the chair becomes a cherished symbol of connection, passed down from her grandmother, who once sat in it with her own grandma. Through floods, moves, and milestones, the rocking …

2025 Fall Quiz & Quill Magazine, English Department

Quiz and Quill

Table of Contents

• Front Cover: Strangler Fig by Grace McKenney
• Letter from the Editors by Freddie Borer & Wrenne Grone
• i dreamt we spoke by Mary Koeppen
• What Was I? by Worthy Wilson
• Will by Mars Scott
• My Life Flashing in Sixty Minutes by Grace McKenney
• Creatures of Discord & Dismay: Failure by Liticia Makhloufi
• St. Anthony by Helen Darrough
• Creatures of Discord & Dismay: Guilt by Liticia Makhloufi
• Three Layers by Freddie Borer
• A Week of Thought by Mars Scott
• Contributor Biographies
• Q&Q&A

Until They're Gone, Sophia S. Chesner

Student Publications

Creative writing fiction piece

'What The World Would Be': How Creating A Shared World Through Collaborative Roleplaying Helps Us To Deal With Real-World Challenges, Pablo Muslera

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This article is in two parts: a creative prose artefact, and a critical exegesis situating the artefact in a wider context. It illustrates how roleplaying games explore community and identity, through a creative / critical lens. A prose dramatisation of a cooperative TTRPG (table top roleplaying game) session, played online over Discord and online gaming platform Roll20, juxtaposes the collaboratively imagined world, and the reality from which it is an escape. Themes of gender identity, isolation, precarious work and fluctuating health are explored within the timeframe of the Covid outbreak in Adelaide mid-2020, with the roleplaying session serving as a …

Augusto Boal’S Forum Theater In Language And Culture Courses A Reflective Documentation, Mona Eikel-Pohen, Mona Eikel-Pohen

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

This documentation is the revised and translated version of the 2024 article Augusto Boals Forumtheater im Deutschunterricht (Eikel-Pohen 2024). It features new observations from the second iteration of a Forum Theater project in a GER 202 language and culture class from 2025 and is again based on autoethnographic notes (Rodriguez-Mejia 2023: 71). It documents the revised application of Augusto Boal’s Forum Theater applied to language and cultural teaching in a socially critical, holistic, cooperative, intercultural, and practical way. Boal’s method aims at exposing structural oppression and allows individuals to explore options for action through play. The instructor followed Boal’s model …

Contributors

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

The Mythic Circle #47

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

Editors' Introductions

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

The Uses Of Dramaturgical Research In Cinematic Storytelling, Asset Design, And Adaptation In Animation, Delaney L. Walker

All Theses

“The Black Hair” is a creative project that explores the convergence of cinematic adaptation, dramaturgical research, and animation design in retelling a traditional Japanese short folktale from the Heian Era. Rooted in the practice of theatrical dramaturgy, this thesis advocates for a research-driven creative pipeline by developing a culturally respectful and historically grounded approach to developing cinematic storyboards. By thoroughly examining the chronicles of history and the sociocultural context, the project seeks to foster deeper cultural appreciation while reintroducing a lesser-known narrative to modern audiences through a visual medium. The project draws stylistic and narrative inspiration from iconic Japanese filmmakers …

Review Of The Hospital, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

I’M A Doctor, Not A Dj, Kasi Garcia, Derick Goff

Quill & Scope

No abstract provided.

At Home In Horror: Women And Body Horror, Brooklynn Kreps

University Honors Theses

While most discussion around the subgenre of body horror focuses on its birthplace of film, the richest iterations come from women writing body horror fiction to explain the experience of womanhood. As body horror focuses on fear of painful or absurd mishap with the body. Women experience pain or absurdity in their own bodies every day with processes like menstruation, pregnancy, puberty, and heightened chances of becoming a victim of sexual assault. Furthermore, women experience society's forceful shaming and fear about natural processes of the body and experiences such as anger and sexual desire. Using this idea as a framework, …

You're Such A Princess, Andree Sole

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

You’re Such a Princess is a five-play anthology that reimagines well-known folk tales. By re-imagining four Brothers Grimm tales and one by Hans Christian Andersen, I follow a centuries-old tradition. As scholar Donald Haase explains, folk tales evolve with each retelling, allowing their ‘morals’ to shift over time. I have created encounters between real people (extending characters beyond Vladimir Propp’s Dramatis Personae) and revised the endings to challenge the audience. My Snow White character hews closer to the pejorative implications of calling someone a ‘princess’ in our society: entitled, arrogant, spoilt. Two of my storylines (Little Red Cap and The …

The Magdala Moms Of La Jolla, Rebecca Shepard

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The Magdala Moms of La Jolla is a satirical novel set at The Magdala School, an elite Christian academy in La Jolla, California, where social status, curated faith, and community performance are indistinguishable. The story follows Mitzi Madigan, a brash, ambitious mother whose carefully constructed persona hides a troubling past. Her world begins to unravel when Caroline—a single mother working in construction—is granted a scholarship for her daughter, Emma, to attend Magdala.

As Emma enters the private school’s polished social ecosystem, she begins to uncover the secrets buried beneath the sun-drenched surface. The Mag Moms, a clique of hyper-polished, scripture-quoting …

Fancy Mice, Damian Aguilar

University Honors Theses

In this proof-of-concept screenplay, a family becomes the subject of an isolating experiment that observes their behavior changes after remaining in their home for an extended period of time with all their basic needs met. The first twenty-pages of this psychological horror lays the foundation for a larger work that explores existential themes related to purpose, competition, and play.

Promethia 2024-2025

Promethia

No abstract provided.

I Remember: Stories In Our Time We Don't Have Time To Tell. Thoughts That Go Too Fast. And Then We Die, Kajsa Isakson

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

As an AuDHDer and a writer, I approach storytelling from a neurodivergent perspective. My novella is titled I Remember: Stories From Our Time We Don’t Have Time to Tell. Thoughts That Go Too Fast. And Then We Die.

I Remember: Stories From Our Time We Don’t Have Time to Tell. Thoughts That Go Too Fast. And Then We Die. captures fleeting moments of being: of falling, the solitude of a crowded station, the vastness of the forest, the ocean, and the words by as Zora Neale Hurston and Claudia Rankine.The inevitability of death and the intensity of life.

Volume 151, Issue 151, 2018, Megan Alfaro, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ahmed Moneim, Keenan Norris, Meg Tinsley, T.C. Boyle, Willy Lizarraga, Sophie Anne Berti, Sativa January, Susan Lowell, Brian Barrientez Ii, Steve H. Vu, Ellen Bass, James K. Zimmerman, Cb Follett, Joyce Schmid, James Brasfield, Meredith Davies Hadaway, Gustavo Hernandez, Marin Nelson, Silvia Bonilla, Katherine Morgan, Tommy Mouton, Sally Ashton, Anna Bernstein, Genevieve Deguzman, Suzanne Rico, Peyton Harvey, William Finnegan, Margaret Mcmullan, Don George, Clare Frank, Grace Schaffer, Robert D. Kirvel, Kelly Grogan, Kelley Jhung, Marisa Murrow, Terry Phimister, Sharon Simonson, Susan Shillinglaw, Talia Adry, Noelle Brada-Williams

Reed Magazine

No abstract provided.

Words / Ideas / Poetry, Stephen W. Fried, Samantha Tamburri

Open Educational Resources

words / ideas /poetry is a series of three creative writing exercises with an online and pen-and-paper version of each. The first uses word association to create a lexicon from which a poem and experimental prose piece emerge; the second uses rhymes to create three poems of increasing complexity and the third is a group activity that generates a collective poem about romantic relationships. The activities and instructions for administering and participating are accessed through an online hub that hosts the activities and related material.

Review Of The Medici Curse, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Our Relentless Objectification Of Native Americans: As Exemplified By Louise Erdrich And Cherie Dimaline, Lena Kozubek

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

Indigenous communities relentlessly challenge the normalized commodification of their culture and beliefs. One way they actively address these oppressions is through storytelling. Their accounts educate readers and encourage them to re-frame modern perspectives and how stereotypes affect Native communities. Their stories are not a simple myth; instead, they serve as an active participant to combat actions that treat Indigenous people as an anomaly. We should treat Native Americans as human beings who invariably struggle with present-day degradations, commodification, and continual displacement. Indigenous authors reclaim their narrative by using their historical context and storytelling skills to dissect the parallels between fact …

All Things Pass Away, John Stuart Wilson

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

“All Things Pass Away” is a work of crime fiction. Set amidst the downfall of local print journalism, laid off sportswriter Mark McGinnis travels from Rochester, New York to the oil boomtown of Fort McMurray, Alberta to pursue a freelancing project on troubled NHL draft prospect Noah Jeannot. Once there, McGinnis’s profile on the player is thrown into question when Jeannot disappears after an apparent violent altercation near his billet family’s home. Exploring themes of nostalgia, ambition, and obsession, the novella traces McGinnis’s attempts to understand not only the culture of the twin gods – oil and hockey – which …

How To Walk On Water: Living Through The Absurd, Esther Du

Masters Theses

Set in a speculative world submerged by water, this thesis constructs a fragmented, nonlinear narrative that reflects on survival, memory, and displacement in the aftermath of catastrophe. Through three interwoven chapters—The Outcast, The Researcher, and The World—the project explores the emotional and psychological landscapes of individuals navigating a post-apocalyptic existence where the past is irretrievable and the future uncertain. Using an interdisciplinary form of visual storytelling, writing, and sound, the work draws from personal experience and collective trauma to examine how people reconstruct identity and meaning after loss. Rather than offering a definitive answer to existential …

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.