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Articles 1 - 30 of 33
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Politics & Poetics Of Audience Creation In Contemporary Epistolary Memoir, Sarah M. Davis
The Politics & Poetics Of Audience Creation In Contemporary Epistolary Memoir, Sarah M. Davis
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy as works of life writing that leverage the epistolary form to engage their direct maternal addressees and audiences beyond them in revision and reconstruction of identity. Secondary audiences are considered in light of Michael Warner’s “Publics and Counterpublics,” and the social affordances of the epistolary form and self-constructive affordances of life writing are analyzed in tandem as a hybrid epistolary memoir form. Specifically, this project explores how the epistolary memoir form affords Vuong and Laymon opportunities for the process of personal, relational, and communal identity construction, …
Explosive Family Dinners: Bipolar Disorder, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy & Me Critical Afterword Convulsive Family Dynamics: When Mental And Neurological Disabilities Entangle And Isolate., Elizabeth Lane Glass
Explosive Family Dinners: Bipolar Disorder, Temporal Lobe Epilepsy & Me Critical Afterword Convulsive Family Dynamics: When Mental And Neurological Disabilities Entangle And Isolate., Elizabeth Lane Glass
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation is a memoir that is about my nuclear family. The themes within the memoir itself include my father’s bipolar disorder, my temporal lobe epilepsy, and how volatile the combination was as I grew up, but also how loving my family was, despite all the issues. It also looks at the ramifications of having temporal lobe epilepsy, growing up queer (bi+) in a time when being queer at all was not accepted and being bi+ was not understood, and the issues I’ve had with my sisters, which were caused in part by my father The memoir is accompanied by …
The Language Of Trauma In Roxane Gay's Hunger: A Memoir Of (My) Body, Cydney Price
The Language Of Trauma In Roxane Gay's Hunger: A Memoir Of (My) Body, Cydney Price
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis uses the language and structure of Roxane Gay’s Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, in tandem with other works of literature, to examine the relationship between Blackness, fatness, womanhood, and trauma. Among other things, this thesis attempts to draw a connection between Deborah King’s concept of multiple jeopardy and the lived experiences of several different traumas. Also, this these works to highlight the usefulness of the memoir genre as teaching tool in classrooms with students of all ages. I ague that Gay’s memoir is a subversion of the typical weight-loss memoir and is instead a social commentary on …
No Vacancy: Family Vacations On The Road, On The Water, And On The Edge., Amy Jackson Sellers
No Vacancy: Family Vacations On The Road, On The Water, And On The Edge., Amy Jackson Sellers
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis is a memoir about the best and worst of traveling on summer vacations with my family as a child and as an adult. This piece is an ode to both my parents and to the art of the family road-trip, which is all but lost thanks to cheap flights, cell phone screens, and a general reluctance to take significant time off work. By alternating between lighter and heavier material with each chapter, this memoir avoids the saccharine nature of nostalgia while still being true to all the brilliance and poignancy of the past. By telling the chapters through …
Introspections Into Rational Fanatics And Thoughtful Deceivers: Examining The Use Of Memoirs In The Works Of James Hogg And Charles Brockden Brown, Tucker Foster
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The memoir as a specific and unique literary genre has only recently been broached for in-depth critical study, with two major, book-length examinations of the genre appearing in the past decade. While the genre has been around in various formats with various conventions for as long as humans have written, only the memoir boom of the late twentieth and early twenty-first-century called for a more sophisticated look at the genre. This thesis will use these recent observations on the memoir as a genre to shed new light on two classics of gothic literature: Charles Brockden Brown’s 1798 novel Wieland and …
"Femme Fatales Of Faith": Queer And "Deviant" Performances Of Femme Within Western Protestant Culture, Kelsey Waninger Minnick
"Femme Fatales Of Faith": Queer And "Deviant" Performances Of Femme Within Western Protestant Culture, Kelsey Waninger Minnick
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Women and queer folk are changing the religious landscape of Christianity in America, and the scope of visibility for these figures and their apostolic endeavors is widening as more and more Christians are seeking out communities rooted in doctrines of love and connection rather than exclusion and hegemonic piety. Thinking on this phenomenon, this dissertation focuses on the intersectional dilemmas of faith practice and rhetorical discourse with Western Christianity, particularly as it revolves around those female pastors and clergy - considered "dangerous" by many within the church - who are advocating for a more inclusionary church space. By conducting a …
Poetically Composed, Educationally Imposed: Exploring Imagination And Poetics In Curriculum—A Memoir, Whitney J. Presnal
Poetically Composed, Educationally Imposed: Exploring Imagination And Poetics In Curriculum—A Memoir, Whitney J. Presnal
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Through the use of memoir, my work centers on how poetry is situated within public education curriculum. I explore the curricular context of poetry through the lenses of my lived experiences in early childhood, as a K-12 student, and as an early career classroom teacher. My dissertation draws upon a wide array of literature, honing in on the poetic perspectives of philosophers (Aristotle, 1996; Heidegger, 1947 & 1971/2013; Plato, 1955/2007), poets (Hall, 2003; Eliot, 1920 & 2009), and curriculum theorists (Leggo, 1997 & 2018; Pinar, 1994; Sameshima, 2007). The foundation of my work is drawn from my own circular experiences, …
Retellings : A Collection Of Nonfiction Essays., Jennifer Kiefer
Retellings : A Collection Of Nonfiction Essays., Jennifer Kiefer
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis is a collection of nonfiction essays, extending both into the realms of journalism as well as into more traditional creative nonfiction essays. While each piece is based in true stories, each piece has its own style. As such, this collection is an exploration of different forms of and takes on the nonfiction essay. It is divided into four chapters, one for each essay. The first half encompasses journalistic pieces previously published in Louisville Magazine, one in the August 2016 issue and one in the February 2017 issue. The first piece is a literal retelling of three medical stories, …
Eight Pieces Of Pie., Maggie E. Cassaro
Eight Pieces Of Pie., Maggie E. Cassaro
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
As a studio artist and a creative writer, I contemplated what would happen if I utilized the principles of fine art in the application of the written word. If I became the subject of the written word, could I formulate the telling of my story in such a way that a reader could find themselves sculpted within its pages? Eight Pieces of Pie tells my story, that as a single woman at the age of forty-three years, eight months and six days, I discovered I was unavailable. I delved back to my first memories to discover how my emotional unavailability …
One Or Two Things I Know About Us: Narrative Strategies For Autoethnography, Self-Representation And Healing In Four Memoirs By Poor-White Women From The U.S. South, Joseph Aaron Farmer
One Or Two Things I Know About Us: Narrative Strategies For Autoethnography, Self-Representation And Healing In Four Memoirs By Poor-White Women From The U.S. South, Joseph Aaron Farmer
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines autobiographical writings by formerly poor white Southern women, who are rarely considered as a group and are more typically studied with “rough South” male writers, which would suggest that few women have contributed their own gendered experience to discussions of class, race, and sexuality vis-à-vis Southern poverty. Correcting this assumption, I examine formative statements by women from poor white backgrounds, including Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Red Dirt, Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and Wild Card Quilt, Dorothy Allison’s Trash, and Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle. Each of these writers engage in narrative strategies that do not defend …
Playbook, Jason Edward Harrington
Playbook, Jason Edward Harrington
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
From 2007 to 2013 I worked for the Transportation Security Administration. It was a Kafkaesque experience, rife with bureaucratic absurdity. This memoir is a chronicle of that experience, from the days leading up to my initial application, to the days following my letter of resignation. It is also the story of a man dealing with personal demons, and struggling to find his way through the morass of modern society.
According To The Gospel Of Haunted Women, Judith Roney
According To The Gospel Of Haunted Women, Judith Roney
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
According to the Gospel of Haunted Women is a collection of seventy-five poems divided into four sections. The voices speaking within, are, indeed haunted by varying definitions. They bespeak complex, troubled emotions such as guilt, shame, and anxiety, yet work towards expressions of courage. The dead and the living are cajoled and accused, while others are provided a format through which they may be heard long after their mouths have closed. The poems are arranged in four sections. Section I, “We Begin,” consists of memoir pieces from the poet's early life. Section II, “We Speak,” is a dedicated space for …
What We Hide, Ashley Bowcott
What We Hide, Ashley Bowcott
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
What We Hide is a collection of memoir essays that explores the themes of mystery and deception in personal relationships, specifically within familial and romantic ones. Though the essays in the collection explore the decades from early in the narrator's childhood through her move to Florida for graduate school, the narrator's keen discernment of the world around her and her curiosity for what experiences shape a person's character remain constant. Many essays explore the extent of her father's alcoholism and the consequences of it, as well as the narrator's obsession over the possible sources of his addictions. Other essays examine …
Composing A Literary Adoption Memoir And Self Through Creative Nonfiction Memoir Writing, Jamie K. Nagy
Composing A Literary Adoption Memoir And Self Through Creative Nonfiction Memoir Writing, Jamie K. Nagy
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Adoption writings span across various forms, such as fiction, non-fiction, essays, poetry, theatre, and scholarly fields of study. While many of these adoption writings speak to the complexities of adoption, the general public still tends to see adoption “such a beautiful thing” to do—as the best plan for the child, a noble act, a selfless decision, and a solution to a long-standing social issue. This thesis explores the “literary adoption memoir”—artful writings about real life happenings; my contribution to this genre addresses the complexities of the closed adoption era, transnational/transracial adoption, and parenting an adoptee as an adult adoptee. For …
Growing Up Village, Malemute, Carlee Kauffman
Growing Up Village, Malemute, Carlee Kauffman
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Growing Up Village is a collection of essays about life in an Alaskan Native village. Ranging in time from early childhood to late twenties, the stories examine how home and place influence the narrator's identity, what the narrator learns from the people around her, and how events, both minor and major, can impact and change a life. Ultimately, this collection of essays explores themes of home, family, culture, loss, courage, and community.
In Double Exile: A Memoir, Deborah Beckwin
In Double Exile: A Memoir, Deborah Beckwin
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
In Double Exile: A Memoir examines the life of a family of Ghanaian immigrants and their journeys of acculturation, and the impact of the father's spiraling mental health issues on his family. Through the eyes of their daughter, this thesis briefly explores their lives on the right side of the Atlantic, as medical professionals, and then focuses on the life of their daughter born in America on the left side of the Atlantic. As novelist Georges Simenon has said, "I am at home everywhere, and nowhere. I am never a stranger and I never quite belong." This memoir explores this …
Stories I Told Myself: A Memoir, Brian Crimmins
Stories I Told Myself: A Memoir, Brian Crimmins
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Stories I Told Myself: A Memoir explores the experience of growing up gay in the 1980s. It is one boy's journey toward self-acceptance set against the conservative backdrop of a rural community on California's central coast. The story illuminates the hunger for a life different than the one being lived, and the ever-present sense of being different exacerbated by bullying and unrequited love. It is a narrative of evolving identity, and includes cultural insights and societal context of the time period. The author poses a fundamental question, "How did I make it out of the 80's alive?" and he explores …
These Romantic Dreams In Our Heads, Sean Ironman
These Romantic Dreams In Our Heads, Sean Ironman
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
These Romantic Dreams in Our Heads is a collection of linked essays that study how key relationships in the narrator's life intersect. The essays attempt to show the complicated nature of relationships and how multiple lives are affected by one's decisions. Taking place over two years, the relationships in focus involve the narrator's parents, his girlfriend, and his dog. The essays deal with themes of manhood, parenthood, gender roles, religion, and memory. The characters deal with discovering their limitations and searching for a balance between responsibility for others and responsibility for their own lives.
Stranger Species, Devin Latham
Stranger Species, Devin Latham
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Stranger Species is a collection of interconnected personal and lyrical essays that illustrate and dissect the biological and psychological forces that drive humans to act. While essays in the collection prove the narrator's need to believe that we are animals first and human beings second and that sex and persistence to survive are proof of our animalism, essays simultaneously counter-argue that humans-our emotions, weaknesses, and consciousness-are unique to our species, separating us from the animal world. Throughout the collection, fear resonates that we do not control our desires and ultimately our lives, that biology and our deep seeded psychological inadequacies …
The Prologue Past, Raymond Mckee
The Prologue Past, Raymond Mckee
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The Prologue Past is a collection of four essays and one novella which explore the past in different fashions. Memory, and the ability to reflect and find meaning in our experiences, is an important cornerstone of engaging the past. Memories are a true anomaly of how our inner-consciousness operates. With each day, the past facilitates a special part of our memory bank which we seldom have any control of. While the abilities of people to recall times, events, places, and experiences differ largely in capacity, we all undoubtedly share universal traits in the manner in which we hold onto our …
Covered In Dust: Coming Of Age In A Gazebo Factory, Jason A. Ney
Covered In Dust: Coming Of Age In A Gazebo Factory, Jason A. Ney
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Covered in Dust: Coming of Age in a Gazebo Factory is a memoir that chronicles the three summers I spent working in the factories at Chestnut Hill Gazebos. The memoir focuses on three narrative strands: the day-to-day life of a factory worker, the struggles within and eventual breakdown of my relationship with my girlfriend, and how my job at Chestnut Hill helped me critique my fundamentalist Christian roots by forcing me into a deeper understanding of my faith and its relationship to the world outside the confines of my upbringing. The critical afterword uses essays by Leona Toker and other …
Mirrors And Vanities, Leslie Salas
Mirrors And Vanities, Leslie Salas
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Mirrors and Vanities is a multi-modal collection which showcases the diversity of working in long and short storytelling forms. Featured in this thesis are fiction, nonfiction, graphic narrative, and screenplay. Using unconventional approaches to storytelling in order to achieve emotional resonance with the audience while maintaining high standards for craft, these stories and essays explore the costs inherent to the subtle nuances of interpersonal relationships. The fiction focuses on the complications of characters keeping secrets. A husband discovers the truth behind his wife’s miscarriage. A girl visits her fiancé in purgatory. A boy crosses a line and loses his best …
Antipodes: Ways To See The World, Brenda Sallee
Antipodes: Ways To See The World, Brenda Sallee
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis is an examination of the geographical oddities of my past, the process of transitioning between worlds, and the kinds of relationships that survive those transitions. In a world where I can fly from Atlanta to Beijing non-stop in fifteen hours, I sometimes convince myself that geography no longer matters. I was born in the tropics, raised in the arctic, and became a dual citizen of the same two countries twice. I could distinguish gunshots from fireworks by age five and have ridden the Trans-Siberian Railroad in both directions. I have milked a water buffalo and played Tchaikovsky’s piano …
Zora, Genevieve Tyrrell
Zora, Genevieve Tyrrell
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This mixed-media memoir uses a variety of forms from short epigrammatic essays to straightforward stories and graphic narratives to explore the author’s coming-of-age experiences augmented by chronic illness. Trying to succeed in the film industry, romance, and family situations, the young female narrator navigates the often unexpected or disappointing consequences of having an autonomic nervous system disorder. Relationships between conflicting identities emerge—between healthy versus sick self, projected/envisioned versus actual self, and tough versus vulnerable self—as the narrator journeys toward a more complete and accepting self-understanding.
Escape Artist, Alejandro Mujica
Escape Artist, Alejandro Mujica
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
My thesis, Escape Artist, is a composite novel written as a fictitious memoir, similar in style to Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, that describes my experiences between the years 2001 and 2011. During that time I went through Marine Corps Boot Camp, became a military police officer, patrolled Yuma, AZ, was sent to Iraq for a sevenmonth tour as a security detail just before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and made it back home four years later. The novel also looks into my struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms, how they affected the people around me, and what …
The Many Pedagogies Of Memoir: A Study Of The Promise Of Teaching Memoir In College Composition, Melissa Lee
The Many Pedagogies Of Memoir: A Study Of The Promise Of Teaching Memoir In College Composition, Melissa Lee
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines the promise and problems of memoir in the pedagogy and practices of teaching memoir in college composition. I interviewed three University of Central Florida instructors who value memoir in composition, and who at the time of this study, were mandated to teach memoir in their composition courses. The interviews focus on three main points of interest: (1) the instructors’ motivations behind their teaching of memoir, (2) how these instructors see memoir functioning in their classes, and (3) what these instructors hope their students will gain in the process of writing the memoir essay. By analyzing these interviews, …
"Pieces In A Pattern": Virginia Woolf And Family Memory, Kirsten Marie Thoming
"Pieces In A Pattern": Virginia Woolf And Family Memory, Kirsten Marie Thoming
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
By examining two memoirs written by Virginia Woolf and one memoir written by her father, Leslie Stephen, along with Woolf's novel, To the Lighthouse, I will investigate the memoir genre, particularly in the context of understanding a shared history. These four texts provide a means of analyzing how texts form a discourse and what can be learned when conversational roles are determined. By grouping these four works together, one can better understand the rich genre of memoir, while also getting a glimpse of the powerful complexity and narrative intricacies of the Woolf/Stephen family conversation.
The Intricacies Of M.F.K. Fisher: Discovering A Kaleidoscopic Hybridity, Elizabeth Lee Sleeper
The Intricacies Of M.F.K. Fisher: Discovering A Kaleidoscopic Hybridity, Elizabeth Lee Sleeper
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis seeks to analyze M.F.K. Fisher's socio-historic role and the components of her texts as a means to interrogate the categorization of her writing, to identify her authorial voice, and to see how it all contributes to and proves that Fisher is a `kaleidoscopic' hybrid writer. I utilize theoretical positions such as New Historicism, Feminism, Genre Theory, and Everyday Theory to help me identify and explain the hybrid tendencies of Fisher's writing. It is not a comprehensive study of her texts in light of these theories, but rather, it is a broad overview in order to demonstrate alternative readings …
Ordinary Madness, Jill Criswell
Ordinary Madness, Jill Criswell
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Ordinary Madness: A Memoir is an exploration of the chaotic trials and tribulations of growing up, of the sensitive, overly-imaginative child I was, trying to navigate her way through a world full of people who didn't seem to understand her, including unsympathetic adults, merciless playmates, and confused relatives. Set in the tiny farming town of Palatka, Florida, and spanning from early childhood memories to adolescence, the memoir delves into the realm of tragicomic youthful experiences with dead pets, bathroom graffiti, mock crucifixions, and other strange mishaps. The prose of Ordinary Madness is inspired by the small-town innocence of Haven Kimmel, …
Tourist Trap: On Being Raised In Award-Winning Sand, Catherine Jane Carson
Tourist Trap: On Being Raised In Award-Winning Sand, Catherine Jane Carson
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The literary essays in this collection explore the relationships between mind, body, and environment as the narrator explores Orlando, her beachfront hometown of Sarasota, and other "tourist traps." The traditional and experimental essays here question how residents make popular vacation destinations their own and how much trust one can put in strangers, neighbors, city planners, theme-park designers, and lovers. Dance floors, hybrid bikes, flying elephants, swing sets, and swimming pools fill these pages. Worries spiral like disco lights on dance floors, and cultural forces press down with the constant pressure of pedal strokes. With the embodiment of place comes connection …