Creative Writing Commons^™

It All Begins With A Dream, Eileen M. Riley

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Eileen is an English major from a military family near Fort Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts. Her interest in vintage fashion led her to research representations of women in early 20th century advertisements for the Maidenform bra for her Composition II class. Impressed by the beautiful artwork she discovered in these depictions, Eileen was intrigued by the portrayals of women in roles that were traditionally held by men. Her essay explores how “these ads fed women’s desires for the gender norm dictates of that post-war time in America [and] went beyond these norms by depicting aspirational scenarios.” Eileen lives in Dorchester, …

A Close Look At The Function Of Slang, Ana Radonjic Sabbagh

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Ana is an undecided major, born and raised in Boston to Serbian and Lebanese parents. Writing has always been a passion of Ana’s, and she created this research essay as a final project for her Composition II course. She notes that “it was a topic that became increasingly interesting the more I researched it. I was thoroughly surprised by the complex history and function of slang, and I gained a new perspective on the role of language in our daily lives.” Other than writing, Ana’s biggest passion is traveling, and she loves discovering new places, meeting people from all around …

Profanity And Perceptions, Elizabeth Lefrancois

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Lizzie is an Exercise and Health Science major from Blackstone, Massachusetts. Assigned by her Composition II instructor to research an aspect of language that interested her, Lizzie chose to research swearing, which was never allowed in her home. Lizzie’s research enabled her to “open [her] eyes and see much more than a lack of vocabulary” when she heard others using profanity. She explains, “I felt as if I was programmed to think that swearing was this terrible thing that no one should do, and, because of that, I never thought about the positive side of this language.” Lizzie’s essay explores …

The Good Samaritan: The Role Of Religion In One's Morality, Kamla Javier

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Kamla is an Economics major currently living in Boston, Massachusetts. Kamla’s essay, created for her Composition II course, began as an exploration of morality. She set out to examine the stereotypes against non-believers in order to better understand the development of the moral compass and the role religion plays in morality. She writes: “In this day and age where all kinds of people can freely express their opinion, both hurtful and helpful, I also wish to communicate my own beliefs through a logical presentation of information.” Kamla wanted to voice a position that is accepting of all people and “hopefully …

There And Back Again: A Writer's Tale, By A Repeat Student, Mark Ballou

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

Mark is an IT Major who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Mark credits his parents for his life-long love of reading, and at a young age he loved writers, like J.R.R. Tolkien and R.A. Salvatore, who “in addition to having abbreviations for their first names, share an affinity for spending pages and pages describing the visuals in their books.” Mark is an Army veteran with nine years of service, and he has spent most of his adult life writing as a Counterintelligence Agent for the US Army, employing his meticulous style into his written work. In this essay for his Composition …

The Insights Of Literacy, Yasmim Alves Da Silva

Undercurrents: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Composition

No abstract provided.

Grieving And Attentiveness: Perception As Flourishing In Ocean Vuong And Mary Oliver, Madison Smith

Papers

The paper argues that poets Ocean Vuong and Mary Oliver treat grief as something formative to one's life and character rather than purely destructive; through their suffering, the subject has the opportunity to cultivate a sense of attentiveness that transforms perceptions of the self, others, history, and the natural world.

This project was an output for The Belmont Formation Scholars Cohort for Character Research and Writing, which received generous support funding from The Kern Family Foundation.

I gratefully acknowledge peer review feedback on this project, and I am accountable for writing of this product without generative AI and in alignment …

Postmodern Fantasy & Its Twin Traditions, Skyler J. Alexander

Honors Thesis

Fantasy literature is diverse and difficult to categorize; nevertheless, throughout the twentieth century two main subgenres emerged: sword-and-sorcery and high fantasy. This thesis examines the differences and similarities between these two traditions, how contemporary examples of the genre fit into or diverge away from the traditions that influenced them, and proves in the negative what and how much of contemporary fantasy fiction is original to itself, with no prominent antecedent. The analysis was performed by comparatively reading two contemporary fantasy novels, The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan and A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, with …

A Poetic Call For And A Reflection And Commentary On Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, And Compassion, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Finding a published poem I had written as a teenager, titled “The Heavens Weep.” this article uses that poem as the basis for a commentary that reflects on the state of the world today (2026),  As a commentary, the article uses the poetic and metaphoric words in the poem as a relevant "reality check" for what is still going on today.  In essence, the commentary is about a call for Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, and Compassion, or what I call Archetypal Energies, Higher Vibrational Energies that operate deep within our individual and collective psyches to creatively urge us to "see" …

From Margins To Center: Los Deslenguados In The Borderlands, Brissa S. Porras Villalobos

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Borderland literature is a subgenre that often includes narratives of migration, tribulations, identity development, and resilience. It foregrounds the collaboration of vulnerability, isolation, connection, and power, showing that hybridity is a source of cultural energy. Acknowledging the borderland and its culture is crucial because it challenges stereotypes, validates marginalized voices, and celebrates heritage in all its complexity. By centering these experiences, borderland literature affirms the potential of living between cultures, prioritizing the recognition of the in-between, valuing and celebrating the space where identities are continually reshaped, histories are reclaimed, and resilience is nurtured rather than neglected. Using Gloria Anzaldúa's theory …

Vibe Coding: Ai, Digital Text Recycling, And The Remediation Of Digital Poetry, Yohanna Joseph Waliya

ELO (un)supervised 2026

This paper theorises Vibe Coding as a novel method of AI-assisted creative practice within electronic literature. Vibe Coding describes an affective mode of communication with AI that enables coding via natural-language prompts, in which the author collaborates with generative AI systems to recycle, remediate, and reconfigure existing digital texts into new poetic forms, including interactive animations. Rather than treating code as a fixed procedural logic, Vibe Coding focuses on rhythm, intuition, and affect as central compositional forces shaping both textual production and computational interaction. Relying on theories of remediation, digital recycling, and posthuman authorship, the paper examines how AI functions …

Compressed Cinema As A Study In Llm Latent Spaces, Mallen Clifton

ELO (un)supervised 2026

In his article “Spec Acts” (2021), Matthew Kirschenbaum analyzes the AI-generated novel 1 the Road to develop his titular concept of the spec act, “the future in its multitudes collapsing into an actionable present.” With the proliferation of texts produced by generative AI and subsequent critical analyses of them, one element in particular calls for further theorization: “the future in its multitudes,” or more directly, the latent space. This echoes arguments by critics such as Antonio Somaini, who offered his own “Theory of Latent Spaces” last year. However, where Somaini’s attention is towards visual culture, I turn mine to the …

Ztc Eng 2400: Composition Ii Syllabus, Ann Marie Dorr

Open Educational Resources

Asynchronous continuation of writing studies in Composition II considering the lens of the role of the cultural critic using New York Times access as the key resource via the CUNY Library system to consider writing research based essays including personal narrative, academic research papers, and reviews.

An Anxious Artist's Guide To Magic, Mot Tuman

Masters Theses

Illustration’s essence is using some type of media to tell a story. This could be anything from sculpture, watercolor, even just text alone. Beyond its medium, I have been thinking for a while of illustration and storytelling as a type of illusory magic. Magic, according to the Oxford language dictionary as being "The power of using supernatural or other unseen forces to apparently influence events or human behaviour." It gives us the power to reach inside the mind and heart of a person and change their emotional and mental state. It's the ability to create a world and have others …

Project Wildest Dreams, Faith Bernier

Honors College Theses

“Project Wildest Dreams” is a hybrid psychological correlational study and short fiction collection based on anecdotes of vivid, frightening, or bizarre dreams. This collaboration of art and science explores the nature of dreaming, a phenomenon that has intrigued and perplexed both the humanities and the STEM fields for many years. The goal of this thesis was twofold: primarily, it was intended to utilize the outlandish, surreal, and unique feelings and images that dreams elicit in order to procure an anthology of surrealist and absurdist short stories across primarily the genres of horror, comedy, and fantasy. In addition to this, the …

Hope, Incorporated: Welborn Hope As B.A. Botkin's "Promising" Oklahoma Poet, Cullen Whisenhunt

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In 1927, a letter by then-professor at the University of Oklahoma, Roy Temple House, was published in the Ada Evening News complimenting Ada, OK, poet Welborn Hope and suggesting Hope get in touch with folklorist and literary scholar BA Botkin, also an OU faculty member. That same year, Botkin published “Oklahoma Poets, Inc.,” in which he detailed what he believed to be the three stages of a state’s literary development: the pioneer stage, the popular rhymesters stage, and finally, the union of art and life (30-31). In 1935, Botkin presented a lecture in Tulsa in which he cited Hope among …

After The Morning Light, Fiona Candland

English Honors Projects

One fall morning, Clarice, a woman in her mid-twenties, is getting ready for the day when she finds a black ground beetle crawling along her bedroom wall. The beetle consumes her, and throughout the day, Clarice undergoes a metamorphosis. Rendered in poetry and prose, After the Morning Light explores the cultivation of a self, questions the boundaries between humans and their environment, and portrays the fragile relationship between women and the act of being seen.

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.

The Creek And The Cave, Zoe Geltman

Student Theses

A play.

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.

Facsimiles, Russell Soh

Student Theses

An excerpt:

Hi Everyone, I’m currently in the process of organizing and sketching out a series of prose proems based on a small multitude of notes I’ve accrued over the last six months. These notes are essentially notes towards the writing of various poems (around 8). The idea is basically to turn these notes, or these would-be poems, into a series of abstracted ‘facsimiles’, like tangible ghosts trapped in a simulacrum of the poem. I need to be reacquainted with the prose poem, or at least my idea of it.

Poppy's Eye, Clementine Morse

Student Theses

A collection of poetry.

From Viðkenning To Valarindi: The Enigma Of Goldberry And The River-Woman, Derek Simon

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

THIS IS A TWO-PART ARTICLE. IN ORDER TO READ OR DOWNLOAD THE OTHER PART, FOLLOW THE LINK AT THE END OF THIS ABSTRACT.

Building upon the previous examination of the eddic and skaldic contours of Goldberry’s River kenning names, this reading of Goldberry’s enigma focuses on the mythological referents of her kinship relations and their narrative consistency in the legendarium.  Tending to the intrinsic connection between “[t]he incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale” (Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 41), I contend that the poetics of kenning diction sustain if not demand a reading of the River-woman references mythologically through …

The Alembic - International Literary Journal, Sara Mackinnon, Finn Heller, Sarah Debian, Kate Blackwell

English Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

On The Sunny Side Of The Street: An Original Novel, Alyssa Caneira

English Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Editors, The Alembic

The Alembic

No abstract provided.

Volume 104, Number 1 - Spring 2026, The Alembic

The Alembic

Cover "The Stars are Screaming in the Field Outside my Apartment" by Hale Mueller

Table Of Contents, The Alembic

The Alembic

No abstract provided.