Creative Writing Commons^™

The Girl In The Yellow Dress, Lauren Julia Thibault

Honors Projects

In Fall 2021, I studied abroad in Rome, Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic. During my four months, I had the opportunity to travel not only throughout Italy, but around Europe as well. In this guide, I lay out every trip I took and wrote tips and tricks for each area I went to. I go through overall points to keep in mind when traveling through Italy and Europe, what to eat, where to stay, what activities you should (and maybe shouldn't) do, and a little bit of history of what I'm talking about. I also list all of the apps …

Sharing Personal Cultural Experiences Through Travel Writing, Faith Morrow

Summer Scholarship, Creative Arts and Research Projects (SCARP)

It is common to hear that travelling changes people, often for the better, but what are tangible ways in which those changes are shown? Founded on a two week study abroad to England, I explored the captivating and educational genre of travel writing and attempted it myself. Through researching and consuming various travel writing and taking countless notes and observations in England, I set myself up to create my own travel pieces. Based on my research, two common types of travel writing included location-based personal narrative and tourist-centered pieces, both of which styles I experimented with in my three completed …

Music Making Connections, Laura M. Breslin

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

The Covid-19 pandemic has made mental health issues sky rocket. Many people are suffering from anxiety, depression, OCD and many other mental health problems now more than ever. Without the in-person interactions, many people are eager to be able to hug friends and family again. People are also eager to see their favorite music artist live in concert again. In this paper, we discuss how music can help your mental health, how to prevent contracting the coronavirus, and ways you can help speed up the process of getting life back to normal.

The Company, David Aldridge

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

A soldier returning to Vietnam for his second tour is mistaken for a VIP and enjoys some accidental perks on his way to rejoin his friends.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and …

Remembering, David Schlitz

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

A Coastie recalls the life onboard with his mates, the many rescues, the hard work of the sea, and his youth.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit.

Visionaries Of The Road, Storm A. Wright

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

What is space? It is a personal concept that people develop while on journeys toward discovery. Through means both intentional and not, that space can be shared with the world and make the knowledge gained on the journey available to anyone with the same curiosities. By looking into the travels of Ezra Meeker on the Oregon Trail, Horatio Nelson Jackson across country, and William Least Heat-Moon on the blue highway, space can be conceptualized and understood as these three men allow us to understand them through their own words and experiences.

A Genealogy Of Self-Development In Modern America, Kelsey M. Binder

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article offers a hypothetical conversation between various authors and creators who have embarked on progressive self-development journeys under the influence of a shared society that intermittently embraces and rejects the structures of the American Dream. While examining the instinctive human motives that cause the radical decision to actualize one’s life, this paper attempts to bridge the psychology of the desire for personal growth to our influential cultural landscape. It explores and analyzes the self-development journeys of individuals such as William Least Heat-Moon and Chris McCandless, as well as the recent message of self-development found in a cinematic pop culture …

Culture Of Modern American Theology, Evan Colon

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This paper examines literature to determine how travel reshapes the culture of spiritual seeking in the United States from the early 1800s to the modern era. As travel evolved, the experience of travel has changed over time and the reshaping of American culture reflects the impact travel can have in a region. This paper also analyzes the roles of Christian missionaries and Evangelists in reshaping the culture of spiritual seeking in America and it analyzes the spiritual experience that is recognized by both atheistic and theistic travelers.

A Genealogy Of Self-Development In Modern America: Influences Of The American Dream, Kelsey M. Binder

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article offers a hypothetical conversation between various authors and creators who have embarked on progressive self-development journeys under the influence of a shared society that intermittently embraces and rejects the structures of the American Dream. While examining the instinctive human motives that cause the radical decision to actualize one’s life, this paper attempts to bridge the psychology of the desire for personal growth to our influential cultural landscape. It explores and analyzes the self-development journeys of individuals such as William Least Heat-Moon and Chris McCandless, as well as the recent message of self-development found in a cinematic pop culture …

Tourism And Nationalism In America, Derick J. Knox

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

Travel has been regarded as not only a vacation but also a learning experience and for many Americans a process of familiarizing oneself with the history of their country. Technological advancements introduced means of mobility that allowed people to indulge in America’s culture and history. The 20th Century was a turbulent era accompanied by industrialization and an increase in nationalism. Tourist marketing had strategically mapped routes to showcase the highest points in American culture while ignoring some controversial narratives. Once travel became mediated by tourism in the 20th century it lost some elements of freedom and adventure, instead becoming the …

If He Can Do It, Why Can’T I?: Women’S Struggles Into Early Automobility, Emily Schlegel

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

No abstract provided.

Automobility And The Future Of Transport, Lukas Koch

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article explores the history of automobility as ideology, its effect on individuals and its possible future. In the USA in the early 20th century the automobile served to solve the crisis of individualism, created by Taylorism and the rise of the scientific method. To the people of the time the car was associated with freedom and individuality. Freedom through the automobile however was and would never be universally accessible. Furthermore examining the real life consequences of increasing mobility reveals unforeseen effects, mainly pollution, traffic and fragmentation of society. This paper proposes adoption of programs favoring sustainable modes of transportation …

G-Day, Donald Green

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

A young Marine artilleryman and his gun crew chase Saddam’s forces across the Kuwaiti desert.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit.

A Second Universe, Emily A. Benson

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A SECOND UNIVERSE is a memoir-in-essays that traces the author’s coming of age and her pursuit of self-discovery, belonging, and healing in all its forms. The book opens in the past, diving into the lives of the author’s parents before she was born and shedding light on the many obstacles they overcame to bring her earth-side. Set against the backdrop of the Southern Utah deserts and the clarity the author finds in the natural world, these essays wind through the author’s different childhood homes, down the lonely and desolate road of a sister’s addiction, and into the darkness that comes …

Ooliths, Estelle Mazor

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

OOLITHS is a poetry collection that challenges commonly held American values such as the sanctity of the family, the American Dream, the nobility of parenthood, and faith in God. Divided into eight sections, the collection follows the arc of childhood, adolescence, maturity and decline. Images of birds, crickets, the beach, the moon, and rainstorms anchor the poems to Miami’s natural habitat and to each other, while images involving music, sleep, raisins, coffee beans and eggs unite them in the realm of the domestic.

OOLITHS includes traditional forms such as sonnets, as well as nonce forms, prose poems, free verse and …

The Empath’S Travel Log, Pamela J. Thompson

Student Publications

Cynthia Marie Hoffman Studner said of the poem, "This is an ambitious poem that delivers on empathy, just as promised. The poem establishes a metaphor of a “taught thread” that pulls together the traveler and an “orange-coated mutt” spotted in Italy, and this thread weaves throughout the poem as one of continual and deep connection with others. One wonders of the empath’s fate, especially when the poem begins with the story of wives cremated beside their dead husbands. What are the implications of this empathy in terms of its being something the speaker must bear? At times, it is guilt, …

Okay Cool No Smoking Love Pony, Annik I. Babinski

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This poetry collection moves from the narrator’s childhood in the marshes of Canada to her coming of age in a new, southern swamp in South Florida. Many of the poems use free verse as well as fairly recent poetic forms like the Golden Shovel and the Pecha Kucha. Others rely on wordplay and nonce forms. Influenced by Hector Veil Temperly, Matthew Zapruder, Dorothea Lasky, Laura Kasischke and Anne Carson, the poems often employ simple language in stream of consciousness, and oscillate between lyric and narrative. These poems are feverish creations inspired by the oracular tradition and induced by the psychic …

Artemisia In The Metro, Emily A. Francisco

Student Publications

The “art poem” is an intriguing form of poetry. In writing about something that is inherently visual, a poet must remold a work of art into new material, drawing upon the work’s elements of form such as color, line, use of light, contrast, and composition to make his or her own reflective statement, beyond simply describing the artwork’s own content. In my poetry I aim to take this model of the “art poem,” and, through extended experimentation with this idea of ekphrasis (writing about art in a poetic context), intend to suggest a more intimate connection between art and language. …

My Second Home, Basa Village, Jeff Rasley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Article for Synchronized Chaos about the author’s journeys to Basa Village in Nepal.

An Enlightened Partnership, Jeff Rasley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Article for Shout! Outdoor Lifestyle Magazine about the author’s journeys to Basa Village in Nepal and the partnership forged with the villagers.

Paddling The Perilous Paradise, Jeff Rasley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Article for Shout! Outdoor Lifestyle Magazine about the author’s journeys to Palau and Jellyfish Lake.

Where I Tread, Sarah Watts

Honors College

I studied abroad for two semesters during the 2011-2012 academic year; I spent the first semester in Bilbao, Spain and the second in Cork, Ireland. Over the course of this experience, I got to know my host cities, traveled widely, and wrote a lengthy blog about my experience. The blog covers not only my experiences but also observations and historical accounts: I connected what I did with the greater context of the places I was in. Study abroad proved to be transformative, something the blog shows. I have chosen to use the blog as the basis of my thesis because …

Red Rose, Sara Lauren Purifoy

Student Publications

Red Rose follows the narrator’s innermost thoughts and feelings of abruptly being immersed into a culture very different from her own. While hiking with her brother, a second year environmental Peace Corps volunteer, to visit the home and garden of a Nicaraguan native, she reflects on the changes she sees in her brother and her inability to communicate in a foreign country. She struggles to overcome her feelings of linguistic isolation while still being fascinated by the culture around her. The piece ends on a lovely image of universal understanding.

Pilgrimage To Wounded Knee: An Essay, Jeff Rasley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Article for Synchronized Chaos about the author’s trip to the Badlands National Park and Wounded Knee.

Pushing Hard: An Excerpt From Bringing Progress To Paradise, Jeff Rasley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Excerpt from the author’s book Bringing Progress to Paradise (ISBN 9781573244824).

Jeff Rasley: Mountains Of Meaning, Pam Richards, Jeff Rasley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Interview with Pam Richards for Seeds Born to Light about the author’s experience in the Himalayas and Basa Village.

Author Spotlight 64: Jeff Rasley, Jeff Rasley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Guest blog post for Morgen Bailey’s Writing Blog on the author’s influences and process.

Philanthro-Trekking In Basa Village, Nepal, Jeff Rasley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Article for Real Travel Adventures about hiking in Nepal and working with Basa Village.

A Resting Place In Nepal, Jeff Rasley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Guest blog for Around the World Blog on the author’s travels in Nepal.

Interview With Bringing Progress To Paradise Author Jeff Rasley, Jeff Rasley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Interview with Travelanthropist about the author’s experience in the Himalayas and Basa Village.