Creative Writing Commons^™

Notes On Distance Dialing, Liam Baranauskas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My mom thought watching professional wrestling would turn me gay, so I saw the WWF mostly at my dad’s house, on his twelve-inch black and white television with aluminum foil for an antenna. Every other week I got two hours of gyrating pretty boys, unexamined racism, heavy breathing, and the occasional obese man whose blubbery folds could endure endless punishment until he ended his match by sitting on his opponent. There was a Jewish accountant wrestler who would berate the crowd for cheating on their taxes. There was “Kamala the Ugandan Giant.” There was a clown. The greytoned pixels on …

The Delicate Art Of Being: Psychological Responses To Environmental Damage In American Fiction Of The 1970s, Andrew Timothy Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This Master’s thesis looks at three works of American literature from the 1970s—James Dickey’s Deliverance (1970), Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree (1979), and Leslie MarSilko’s Ceremony (1977)—with two primary research questions in mind: How do these novels act as responses to the politicization and globalization of the American environmental movement? and How do these novels depict psychological responses to ongoing environmental damage and destruction? This study is particularly interested in depictions of abjected environments inhabited by socially abjected people. Through investigations of ecohorror, ecotrauma, and ecomelancholy as manifested in aesthetic representations of abjected environments, I read these three environmentally aware texts as …

Beer Stein Poem, True Poem, Sick Poem, Erotic Poem, And Other Poems, Margaret Bower

Honors Theses

A collection of poems dealing with subjects like absurdity, strange love, and adulthood.

Lucy Negro, Redux, Caroline Randall Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lucy Negro, Redux is a collection of poetry that uses the lens of Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" sonnets to explore the way questions about and desire for the black female body have evolved over time, from Elizabethan England to the Jim Crow South to the present day. Research for the collection began with the discovery in early 2012 of a connection between the historical Elizabethan figure Black Luce--a notorious brothel owner--and William Shakespeare, by Professor Duncan Salkeld of the University of Chichester. A grant from the University of Mississippi yielded an opportunity for on-site research with Dr. Salkeld in order to …

The Personal Creed Project: Portal To Deepened Learning, John Creger

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The founder of an influential and transformative writing project reflects on its grounding in Moffett’s philosophy and presents the model of learning that grew out of it.

Gloria Posada Folio, Gloria Posada

Corresponding Voices

A folio of poetry by Gloria Posada, appearing in the Spanish original and in the English translation by Libertad Garzón.

Jessica Cuello Folio, Jessica Cuello

Corresponding Voices

A folio of English-language poetry by Jessica Cuello.

Jessica Ann Poli Folio, Jessica Ann Poli

Corresponding Voices

A folio of English-language poetry by Jessica Ann Poli.

Cautery, Aaron Brossiet

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cautery works with the tools of language and archetypes exploring memory, imagination, ecstasy, and suffering as well as life and death. The poems work to cauterize wounds and give scarred shape, but shape nonetheless, toward the future.

Damas Y Caballeros, Guadalupe Mendez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Collected Poetry - Manuscript over socio - political and culturally relevant context.

A Swath Of Poppies, Spring Ulmer

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Black Skies And Gray Matter, Jacquelyn Bennett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Black Skies and Gray Matter is a collection of stories thematically centered on characters that are lonely or lost in the world. These stories explore the characters' personalities through their interactions with others (strangers, family, friends, and spouses) and the difficulties they face being misunderstood. Their journeys are ones of trying to find happiness and their place in society (or rejecting it). As they face alienation, they must endure the trials of everyday life (some more extreme than others) and, at the same time, search for kindred spirits, a sense of belonging. Some stay true to themselves while others conform …

Instant Conductors, Mary Petralia

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Instant Conductors is a collection of poems meant to engage the reader in conversation about the imperfect nature of the world in relation to the imperfect nature of readerly experience. Walt Whitman wrote, “I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop / they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.” And so the things on these pages are intent on transmitting what one experiences in the minutiae of memory and routine: the sounds that surround a blackwater tidepool, what one imagines happens behind the closed doors of the friendly neighbors, or what's heard in …

Scribblescholar Was Here: Confessional Notes Of A Vandal Academic, Clay Shields

Theses and Dissertations--English

As a (former) vandal-punk in the academy, I often fear succumbing to Ivory Tower Stockholm syndrome. The identities I perform, vandal-punk and scholar, ideologically clash to the point that they often feel irreconcilable. By codemeshing the high-low discourses associated with these adopted cultures, I attempt to disrupt any hierarchal privileging of either, instead searching for a way to live with and harness both.

Branded Cowboy, Meredith Doench

English Faculty Publications

“Here is a moving story of a transgender man whose roots reach deeply into the dust of West Texas. He must choose between the woman he loves and the life he has made on his family’s ranch as a cowboy. I was impressed with how the writer chose to tell this story, with grace and nuance and heart." – Roxane Gay

Bridging The Information Gap For Ulcerative Colitis Patients, Amanda Morgan

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Nearly all humans, throughout the course of their life, have been diagnosed with everything from a mild cold, to a viral infection, or perhaps a diagnosis of a chronic condition. Upon experiencing symptoms, patients are exposed to a plethora of information. The Internet holds home remedies, for those wary of the doctor's office, or there are advice boards where people share their experiences, trials, and tribulations. In some cases, the doctor is the purveyor of the information and written materials are sent home with the patient dictating the regimen to follow to achieve wellness. However, some patients, particularly ulcerative colitis …

Fracture, Gretchen R. Heisler

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

Gothic/horror novella taking place in 1950s Western Pennsylvania.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Coming Out In An Alcoholic Family, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This piece invites readers inside emotional and relational dynamics of coming

out as gay in an alcoholic family system. Taking an interpretive approach to

research, focused on how participants make sense of and make meaning

from their lived experience, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” offers a longitudinal and

narrative ethnographic account of family secrecy and disclosure.

Journal Of The National Association Of University Women - Spring 2015, Nauw

The Journal of the National Association of University Women

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN

JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN

SPRING 2015

[Introduction To] Red Star Tales: A Century Of Russian And Soviet Science Of Fiction, Yvonne H. Howell

Bookshelf

For over a century, most of the science fiction produced by the world’s largest country has been beyond the reach of Western readers. This new collection aims to change that, bringing a large body of influential works into the English orbit.

A scientist keeps a severed head alive, and the head lives to tell the tale… An explorer experiences life on the moon, in a story written six decades before the first moon landing... Electrical appliances respond to human anxieties and threaten to crash the electrical grid… Archaeologists discover strange powers emanating from a Central Asian excavation site… A teleporting …

Reimaging Desire: Queer Time, Liminal Space, And Narrative Anxiety, Aidan Mitchell

HIM 1990-2015

Media shapes and supports certain ideas about how we view ourselves and others. The narratives that we consume train us to desire a particular formula of what critic Lauren Berlant calls "the good life": growing up, becoming a man or a woman, getting married, having children, and retiring. People who fail to fit into these narratives are often punished and excluded from society. However, queer theorist Jack Halberstam asks us to reconsider failure as a means of resistance. The texts that I examine fail to conform to narrative expectations or to fit formulae that are easily consumable or defined. They …

Blue Eyes, Casey Schmidt

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

Survival, Bailey Little

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

The Last Year, Brittany Clemens

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

My Fourteenth October, Casey Schmidt

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

Euphoria, Renan Ferreira De Almeida

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

This Isn't A Title, Tracy Akers

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

Upon Seeing Myself In Giovanni's Room, Caroline Merritt

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

Pyro, Brittany Capps

The Messenger

No abstract provided.

I Am (Yours) To Command, Kevin Hargrave

The Messenger

No abstract provided.