Fiction Commons^™

The Bones: A Novel-In-Progress, Chris Stark

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Crip Queer Storytelling: An Intersectional Analysis, Audrey T. Heffers

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Abstract

Where are queer disabled characters, and how do they avoid tokenization? This particular approach will use the following criteria as its foundation:

1) The story has a character who is both disabled and queer. (This must be explicit in some way and not ambiguously coded within the text, or solely paratextual.)

2) The character is central to the narrative. (If the character were removed, would the story change significantly?)

3) The story can be affected by disability, but (with due respect to making space for such stories) the story isn’t solely/centrally about disability/overcoming ableism.

The hope with these criteria …

Controlling The Narrative: How The United Daughters Of The Confederacy Shaped Collective Memory Through Romance Novels, Karie L. Cobb

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

While existing scholarship on the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) reveals the immense influence the organization wielded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I assert that their legacy has had a broader and more insidious reach than previously believed. Through close analysis of two foundational romance novelists’ works published during the rapid escalation of the genre’s popularity, I contend that the rhetoric of the UDC shaped generations of Southerners as demonstrated through repetitions and parallels of the Lost Cause ideology found in UDC publications and sponsored materials within romance novels written by white Southern women who came of age …

Inherited Wounds: Generational Trauma In Postcolonial Film And Narrative Fiction Of The Global South, Sabrina Testi Melgarejo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The theorization of trauma in literary studies emerged in the 1990s, evolving from its physiological origins to a multidisciplinary framework encompassing literature, psychology, and history. However, classical trauma theory, rooted in Western scholarship and focused on singular traumatic events, has been criticized for its limitations in addressing collective and ongoing trauma in non-Western contexts. This thesis responds to a call for a more inclusive approach to trauma studies, examining how multi-generational and cultural trauma is represented in non-Western postcolonial films and literature from the Global South, including works from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, Vietnam, and Lebanon.

The …

The Sword And The Serpent, Gina Dittmeier

Children's Book Writing and Illustrating (MFA) Theses

This project provides insight into the monstrous bridegroom trope in fairytale and its influence in modern fantasy literature. The monstrous bridegroom trope has several different variations, but all of these variations result in a young and innocent woman marrying a monster. Through my critical essay, I look at this trope through a modern feminist lens, exploring the different variations of the trope in fairy tales, modern fairy tale adaptations, and fantasy literature. The essay brings in modern ideas of toxic masculinity and toxic femininity and applies them to the fairy tale inspiration of fantasy literature. The monstrous bridegroom trope and …

Alive For The Wake, Anna Kate Powell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In the year 2046, bacteria strain B. bibitor has rendered all petroleum hydrocarbon compounds unrefinable. Paramedic Amanda Bailey finds hope in the resilience of humanity but struggles when she learns the powers that be would rather concentrate their efforts on fighting B. bibitor—restoring infected hydrocarbons to their previously refinable (and profitable) nature—rather than investing in already-developed clean firm energies and renewable material manufacture.

Phantasma, Grace Wright

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Ever since the infamous Ides of March, scholars have been debating the true psychology behind Brutus’s betrayal. The purpose of this project is to take a step back from the politicized motivations and explore the emotional, strenuous conditions of Julius Caesar’s assassination. This project will transform William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar into a novella with its central focus on the relationship dynamics between the key figures of Caesar, Brutus, and Cassius. The intention of the novella is to not only analyze the play through a critical queer lens, but to interrogate the themes of violence and desire that surround male relationships …

Wildflowers A Novel, Kelli Roberts

Theses

Abstract for Wildflowers

Wildflowers is a feminist literary novel that examines the intersection of sex, power, and free will, exploring how these forces shape and define human agency. The story follows a group of women drawn to an enigmatic leader who promises enlightenment and empowerment through embracing their desires. As they navigate the fine line between self-actualization and manipulation, the novel delves into themes of liberation, coercion, and the choices we make to create the lives we long for. Provocative and thought-provoking, Wildflowers invites readers to consider the complexities of desire, the cost of empowerment, and the courage required to …

The Power Of The Written Word: An Exploration Of Writing As Craft And Pedagogy, Kristen Charlesworth

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio is an exploration of writing, both as a crafted process and a subject of pedagogy. It includes three pieces of vastly different genres, which have one overlapping theoretical notion: autonomy is a key ingredient to successful writing at any level. Student success, creative writing, and scholarly research are all enhanced when the writer is given opportunities to guide their own process. The selected works of this portfolio serve as examples of how student autonomy is not only possible in the classroom, but of the overwhelmingly positive effect it has on the writing process, student engagement, and ultimately, academic …

Tear In The Wing, Aspen Balducci

Student Sequential Art and Comics

A short comic based on the author's own experiences with disability and acceptance, as a plus size person with knee problems, growing up.

Following The Wounded Women In Isabela, Kaisa Aquino

Fine Arts Department Faculty Publications

This article examines some elements in the crafting of my novel, Isabela (2024), particularly its novelistic formation, and its take on the emblematic figure of the wounded woman in war. I demonstrate what non-conventional stylistic and conceptual decisions give the story its syncretic mode of thought, as its trail shifts from city to barrio, one category of fiction to another, and one wounded woman to the next. I also argue that all these movements and turns are necessary in the novel’s project of representation, as it envisions to narrativize the ongoing historical moment that is the people’s struggle for liberation …

Following The Wounded Women In Isabela, Kaisa R. Aquino

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This article examines some elements in the crafting of my novel, Isabela (2024), particularly its novelistic formation, and its take on the emblematic figure of the wounded woman in war. I demonstrate what non-conventional stylistic and conceptual decisions give the story its syncretic mode of thought, as its trail shifts from city to barrio, one category of fiction to another, and one wounded woman to the next. I also argue that all these movements and turns are necessary in the novel’s project of representation, as it envisions to narrativize the ongoing historical moment that is the people’s struggle for liberation …

Shared Shame And Affect In Nella Larsen's Passing, Claudia Ludwick

All Theses

This project focuses on the negative affect of shame in Nella Larsen’s 1920s American novel, Passing. While shame is a universal feeling everyone feels, the project argues that Larsen’s two main characters, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, feel a specific type of invisible shame that pulls on them differently. For Irene, this shame is reactive and aggressive, but for Clare, this shame is passive and often ignored. The project details where and how the shame manifests for each character, particularly focusing on how shame can be seen visibly and invisibly in and on the body. Because no other character recognizes …

A Collection Of Short Stories, Tryphena Lizzert Yeboah

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

The short stories in this collection offer diverse and expansive realities of the human condition, particularly around the lives of women—their identities, bodies, emotions, and how they live and navigate a social order that is often constructed to dominate and undermine them. How can we complicate marginalized portrayals of women shaped by the male gaze and interrogate the patriarchal presumption of the African woman? What different approaches should be employed in capturing different aspects of her domestic and social life, how she defines and expresses autonomy, how she subverts gender norms, and her experiences of emotional and physical violence? These …

A Case Study In Vacillant Literary Analysis: Nella Larsen's Passing (1929), Sara Casten

University Honors Theses

For the last 95 years, Nella Larsen's Passing has been a topic of discussion within the literary and scholarly communities. First considered Larsen's folly, her second novella Passing had struggled to received a compliment from critics and was quickly lost to readers until her work was rediscovered in the early 1970s. However, unbound by the restrictive literary trope of the era, scholars now wonder if Larsen's Passing had been a misinterpreted masterpiece. This thesis outlines the initial interpretations of critics and modern understanding of scholars in order to highlight the influences of outside influences when reading a written work from …

Old Wives’ Tales: Collections From Beneath The Floorboards, Layla Barnes

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Old Wives’ Tales: Collections from Beneath the Floorboards draws on the rich tradition of feminist speculative fiction, particularly in the genre of the fairy tale. It responds to Walidah Imarisha’s idea of “visionary fiction,” a kind of fiction which seeks to participate in “the decolonization of the imagination.” Using an experimental fragmentary form, it explores themes of story and counter-story, maternal legacy, female interconnectedness and community, and magic as a form of female empowerment in opposition to patriarchal control and surveillance.

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Seeking The Unspoken: Examining Queer Subtext In Storytelling, Morgan Stevens-Reidy

Postgraduate

This exegesis aims to examine the techniques of subtext that are used to determine creative decisions in narrative structures on various forms of fictional screen media with a specific focus on storytelling in an animation context and the creative mediums used to form it. The major focus of subtextual storytelling that is investigated during this exegesis is the themes and narratives used throughout the LGBTQ+ community and the diversity of its influences upon hidden signs within stories, which was studied through the process of creating the foundation of a short film with the use of methodological approaches such as practice-led …

My Gender In The Closet, Aspen Balducci

Student Sequential Art and Comics

This book details the transitioning and rediscovery of gender from a single person's perspective. Gender is not linear or binary, something all people should be free to study and discover.

The Boy With The Pet Dog, Allan N. Derain, Christian Jil Benitez

Filipino Faculty Publications

Set at the beginning of the hot season in the Philippines, when heat starts to crawl on skin, the short fiction “The Boy with the Pet Dog” (“Ang Batang May Alagang Aso”) stages an encounter between the titular character and a young man from the province who intends to work on his family’s farm. Queerness figures in the narrative as intimately entangled with class, and becomes articulable only through a language made possible by the tropics itself, in the form of butterflies coming out of chrysalises, brown bodies glowing with sweat, and swiftlets flocking mango trees. At the heart of …

Critiquing The Discourse On Women In The Edo Era: Intertextual Studies Of Ariyoshi’S Hanaoka Seishū No Tsuma, Nina Alia Ariefa, Melani Budianta, Dhita Hapsarani

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Under the Tokugawa clan, Japanese women’s position was declined throughout the Edo era (1603–1868). Almost one century afterwards, a female writer called Ariyoshi Sawako (1931–1984) raised the issue of female position in the Edo era through the novel Hanaoka Seishū no Tsuma (HSNT). This article will focus on two things. First is the exploration of the discourse of women in the Edo Era through three texts written during the era. The second part of the article will discuss the intertextuality of novel, with the discourse on women in the Edo era. New historicism method and Foucault’s concepts of discourse and …

Shan Song Xiao / 山松晓, 熙福 著, Jane Li

Zea E-Books Collection

故事梗概 这本书描写一百年来一家三代女儿的家族故事，从外祖母，母亲，再到女儿，她们生活在有重叠的生活里，又各自有着不同时代不同主旋律的生活轨迹。光阴荏苒，人生匆匆，回首过往，记录生活。 书中的人物以真实人物为原型，作者将真实名字略去，并在故事情节上加以了丰富和构想。 作者：熙福

ShanSongXiao 'Morning Pine on the Mountain' -- Summary of the story: This book describes the family story of three generations of daughters in a family over the past 100 years. From grandmother, mother, to daughter, they live in overlapping lives, and each has a life trajectory with different themes in different times. Time flies, life is in a hurry, look back on the past and record life. The characters in the book are based on real people. The author has omitted their real names and enriched and imagined the storyline. Author: Xi Fu

部分读后感： 你的小说语言淳朴，接地气。我非常喜欢你的小说，看过后有很多感想。一代一代的 女性不容易，我们赶上了好时代，要争取自己的权力！~ …

Defining Gastrocriticism As A Critical Paradigm On The Example Of Irish Literature And Food Writing: A Vade Mecum, Anke Klitzing

Doctoral

The aim of this study is to map out the gastrocritical approach, using Irish literature and writing to test its premises, and to provide a vade mecum for its practical application, particularly for interdisciplinary scholars. The gastrocritical approach furnishes a “culinary lens” for reading food and foodways in imaginative texts, informed by work in the field of food studies and gastronomy. The approach was broadly characterised by Tobin in 2002, but only sparsely used since. The past fifteen years have seen an increasing self-awareness and reflexivity in the field of literary food studies. As the field matures, there have been …

Ships In Houston, Nadia Villafuerte, Julie Ann Ward

Undiscovered Americas

Ships in Houston by Nadia Villafuerte, translated by Julie Ann Ward, is a harrowing and heartrending collection of fifteen stories that bring to life characters who, though they exist independently from one another, inhabit the same world: Mexico’s southern border. Using acute attention to language, such as various dialects and slang, to create a nuanced and varied mood and setting, Villafuerte’s stories track exotic dancers, sex workers, truck drivers, drug dealers, immigration officials, and even a mayor’s daughter to create compelling fictions rooted in the harsh realities of borderlands that many choose to overlook. While the US’s southern border with …

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-One. Twenty-One. Twenty-Three. Twenty-Four. Twenty-Five. Twenty-Six., Liza Lacroix

Theses and Dissertations

"One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-one. Twenty-three.Twenty-four. Twenty-five. Twenty-six." is a biographical fiction of violence toward the protagonist. Comprised of writing, audio, documentation and intervention. This text is the first iteration, and the thesis work is the second iteration of the same.

Daughterly Narratives In Search Of Voice: Fadwa Tuqan, Latifa Al-Zayyat, And Samar Attar, Rania Bedeir

Theses and Dissertations

A myriad of pressures and struggles affect Arab women as they are coming of age due to the familial and societal constructs they face. As daughters, they yearn for a voice amidst a plethora of generational boundaries, transmissions, and ideals. The intricacy of the psychological and interconnected structural factors is augmented by their gender in societies that are motivated, and often governed by, the implications of gender roles. While multiple layers of influence such as familial and sociocultural institutions affect how consciousness is formed, generational transmission, through the maternal figure, is paramount. Daughters, therefore, cannot narrate their personal stories without …

Babel, Daniel Horowitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is a series of three memoiristic essays around the vortex of identity. The first is an exploration of how childhood overmedication split the continuity of the author’s self-conception. The second traces the slipperiness of Jewish and Queer identifications detailing their synthesis in the klezmer revival in New York City in late 1980s and early 90s. The third is a polyphonic narration of the recovery of a lost klezmer’s life story in the face of the silence of time and slaughter.

Woman Flytrap, Brianna Jo Hobson

Student Theses and Dissertations

Woman FlyTrap is a short story zine collection that explores the topic of sexual violence through the perpetrator and victim relationship with an explicit lens. Replete with cultural and entomological themes and motifs, Woman Flytrap seeks to remind survivors that we are not alone. In our bodies or in our lives. Neither in the world. There are over a million insects to every human, proving that there is strength in numbers. All five stories in the collection present different abstracts: revenge, transformation, justice, healing, body image, self-harm, mourning, etc. There is also a playlist and a section about the author. …

The Dark House And Its Inhabitants, Emily Bielski

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

From the inception of the genre, Gothic horror has been fixated on the domestic space in distress. This essay explores domestic archetypes and roles of the Gothic novel, serving as a “tour of the house”, analyzing the iconography of the dark castle, and how it externalizes and exacerbates the fears and behaviors of its inhabitants. The power dynamic of the household is starkly divided by the expectations and authority of masculine and feminine figures. In turn the “house” becomes a vehicle for the anxieties of the inhabitants—both experienced and inflicted—regarding gender, sexuality, isolation, and abuse. Exploration of the visual and …

Anticolonial Feminism, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, And The Female Gothic: A Textual Analysis Of Mexican Gothic, Hana Vega

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Latinx authors writing in English are challenging the western literary canon and the way stories are told through a western-centric lens. I argue that Mexican Canadian author Sylvia Moreno Garcia and her novel Mexican Gothic redefines the genre by telling the story of a British family living in 1950’s Mexico from an anti-colonial feminist lens. After a review of the literature on the gothic genre and how authors of color use it to respond to western-centric ideas in their own gothic novels, I am approaching the text using postcolonial and decolonial feminist theories to conduct a textual, genre, and ideological …