Fiction Commons^™

The Words. Or Holes. Or Both: Writing As An Integrative Methodology For Trauma, Daniel A. Castle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to identify methods authors have used to integrate their traumatic experiences. My work will analyze the genre of War Literature and specific authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and Kurt Vonnegut to explore the way writers describe the trauma of combat. Using insights from neuroscience and psychology, I will expand the field of Cognitive Literary Studies from a focus on the reader to a focus on the writer by linking neurological functions with narrative tools.

Review Of Heaven & Earth Grocery, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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 …

Personas, Issue 1, 2023, Jonathan Maiullo

Personas: Multilingual Creative Writing Journal

This multilingual creative writing journal from the College of the Redwoods is intended to advance the conversation of multilingualism. Primarily because there is a great deal to be communicated on the subject which has gone under-considered or consigned to the realm of graded writing. Hopefully, in reading this journal, you will find something communicated to you that shifts your understanding and inspires you to (re)examine your perception of culture and language. We hope that you’ll then write something on the subject to share with us for the next issue which will continue to advance this conversation. -Editor, Jonathan Maiullo

Nella Larsen’S Passing: Ambiguous Symbology & Weather, Sara Casten

Anthós

Nella Larsen wrote Passing in 1929, a novella that explored the relationship between two women of mixed race: Irene and Clare. This article highlights the complimentary weather elements with the emotional turbulence experienced by Irene as she tells the story; Clare’s warmth and beauty to Irene’s cold and lack thereof. This article also explores the skills of Larsen to write these ambiguous complimentary weather elements in Passing by highlighting her other novella Quicksand, published the year before.

Le Chemin Détourné, Ailie Coffey

University Honors Theses

Le Chemin détourné is an original fairy tale in French about Melisende and Olivier Fournier. One day, Melisende disappears on her way home. Although her disappearance is a mystery, she was taken prisoner by the fairies as revenge against her mother. Her father Jehan and brother Olivier are very distressed, Jehan goes out after her immediately but, worried about Olivier’s safety, asks him not to go out after his sister. On the third night that she is gone, Olivier decides to go out to look for her anyways, and even though he is terrified to leave home, he sets out …

Any Way You Like It, Madeline B. Eubanks

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

None!

Making Then Meaning, Ben Denzer

Masters Theses

This is an artist talk contained within a book. It is 816 pages and 49 minutes long. Closed captions run across the spreads. A video of this talk can be watched on bendenzer.com/making-then-meaning

At RISD, I’ve been prompted to expand the scope and tools of my practice and to reflect on questions of meaning in my work.

I spend my days making things, but I’ve never really had good answers to questions of why I make the things I make, or what their meaning is. I don’t think there are simple answers to these questions.

I think meaning comes from …

How To Grow Blurry: Poems, Nathaniel Metz

Canterbury Scholars

In this collection of poems, Nathan D. Metz explores the distance between the word for a thing and the touch or feeling of a thing. Using a variety of forms both established and innovative, as well as free verse and ekphrastic response, these poems are a celebration of art, color, and the sounds of words. After the collection is a series of poems translated both from the original Japanese and Haitian Creole.

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. …

Creating Project Contrast: A Video Game Exploring Consciousness And Qualia, Pierce Papke

Honors Projects

Project Contrast is a video game that explores how the unique traits inherent to video games might engage reflective player responses to qualitative experience. Project Contrast does this through suspension of disbelief, avatar projection, presence, player agency in storytelling, visual perception, functional gameplay, and art. Considering the difficulty in researching qualitative experience due to its subjectivity and circular explanations, I created Project Contrast not to analyze qualia, though that was my original hope. I instead created Project Contrast as an avenue for player self-reflection and learning about qualitative experience. While video games might be just code and art on a …

Fever Dive: A Novel, Sofia Ohrynowicz

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This is the craft reflection, prologue, and first five chapters of Fever Dive, a novel in progress.

Santa Clara Review, Vol. 110, No. 2, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Review

No abstract provided.

Odyssey Of A Renegade Queen, Annabelle Harris

Honors Theses

After a violent shipwreck, Savannah washes up on the shores of Outis with no memory of her past. She is found by James, who she thinks is a suave but ill-tempered merchant. Outis turns out to be a more dangerous place than Savannah had thought. Through the aftermath of a traumatic encounter with another islander, she learns that James is a notorious pirate, and she is stuck on an island populated by his dangerous crew. James gives Savannah an ultimatum, and with no choice but to join his crew, she becomes the ship surgeon on the Cyllenia. During their sea-faring …

Mirrored Demise, Danika Ogawa

Floodwall Magazine

No abstract provided.

Maria, Maiken Møller-Andersen

Floodwall Magazine

No abstract provided.

Gail And His Snails, Brenden Kimpe

Floodwall Magazine

No abstract provided.

Dear Already Amused Reader, Lala Guse

Floodwall Magazine

Winner of the 2023 John Little Fiction Scholarship

Bees, Amanda Babcock

Floodwall Magazine

Runner-up for the 2023 John Little Fiction Scholarship

I Hope You Read This And Feel Awful, Clara Anderson-Cameron

Floodwall Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Sounds Of The Shore: An Afrofuturistic Double Record Performed Through Vernacular Technology, Collin Bright

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Predominately white institutions are socially exclusive hostile environments that uphold white heteronormative patriarchal systems (Harper, 2013; Holliday & Squires, 2021; Razzante, 2018). The everyday task of existing on campus is a struggle for students of color as they are asked to enter spaces/places that are not diverse, inclusive, equitable, or accepting. To address the oppressive and dismissive forces of campus, my thesis uses Afrofuturism to reimagine what it means to exist as a student of color at a PWI. Afrofuturism is a “counter-imaginative cultur[al]” aesthetic-based practice that uses creative postcolonial critiques to reimagine future possibilities (Asante & Pindi, 2020; Pirker …

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 …

Legends Of Light: Crafting Middle Grade Fantasy In The Tradition Of Catholic Philosophy And Medieval Visual Culture, Bernadette Lamb

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This essay promotes the writing and illustrating of middle grade literature that mirrors the wonder-inducing experiences of leafing through an illuminated manuscript and stepping into a Gothic cathedral. An examination of Catholic medieval visual culture moves into a discussion on its underlying philosophy and theology, which are profoundly centered on relational healing and the dignity of the human person. Christian writers including St. Pope John Paul II, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Josef Pieper, Madeline L’Engle, Dr. Bob Schuchts, Makoto Fujimura, and Andrew Peterson inform an exploration of mercy, forgiveness, and love as self-gift in the context of illustration and storytelling …

The Exile's War, Stephen Edwards Arnold

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

In Gaelwyn, the village of a thousand stories, Katchan receives a powerful ruby and an ancient technique called writing hidden by his grandmother, Maggaline. Jealous of the power Katchan has, the village Elder seeks to destroy him. After escaping the Elder, Katchan must leave his home and traverse a dangerous and mysterious wasteland that will lead him directly into an ancient conflict that lost a powerful empire to the sands of time.

Midnight Occurrences, Valkyrie Bradford

Floodwall Magazine

No abstract provided.

Warp Test, Jonathan Sladko

Floodwall Magazine

No abstract provided.

Activation Day, Elena Uhlenkamp

Floodwall Magazine

No abstract provided.

The Sparkling Heat I Found In The Bathtub, Delaney Otto

Floodwall Magazine

No abstract provided.

Pieces Of Me, Claire Arneson

Floodwall Magazine

No abstract provided.