Nonfiction Commons^™

Brushfire, Ariel Gordon

The Goose

“Brushfire” concerns itself with how people use urban forests, from indecent exposure to poaching to teenage drinking party-bonfires that get out of control. Though it could be construed as a manifesto on walking-in-the-woods, it also touches on some of the conflicts inherent in urban/nature experiences.

Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar By Brian Bartlett, Joel Deshaye

The Goose

Joel Deshaye reviews Brian Bartlett's Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar

Deer In Their Own Coats, Daniel Coleman

The Goose

Urban deer are requiring a renegotiation of settler-Six Nations relations in Hamilton, Ontario. In this article, Daniel Coleman attempts to get to know one doe group that share his neighbourhood in an effort to understand what their presence has to say about how Hamiltonians and members of the Hodinoso:ni Confederacy can honour the spirit of an eighteenth-century treaty in ways that enable us all to live with "the good mind" here at the Head of Lake Ontario in the twenty-first century.

Bailamos Juntos: Salsa En Los E.E.U.U. Y El Mundo, Betty Tran

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

This composition traces the history of Cuban-American cultural identity formation through the lens of music and dance. As the author explains, Cuban immigrants cultivated a rich music and dance culture in New York City by creating a series of Latin and Afro-Cuban music genres and dances that brought diverse groups of people together. As a Vietnamese-American woman, Tran sees several connections between her family’s Vietnamese heritage and the cultural histories of Cubans who came to the United States as refugees seeking asylum from political oppression. As a first-generation college student, Tran believes it is important to share this composition as …

A Tres Pasos De La Muerte, Samuel Temblador

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

"A Tres Pasos de la Muerte" tells the story of a son of Mexican immigrants and his search for his roots. Here, Temblador attempts to communicate a bicultural experience through the frame of border literature (Literatura Fronteriza) born out of the intersection between Mexican and American culture.

Applications For Dummies, Carla M. Sanchez

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

This poem discusses the overwhelming pressure that is put on students to justify their right to be admitted into universities or to receive scholarships based on their extracurricular activities. Many working-class, first-generation college students are unable to participate in organizations and programs that offer students a more well-rounded college experience. This can lead first-gen students, like the author, to feel isolated, inadequate, or illegitimate. "Applications for Dummies" expresses Sanchez's incessant fear that she will never be able to compete with other students who were given the opportunity to build more worldly resumes, despite her strong academic commitment and intellectual potential.

It's Not Just A Leave, Genesis L. Montalvo

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

In this piece, the author sets out to explore the first-generation college identity through a gothic lens. In the early stages of this project, Montalvo had considered doing research on narratives from other first-gen college students as a way to trace the uncanny and the abject in their experiences. However, as she began reflecting on her own personal history, she realized that in a matter of only two years she had already experienced moments of distance, uncanniness, and confusion, which are recorded here. In presenting these installments in non-chronological order, Montalvo intends to insert a gothic element of disorder, which …

Flashlight, Min-Jung Kim

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

This poem illustrates the struggle of an undergraduate first-generation college student who knew little about the first-gen identity or the experiences she would encounter until she became a First To Go Scholar at Loyola Marymount University. The poet represents the First To Go Program as a flashlight that has helped her to navigate a once dark and unfamiliar environment.

Revelation, Tanya Diaz

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

There can sometimes be a gap between first-gen students and parents who have not experienced the stress of higher education. Children may believe this stress to be a necessary sacrifice for their future wellness; however, they often cannot feel their parents' sacrifices, just as their parents cannot feel their child's mental strain. Diaz creates this poem in an effort to examine her relationship with her mother from an outsider's point of view, in the end realizing that although her parents cannot always understand her experiences, they care and will support her decisions.

Revisiting Don/Ovan, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

In this piece, the author, a heterosexual woman, travels to her hometown of Lake City, MN to reconnect with Donovan Marshall, a gay man she last saw in 1986. "Revisiting Don/ovan" explores opportunities and challenges of coming out, leaving, and returning to live in a small town.

Wedding Album: An Antiheterosexist Performance Text, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Historical and personal snapshots of weddings become poetic stanzas that advocate for marriage equality and for a social safety net strong enough to protect the human rights and meet the human needs of everyone, regardless of relational—or any other—status

Remembering A Cool September, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This ethnographic short story chronicles the author’s emotional journey following September 11, 2001. After weeks of disconnection, she encounters a display of patriotism by two gay male friends, provoking her to process what it means to be both patriotic and gay in contemporary U.S. culture.

Father's Blessing: Ethnographic Drama, Poetry, And Prose, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Following interpretivist traditions focusing on how individuals make sense of and make meaning from their lived experience, the author, a heterosexual woman, travels with a gay male friend/participant to visit his estranged father, a retired Air Force pilot and elder in the Mormon Church. The work attempts to show the dialogic construction, negotiation, and transformation of identities and relationships.

Forum Magazine, Spring 2015

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

Forum Magazine, Summer 2015

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

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.

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.

Passings, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

The author, a heterosexual woman, and Gordon Bernstein, a gay man, have been friends and research collaborators since 1995. In 2004, the author accompanied Gordon on a trip to his hometown of Philadelphia to conduct fieldwork and interview family members. This project ethnographically explored personal and relational opportunities and challenges associated with coming out in a family system defined by avoidant communication, hegemonic masculinity, and terminal illness.

State Of Unions: Politics And Poetics Of Performance, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

At the 2005 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, the author delivered a poem and slide show, “The State of Unions: Activism (and In-Activism) in Decision 2004.” The performance processed the election in the context of her research community, a network of gay male friends—marginalized by sexual orientation but privileged by sex, gender expression, race, class, and education. Audience members offered mixed responses, some praising its provocative content, others criticizing the author’s position and tone, which some perceived as hostile, even as “gay bashing.”

From The Inside Out, And Through., Dominique Ovalle

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

These photographs describe “Science” born of consumerism, hijacked by me, economically disenfranchised, or rather—temporarily embarrassed, artist. I was putzing around Malibu—my old college stomping ground, looking for free food; maybe a sample of some gourmet $5 chocolate, and all I got were these photographs.

Cyberbook: An Introduction To Topics In Cyberculture, Western Kentucky Univeristy Department Of Communication

Communication Student Publications

No abstract provided.

Forum Magazine, Fall 2014

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

Forum Magazine, Graduation Issue, 2014

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

0820: Kenneth Hechler Papers, 1958-1976, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection is composed of papers related to Ken Hechler's careers in teaching and writing as well as his personal life. Some political materials are represented as well as artifacts and other memorabilia.

Forum Magazine, November 2013

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

5th Annual Rainbow Book Fair, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Each year, the Rainbow Book Fair grows larger and more exciting: as the largest LGBT book expo in North America, the RBF is the place to learn about new trends in queer publishing. Exhibitors at the Fair range from academic presses to romance and erotica, from trade presses to art books and literary journals and beyond: it’s the Fair’s goal to represent the amazing variety of queer and trans writers and publishers.

Forum Magazine, Spring 2013

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

Forum Magazine, Orientation Issue

Forum Magazine

No abstract provided.

0800: Chris Greene Collection, 2000-2009, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

The Chris Greene Collection includes essays submitted for the MLK, Jr. Symposium Essay Competition, the winners chosen for the competition in 2007, and the winning entries booklets for 2005-2007. This collection also includes information about the Marshall University and Appalachian Studies Association NEH Challenge Grant Application. Along with this, you will find newspaper clippings, letters and emails to and from Chris Greene, and notes taken by Greene.

The Accused, Nathan Damon Hopper

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Exonerations are increasing, largely thanks to the advent of DNA evidence, which several prisoners’ rights advocacy groups, like the Innocence Project, have used to prove the innocence of the convicted. But returning home after spending years imprisoned for a wrongful conviction brings with it several types of challenges: psychological, financial, and simply personal.

Roy Brown, the main subject of this story (though there are several other important characters) is an incredibly intricate man. Before his 25-to-life sentence for the murder of a county social worker, he’d faced several other convictions for a slew of misbehavings and a general disregard for …