Wandering Sagebrush is a collection of eight unified short stories. The main themes of the thesis include: the struggle of identity and how one finds the people and places to call family and home. The stories focus on family we make, family we lose, family we choose, and the decisions one makes in the name of family.

This thesis examines the use of interior narrative techniques such as free indirect discourse and internal monologue in two of James McBride’s neo-slave narratives, Song Yet Sung (2008) and The Good Lord Bird (2013). Very limited critical attention has been given to these neo-slave narratives that illustrate McBrides attention to characterization and focalized narration. In these narratives McBride builds upon the revelations he explores in his bestselling memoir, The Color of Water (1996, 2006), where he learns to disassociate race and character. What he discovers about not only his mother, but also himself, inspires his re-imagination of the people who lived during the antebellum period. His use of interior narrative techniques deviates from his peers’ conventional approach to the neo-slave narrative. His exploration of the psyche demonstrates a focalized attention to the individual, rather than a characterization of the community, which is typically portrayed in neo-slave narratives. In conclusion, this thesis argues that James McBride’s neo-slave narratives reveal his interest in deconstructing the hierarchal positioning of whites and blacks during the antebellum period in order to communicate that although African Americans were the intended victims, slave masters and mistresses were oppressed by the ideologies of slavery as well.

This thesis examines the birth, rise in popularity, and evolution of the video essay, a subgenre of the essay found recently in online literary journals. Chapter one provides a brief history of the alphabetic essay as it expands to include photo essays, audio essays, and essay-films. The second chapter outlines the history of the online literary journal and John Bresland’s role in the introduction of the video essay as it appears in online journals. Chapter three contains an examination of the way image, text, and sound function in video essays and the tools and strategies essayists are using to create them. The fourth chapter is composed of three case studies of Bresland’s work in an attempt to analyze the continuing evolution and breadth of the form.

This study focuses on the novels of Quicksand by Nella Larsen and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison to explore the phenomenon of poqéakh (פֹּקֵחַ) through the fictionalized lived experiences of their protagonists, Helga Crane and invisible man. Each novelist’s representation of poqéakh offers a portrait of the protagonists’ psyches. The narratives reveal an unsettling truth for the protagonists, who are members of a population often targeted, stigmatized, and fashioned or re-fashioned by Americans and various environs in American society, that they must assimilate—not only their bodies, but their psyches too to fit the “white man’s pattern” (Larsen 4). Their realities inform them that non-conformity and/or developing or utilizing their intellect is disadvantageous—perceiving is unfavorable. Each protagonist learns that she and he will not only be limited by their imaginations or abilities, but also by persons and constructs within American society keeping them witless and amenable. The environs presented in forms such as schools, jobs, even people who prepare each protagonist to accept all and any disparity (inequality and inequity), they are made to be persistently and surreptitiously instructive. As such, these environs are always educating (or training), always molding the psyches of the protagonists to live within a frame—the construct (American society). These ever informing boundaries thoroughly acquaint each protagonist on “how to scale down [their] desires and dreams so that they will come within reach of possibility” (Thurman 115). Poqéakh leads Helga Crane to perceive the boundaries while it prevents the invisible man from returning to unblissful ignorance, thus, for him, providing momentary periods of lucidity. This study utilizes a qualitative research design and method, and relies on phenomenological theory to successfully analyze the novels and explicate on the representations of poqéakh. As this study will illustrate, Larsen and Ellison offer as representative via their novels two narratives of the diasporic psyche (mind), wherein their protagonists’ experiences of poqéakh lead to some unmitigated facts and disturbing truths about their reality.

“The Bedroom and the Barnyard: Zoomorphic Lust Through Territory, Procedure, and Shelter in ‘The Miller’s Tale’” is an academic endeavor that takes Chaucer’s zoomorphic metaphors and similes and analyzes them in a sense that reveals the chaos of what is human and what is animal tendency. The academic work is expressed in the adjunct creative project, Haunchebones, a 10-minute drama that echoes the tale and its zoomorphic influences, while presenting the content in a stylized play influenced by Theatre of the Absurd and artwork from the medieval and early renaissance period.

Orange County is the traditional homeland of the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation. Though the tribal-nation is not federally recognized, it is a state and county recognized tribe. Development is a constant threat to Acjachemen ancestral homelands. The Acjachemen are faced with the problem that their ancestral sites are now other peoples' lands. Many Acjachemen sacred sites have already been developed, like the burial grounds at Putuidem. The four sacred sites I explore -- the Cogged Stone site at Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach, California, Puvungna in Long Beach California, Putuidem in San Juan Capistrano, and CA-ORA-64 at the Newport Back Bay in Newport Beach -- share very political histories as well as immense ceremonial significances, significances measured in great part by their sacred rocks, their other natural features, and their roles as gathering places. I learned that, by opening my mind to the ways rocks ground ceremony, I could better appreciate Acjachemen ways of being and, in turn, appreciate these spaces' sanctity. My role in writing this thesis is to facilitate an exchanges of ideas -- ideas which explore what is sacred and ceremonial, and why - in hopes of cultivating in the reader a consciousness about these complex issues. This is a celebration of the individuals who have shared their stories with me, a celebration of ceremony and Acjachemen heritage.

Literature review -- Methodology -- Body of project : Fire in the belly. / Dept. of Journalism

No description available.

This thesis tells the stories of five Oregon women who transcended the customary roles of their era. Active during the waning years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, each woman made a difference in the world around them. Their stories have either not been told or just given a passing glance. These tales are important because they inform us about our society on the cusp of the twentieth century. Hattie Crawford Redmond was the daughter of a freed slave who devoted herself to the fight for women's suffrage. Minnie Mossman Hill was the first woman steamboat pilot west of the Mississippi. Mary Francis Isom was a local librarian who went to France to deliver books to American soldiers. Ann and May Shogren were sisters who brought high fashion to Portland and defied the gender and social rules in both their business and personal lives. These women were not the only ones who accomplished extraordinary things during their lives. They are a tiny sample of Oregon women who pushed beyond discrimination, hardship and gender limits to earn their place in Oregon's history.

No description available.