Following in the footsteps of writers Mary Karr, Joan Didion, Russell Baker, and many others, Kelly Rose writes about her childhood, marriage, and subsequent divorce from a New Orleans journalist. Her writing is broken down into various sections, which address her writing influences, her troubled relationship with her mother and her complicated divorce. Finally, the author discusses how these experiences have shaped her writing today.

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This oratorio tells the story of Queen Esther as presented in the Old Testament Book of Esther. Its format includes choruses and solos with an orchestral accompaniment. The main characters in the story are Esther, King Xerxes, Esther’s uncle Mordecai and their antagonist Haman, with occasional insertions by a narrator. In addition to the primary scripture used, there are several inclusions from the Psalms, Song of Songs, and a commentary poem by Wayne Watson highlighting the oratorio’s sub-title, “For Such a Time as This,” which is the overriding textural theme. The orchestration focuses on reed woodwinds, brass, strings, and percussion, including consistent use of the Persian tanbak (bongo type drum). Rhythms are regularly freely used to support the text. Dissonant melodic construction and its resulting harmonic dissonance present a panoply of sound beyond the traditional classical approach of dominant/tonic tonality.

This thesis documents the journey of Meghan Rose Shea struggling to find the character, Dr. Martha Livingstone, in the play Agnes of God. Meghan focused on the Meisner technique as a guideline for her acting approach. She explores past performances, the playwright, and thoroughly journals the trials and triumphs of the production process.

I wrote my first story in third grade. “Francine and the Head-Chopper Man” borrowed its plot from “Beauty and the Beast,” but my teacher didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she arranged for me to read the story to the fifth-grade class down the hall. After that first public reading, I was hooked. I knew at age seven I was going to be a writer. When I discovered journalism in the ninth grade, I knew just what type of writing I was going to do. In junior high and high school, I was editor of the newspapers, and in college I worked on the newspaper and was editor of the yearbook. After graduation I was a reporter, copy editor and features editor at two daily newspapers in Kentucky. I began teaching journalism part-time at Western Kentucky University in 1983, and two years later, when I heard about the English department’s new writing concentration, I decided to study for my master’s. In Frank Steele’s Advanced Writing Workshop, I was confronted by a question I hadn’t asked in years: What did I want to write? Having written newspaper articles for years, I wanted to try something different – the essay, based on fact and usually written in the first person, although not necessarily. I believe this type of writing is valuable because it records and attempts to understand events, people and perceptions. As the number of essays grew, I began to realize a potential problem: If the subjects are dissimilar, any collection of essays runs the risk of seeming disorganized. If the subjects are similar, it runs the risk of sounding the same from essay to essay. I hope this collection of essays avoids both faults. The subjects are dissimilar – ranging from family to education – but revolve around the common themes of relationships and time. Each essay examines relationships between parents and children, sisters and brothers, friends, teachers and students, or others. In addition, they all deal with time, either chronicling the passage of time or preserving the moment. Most of the essays are written in the first person, and many deal with family issues. Those two details may sound as if the collection is germane to only one person, the writer. But it is not. Most readers will recognize themselves or people they know in the characters, and many will recall a way of life, an attitude, or a conversation they thought they had forgotten. Even those who don’t recognize or remember the characters may find the essays valuable if they learn a little about ordinary people and ordinary problems.

From early eighteenth-century literature to contemporary Gothic literature, the existence of Gothic conventions is evident. These Gothic conventions include family secrets, ruins or isolated mansions, hidden passageways, and bad weather. During an era when women were viewed as inferior and were expected to conform to the domestic expectations of their male counterparts, some female writers took it upon themselves to use their writing as a way to voice and illustrate the conditions that women endured. A thorough examination of Gothic Trappings in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Hannah Crafts’ The Bondswoman’s Narrative shows representations of various spaces that essentially confined women resulting in their silence. When analyzing the position of women during the nineteenth-century and the spaces that they were confined to, it becomes evident that the genre of Gothic literature serves as a device to challenge the restrictions placed on women in patriarchal society.

This qualitative study gave insight on the benefits that a university literature course for future Spanish teachers could contribute to preservice teachers as part of their preparation program. Nine university students participated in this study as they were the ones enrolled in this first-time offered university literature course for Spanish teachers. Data were collected from pre- and post-questionnaires, journals, and course observations. The findings suggested that the preservice teachers grew in pedagogical content knowledge, literary content, resources and strategies, and felt an overall sense of preparedness to use literary sources in their future classrooms

Talking about spirituality can be uncomfortable. The topic is especially precarious within the sphere of education. Despite the discomfort and precarity, many scholars argue that there may be room in the postmodern curriculum for safe, open, and generative dialogue about religion and spirituality as cultural phenomena. These curriculum theorists (see Slattery, 2013; Doll, 2002; Huebner, 1991; Noddings, 2005; Whitehead, 1967a/1929; Wang, 2002) propose a sensitive critique of spirituality and religion that can lead to cultural healing, re-membering, re-integration and re-collection (Huebner, 1991). In an increasingly fractured world (Slattery, 2013), where spiritual and religious underpinnings cause an array of conflict, this study works toward critical dialogue in a secondary level public school art classroom. Through art-making, writing, and class discussions, the teacher and student researchers explored, critiqued, and de/constructed their own spirituality<&mdash> with the aim of aggregating, accommodating (Rolling, 2011) and appreciating ways of thinking, being, and practicing that were different from their own. The project adopted A/r/tography as a qualitative research methodology, which views art-making, writing, and conversations as generative pools of data that can produce new understandings, meanings, and potentialities (Irwin et al., 2006; Irwin & de Cosson, 2004; Irwin & Springgay, 2008).

The purpose of my thesis research was to transcribe a collection of letters to John H. Crawford about the formation and actions of the Sixtieth Tennessee Infantry (Confederate) in Jonesboro during the Civil War, annotate them, and provide an introduction that details the events and people described in the letters. These letters are important because they describe first-hand the process of formation of this Confederate infantry unit in an area of East Tennessee that predominately supported the Union. The letters themselves can be found in the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University’s Charles C. Sherrod Library.

Naga is an animated short about a lively dragon that roams about the lands embracing it’s surroundings dearly. It discovered a barren land while out exploring and was saddened by the sight. After pondering for a while, it then realized it could revive the land with it’s ability to summon rain using it's dragon ball. The short blends traditional animation and computer animation, where the look is similar to 2D animation but the character and a few environment elements are done in 3D. Software utilized to complete the short were Autodesk Maya, Adobe Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Premiere Pro. The short showcases a stylized Chinese traditional ink painting style, key frame animation, and particle effects.