<p> From Under the Blanket is a series of short stories that are told through the lens of modern day Native Americans. These stories provide insight into the struggles of fitting in outside of the token historical and/or Hollywood versions of what &ldquo;Native Americans&rdquo; are depicted as. The timeline progresses from a young girl&rsquo;s perspective of learning about traditions, into a young man dealing with the grief of death and the progression of a new chapter in his life, to an older woman reflecting on the way that society judges not only her but her daughter because of their DNA. Each story translates the harsh realities of being a Native American in a society that believes this ethnicity is either extinct or subjected to the barriers of Reservations. Within each tale, there is a spark of truth of how people have been and still are treated in our current time. The mistreatment of Natives throughout the United States is showcased through these characters&rsquo; voices, echoing the importance of respecting and understanding the culture and history of all tribes, both the recognized and the overlooked.</p>

<p> <i>Converging Origins: Never Forget What Happened in the Future</i> represents a body of poems that examine people&rsquo;s (re)location, and how the movement from one place to another influences an individual&rsquo;s identity and personality. The inspiration for this concept arose out of something that Thomas Wolfe wrote in his novel, <i>You Can&rsquo;t Go Home Again</i>: &ldquo;You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time&mdash;back home to the escapes of Time and Memory&rdquo; (602). While these poems were written over the span of three years, they nonetheless attempt to capture something from every stage of my development (as a poet and person). The inherent paradox of the title is a way to emphasize that people who journey back to their homeland, hometown, or even street they grew up on, are never actually going <i>back</i>, but always moving forward.</p>

PLIGHT AND PASSION By Lisa B. Williams A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014. Major Director: Dr. John McCown, Professor of English, English Department. The goal of this thesis is to bring to life the countless stories of oppression, perseverance, and hope of African-Americans during the early twentieth century. I used two settings, the rural South and the industrialized North, to reflect the different challenges of surviving and thriving during times of segregation. Buck Carrington, in Part I of the novel that is set in Virginia, is forced to confront not only his own personal demons of lust and intemperance, but also the vices of hatred and racism. In the end, he loses everything. His wife, Helen, decides to leave Buck, and she ventures to the city, to Harlem, which is the setting for Part II of this novel. As a woman with no education, she must forge a path to independence by working hard and attaining an education, and incidentally, she finds love and self-confidence in the process. I used dialect and vivid description to characterize each protagonist, Buck as wild and hot-tempered, and Helen as reserved and shy, but strong-willed. I also used historical references and allusions to place the reader in the time period and to bring the many facets of African American culture and values to life.

This creative thesis examines modes of alienation. The Visitor series explores a speaker that is searching for a home.

No description available.

Book I of Wedgewood tells the story of two generations of women struggling to define themselves as individuals within the boundaries of a sometimes abusive, strongly patriarchal family. This first half of the novel exposes the distinct and powerful ways that women use language to recall and narrate the past through performative narrative strategies, and it navigates these complex familial relationships through its remote, distinctly Canadian setting, and themes. The first chapter of the exegesis analyses the intersection of memory, identity and trauma in the family. Various narratological interpretations of inherited memory are explored in the context of a patriarchal family dynamic. John McGahern's Amongst Women and Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping are approached in terms of the representational strategies they employ to engage with and illuminate theories of inherited memory, domestic trauma, and the patriarchal family dynamic. Insight into how these texts compare and contrast with my own writing are considered throughout. Chapter Two analyses the formal and structural outcomes of my approach to Wedgewood. My analysis draws on elements of Frank O'Connor's writings on the short story and Alberto Moravia's writings on novel and short story ideologies. Bernhard Schlink's novel, The Reader, and Donna Tartt's novel, The Goldfinch are explored in terms of their uses of voice and tense, and their capacity to self-consciously represent memory in fiction. Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad is discussed in terms of its categorisation as a story cycle, and its influence on Wedgewood's form and structure. Chapter Three builds on the discussion of memory, trauma, and family by analysing their narratological implications through a gendered lens. The subjugation and marginalisation of female voices and narratives within the family are explored against the backdrop of the current socio-political climate. Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the dialogic figures prominently in the discussion about the novel's 'polyvocality' and its influence on my own writing. The fourth chapter approaches many of the key ideas and methodologies outlined thus far by engaging with notions of 'life writing,' and provides an in-depth reflection on the writing process, including Wedgewood's varied uses of lived experience and family history, and its formal progression from a short story to a novel.

Master of Arts / English / Daniel A. Hoyt / This project is the first portion of the novel Leper Kings. Frank Nash, a bank robber and historical figure from the jazz age Midwest, is struggling to launch his criminal career and find his place in history. A series of his confidants and cronies records his attempts to gain money and notoriety through violence, only to find that Nash has the uncanny ability to propel them forward through time and into visions of the American future through a carefully manipulated series of robberies, assaults, and murders. Nash, aware that he is destined to die in the Kansas City Union Station Massacre of 1933, desperately seeks ways to launch his associates Lucas Mooney and Vernon Miller further into the future, beyond Nash’s death, to experience and catalogue violent events that press increasingly into our present age. As their methods of soothsaying become gradually more reprehensible, Miller and Mooney question their chrono-magical project and find that their volatile leader and prophet, Frank Nash, is slowly and steadily losing his hold on the present reality and those in it.

Creative Writing

No description available.

The following master's thesis includes three stories. These stories are fiction and any resemblance to real people is not intended. The stories range from coming of age tales to cultural satire. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2006. / Date of Defense: February 27, 2006. / Short Stories, Fiction / Includes bibliographical references. / Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Professor Directing Thesis; Julianna Baggott, Committee Member; Mark Winegardner, Committee Member.