Thesis (M.S.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2003. / Title from title page screen (viewed Sept. 23, 2003). Thesis advisor: Gary McDaniel. Document formatted into pages (ix, 83 p. : ill., maps (some col.), charts). Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 76-79).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2003. / Title from title page screen (viewed Sept. 24, 2003). Thesis advisor: Dr. Schuyler Huck. Document formatted into pages (vii, 133 p.). Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 112-123).

The “I” in lyric poetry has not only shifted expectations throughout time, but has been called many names including the authorial persona, the biographical self, or, in Helen Vendler’s term, the ‘fictive poetic self.’ Currently, the term “authorial ‘I’,” which denotes a first-person poem (or collection) that invites conflation between the author and speaker, such as with the Confessionals, continues to face critique as it has since the 1950s, critique toward The New York School poets and later toward the New Formalists, Language poets, and these days toward the New Thing poets who stress self as object. Furthermore, amidst the current fascination with recording private moments and distributing them to the public via Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and blogs, poetry that reveals personal details and conflates the identity between speaker and author can inadvertently be viewed as yet another commoditization of the self. Stephen Burt and other critics voice another concern that the authorial “I” is a “bourgeois illusion, an outmoded epiphenomenon” that is simply a construct of systems outside the self. This issue regarding the authorial “I” is of particular importance to me since my dissertation is heir to Confessional poetry. My dissertation, This We Call Many Things, combines personal and scientific inquiries regarding evolution, specifically addresses the anatomical changes that enabled communal living within our species, as well as my father’s paranoid schizophrenia and subsequent chronic homelessness. The interdisciplinary weave of the personal with another subject in a tightly unified collection, which I term a “concept collection,” represents one strategy to subvert the authorial “I.” Post-millennial practitioners of such concept collections include C.D. Wright, Anne Carson, Louise Glück, as well as a growing number of other poets who merge the concept collection with the Confessional such as Joseph Harrington, Beth Bachmann, Karyna McGlynn, and Natasha Tretheway. The concept collection’s structure and subject matter suggests that the personal and political, the domestic and the international, and the private and public are not dichotomous subjects, but interconnected ones. This sense that all spheres are connected encouraged me to find the connection between my family’s personal story and the human race’s evolutionary story.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2009. / Title from title page screen (viewed on Oct. 23, 2009). Thesis advisor: David K. Irick. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.) -- University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2005. / Title from title page screen (viewed on Feb. 2, 2006). Thesis advisor: John Ray. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2006. / Title from title page screen (viewed on June 1, 2006). Thesis advisor: James A. Black. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

The design solution for this thesis seemed to present more than the usual amount of difficulty. The first and one of the most difficult problems was of course the ever present enigma of designing a contemporary church which would "look like a church”. The author has never felt that a cross attached to the outside is sufficient to designate a building as a church. It seems also to be an expensive way of admitting defeat to resort to a romantic recall solution for appeal: to build arches which are hung from steel; to filing buttresses into the sky when the building is tied together with a rigid frame; to hang a stone veneer on a steel column. The question resolves into one obtaining through character and proportion and with simple materials and simple masses a tone of dignity or inspiration. In this solution the author has tried to use the structure as a visual feature; to use romantic recall only insofar as it honestly' serves a purpose. The exposed rigid frames (usually hidden) are to the modern church what the ribbed vault was to the gothic. The author believes that if they have looked cold at times it has too often been the fault of proportion or workmanship and not material or idea. The second major problem was that of relationships of the various parts. The problem of grouping the different elements so that worship, educational and social functions of the building best served the needs of the church was not an easy one. The author has chosen to express a "sanctuary in space" around which the essential elements could be wrapped to exclude the workaday world. The third and most difficult problem was the arrangement of the chancel. This area has seldom been solved successfully due primarily to economic considerations, and yet to save money at this, the focal point of the whole church plant, seems a false economy indeed. The semi-circular solution used in this thesis appears to answer all of the functional requirements in a satisfactory manner while at the same time giving a sense of depth to this important area. Majesty and reverence should be expressed in the Protestant Church and these qualities should not be confused with the undesired qualities of pomp, ceremony or unattainability. The remainder of the design of the church involved mainly space and circulation problems. The materials have been kept simple for the sake of the economy. Although the problem has been very complex, and was undertaken under difficult working conditions (working in absentia) the author feels that he has profited greatly by this exercise. It is his hope that by having gone through this additional period of study something has been gained which will allow him to do more credible work in his profession, for it is the unknown and unacclaimed men working silently who will do most to raise the general level of architecture. / Master of Science

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2009. / Title from title page screen (viewed on Oct. 22, 2009). Thesis advisor: Mary Jo Reiff. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Hello From Across the Past is a collection of poems written either while I was enrolled at the University of New Orleans MFA program or before, in Knoxville.