As Close As Hands focuses on the lives of twin sisters, Beth and Rachel Berkowitz. After years of being teased by classmates about their Jewish noses, they hatch a plan to raise money to have them altered. Once in college, with jobs outside school, they save enough to go through with the procedures. Unfortunately for Rachel, only Beth's nose job goes on as planned, causing them to refer to themselves from that day on as "Sisters, not twins." This separation forces Rachel to begin to question her identity, and it causes her to feel intensely isolated. The sisters, who have grown apart since Beth altered her appearance, are reunited when their mother learns she has cancer. When the sisters reunite, they begin to reexamine their relationship, and through confronting one another, they are forced to explore their pasts and consider how their lives may have been different had both of them gone ahead with the surgery. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / March 20, 2015. / Creative Writing, Fiction / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert Olen Butler, Professor Directing Dissertation; Don Latham, University Representative; Diane Roberts, Committee Member; Barbara Hamby, Committee Member.

Collection of short stories. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor or Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / March 20, 2015. / Includes bibliographical references. / Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Professor Directing Dissertation; Thomas Joiner, University Representative; Diane Roberts, Committee Member; David Kirby, Committee Member; Jennine Capó Crucet, Committee Member.

The lives and landscapes that exist within these poems serve as catalysts for reflections upon issues related to personal familial conflict, the attempt to construct a pragmatic, moral structure while struggling with the influence of Southern Baptist ideology, and an epistemology reliant upon the blurring together of nostalgic narratives and first-hand experience. The problematic relationship between past and present permeates these poems, and an attention to musicality is my endeavor to tap into a kind of Southern duende in an effort to reconcile a problematic, cultural history with a sense of devotion and loyalty to place. I aim to explore, as Lorca says, the "dark sounds" that live in the bottom register of language I grew up hearing. For this reason, musicality plays a crucial role. My goal is to emulate the vernacular and cadence of my home region of Mississippi. The manuscript, itself, contain three sections, each with its own theme. The purpose of this is to map the individual's progression of understanding or, in other words, how a person comes to know meaning at different times as a result of different influences. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts. / Spring Semester, 2015. / March 27, 2015. / Creative Writing, Poetry / Includes bibliographical references. / Barbara Hamby, Professor Directing Thesis; David Kirby, Committee Member; James Kimbrell, Committee Member; Maxine L. Montgomery, Committee Member.

Mapping the Poetics of Early Modern Garden and Lyric Traditions explores the reciprocal relationship between the poet and his surroundings by examining how the major aesthetic conventions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries take shape from the common topoi of poems and gardens. To place love poetry in the garden and the garden in love poetry was not just a reiteration of old metaphors; it was a kind of decorum, a means of matching work to site in a way that could offer readers a rich array of multi-media allusions and varied (sometimes paradoxically varied) points of view. In order to demonstrate this aesthetic interchange between garden and lyric, the present study ranges through a number of generic spaces, from sixteenth-century plays and sonnet sequences to seventeenth-century pastoral modes. The first chapter examines how the garden commonplace functions as as a signifier of lyric praxis, the second connects the topography of the early English garden to the mise-en-page of printed lyric collections, the third explores Shakespeare's performative uses of the staged garden in relation to collaborative acts of audience agency, while the fourth analyzes the eco-aesthetic of the color green in the garden descriptions of Milton and Marvell. By drawing attention to the distinctively trans-generic and trans-media manifestations of the garden/lyric commonplace, this study introduces new perspectives on the cultural value of form and its involvement in matters of genre, embodiment, environment, and self-fashioning. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / February 9, 2015. / Includes bibliographical references. / A. E. B. Coldiron, Professor Directing Dissertation; Stephanie Leitch, University Representative; Gary Taylor, Committee Member; Bruce Boehrer, Committee Member.

When news of the most recent Kuomingtang invasion arrived, Ping and the other platoon members were more interested in its carrier, a new comrade that would join their unit--a girl this time--named Yong. She had transferred to Iron Well Mountain from Ruijin, the administrative capital, by her own request, and because she had fought in the shorthanded eastern divisions during the second and third encirclement campaigns, the politburo had decided to place her with a combat unit instead of the medical or propaganda detachments. She wanted to be here at Iron Well and defend the birthplace of the revolution. She was honored, she told the platoon, to fight with those who'd been with General Mao the longest. At first, Ping couldn't tell if her words were merely meant to sound charming. Nearly all the soldiers had been bandits or prisoners, and they cared about the communist ideals about as much as they did their body odor. Ping was a gunsmith. Back in Canton, he'd also been a gangster, someone who traded a week's work for a night with a perfumed courtesan. He'd shove his way into the brightest building on the street, throw a rifle to the cashier as payment, and ask the lady of the house, "Take me to your finest!" / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / February 27, 2015. / Fiction / Includes bibliographical references. / Elizabeth Stuckey-French, Professor Directing Dissertation; Thomas Joiner, University Representative; Helen Burke, Committee Member; Mark Winegardner, Committee Member; Ned Stuckey-French, Committee Member.

A collection of dithyrambic poems that explore themes of identity through the lenses of family, history, and culture. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2018. / April 10, 2018. / Includes bibliographical references. / David Kirby, Professor Directing Dissertation; Juan Carlos Galeano, University Representative; Andrew Epstein, Committee Member; Barbara Hamby, Committee Member; James Kimbrell, Committee Member.

Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / Four short stories / 2031-01-01

A collection of short stories / N/A

Abstract not available

Abstract not available