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It is psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and philosophers who most often attempt the formal study of consciousness: it is writers who observe the impossibility of any such study. In the spirit of Joseph O'Neill, Muriel Spark, and J.K. Rowling, with reference to cross-disciplinary thinkers like Donella Meadows, Douglas Hofstadter, and Rudy Rucker, Tree of Knowledge concerns itself with the mystery of mystery and the knowledge of knowledge. This collection of short stories bespeaks the human observer's paradoxical situation in all its the diverse implications, including moral confusion, tragedy, and violence, but also comedy, beauty, and the possibility of transcendence.

Nothing Remains Still is a collection of short stories and a novella. The series of short stories, "The Assortment 1-4" chronicle the childhood of a young girl, her siblings, and her mother, and the lives they lead in the gated, but impoverished, community, in which they live. The tone of the stories is meant to be surreal, approaching the dystopic, as a way to reveal the underlying horror of growing up in low-income housing. The story, as so many of these stories do in their real life correlates, ultimately ends in tragedy for the central family. The novella, Nothing Remains Still, is an epistolary tale of a young woman who rediscovers her mother, and herself, while training to become a psychoanalyst. The novella is about movement and stagnation, or false or artificial stagnation. In this context, the Heraclitus quote, "All entities move, and nothing remains still," which acts as the novella's epigraph, serves to introduce a kind of cosmological conceit concerning bodies of matter and how the study of physics situates inanimate objects. I had my narrator apply this conceit to people, as well, and to situate human bodies as also being physical objects subject to the same physical laws. The quote is meant to signal that the narrator's journey is in constant flux -- there are no endings, happy or otherwise, just a transfer of energy into one thing or another. / MFA

All of the stories in The Center of the Known World are subtly linked by their connection to the Appalachian Mountains — more specifically the Allegheny Mountains — although not all of the stories take place physically in the mountains. They also are linked in that they explore the small changes and shifts that take place in the emotional landscape as we live our daily lives. There are no life or death situations that change characters' lives in the beat of a heart or the shot of a gun. Rather, these are people who deal with gradual shifts in power and understanding. They are people in search of connection and community. Some of them come to seemingly small realizations that change everything. Others battle flaws or demons that keep them from having the things they want most. The first five stories are free-standing pieces. The next two stories — Grand Opening Special at the West End U-Store and A Fine Addiction — are connected by location and characters. I hope eventually there will be other stories in that series. The final part of my thesis — Skin Writing — is the first section of a novel in progress. / Master of Fine Arts

This story cycle focuses on the members of the Ordoñez family of Castroville, California from the time of the first generation’s migration from Mexico in the 1950s to the most recent generation who moves out of the town in the 2000s. “The Ordoñez Pride” shows the entire family as they experience a miracle. Cecilia, the matriarch, receives a belated wedding ring that bursts into flame that doesn’t burn her, but everything else it comes into contact with. The flame also magically sparks hers and her husband’s sex life into overdrive and, late in life, they produce three more children, for a total of nine. Following this framing story, we see snapshots of all the other family members at life-changing moments. In “After the Revolution” we see Ray Ordoñez , the family patriarch, grow from a boy into a man, as he defends his sister from what he perceives to be the American ranch owner practicing the right to first night—a custom that was still practiced in rural Mexico in the twentieth century. Eventually, Ray migrates to California and begins his family, becomes assimilated into American culture, and reluctantly welcomes an American boy—his oldest daughter’s boyfriend—into his household.

In translation studies, the short story cycle has been largely overlooked as an object of study in prose translation. This thesis serves as a case study on the practice of translating the short story cycle, using my translation of Suzanne Myre’s 2007 short story collection Mises à mort as a paradigm. The thesis comprises four sections: the first is devoted to a discussion of the short story cycle, a modernist form of the short story collection. It is a hybrid subgenre, balancing elements of both the traditional short story collection, characterized by heterogeneity, and the novel, characterized by homogeneity. In this first section, I examine a few definitions of the cycle, then I discuss the subgenre according to a four-part criteria established by Gerald Lynch: ‘character,’ ‘place,’ ‘theme’ and ‘style or tone.’ In the second section, I provide an analysis of Mises à mort within the framework of short story cycle criteria; an examination of the characters, setting, overarching themes and stylistic parallels serves to demonstrate how and why I ultimately interpreted the collection as a short story cycle. The third section is my complete translation of the work. In the fourth and final section, I discuss what implications my interpretation of Mises à mort as a cycle had for my translation thereof, and what unique challenges it presented. I compare my first draft, produced in the mindset that I was translating a traditional collection, to my final draft, revised to accommodate the cohesiveness of the work. This thesis serves to demonstrate how a translator can accommodate for the dual nature of the short story cycle, simultaneously maintaining the discreteness and interconnectedness of the stories.

In translation studies, the short story cycle has been largely overlooked as an object of study in prose translation. This thesis serves as a case study on the practice of translating the short story cycle, using my translation of Suzanne Myre’s 2007 short story collection Mises à mort as a paradigm. The thesis comprises four sections: the first is devoted to a discussion of the short story cycle, a modernist form of the short story collection. It is a hybrid subgenre, balancing elements of both the traditional short story collection, characterized by heterogeneity, and the novel, characterized by homogeneity. In this first section, I examine a few definitions of the cycle, then I discuss the subgenre according to a four-part criteria established by Gerald Lynch: ‘character,’ ‘place,’ ‘theme’ and ‘style or tone.’ In the second section, I provide an analysis of Mises à mort within the framework of short story cycle criteria; an examination of the characters, setting, overarching themes and stylistic parallels serves to demonstrate how and why I ultimately interpreted the collection as a short story cycle. The third section is my complete translation of the work. In the fourth and final section, I discuss what implications my interpretation of Mises à mort as a cycle had for my translation thereof, and what unique challenges it presented. I compare my first draft, produced in the mindset that I was translating a traditional collection, to my final draft, revised to accommodate the cohesiveness of the work. This thesis serves to demonstrate how a translator can accommodate for the dual nature of the short story cycle, simultaneously maintaining the discreteness and interconnectedness of the stories.

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