A collection of reflective essays on the personal relationship with identity, land and travel. All of the essays are united by common themes of liminality, transformation and neutral space, set against the backdrop of Iceland and Hawaii. Anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep writes how certain geographical "zones," those that are semi-civilized with less precise boundaries are neutral zones. For example, deserts, marshes and virgin forests equally accessible to everyone because they are places in between. Whoever passes through these sacred spaces finds herself physically and magico-religiously in a special situation for a length of time—wavering between two worlds. Travel neutralizes the traveler, forces her into a space of imbalance and liminality (i.e. the threshold), where as an outsider she is as equally weak as she is powerful. I am interested in exploring this liminal space as it relates to my own personal relationship with identity and belonging. Throughout my life the topic of symbolic and spatial liminality appears again and again: through my identity as a "third-culture kid" raised in Saudi Arabia; through my own biraciality; through travel in general or even the physical act of the journey. I imagine this self as part of the Earth (a secular relationship represented by Hawaii) and part of the Sky (a metaphysical relationship represented by Iceland).

This is a collection of creative nonfiction writing including travel memoir, personal essay, and immersion journalism spanning fourteen years and four continents. Themes include overcoming writer's block, traveling as ritual, and seeking the hidden hearts of cities. The pieces feature aspiring romance novelists, the last operational roller skating rink pipe organ in the U.S., and an author whose search to find her voice leads her from the spirit houses of Thailand to the lemon groves of Italy.

This dissertation explores the relationship between fiction, knowledge and "knowing" in Latin American discourses of China and Japan. By scrutinizing Brazilian and Hispanic American travel journals, novels, short stories and essays from the nineteenth century to the present, Disorientations engages with the epistemological problems of writing across cultural boundaries and proposes a novel entryway into the study of East Asia and Latin American through the notions of "cultural distance," "fictional Sinology" and "critical exoticism." / Romance Languages and Literatures