This project has explored the use of leather as a nonfunctional sculptural medium. The sculptures in this project had their design and construction roots in the historical use of leather for clothing, shelter, tools, and protection. The scultpures differed from leather objects in the past by being solely involved with the aesthetic possibilities of leather and curvilinear relationships, hard and soft oppositions, and surface decoration.There were four sculptures in this project. Each sculpture was built entirely of leather. There were no metal or wood armatures. The construction and the end results of these sculptures depended entirely on the various shaping properties of leather.

This creative project is a collection of five pieces of short fiction revolving around the life and times of one central character, a young man named Jared Yando. The perspective of each individual piece is centered at different points within approximately one calendar year, and chronicles the protagonist's life within that very transitional period. The focus holds mainly on Jared's relationships, from the latest one with his girlfriend Claudia to the oldest ones with his shattered but healing family. Throughout, these relationship partners take unexpected actions that result in unexpected consequences spanning both ends of the emotional spectrum. Jared finds himself repeatedly involved in that most human of predicaments as he is forced to sort out the actions of those close to him and determine what they have meant, and will mean, to the construction of his own character. / Department of English

The primary objective for this creative project is to develop a series of wheel-thrown and altered ceramic sculptures that reflect my intuitive formation process. Although the work was influenced by a wide variety of outside sources, much of the impetus was born of my personal reflections on the concept of physical touch. My actions during the creation process were governed by sensory information absorbed mostly through my hands on the clay, and enhanced by inherent properties of the material. These preliminary experiences eventually sparked a desire to share this discovery with the viewer in the same tactile way. I further wished to include observers in the exhibit in a more direct and physical way, offering participants opportunities to explore their own sense of touch and consider how they relate to the objects around them. This body of work is an in-depth study of my intuitive creative process, a model for exploring the relationships between process and materials, and a means of providing observers of visual art a chance to connect with a visual object in a tactile way. / Department of Art

This dissertation examines the work of Felipe Alfau, a Spanish-American writer who wrote two novels and a collection of children’s stories in the first half of the twentieth century which were the focus of a short-lived critical enthusiasm in the early 1990s. It recognizes the important contribution made by those early critics, but also tries to make a case for a reading of Alfau at variance with the kinds of readings his work has previously received. Specifically, it points at structural and thematic complexities in Alfau’s narratives that have been attributed to his experimentation with self-reflexivity and metafiction, experimentation which many have claimed anticipates the work of writers of the second half of the century. My dissertation shows how other unrelated concerns may have led him to boldly reconsider the parameters of narrative form. I contend that for Alfau confabulation, collaboration, and art are generators of narratives that present the self as an insoluble mystery. What I intend to demonstrate is that Alfau views these sources as problematic repositories that fail to capture and preserve human experience, yet simultaneously believes that they are the only means at our disposal for doing so. His narratives communicate the frustrations such a paradox entails, but also celebrate human faith in those means in spite of such frustrations.

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