Following in the footsteps of writers Mary Karr, Joan Didion, Russell Baker, and many others, Kelly Rose writes about her childhood, marriage, and subsequent divorce from a New Orleans journalist. Her writing is broken down into various sections, which address her writing influences, her troubled relationship with her mother and her complicated divorce. Finally, the author discusses how these experiences have shaped her writing today.

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“I Remember Myself” is a hybrid memoir told through poetry and prose. It tells the story of a young woman struggling to establish herself as an adult whose life is interrupted by chronic pain. The reader follows her relationships, along with her physical, mental, emotional and spiritual journeys through illness and grief. The work explores identity, the nature of the self, and the boundaries between reality and imagination.

This thesis consists of five chapters including a traditional introduction and four chapters, which investigate cultural interpretations of motherhood within the genre of memoir and personal essay. In the introduction, I discuss my research as it relates to the larger collection and detail how this work is different from other works within the "mother memoir" genre. Chapters II thru V, then, are all essays which begin to explore the major themes of cultural motherhood: ambivalence, loss, legitimacy, morality, and sin. These chapters, especially chapter II, identify and detail the traits of true motherhood as patience, compassion, sacrifice, and strength. Chapter V, as the culminating chapter, places me, as writer, in a different position--as a reader--and I begin to understand my history as a parent and as a writer through these texts. Using literature as an area of personal research and recovery, I reconstruct my past as a child and a parent and begin to understand what it means to be a mother--or at least, to better understand the expectations of those who surround me.

Creative nonfiction is abundant and popular. There are many names and definitions for this fluid, multimodal genre, which has played a role in its marginality in academia. This dissertation examines creative nonfiction in composition, creative writing, and journalism. I argue that distinct beliefs and values of each discipline have led to compartmentalized, disciplinary-specific definitions and uses of creative nonfiction. To understand why this is, and to develop and a cross-disciplinary understanding, I use Amy Devitt's rhetorical genre theory to illuminate cultural beliefs and values that influence the names, definitions, subgenres, and views of the genre in each field. A rhetorical understanding of genre reveals the purpose of creative nonfiction, the themes it conveys, and perhaps why it is so persuasive and powerful. In examining composition I analyze the historical development of creative nonfiction, its definitions, and current beliefs and values about teaching composition. I argue composition limits its view of creative nonfiction by too often equating it with the personal essay. A personal-expressive pedagogy would help teach creative nonfiction. In creative writing I analyze the definitions of creative nonfiction and the AWP's statements about creative writing education. I argue creative writing has inclusive definitions, if not rhetorical, but the culture of literature limits the genre for students. A strength of creative writing is the teaching of craft that I argue is beneficial for teaching creative nonfiction. In journalism I analyze the culture of objectivism from which literary journalism emerged. I argue literary journalists have developed definitions that identify the purpose of literary journalism and narrative form. I express concerns about the separation of journalism from composition and creative writing that has limited discussions about creative nonfiction and literary journalism. Finally, I argue each discipline should value one another's views and agree on dissensus instead of focusing on denying one another or trying to find a single name and definition. I suggest narrative nonfiction as a subset of creative nonfiction that would benefit students in composition. Creative nonfiction engages students in writing and examining the sociopolitical world from a personal perspective, which aids them in becoming writers for life.

abstract: Privilege is unearned advantages, access, and power reserved for a select group of people. Those that benefit from privilege manifest their power consciously and sub-consciously so as to maintain their exclusive control of the opportunities privilege affords them. The reach and power of one’s privilege rises and falls as the different social identities that one possesses intersect. Ultimately, if a society built on justice and equity is to be achieved, those with privilege must take tangible steps to acknowledge their privilege and work to end the unequal advantages and oppression that are created in order to perpetuate privilege. This thesis unpacks privilege through an autoethnographic examination of the author’s history. Through the use of creative nonfiction, personal stories become launching points to explore characteristics of privilege manifest in the author’s life which are emblematic of larger social groups that share many of the author’s social identities. The following characteristics of privilege are explored: merit, oppression, normalization, economic value, neutrality, blindness, and silence. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Justice Studies 2015

abstract: This dissertation is both creative and scholarly, engaging in the technique of "narrative scholarship," an increasingly accepted technique within the field of ecocriticism. The project is framed by my experiences with Spanish and Latino actors as well as activists involved with the 15-M movement in and around Madrid. It takes a "material ecocritical" approach, which is to say that it treats minds, spirits and language as necessarily "bodied" entities, and creates an absolute union between beings and the matter that constructs them as well as their habitat. I apply the lens of Jesper Hoffmeyer's Biosemiotics, which claims that life is at its most essential levels a communicative process. In other words, I will explore how "all matter is 'storied' matter," as well as how the "semiosphere," which is an important concept in biosmiotics, signaling a semiotic environment that predicts and defines all biological bodies/life, the human, the plant and the animal as beings who are made of and involved in semiotic activity, can serve as a basis for union amongst all bodies and provide a model of cooperation rooted in "storytelling." My project aims to embody what Wendy Wheeler describes as ecocriticism's, "syntheses between the sciences and the humanities" It is my strong opinion that creative writing has the power to offer the general public insight into the reasons why new research in biosemiotics is so important to the work that activists are doing to raise awareness of how humans can live responsibly on the only planet that is our home. This will help readers of creative writing and cultural studies scholars understand why they ought to embrace science, especially in literary and cultural studies, as a path to better understanding of the role of the humanities in an increasingly scientifically oriented world. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2016

M.A. / An overview of reviews on Antjie Krog’s ‘n Ander Tongval (2005), shows that critics find it difficult to classify the text and to determine the genre of the book. This study is intended to investigate the hybrid nature of ‘n Ander Tongval which is a mixture of poetry, essays, journalistic report, autobiography, academic research and personal anecdotes. This study is primarily an examination of a specific example of a text that can be considered “literary non-fiction” to contribute to the description of the nature of this particularly problematic genre, while at the same time contributing to the literary criticism of Krog’s “literary non-fiction”. Secondly ‘n Ander Tongval is examined to determine the specific demands that this kind of text makes of the reader. This examination of ‘n Ander Tongval contributes to the description and problematising of the term “literary non-fiction” and many other genres which can be associated with these kind of texts because of its hybrid nature. This is also linked to the current debate about the growing interest in what Leon de Kock (2010) describes as “Creative Non-fiction”. De Kock considers this kind of writing distinctive of South African literature. Eventually it becomes clear that ‘n Ander Tongval does not only advocate change (transformation), but makes a change possible by the choice of genre (literary nonfiction) which is itself a text that “changes” established genre conventions and thereby guides the reader to read differently and look at the text and the country in a different way.