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The Sky We Buried is a collection of short stories, flash pieces, and fragments investigating queer histories and speculative futures of academic researchers, computer programmers, single mothers, grieving widows, Boy Scout troops, pilots, museum caretakers, Victorian mediums, clones, and rogue AI programs.

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This thesis is a work of creative fiction in the form of a novel.

This novel is conceived as the first in a series of seven books. It takes place 25,000 years in humanity’s future, primarily on a space station - Laniakea Station - made from the combined cultures and habitations of beings from many galaxies outside our own. It floats eternal in the space between galaxies. It is a utopia of sorts. The novel is a series of connections between: Sainn-Temo, a human clone, grown from the genetic library rescued from the plight of interstellar slavery plaguing the human species; Ailu, a human woman born from actual human parents, stowed away on Laniakea; Swasim, a non-human mining executive attempting to sell off rights to the abandoned human solar system; and Revac, Ailu’s friend, a scientist of renowned fame and importance, inventor of a gene therapy that can stop the aging of living cells. These beings coalesce and bind together across space and time, leading to a discovery with profound consequences for the galaxy and the fate of humanity. The work is not just a sci-fi series but part of a wider universe I am creating across different artistic mediums. The series of works is called Hojas, or leaves. Over the next 2 years, as part of my PhD in anthropology, I will be constructing installation works, sculptures, video art, short stories, and interactive software art (video games!) to complement and build out the backstory leading up to the novel series. I hope for these works to engage participants and readers in co-creating a future mythology where brown and black bodies are triumphant, living well, and free. I will likely keep writing Hojas books until I die (unless we crack immortality!).

Human Subjects is a collection of eight short stories that explore the role of identity, otherness, and personhood in contemporary life. Two sex workers try to buy new faces after a botched plastic surgery, a young girl struggles to find her place in a religious sweat cult, mixed race orphans commune with ghosts in a Korean orphanage, best friends embark on a road trip across America in search of a mother. Human Subjects works to tell stories about deeply felt wants and desires from perspectives at the margins, caught in a state of in between. This collection grapples with what it means to be a subject, and what it means to be subjected.

ZULEIKHA, who was trained as a pianist in her hometown of Lahore, Pakistan, arrives in Irving, Texas after her arranged marriage to ISKANDER, but finds it difficult to get accustomed to the appurtenances, encumbrances, and perquisites of the middle-class housewife lifestyle. Despite giving birth to a son, WASIM, she quickly falls out of love with her dutiful but straight-laced husband. She begins giving private lessons, and commences an affair with PATRICK, a transplanted Canadian who is trapped in his own loveless marriage. When she gets pregnant, Zuleikha is convinced the child belongs to her husband. She ends her affair with Patrick, but Iskander finds out about it anyway. The ensuing confrontation between Zuleikha and Iskander turns into a physical altercation, during which Zuleikha, having fallen to the floor, is unable to see if Iskander stomps on her belly, or falls on her by accident as he will later claim. The trauma results in a miscarriage. The unusual set of circumstances surrounding this violent episode serves as the backdrop for the rest of the story, by catapulting this otherwise nondescript couple into the glare of the public eye. Iskander is arrested and charged with feticide, and he faces a long prison sentence under Texas law. A court order prohibits him from contacting Zuleikha and Wasim, who are taken to a shelter for Muslim women and children. There, the other domestic abuse victims view Zuleikha as someone who "had it coming" because of her infidelity, and are therefore openly hostile to her. The shelter's director, a woman named REZA, is beholden to wealthy Muslim donors, and therefore arranges for Zuleikha to meet with members of a highly controversial Islamic tribunal. Zuleikha is pressured to forgive her husband and testify in his favor, so as not draw further negative attention to the Muslim community. JANE, the District Attorney, on the other hand, initially plays nice with Zuleikha and informs her that she will devote any and all available resources in the prosecution of Iskander. When Zuleikha can't get her story straight and hesitates about testifying against her husband, however, Jane, too, turns against her. Zuleikha discovers that the DA has been caught hiding her own secrets and now faces a public confidence crisis of her own. Zuleikha comes to realize that Jane's reasons for being so gung-ho about winning Iskander's conviction have as much to do with re-endearing herself to her electorate as with justice. Zuleikha thus finds herself at the epicenter of a political firestorm fueled by winds of anti-Muslim hysteria, with different people trying to use her situation to their own advantage. When Wasim gets in a scuffle at the shelter and has to be taken to a clinic, she panics and contacts Iskander against her better judgment. Husband and wife finally confront each other while Wasim is being treated. Iskander claims to still love Zuleikha and begs her to take him back so that they and their son can resume their prior family life. But Zuleikha realizes that even if Iskander is sincere and not merely seeking reconciliation in order to avoid a harsh prison sentence, she will never be able to forgive him, let alone love him and live with him again. She comes to accept the fact that she has no control over Iskander's fate in court, and can only move forward by testifying truthfully and trying to do what is best for her and her son. While waiting for the trial to begin, she gains admission in a summer training program for piano instructors and begins the next phase of her life.

The dissertation consists of a critical preface and excerpts from the novel Patrol. The preface explores how the novel Patrol utilizes characters that engage with tropes of the Romantic Genius in order to establish their subjectivity while navigating the standardizing mechanisms of twenty-first century information technologies. The preface analyzes how the rise of the organic food movement, the usage of biotech genetic engineering, and the tactics of Big Data-era marketing all inform the critical underpinnings of Patrol, situating the novel in conversation with works of fiction and nonfiction that also explore the interplay of these topics with contemporary American culture. Set primarily in Cincinnati, Ohio, the bifurcated narrative of the novel Patrol enlists the perspectives of both a science-tech father from the Boomer generation, Tim Smith, and his millennial public relations-major daughter, Sarah Smith. Both work in industries that seek to utilize the concept of the individual genius in service of quantification. Tim and Sarah’s interactions with Alexandra Smith, a family member who transitions from female to male over the course of the novel, cause both protagonists to recognize that their own identities are malleable, and this discovery goads each into reexamining their career choices and personal relationships. The plot depicts the outcome of these explorations, culminating in a series of choices for Tim and Sarah that showcase the fundamental change in each character. Unable to simply quantify themselves and those around them, Tim and Sarah instead adopt a more nuanced view of the world that seeks to find a balance between the individualistic conceit of the Romantic genius and the quantifying mandates of technology.

The dissertation "And the Sea looked : a novel in the making" is an exploration of the creative process of a prose fiction novel called „And the Sea Looked‟. Following the lives of three women, the novel reflects on the idea that universal Peace (the end of all wars) will only be possible if individuals, through the power of their choices in the way they live their ordinary lives, strive to transcend the separations and imperfections of the Material World, ultimately finding a universal unity ("oneness") in the ideal love existing in Plato‟s superior, Divine World. The psychological creative process behind the making of the novel is investigated in-depth and a short critical interpretation of the novel is included. / English Studies / M.A. (English)