This thesis disrupts the popular narrative of high-functioning autistic individuals as the ideal and capable special needs people who are worthy of our attention. It characterizes the author’s nonverbal autistic sister as a charming, cunning, even diabolical figure who cannot be pinned to a single interpretation - a figure beyond understanding. Defying convention both stylistically and thematically, this thesis provides a nuanced, in-depth view of a family with special needs as each member copes in different and contradictory ways.

For my senior thesis, I have compiled essays that cover traveling to Aix en Provence for the month of June 2103 and growing up in East Tennessee. This project should exhibit my skills as a writer in the nonfiction category. I describe personal experiences, portray characters, and attempt to show readers a world that they may not otherwise have been able to experience. I blend narrative essays with travel writing to show overall how these two components create an intercultural experience that work to inform and answer each other.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This is a book-length work of memoir/creative non-fiction focused around my father’s sudden death and the resulting effects, direct and indirect, on my family and myself. To borrow the disclaimer Maggie Nelson makes at the beginning of her book, The Red Parts: “This book is a memoir, which is to say that it relies on my memory and consists primarily of my personal interpretations of events and, where indicated, my imaginative recreation of them. Conversations and other events have been recreated to evoke the substance of what was said or what occurred, but are not intended to be perfect representations.”

This collection of essays, organized with two fiction pieces to every three essays, blends fiction and nonfiction craft elements and is intended to challenge the reader's notion of experienced reality. There were three goals in mind while creating the collection: to give the reader a better understanding of PTSD and its symptoms, to illustrate the ways in which storytelling impacts our perception of reality, and to examine the ways in which a gendered experience affects an individual's reality.

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.

babel is a collection of nonfiction essays in which I explore a female twenty-something’s crossdimensional dilemma of spirituality, racism, art, and love in the wake of Bible-belt hipsterdom. I board the train that is human pride, that great metal snake by which we essayists craft our lives, and measure out my stories by cities and coffeespoons—dotted with dark roast, preferably. The train of my collection glides through the first ‘burg and its Godlike aspirations, Babel; travels a ways to Virginia, specifically Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and Prince Edward County, which was the hotbed of the Civil Rights in Education Movement; says hello to Bowling Green; and emerges a world away, in a mosaic of people on cow-peppered Indian streets. This master’s thesis—as a tangible fixture of my own words in a realm where greater folks have preceded me and still fallen (far and hard as Icarus)—is prideful, exploratory, and ultimately human. The titular pun may be taken more or less seriously. Hear the train whistle. It is our attempts at the Divine, a nexus of journeys and somehow in itself too a destination.

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.