Land of Flowers is a collection of short fiction presenting a Florida that stands in counterpoint to the image the state holds in the national consciousness-an image of a backward region rife with rednecks, retirees, racists, and religious kooks. In contrast, these stories feature the natives, the tourists, the immigrants, and also the transplants who are drawn to this "paradise" with hopes of finding warmth, escape, and a new life that so often fails to materialize. Many of the inhabitants of these stories are mired in a state of introspection. In the title piece, an early Spanish explorer contemplates his existence as well as that of God's. In another story, an actor/bartender considers how eking out a living at a luxurious resort has sapped his passion for the theater. In trying to save a family of doves, a father finds a metaphor for his role as protector and provider for his own family. Another story is about an old man dying in the palmetto brush who discovers comfort in a place far from a society that no longer suits him. Space and place are the threads that holds these stories together: place in regard to the topographical Florida, and space in regard to where the main characters are mentally. The true physical landscape of the territory that once extended as far west as New Orleans is depicted in many of the stories-a landscape shorn of condos, strip malls, and theme parks, a landscape that defines Florida as wild, open, raw, and primal in the best sense of the word. These stories of people, place, and space work against the stereotypes and toward a deeper understanding of Florida.

Friday is a Planet: Stories is a collection of short fiction that explores the ways loss can alter family bonds. Characters in these stories have lost daughters, sisters, mothers, and friends. Some characters go to extreme lengths to return to their loved ones—one woman hallucinates, another time travels. Others deal with the loss in more conventional ways, through support groups and the emotional outlet of community theatre. What ties these stories together is a sense of post-loss confusion and mystery. The characters are unsure how to move forward, or if they should try. The men and women in these stories struggle with faith as they navigate life after loss. They question who to have faith in. They wonder whether it is ever okay to let faith lapse. While attempting to answer these questions, the characters discover different questions. What are the connections between faith and loss? Faith and hope? Faith and forgiveness?

This collection of short fiction probes the lives of characters trying to make their home in the flat, unchanging landscape of the small towns that make up central Florida. The largely static environment reflects the rigid patterns of behavior and domesticity the characters find themselves so easily falling into. Seemingly ordinary items-a shotgun, a t-shirt, a paper bag-and the small moments that make up everyday life are imbued with significance as men and women painfully aware of their own ordinariness struggle to hold onto those fragile instances of connection, happiness, or even their own self-constructed sense of identity. The struggle becomes one of opposing forces: as characters yearn to connect to the people, places, and objects around them, they find themselves more and more attracted to the idea of escaping their own lives, even if for just a moment. Stories range from two pages to over twenty and introduce the reader to a diverse population of characters, from an out of work construction worker cum wannabe philosopher to an amateur historian writing a history nobody cares about to the one man who actually did escape-a cockfight organizer who made it big in Georgia before blowing himself up at a gas station. Characters fight over toothbrushes, puzzle out whether a father is just drunk or beautiful, and look for space stations they may or may not be able to see at all. As in life, in these stories, it's the small, quiet moments that come to define who these people are and demonstrate their pursuit of something bigger and more important, even if they don't have any idea what that may be.

In this collection of connected stories, the inhabitants of the imaginary Mediterranean village of Marcenac struggle with daily situations that often take allures of a farce, simply because they occur in Marcenac. The stories explore the influence southern France's Roussillon region has on people, the way the proximity of the Spanish border and the Mediterranean shapes the inhabitants of Marcenac's daily lives, and the influence of the climate. Often, the Tramontane, the region's predominant wind, becomes a character. While some of the stories are told from a collective point of view, others reveal the inner thoughts of children and adults, male and female. Because the stories are connected, characters visit different stories and help tell the collective tale of Marcenac. Even though the stories stand on their own, they form cohesion, united by the progression of the seasons and the underlying theme of death. Each story reveals a particularity of the region's weather and culture. Some stories are entertaining and lighthearted. Others are serious. Each invites the reader to share the most intimate thoughts of the characters as they seek solace from various degrees of grief and frustration. Some characters are gauche, naive, some tender, others bitter, but all are resilient and amicable. The characters' speech and the narrative are often peppered with French, which makes for humorous situations and takes the reader deep within a foreign culture without giving the feeling of an anthropology lesson. As a result, the characters become cultural guides as they ruminate over the past or go about their daily lives. They give the reader a unique insight into the habits and values of the region.

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This thesis looks at ways of Anishinaabe cultural resurgence for Indigenous youth through our current education systems. / Three Anishinaabe elders who had experience in Anishinaabe on-reserve schools and in community Indigenous education programs were interviewed to learn their views on what had worked and not worked in past attempts to integrate Anishinaabe language and cultural knowledge into curriculum and programming. Their views on curriculum content, pedagogical methods, and education policy were solicited to gain a better understanding of how to decolonize the current Eurocentric school system and provide more successful learning experiences for Anishinaabe children and youth. The key findings were: 1) language and spiritual education must be at the core of the curriculum; 2) elders’ knowledge and their oral stories and oral history had to be the key means of transferring knowledge to the younger generation; 3) land-based, hands-on experiential learning experiences that utilized the knowledge and skills of community members were essential to successfully engaging students in the learning process; 4) teachers needed to take responsibility for identifying and nurturing the learning spirit in each child; and 5) commitment from the government for adequate funding, support resources and class time was essential for the successful integration of Anishinaabe language and cultural knowledge into on-reserve school systems. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This thesis examines the insights of three Anishinaabe elders (knowledge holders) who had extensive experience in Anishinaabe on-reserve schools or in community Indigenous education programs. They were interviewed to learn their views on what had and had not worked in past attempts to integrate Anishinaabe language and cultural knowledge into on-reserve schools and programming. Their insights inform recommendations for five strategies to improve the engagement of Anishinaabe students through culture-based teachings.