Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, English (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation is divided into two sections: an essay titled “Poetic Function Between Fact and Fiction: Examples from Six Contemporary American Poets” and a book manuscript titled Hello Nothingness. “Poetic Function Between Fact and Fiction: Examples from Six Contemporary American Poets” analyzes six examples from contemporary American lyric poetry to highlight the tension between fictionality and factuality in broader trends in lyric poetry. While this poetological tension between fictionality and factuality can be understood to exist broadly across the span of lyric poetry, this essay highlights selections from contemporary American lyric poetry to demonstrate the rhetorical and functional effects made possible by this interplay in lyric poetry. Hello Nothingness is composed of lyric poems that interrogate the uncertainty between perception and lived experience. The poems in the manuscript juxtapose high lyricism with language meant to mimic interior thought patterns, often making use of ekphrastic, surrealist, and/or confessional modes to explore their subject matter. The manuscript pays close attention to the formal composition of its free verse poems, and the poems themselves often combine artifacts of personal experience with disjunctive, lyrical expression to explore the poems' concerns.

Committee: Mark Halliday (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Creative Writing/Poetry

Mixing the mundane with the spiritual, Poems from a House That No Longer Exists goes through the rooms of a gone place like a ghost condemned to walk the path it trod in life, chanting poetry about what used to be as it makes its rounds. These poems tell stories of the gone inhabitants, the insects, the cats and fishes, the humans that linger like dead myths. Like an archaeological dig, stories crop up around the artifacts that were there—a petrified yellow rose, a glass of orange juice swarming with ants, piss-soaked confederate flags—and each artifact warps the space a little more in its revelation, love and grief intermingling as the small history of the space is shown in brief, balanced, sonically-measured moments. As the reader moves through Poems and gets deeper into the house room-by-room in small, tight sections, it gets stranger. Crude maps are found tucked in-between the squareish poems that mirror the rooms they exist in, small, dense places of refuge within the home. Figures from other times and spaces appear, imprinted with the house's particular brand of mournful domesticity. Napoleon appears in his pajamas, Judith stalks the halls with Holofernes's babbling head, and the spirit of a dead man lives in a flying mud dauber as the collection comes to a close and the speaker leaves the house for the last time, and the home evaporates with their leaving, though the crooked walls and bubbling latex paint remain.

Committee: Abigail Cloud (Advisor); Rebecca Frank Dr., Fr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2019, English

Ekphrasis influences descriptions of female characters in early modern drama and prose fiction. These vivid descriptions are conveyed with such clarity that they highlight the constructed nature of ideal feminine behavior within a patriarchal system, thereby exposing abuses of patriarchal power. Classical ekphrasis is a technique capable of transcending genre, aiding in the exposure of abuses of power and eliciting emotional responses from audiences. Ekphrasis is an effective way to appeal to an audience's emotions—when descriptions develop vivid images, they can bypass mental and emotional barriers constructed to protect one's emotions or self-image. Authors elicit emotions from readers in order to teach them how to name their emotions and feelings; being able to name and understand feelings is a crucial part of developing understanding, especially in a society that increasingly relied upon empirical evidence to determine the truth.

Committee: Chris Flint (Committee Chair) Subjects: Literature; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2019, English (Arts and Sciences)

This creative dissertation features a book-length work of Creative Nonfiction forwarded by a critical introduction on the relationship between form and content in examples of visual nonfiction writing. The visual essay is a genre of nonfiction that uses elements of design and active whitespace to drive storytelling and develop visual arguments across a text. “Beasts of the Interior” is a collection of visual essays considering the deterioration of homes and landscapes, and the ways these processes mirror the fissures between people living therein. The book combines personal, journalistic, and critical approaches to consider how histories are made by certain places, and what happens to each history when a place begins to shift. This is a project obsessed with structure, form, restraint, and the relationship between a page's form and its content. The book investigates the ways stories might behave more like objects do—like a cave system or a quilt pattern, a riverbed or a blueprint. Each chapter uses a borrowed structure to guide the reader between the walls of a hundred-year-old home, down a bat-infested dry riverbed, or across a farm run by an eco- cult. In the final chapter, this book's coda, this project turns back on itself and considers formlessness instead.

Committee: Dinty Moore W (Committee Chair); Eric LeMay C (Committee Member); Bianca Spriggs (Committee Member); Courtney Kessel (Committee Member) Subjects: Art Criticism; Communication; Design; Education; Experiments; Gender; Gender Studies; Language; Language Arts; Multimedia Communications; Performing Arts; Rhetoric; Textile Research; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, English

The recent work on the manuscript reception of Ovid's canon and Ovidian commentaries in western Europe has affirmed the author's significant literary influence in the late Mid- dle Ages. The production and reception of Ovidinia flourished, and Ovid's poems in- creasingly became read as coherent compositions rather than dissected for bits of moral exempla. In particular, the Metamorphoses profoundly affects the literary landscape of late medieval France and England. Allusions to Ovid's poem reemerge throughout the late Middle Ages at defining moments of poetic self-consciousness, most often through figures of ekphrasis, the use of poetry in order to portray other media of art. By examin- ing such moments from a selection of influential medieval poems, the mind of the late medieval poet reveals itself in perpetual contestation with the images and figures of an Ovidian lineage, but the contest entails the paradoxical construction of poetic identity, which forces the poet to impose the haunting shadow of literary history onto the mirror of his or her craft.

Committee: Ethan Knapp (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1985, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2017, English

This dissertation examines the disconnect between rhetoric and poetics in the field of composition studies and argues that style can mend this frayed relationship. Chapter one asserts that rhetoric and poetics were separated by historical accident; however, the poetic tradition is central to rhetorical study and must be reclaimed, and style serves as a key concept. Chapter two analyzes the figures in rhetorical manuals and recovers these tools for style pedagogy. Chapter three reclaims visual theories from classical rhetoric and shows how these theories reinvigorate pedagogy and allow us to think about style beyond alphabetic text. Chapter four asserts that style can be practiced within a larger aesthetic approach to the teaching of writing that invites creative experimentation and risk. The study includes student writing and student interviews; it also makes the case for alternative assessment practices. Finally, chapter five argues that the field can and should take style seriously, from the first-year writing course to graduate training to overall programmatic goals. This requires imagination and consciously looking beyond our disciplinary limits.

Committee: Jason Palmeri (Advisor); Kate Ronald (Committee Member); John Tassoni (Committee Member); Elaine Miller (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric

MFA, Kent State University, 2016, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This collection of poems deal with themes of family history, romantic relationships, motherhood, gardening, plant physiology, the feminine body, the natural world, culture, and mythology. Most of the narrative poems contained in this manuscript are biographical in nature, and trace my experiences as a mother, wife, and daughter over the last five years. A few of the poems are ekphrastic, detailing a fictional narrative about a character that acts as a counterpoint to the biographical "I" in the other poems. These poems contain epigraphs with the titles of the artwork I reference or use as inspiration.

Committee: Catherine Wing (Advisor); Mary Biddinger (Committee Member); Craig Paulenich (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Master of Humanities (MHum), Wright State University, 2015, Humanities

The purpose of this research is to identify main causes for the expansion of ekphrastic poetry during the 20th century and how it became a more widely used genre. The goal is to show how ekphrasis contributed to the growth of the interdisciplinary partnership between museums and poets. By evaluating two factors that led to a growing interest in the genre and increased accessibility to poetry and the visual arts. This is done by looking at ekphrastic work by Imagist poets like Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and H.D. as well as the growth of 20th century museum accessibility and educational practices. The expansion of ekphrasis resulted in a wider exposure to poetry, the visual arts and museums. Ekphrasis assisted in accomplishing mutual goals of exposing and educating the public to both mediums, which resulted in better understanding of the genre and its influence on museums throughout the 20th century.

Committee: Valerie Stoker Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Dennis Loranger Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Andrew Strombeck Ph.D. (Committee Member); Karla Huebner Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Literature; Museum Studies; Museums

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2015, English

A collection of original work and scholarly analysis exploring the boundaries and potential of the ekphrastic tradition in poetry.

Committee: David Sanders (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2011, English

The manuscript is broken into three sections. The opening poem, “Reconciling Image,” introduces the first section and also the manuscript as a whole. This poem asks how art is made and what its impact is or can be. The first section features poems that are linked by ideas of ekphrasis and women's anatomy. The poems in section two are thematically a “women's world” of concerns, relationships, dissections, and ekphrasis. This section is also loosely linked by concepts of family and familial relationships. The final section of the manuscript is the broadest thematically and is concerned with meditations on science/nature and romantic relationships. In this way, it turns the manuscript's previously inward eye outward toward the wider world of creatures. The final poem of the manuscript, “Reconciling Thought,” echoes the first poem in its title and themes. This poem asks the question: Can thought, and thereby poetry, ever be overcome, escaped from or transcended? Asking this question reframes the manuscript's concerns and ends on a note of both uncertainty and certainty.

Committee: Henri Cole (Advisor); Kathy Fagan (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts; Literature

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2012, Spanish

The following thesis offers an alternative reading of the text of Don Quijote and the images created therein, not in terms of ekphrastic passages, but rather through the identification of the appropriation of techniques traditionally thought of as pertaining to the plastic arts. Cervantes employs these techniques in order to create literary portraits. This close reading focuses on the description and narration of chapters I.28 and II.48, in which, Cervantes through the translation of artistic techniques into textual representations, controls the reader's mental visualization of the scenes. The use of various elements of design, such as, line, texture and light combined with perspectivism form textual representations that mimic pictorial representation. The analysis of chapter I.28 focuses on voyeurism and mythology which forms the reader's vision of Dorotea while that of chapter II.48 deals with the use of caricature and chiaroscuro which serves to sketch the physical identity of Dona Rodriguez.

Committee: Darcy Donahue Ph.D (Advisor); María Auxiliadora Álvarez Ph.D (Committee Member); Shelly Jarrett Bromberg Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

PHD, Kent State University, 2011, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies

When we consider the role of writing in our language arts classrooms today, I would argue that the vast majority of it is framed by Freire's (1984) banking model of education, wherein we have a teacher who knows how to pass a standardized writing test and tries to deposit that information into the learner who knows nothing. In fact, to extend the metaphor, the only withdrawal that seems important to either the teacher or the student is what product the student creates at the time of the test. Somehow, we language arts teachers have found ourselves in the unfavorable position of having betrayed our own knowledge and expertise. Essentially, the problem that this study seeks to address is the surrendering of effective, creative, and imaginative writing strategies to the narrow scope of writing as evidence of understanding and standardized test preparation. The purpose of this study was to inform three primary questions: 1. What are students' perceptions of the use of the arts as a tool for writing and making meaning? 2. How would a deliberate, honest, and authentic approach to increasing and facilitating dialogue and communication in the language arts classroom affect students' writing and/or their writing process? 3. What effect does using empathic literature selections have on students' writing? The study was a naturalistic case study that led to several findings. Of the arts, the study revealed that students demonstrated increased confidence in their writing and began to value the process of writing over the product. Further, students perceived this writing approach as new and freeing. Of dialogue, the study revealed that dialogue is a dynamic convention, one that constantly changes and rarely looks the same in different contexts, and that an honest, deliberate, authentic approach to increasing dialogue creates a comfort and familiarity that encourages writing as well as sharing. Finally, the use of empathic texts allo (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: William Kist PhD (Advisor); Averil McClelland PhD (Committee Member); Andrew Gilbert PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education Philosophy

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2011, Creative Writing/Poetry

In We Used Clothespins, a correspondence is built amid echoes of the unsaid. Objects accumulate and amass; transmutation occurs and we shrug off what remains. The poems in this manuscript attempt to scrutinize the tangible, the scuffed surface, and dig holes in the center of worlds below sea level. Process acts as a filter for seeing—through crosshatched lines, the folds of a skirt, or the tenuous stretch of a spider web, both readers and speakers are able to navigate the fields created on the page, in the mind. The poems follow a trajectory of obsession that in the end transcends into an experience that is charged by something intangible but still felt. Beginning in sections I and II, the reader is invited into an altered space that is just peripheral to our plane of existence, but entered into through a comfortable contract of interaction between the reader and the poems. Sections III and IV explore the potential for a voice to transfix and suspend disbelief; a voice that with its own power can reveal imagery and situations beyond the framework of the everyday. Drawing upon art processes, words become like materials akin to oil paints, cut paper, or watercolors. The materials are built up in layers, and sometimes examined for their sheer physicality. These processes are enacted as a means toward an acute way of seeing. Throughout, language and syntax are used in a similar way one might build up marks in a drawing to move beyond traditional narrative into an extended moment or experience.

Committee: Larissa Szporluk (Committee Chair); F. Daniel Rzicznek (Committee Member); Sharona Muir (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts; Literature

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2011, Creative Writing/Fiction

These stories concern, chiefly, art: the making - or not making - of it, its function in our lives. Some stories, such as “Four Minutes, Thirty-Three Seconds,” “Art Thou Troubled,” and “The Many Iterations of Walter Rose,” are attempts at “ekphrastic fiction”: responses to particular songs or pieces of art. Others deal with what it means to be an artist, and yet others are about negotiating the divide between ‘art' and ‘artifice' : a young woman finds solace in a virtual world, a dog is cared for as if it's a child, a couple adopts a mouse in lieu of having a baby. In each, a character that is confused about his or her place in the world of creating finds a place to land.

Committee: Lawrence Coates PhD (Advisor); Michael Czyzniejewski MFA (Committee Member); Wendell Mayo PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Canadian Literature; Fine Arts; Literature

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2011, Creative Writing/Poetry

A collection of original poetry by Jessica Dawn Zinz. Divided into three sections, the poems in this collection consider the necessary relationship between memory and grief. While creating tension between what's logical and what's mysterious, strange, or fantastic, the collection moves readers through past memories, current moments, as well as events that have never happened outside of this poetic world. Several poems in this collection draw from the black and white photography of Sally Mann, including “Jessie and the Deer,” “Gathered Around the Ditch,” “Damaged Child” and each of the “Carousel Horse” poems. The photographs of Mann's children are brought into the world of language in this collection in order for them to escape the trance of the camera's flash and begin to move around again. In addition to childhood, themes of childbirth, human and animal deaths, building, as well as falling come to play poetry that is the watery surface created between narrative and lyric. In the first section of this collection, the speaker has a desire to escape moments of grief in order to gain control. In section two, the speaker begins to see the moments of grief as opportunities for discovery. In the final section of the collection, there is a sense of certainty that it is necessary to recall past grief in order to understand the present. Throughout the collection, readers consider time, what it takes to approach grief, and what it means when The Horse Lies Down Like a Person.

Committee: Larissa Szporluk (Advisor); Frank D. Rzicznek (Committee Member); Karen Craigo (Committee Member); Sharona Muir (Committee Member) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2010, English/Rhetoric and Writing

This dissertation is a historical and theoretical exploration of epideictic rhetoric of blame as it functions to build community and teach civic virtues. I have assembled a set of heuristics - concentrating on three strategies of creating ethos, establishing place, and utilizing ekphrasis - to examine the didactic nature of epideictic, especially in environments where social change is being demanded by the rhetor. The heuristic model encompasses 13 guiding questions, which then are applied to two case studies of rhetoric of blame: the writings of journalist Ida B. Wells to stop the lynchings of African-Americans during the 19th century, and a current website created by the Save Darfur Coalition to intervene in the genocide in Darfur, Africa. While a significant amount of research has examined epideictic rhetoric of praise, existing scholarship on rhetoric of blame is minimal. Thus, this project helps to fill the gap both by furnishing evidence of historical and current instances of epideictic rhetoric of blame as it functions to build community and teach civic virtues, and by demonstrating a methodology to assess such discourse. At a time in our nation and neighborhoods when words of condemnation are often flung about too quickly and carelessly, a reliable methodology is needed for creating and analyzing rhetoric of blame – and how it accomplishes a rhetorical purpose beyond that of a one-sided volley of insults. This study breaks new ground by offering a methodology for analyzing how the epideictic rhetor using words of blame can be successful through an expression of ethos and ekphrasis in bringing readers together, and the places where this occurs. This project is grounded in the work of more than a dozen scholars ranging from Sullivan to Royster, Laurer to Hauser, and Agnew to Bolter, and it furthers work concerning ethos and the transformative nature of epideictic discourse. Because new media technologies often play a crucial role in today's epideictic rhetor (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kristine Blair PhD (Committee Chair); Richard Gebhardt PhD (Committee Member); Lance Massey PhD (Committee Member); Lisa Dimling PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric