Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Creative Writing/Fiction

The stories in these four chapbooks examine borders, limitations, and the mechanisms of exclusion by which society operates, as well as the mechanisms of inclusion through which it might become kinder and better. The tales trot the globe and zip through time from a darkly dreamed-up, dystopic version of western Ohio to the Bucharest of the 1930s to the Podunk Fairgrounds of contemporary Central California. These stories examine tensions between agency and authority, freedom and self-destruction, and engagement and withdrawal, as the characters in them reckon with the possibility and peril of acceptance—of themselves, others, and the sadder inevitabilities of life—and interrogate notions of what it means to love and accept someone in a world where people are constantly denying others the same treatment. Many stories began as ethical questions the author couldn't answer; rather than prescribe solutions, the stories observe at length the attempts of characters to find light in what is morally murky, and to justify to themselves and their community why they've let their light guide them thus. The collection of twenty-four stories was split into fourths in a concession to the attractive nature of the chapbook form and arranged according to natural cycles to approximate four seasons of weather, four times of the day, and four approximate stages of human life. “In an Ohio Dreamscape” has a wintry, midnight feel, and operates by the twilit illogic of dreams, childhood whimsy, and magic. “The Journalist is Here” springs the reader into a busy morning of work, travel, and praxis in the outer world; its pieces stem from autobiography, history, and facts gathered in pen-scrawled journals. “Lovelorn: Five Blues,” the noontime, summer section, examines mid-life heartache and the costs of living with and without love. “Grasses like Flayed Lion Hides,” the autumnal, California-set section, follows the sun to the Golden State and dips us West towards evening, night and death; its ch (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2012, American Culture Studies/Popular Culture

The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze African-American participation in science fiction fan culture at science fiction conventions. My inquiry will include four main sections involving how and why African-Americans seem to be underrepresented at science fiction conventions in comparison to their proportion of the general population. These include a brief history of science fiction conventions, an exploration of the possible reasons for African- Americans who read science fiction literature or watch the television shows and movies would chose not to participate in science fiction conventions, some examples of positive portrayals of black characters in both science fiction literature and visual media, and the personal observations of my research subjects on their experiences regarding attending science fiction conventions. My research methodology included personal interviews with several African-American science fiction fans and authors, an interview with a white science fiction fan who is very familiar with the history of fan culture. I also draw upon scholarship in the science fiction studies, cultural anthropology and critical race theory.

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Creative Writing/Fiction

It's 2016 and the nameless narrator breaks into his ex-wife's house to retrieve a taxidermied badger, a way to regain a small measure of control in his life. Feeling confident after retrieving the badger, he decides to revisit his old haunt, The Lucky Clover, where rawboned and rough characters await him, principally Nanny, a six-foot redheaded amateur madam with a penchant for meth binges. One night the narrator discovers and takes a sizable amount of cocaine, is marked for death by Ray Kennedy, a man haunted by his own racial background. The narrator then turns to crime to repay the debt, only to find he's been a pawn in game where violence is the only possible conclusion.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Arts and Sciences: Germanic Languages and Literature

In this dissertation I focus on two types of genre fiction as viewed through the lens of Kantian ethics and social contract theory. The two types of genre fiction include detective novels written by a German speaking Swiss author named Friedrich Durrenmatt, as well as two spy novels by John le Carre. All of these novels are set in the second half of the twentieth century and in le Carre's case, during the height of the Cold War. Durrenmatt is well-known throughout the German literary canon for both his plays and his prose. I argue that he tends to differ from other writers of detective fiction because he focuses less on the mystery of the murder itself and more on the interaction of the characters, as well as the philosophical ramifications of what is happening in the story. The first Durrenmatt novel, Justiz, focuses on the conflict between a failed lawyer, named Spat, and an influential member of Swiss high-society, Dr.h.c. Isaak Kohler, who has been convicted of shooting his friend, Dr. Winter, in a crowded restaurant. This novel focuses on Spat's tortured quest for justice, in that Kohler is able to elude justice. This first chapter sets up the idea of the Kantian hero and Kantian villain. Kantian heroes and villains differ from conventional heroes and villains in that they are judged not by conventional standards but by ideas of duty, or deontologically based ethics, as well as how they treat the inherent dignity of their fellow humans. This conflict between Kantian hero and villain continues into the second chapter, which is also a detective novel by Durrenmatt, called Der Richter und sein Henker. The villain in this story is just as villainous as the hero is heroic, and again I will work with Kantian ideas of ethics to enhance the ideas of what makes a hero or villain. By this point it will be the case that conventional methods of defining heroes and villains are quite different from Kantian standards. In the third chapter, I bring in the spy fiction of John (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2022, English

Withering is a collection of seven stories rooted in an exploration of humanity's relationship with the natural world and with itself. Spanning geographies and time periods, these stories are connected in their primary impulse to reconsider passivity in the face of environmental degradation. Other prominent themes in the collection are dynamic social identities and the performative quality of those identities. The stories that comprise Withering are situated primarily in the eco-fabulist tradition, with other inspirations found in the New Weird movement and horror, as well as traditional realism. By blending genre, Withering seeks to decenter readers' understanding of reality. The uneasy and shifting reality through related but distinct genres serves to underscore themes of calamity and worlds that have been broken and reassembled in new ways. Withering challenges popular notions of crisis, environmental and otherwise, as being a purely distinct event, having a clear “before” and “after;” rather, my thesis considers crisis a degenerative process, much in the way a plant slowly withers away over time, leaf after leaf shriveling up and falling.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, English

This dissertation examines how recent works of Black apocalyptic fiction represent the opportunities and limits of crisis as a driver of radical social change. Black apocalyptic fiction deals explicitly and substantively with what it means to be Black during, and in the aftermath of, apocalypse. It is a subset of the genre of Black speculative fiction, a broad category for texts by the African diaspora that resist purely realist or mimetic representation of the world and encompasses several genres, most commonly science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and horror. Black speculative fiction has garnered considerable academic interest in recent years and has been recognized as a rich site for analyzing race and racial differences in popular culture. This project joins the emerging critical conversation of scholars such as Isiah Lavender III, Ramon Saldivar, Lisa Yaszek, and Marleen Barr, to analyze how Black writers engage with, challenge, and revise the conventions of the speculative genres. However, critical engagement with apocalypse in Black speculative fiction is still relatively sparse, as is scholarship addressing the representations of race and gender in Black apocalyptic fiction. Using intersectionality as a theoretical framework, I address this gap in current scholarship through a sustained consideration of Black apocalyptic fiction and the intersections of race and gender therein. This dissertation begins to answer the question of how race and gender impact the potential for radical change in the wake of extreme crisis. Literary representations of apocalypse provide one form of what Nnedi Okorafor calls “the distancing and associating effect” of science fiction. They depict familiar spaces made strange through the lens of total destruction. Apocalypse narratives have a long history and have served many functions over time, including articulation of societal anxieties, social critique, and utopian striving. Black apocalyptic fiction extends this (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Spanish and Portuguese

Gay Chicano authors have been criticized for not forming the same type of strong literary identity and community as their Chicana feminist counterparts, a counterpublic that has given voice not only to themselves as authors, but also to countless readers who see themselves reflected in their texts. One of the strengths of the Chicana feminist movement is that they have not only produced their own works, but have made sense of them as well, creating a female-to-female tradition that was previously lacking. Instead of merely reiterating that gay Chicano authors have not formed this community and common identity, this dissertation instead turns the conversation toward the reader. Specifically, I move from how authors make sense of their texts and form community, to how readers may make sense of texts, and finally, to how readers form community. I limit this conversation to three authors in particular—Alex Espinoza, Rigoberto Gonzalez, and Manuel Munoz—whom I label the second generation of gay Chicano writers. In Gonzalez, I combine the cognitive study of empathy and sympathy to examine how he constructs affective planes that pull the reader into feeling for and with the characters that he draws. I also further elaborate on what the real world consequences of this affective union—existing between character and audience—may be. In Munoz, I consider how, through the destabilization of the narrator position, the author constructs storyworlds that first pull the reader in, and then push them out of the narrative in a search for closure. Here, I theorize that he forces the reader to mind read his narrators in order to discern their true intentions. In Espinoza, I explore the typification of Latino/a literature in the marketplace and how it has become tied to magical realism. Here, I posit that Espinoza has created a magic realized novel, one that presents itself as something magical realist, but systemically discredits the notion of magic throughout the work. I use co (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2022, English

When Nate Luck arrives in California in 1853, he is a wide-eyed, half Russian/half Buriat Mongol kid in love with the idea and ideals of America, looking for freedom and adventure – and he finds plenty of both. Over the next forty years Nate wins devoted friends and fierce enemies, digs for gold in California, punches cattle in Colorado, fights for - and against - the nation, falls in love, lives with and raises a family among the Nez Perce tribe, and sees - and spills - more than his share of blood in the pursuit of freedom and the American Dream. Finally, seeing the law as the only possible path to real freedom, he becomes a lawman – until he's arrested for murder. Fortunately, in Buffalo, Wyoming they take their time holding a trial, so he hopes he can tell his story and make sense of it all before they hang him. Nate's unique perspective and voice as an outsider provides a clear-eyed look at both what America's aspirations and failures. It also invites consideration that, despite all our progress, many of the issues faced by the powerless in 19th century America continue today.

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2022, English

Gregor Samsa is changing. Expelled from the Army, disoriented by the stresses undergone during treatment at a sanatorium, and pressured into a job he loathes, Gregor clings to writing as a source of identity. In his diaries and notebooks, Gregor struggles to make sense of the world, his body, his relationships with others, and the workings of his own mind. As he contends with his inner dualism—the urge to create and the impulse to self-destruct—the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur. In this reimagining of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Gregor's human past is revealed through written forms such as diary entries, letters, interviews, and telegrams. As readers encounter a variety of narrative structures, gaps in recorded history, and a chorus of unreliable narrators, they are invited to take part in puzzling together the story of a life on the verge of an extraordinary transformation.

Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2019, East Asian Studies

The first decades of the 21st century have seen a remarkable rise in science fiction novels and short stories by Chinese authors, whose works have attracted international attention and success. Although highly imaginative and fantastical works of literature have a long history in China, the genre of science fiction has experienced long periods of interruption and obstacles that limited the genre's constant growth. During the Cultural Revolution, any films, books or plays that were not actively promoting the Chinese Communist Party were not condoned by the State or seen as useful to Chinese society. Science fiction literature generally did not fall within the strict confines of the socialist realism genre and therefore virtually died out during the middle of the twentieth century. As the Cultural Revolution ended, the influx of culture included non-Chinese science fiction literature and sparked a renewed interest in the genre. Three authors in particular, Han Song, Liu Cixin, and Hao Jingfang, are actively ushering in a new age of Chinese literature with their fascinating works of science fiction, which comment on the state of humanity and the Chinese experience. The new age of Chinese science fiction takes root in the satirical nature of the genre's origins, serving primarily as criticism of China's sociopolitical state. It is with these criticisms that modern science fiction authors employ the characteristics of the genre in order to openly, accurately and creatively portray their experience as Chinese people. This “Golden Age” of Chinese science fiction could be more accurately described as an “Electric Era,” containing a small but powerful spark that will soon light up as a global sensation, bringing critical discussions of the Chinese experience to both domestic and international readers.

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2018, English

Dotted Lines is a collection of short stories centered around commodification to reflect the ways systemic ideologies affect the individual psyche. By placing monetary value on abstractions like death and time, I comment on consumer culture and capitalist influence. Similarly, I inspect social constructs like gender, sexuality, and love to dissect the patriarchal/puritanical foundations from which westernized perspectives are derived, with emphasis given to queer relationships. I convey these stories with consideration for accessibility, prioritizing clarity and humor. Fabulism, realism, transgression, and absurdity are all present within the collection, with tonal influences of Mary Gaitskill, Lorrie Moore, and Flannery O'Connor.

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, English

This thesis is comprised of short fiction ranging from four to eighty pages, inhabiting worlds as familiar to the reader as a suburban home and as alien as a magical, spirit-filled wasteland. I assembled this collection along three key thematic lines, the first being feelings of ambivalent motherhood. Characters in this collection come to terms with their pregnancy or reject it; they leave their families wondering if they should have had children at all; and they live in a liminal space where love is expected of them but not easy to procure. The second thematic concern present in many of these stories is grappling with mythology. In “Ithaca”, a young woman is introduced to a cosmic mythology by her aging employer. In “Investigation No. 5,” a family mythology is investigated as if it holds as much importance as one of the major world religions. Disillusionment with Judeo-Christian mythology is portrayed in “In the Pool,” and “Shoulder, Midrib, Neck” deals with the retelling of a Scottish myth. The final theme running through these stories is that of generational legacy: what a parent bequeaths to their children far beyond physical possessions. How is that legacy corrupted by the actions of the parent? How can a child fit themselves into the world, bearing these often-sordid gifts? Characters struggle with these questions in “Nomads,” “Shoulder, Midrib, Neck,” and the novella that ends the collection, “The Ballad of Baby MacCrae.” The novella is the story where all of these themes come back and braid together. The solitary narrator must grapple with the worldview she's been indoctrinated into by her aunt: pagan Celtic beliefs, Old Testament Christianity, and blood rituals. This novella concerns how a woman can bring a private mythology into the public world, and how she can make peace with the legacies that have been left to her.

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2017, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

In the early part of the twentieth century, the Modernist literary movement was moving into what was arguably its peak, and authors we would now unquestioningly consider part of the Western literary canon were creating some of their greatest works. Coinciding with the more mainstream Modernist movement, there emerged a unique sub- genre of fiction on the pages of magazines with titles like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories. While modernist writers; including Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, William Faulkner, and T.S. Elliot – among others – were achieving acclaim for their works; in the small corner of unique weird fiction there was one eccentric, bookish writer who rose above his own peers: Howard Phillips Lovecraft. I would argue that within the works of Lovecraft there are glimpses of modernism. Lovecraft was aware of and wrote with an understanding of the concerns of the more mainstream literature of the Modernists, and he situated his narratives and stories within a modernist framework that reflected this. Most importantly, it is the way in which Lovecraft used science and religion, and blended myth with material culture, that Lovecraft most reflects modernist leanings. It's important to make the distinction that he is not part and parcel a Modernist, but he was influenced by, interacted with, and showed modernist tendencies. There is a subtlety to the argument being made here in that Lovecraft was not Joyce, he was not Elliot, he was most definitely not Hemingway, and his fiction was by no means what we would consider traditionally modernist. In 2005 he received inclusion in the Library of America series and, although this isn't an indicator or guarantee of inclusion in a large canon, the argument that he in no way had a discourse, awareness, or did not contribute to what would be more properly termed `Modernist' warrants consideration when properly situating Lovecraft within early-twentieth century lite (open full item for complete abstract)

BFA, Kent State University, 2017, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This piece focuses on the issues surrounding the lack of diversity in media, particularly within the genre of Young Adult literature. The excerpt is from a novel about children with special powers living in an otherwise ordinary world. The excerpt makes use of various methods of including diversity in one's work as well as examining the character creation process and how said characters came to be.

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2016, English

This thesis consists of five original short stories and a critical introduction in which I explore my notion of "quiet realism." Quiet realism is the lens through which I seek to describe, explore, and understand the stories and writers that have inspired the writing of these stories. Quiet realism has much to do with the inner life—what is not quite visible and what often is difficult to say.

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2016, Creative Writing/Fiction

Warp and Woof is a story collection primarily governed by non-linear, woven story forms. My interest in forms that draw attention to the artifice of story is inherently tied to a love for the oral tradition I grew up with in rural Pennsylvania and, more broadly, northern Appalachia. The way that stories told aloud wind and weave creates a kind of atmospheric cloud that's as much about the telling as it is the words themselves. In my study, woven story forms seem to best emulate that atmosphere. What's more, Warp and Woof's subjects and characters are tied to the same region as its forms, making this as much a collection of place as it is one of structural experimentation. Here are hills, forests, small farms, and animals; dirt tracks, and Sunday School, 4-H, and dogs chained long in kennels. The characters at the center of the stories that make up Warp and Woof are necessarily struggling in search of a personal narrative, a metaphor. The weaving of different times, voices, and points of view provides the reader with a system of symbols for understanding this search on a built-in, experiential level, even if the characters never find what they're looking for.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, East Asian Languages and Literatures

In the immediate aftermath of the dynastic transition in 1644, when the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) collapsed and the Manchus claimed to be the holder of Heaven's Mandate to rule the empire, a de novo novelistic genre emerged in the book market, typically grouped under the label of "scholar-beauty fiction." These novels soon ascended the best-seller list and enjoyed long-lasting popularity throughout the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Interestingly, Qing-dynasty critics as well as modern scholars have dismissed this large corpus of novels as light-hearted romance. By contrast, my dissertation seeks to address the question of the curious popularity of this genre. It proposes to view this literary phenomenon as the earliest self-conscious genre fiction in the Chinese context. As a commercially-driven genre, these novels follow a narrative formula and provide entertainment and comfort through happy fantasies of wish-fulfillment, but they also engage serious social and political concerns in explicit and indirect ways. The narrative flexibility allowed by the formula enabled the genre's ideological versatility. As such, scholar-beauty fiction served as an effective venue of self-expression and social commentary for frustrated and obscure literati writers, one that was welcomed by their peers and by other audiences.

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2013, English-Literature

This thesis examines Theodore Dreiser's "Sister Carrie," Frank Norris's "Vandover and the Brute," Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth," Jack London's "Martin Eden," Abraham Cahan's "The Rise of David Levinsky," and Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" as well as relevant secondary sources in order to study themes of socio-economic mobility across the genre. Chapter one discusses upward mobility and compares and contrasts the rises of Carrie Meeber and Martin Eden in an attempt to ascertain what exactly makes a socio-economic rise successful and what makes it impossible. Chapter two discusses George Hurstwood, Vandover, and Lily Bart and their respective declines in socio-economic status. This chapter examines the factors that led to these characters' downward movement and determines trends across the genre. The final chapter discusses Jurgis Rudkus and David Levinsky and their disparate levels of success after immigrating to America. This chapter points out the difficulties in becoming financially and socially successful and also discusses the importance of assimilation and the embrace of capitalism in order to succeed in America.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2007, Arts and Sciences : English and Comparative Literature

This dissertation examines the role of documentary fiction within contemporary media culture. Through the authors' inclusion of documented historical events/personages and their critical mediation of these documents, the writers show an awareness of the mediated nature of historical knowledge—including a consciousness of their own act of novelistic mediation. As a result, I argue that contemporary documentary fiction, through its recognition of the inevitability of mediation and the challenges it brings to entrenched cultural notions, is best equipped to thrive in the media-saturated marketplace. In order to explore the variety of ways contemporary documentary fictions “navigate the media torrent,” I have paired the texts according to similarities in form and mode of mediation. Each chapter examines the authors' novelistic renderings of history against dominant nonfictional accounts in order to analyze the authors' mediations of and challenges to hegemonic conceptions of that history. Before moving to the pairs, however, I briefly examine the methodology of E.L. Doctorow's The March, ultimately dismissing it as outdated. The first dyad, then, includes Lewis Nordan's Wolf Whistle and Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies, which emphasize the imaginative nature of memory in order to influence and even alter their communities' collective memory. In the second pairing, Rene Steinke's Holy Skirts and Charles Johnson's Dreamer utilize a fictional biography form to revise popular conceptions of their biographical subjects, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Martin Luther King, Jr. respectively. Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days and Mark Winegardner's The Veracruz Blues challenge American mythology by representing their characters' searches for—and inability to find—Truth. The final pairing includes Christopher Sorrentino's Trance and William Vollmann's The Ice-Shirt. Sorrentino takes media distortion as his critical target, and Vollmann, with a grand encyclopedic s (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, East Asian Languages and Literatures

During the twenty-five years between the beginning of the Taisho period in 1912 and the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the spread of medical psychology and sexological discourse helped contribute to the development of new ideas about masculinity and gender in Japan. Popular literature represented one forum in which people explored, promoted, and qualified these new ideas. The manifestations of male-male desire that one finds in the literature of the period, however, do not just passively reflect changes in contemporary ideology. Literary developments also helped shape the idioms that writers used to describe the subject. This dissertation examines the representations of male-male desire in the bestselling works of two authors active during this window of change: the poet, writer, and painter Murayama Kaita (1896-1919) and the mystery author Edogawa Ranpo (1894-1965). Through critical analysis and original translations of their works, this dissertation shows that their depictions of desire between men were shaped not only by changing ideas about gender relations but also the artistic movements and genres with which both authors were associated. By combining elements of gender studies and literary history, this dissertation examines the thematic interests, genre-related assumptions, and social expectations that molded their treatments of the subject. Chapter One examines the florid representations of boyish desire in Kaita's poetry and diaries from the early 1910s. These writings reflect Kaita's pseudo-symbolist notion of the poet as a visionary who drew upon manifestations of beauty to create art. Chapter Two examines the relationship between decadent sentiment, male beauty, and Kaita's own artistic aspirations in "Bishonen Saraino no kubi" ("The Bust of the Beautiful Young Salaino"), a story about a dream-like competition with Leonardo da Vinci for the love of one of Leonardo's disciples. This chapter also examines the connections between pre-modernity, decaden (open full item for complete abstract)