Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2010, English (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation is a collection of creative essays preceded by a critical introduction that defines what the author calls "The Aesthetic of Friendship." That essay explores the work of Mary Karr, Edward Hoagland, Patricia Foster, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginia Woolf, and David Foster Wallace, with particular focus on writer-reader connection. The ten creative essays that follow explore issues of family influence and empathy (and also love, and chili, and college theater, and nuclear power).

Committee: Dinty Moore MFA (Committee Chair); David Burton PhD (Committee Member); Mark Halliday PhD (Committee Member); Carey Snyder PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: English literature