Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2024, Music

Tracking the development of experimental music from 1920 to 1970, this paper seeks to explore how Artists have dealt with and worked within the Absurdity of Life. From Arnold Schoenberg, to John Cage, to Fluxus, the artistic shifts brought by these artists move toward a gradual acceptance of the Absurd and the break down of the Art/Life divide. Accompanying the research is a portion of an opera I wrote that simultaneously analyzes, comments on, and participates in the conflict between the Absurd and the Ideal in Art. The opera follows the poet Stephane Mallarme on his journey to create perfect expression through language despite several Absurd scenarios ranging from the fantastic to the deeply human.

Committee: Robert McClure (Advisor) Subjects: Art History; Music; Performing Arts

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Creative Writing/Fiction

Crowd-Pleaser: Stories is a collection of short stories that is conceptually interested in the rhetorical dynamics between observers and the observed. Across the genres of absurdism, dystopia, and satire, and under the aesthetic umbrella of postmodernism, these stories ask readers to consider how they perceive others under varying contexts. How do we perceive lives displayed in museums versus visitors at those museums? How do we perceive a wild polar bear versus a polar bear in a glass enclosure? A principal focus across this collection is deconstructing the societal norms that enable people and systems to mine particular lives for educational or entertainment value. These stories are also concerned with space and its commodification. Each story is interested in the spaces that are not obviously commodified but might eventually be as capitalism runs out of free space to consume. Some of these new spaces include private aspects of the body, the grave, and the afterlife, among others. Though extreme and fantastic, the commodification of the afterlife only humorously realizes a realist trend of insatiable corporatization. These stories are heavily influenced by authors such as Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, George Saunders, Aimee Bender, and Kelly Link. The stories in this collection, like the authors listed above, mix and subvert various genres to defamiliarize our complacent, uninterrogated understandings of the systems we ignorantly uphold.

Committee: Pauls Toutonghi Ph.D. (Committee Member); Reema Rajbanshi Ph.D. (Committee Chair) Subjects: Literature

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2022, English

Focused on alternate universes where you can get your car taxidermied, where you can be reincarnated as your neighbor's golden retriever, and where you have conversations with loved ones you've meant to all your life (but couldn't), In This Universe is a collection of branching what-ifs and cosmic could've-beens, a multiverse-jumping selection of short speculative personal essays, lyrical essays, and braided essays that challenges genre conventions and questions the idea of whether a single universe even exists that can accommodate multiple ways of being. Though it deals with many different subject matters, there is always the presence of an alternate universes working as a sort of metaphor for future-thinking and alternate ways of being. Written with the intention of providing a space for folks who don't see themselves as valid in this world, or who can't imagine possibilities for themselves in this world, In This Universe looks to reimagine embodiment and to reshape spaces and ways of being, so that we might discover for ourselves far grander, perhaps far stranger, and mostly hidden possible realities.

Committee: Daisy Hernández (Committee Chair); TaraShea Nesbit (Committee Member); Jody Bates (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

BA, Oberlin College, 2021, Russian and East European Studies

This project focuses on the philosophy of Yakov Druskin and its applicability as a lens through which to examine the metaphysical and religious elements of chinari literature. Formed in Leningrad at the dawn of the Soviet Union, the group of authors and philosophers known as the chinari has long been recognized as an important component of the Russian avant-garde. However, the role of religion and spirituality in their works remains under-examined, despite the fact that the group featured a prolific religious philosopher, Yakov Druskin. By exploring a selection of Druskin's philosophical concepts and applying them to major chinari texts—Daniil Kharms' “The Old Woman” and Alexander Vvedensky's “God May be All Around”— I argue that Druskin helps us look beyond the grotesque and comic aspects of the group to uncover deeper themes of faith, selfhood, and transcendence. The project adds to our understanding of the chinari and works to fill a gap in Slavic studies, as Druskin has received very little scholarly attention in the field. This research also points to new directions for further study, prompting us to examine more closely the influence of theology and European existentialism on the Soviet literature of the absurd.

Committee: Vladimir Ivantsov (Advisor); Thomas Newlin (Committee Member); Maia Solovieva (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Metaphysics; Religion; Slavic Literature; Slavic Studies

MA, Kent State University, 2020, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

In this thesis, I argue that there is a metaphysical shift in Albert Camus's philosophy which allows him to build an ethics of revolt in his later work out of his earlier, individual-focused account of absurdism. Against Herbert Hochberg and other scholars who argue that Camus's later work is inconsistent with his earlier work, this thesis tracks the progression of Camus's thought in order to demonstrate that his ethics does not constitute a rupture with his past work but a consistent evolution of it. First dealing with the problem of suicide covered in the Sisyphean cycle, the thesis goes on to examine the ethics of rebellion in the Promethean cycle and concludes with a speculative consideration of the third, incomplete cycle on love. Taken together, these chapters show that the consistent evolution of Camus's absurdism argues the reaction to the absurd that one ought to have is that of agape: the recognition of humanity's innate power to create value as a transcendental structure of consciousness.

Committee: Benjamin Berger (Advisor) Subjects: Philosophy

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.

Committee: Margaret Luongo (Advisor); Joseph Bates (Committee Member); Daisy Hernandez (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Music (MM), Ohio University, 2015, Music Composition (Fine Arts)

The Chromatic Fall is a one-act play with music. It is scored for clarinet, percussion, cello, and piano as well as the 12 actors needed to tell the story. It is an absurdist fantasy drama-comedy expounding on the rise and fall of heroes and villains. The music begins in the key of C and descends through every chromatic key area throughout the story, landing back in C for the final group number. Passages also use a blend of chormaticism and tonality, traditional harmony and more avant-garde experiments, to create the mood and aesthetic behind the action.

Committee: Mark Phillips Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Music

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2012, Theater

This thesis explores Samuel Beckett's Happy Days through feminist theater theory. This thesis explores absurdism as a genre,Samuel Beckett, Happy Days and gender, and expolres a 2012 performance of the text through primarily radical and materalist feminist theories.

Committee: William F. Condee Dr. (Advisor); Angela Alhgren Dr. (Advisor); Shelley Delaney (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts; Gender; Gender Studies; Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies; Womens Studies