Master of Fine Arts, University of Akron, 2014, Creative Writing

This coming of age novel follows three friends as they navigate through their final summer before high school. Sanders is the son of a religious fanatic determined to control the citizens of the small town and manipulate them to do her bidding. Johnny is the leader of the pack, inherently violent and misguided. Andrew, the narrator, is a peacekeeper who finds himself strangely attached to Johnny and all of the wildness he embodies. As a traveling carnival comes to town for the annual Giant's Festival, a girl their age goes missing, and the town becomes restless in searching for the one responsible. No one is safe, and everything will change as these childhood friends begin to realize that they are as monstrous as they're ever going to be and they are at an age where their future identities hang in the balance, weighted and determined by the decisions they make and subsequently avoid.

Committee: Christopher Barzak Mr. (Advisor); Robert Pope Mr. (Committee Member); Imad Rahman Mr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts; Gender; Gender Studies; Literature

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2025, English

This thesis studies the psychological and emotional tensions embedded in the mother-daughter relationship in Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird through the framework of Sigmund Freud's “The Family Romances.” By examining Lady Bird's narrative arc, this study demonstrates how development and maturity can only be achieved by separating ourselves from the parental figures in our lives. It also shows how the protagonist's desire for autonomy is linked to her turbulent relationship with her mother, who functions as both a mirror and an obstacle.. Through close textual and visual analysis, the paper argues that Lady Bird's rejection of her given name, her fantasies of wealth and belonging, and her eventual geographical and emotional departure from her family home all constitute a Freudian process of individuation known as the “Family Romances”. It is only through this painful detachment that the protagonist begins to view her mother not as a limiting force, but as a complex individual. This understanding marks the emergence of a more integrated and autonomous self.

Committee: Andrew Slade (Committee Chair); Andrew Slade (Advisor); Shannon Toll (Committee Member); Bryan Bardine (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Developmental Psychology; Education; Educational Psychology; Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Literature; Psychology

MFA, Kent State University, 2025, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Life is simple for Miranda. She lives with her family in the forest, where she and her mother work in the garden and go on walks through the forest. Uncle Peter goes out most days for food and supplies, and Grandma Nora keeps the house in order. Miranda is curious about the world outside her home, but she knows she can never leave. For you see, there are monsters not too far from home, and Miranda must stay with her family to keep safe. However, Miranda slowly begins to believe that there might be sinster things closer to home than she once thought. Her family is not always as nice and loving as she would like, and there always seems to be a fight happening and secrets only a moment away from being revealed. Miranda must discover why Uncle Peter and Grandma Nora want her to always stay near home, and why her mother seems so desperate to keep her away from them.

Committee: Imad Rahman (Advisor); Catherine Wing (Committee Member); David Giffels (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

MFA, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Kids Can Be Cruel is an action Young Adult novel that uses domestic horror and subversive comedy to investigate the connections between people. YA novels cover many different topics, but in distillation, they work to explore relationships between people. Inspired by Daniel Handler's semi-absurdist drama A Series of Unfortunate Events, Bryan Lee O'Malley's very-absurdist action/romance Scott Pilgrim series, and Hiromu Arakawa's politically conscious fantasy adventure Fullmetal Alchemist (among others), Kids aims to emulate these works' bending of genres and conventions — and their relationship themes. Protagonist Maria may not always understand it, but her world is one where relationships are created, tested, and broken in sparks of fire.

Committee: Imad Rahman (Committee Chair); Catherine Wing (Advisor); Christopher Barzak (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2023, American Culture Studies

Good Times? is an examination of the American film industry of the 1990s, with a focus on how both the major studios and independent distributors capitalized on cultural recycling of the 1970s. On the side of the major Hollywood studios, intellectual property became increasingly important as established brands could effectively be revived and resold to audiences. In independent cinema, filmmakers sampled the music, stars, and their own personal experiences from the 1970s, in line with larger aesthetic trends of postmodernism. The films studied in this project essentially mark a meeting point between these multiple trends. An appeal to nostalgia, broadly defined, for the 1970s provided a useful strategy for both reviving brands of that time and using them in the new ways afforded by postmodernism (such as parody and sampling) and the diverse perspectives of multiculturalism. My central argument is that, in the 1990s, both Hollywood and independent cinema utilized “the seventies” as a product to be sold and the past as something to be marketed. The primary way studio and independent films achieved this was through marketing tactics that made the seventies into a brand on multiple synergistic channels. Chapter one surveys the industrial landscape impacting the entertainment industry of the time, while chapter two covers the cultural trends of multiculturalism and postmodernism. Chapter three shows how ‘70s-set coming-of-age films from Gen X filmmakers had a rather serious take on growing up while their distributors glossed over these elements to highlight elements associated with nostalgia. Chapter four analyzes the studios' role in the nostalgia wave through recycling brands via synergy, as Paramount/Viacom did with The Brady Bunch. Chapter five examines independents' sampling of imagery and stars associated with blaxploitation to promote their films and ancillary products. Employing an industry studies perspective, the project uses a diverse collection of text (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Cynthia Baron Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Cortland Rankin Ph.D. (Committee Member); Andrew Schocket Ph.D. (Committee Member); Melissa Burek Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: American Studies; Film Studies

MFA, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Growing is a story about a family in southern Ohio growing up and growing apart in 2006. Teenage sisters Harper and Kennedy are drinking and smoking their summer away with their best friend August when Kennedy stumbles upon the real reason behind their father's preference to build their clubhouse in a remote area. Amidst their parents divorce, they struggle to cope with the reality of their deeply clandestine family secrets; meanwhile August is finding it harder to address his sexual identity as his bigoted father re-enters his family picture. Unbeknownst to the sisters, the family business has expanded into the wilderness of their childhood, and has attracted unwanted attention from people who'd like to see it permanently shut down. The kind of people who'd do anything to take it over, and would go to extreme lengths to silence anyone who gets in their way.

Committee: Imad Rahman (Advisor) Subjects: Literature

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Creative Writing/Fiction

With[in]out is an artistic experimentation and liberation of hybrid stories that mirror thought processes and memory through an array of characters from an array of genres. Each piece utilizes form, genre, diction, white space, and style to best exhibit the inner worlds of characters on the page as well as the worlds the characters themselves inhabit. With[in]out creates a space for characters to go on a complex, internal journey involving difficult decisions, mental illness, trauma, isolation, and recovery. The collection asserts that memory is but a collage of images and sensory experiences and asks the reader to consider this tenet, as well as the stylistic choices within each piece, to gain a deeper understanding of how each character operates, to viscerally immerse oneself beyond prose conventions.

Committee: Lawrence Coates Ph. D. (Advisor); Abigail Cloud Ph. D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Environmental Philosophy; Ethics; Experiments; Families and Family Life; Individual and Family Studies; Language; Mental Health; Personal Relationships; Psychology

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Creative Writing/Fiction

DANCING WITH BIRDS is a historical fiction that follows the Al-Hani family from the 1930s Palestinian Resistance Movements to the Six Day War of 1967. It is a story about a family's effort to keep a sense of belonging during a time where the familiar transforms to the unthinkable, from Palestine to a new state called Israel. Told chronologically in five parts representing fragmented identities, the story first follows Ibrahim, who is forever torn between defending his nation or protecting his family throughout the 1930s and, then, again at the 1948 Haganah intrusions into his village. It follows his son, Hamza, after a harsh separation, taking the reader on a route from Haifa to Acre as Hamza leads his family to refuge. It follows Ehud, a Jewish boy loved to Ibrahim as his own son, as he struggles with his newfound Israeli identity in his post-Palestine 1950s homeland. The Six Day War of 1967 then sheds light on these characters and their families, who are left haunted by the past and the future alike. It is a story of fatherhood and of boyhood—of a father who struggles to protect his family and his nation, of a son who comes to age during a time of war, only to balance responsibilities of adulthood and desires of childhood. It is a story of sacrifice for something greater than oneself, of family and patriotic duty at the same time, of friendship, and of identity. Following over two decades of time, this novel's real estate (approximately 110,000 words) takes its reader on a journey through time that shares the pains of war and loss, of hope and faith, of responsibility and resilience.

Committee: Lawrence Coates Ph.D. (Advisor); Brad Felver M.F.A. (Committee Member) Subjects: Language Arts

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, English

The Narrative Space of Childhood traces the representations of childhood in 21st century Anglophone Arab literature in the diaspora. Concerned with the contemporary moment, this study focuses exclusively on Anglophone Arab coming-of-age narratives published post 2000 including Rabih Alameddine's The Hakawati, Alia Yunis's The Night Counter, Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men, Nathalie Abi-Ezzi's A Girl Made of Dust, Alicia Erian's Towelhead, and Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home. Anglophone Arab writers frequently place children at the center of their literary production, most notably in the midst of conflict-ridden zones besieged by threats of violence, daily terror, and political unrest. Child narrators in Anglophone Arab literature function as reluctant witnesses, innocent bystanders, and unwitting collaborators. In many cases, they become active participants, exercising agency, sometimes finding themselves culpable in the violence. Children frequently offer testimonials, inscribe the battlefield as a playground enacting multiple states of play, become collateral damage dispossessed of home and family, and serve as a repository for collective memory in terms of families, communities, cultures, and generations. Children's perspectives are limited in understanding the confluence of events unfolding within a conflict zone. Their naivety, however, is relatively short-lived. The child's vision provides a piercing, unflinching depiction of history from a vantage point that explodes conventional sentiment in favor of a more penetrating, debilitating, and raw vision of crisis. The figure of the child in 21st century Anglophone Arab diasporic literature interrogates, challenges, and resists facile tropes of sentimentality, nostalgia, and authenticity. Most evident in these works is the child's capacity to instruct, rehabilitate, and complicate adults' beliefs about gender, sexuality, masculinity, femininity, memory, trauma, and play. The post 9/11 Era as it relates to yo (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Martin Ponce (Advisor); Lynn Itagaki (Committee Member); Dorothy Noyes (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; British and Irish Literature; Gender Studies; Literature

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

Nadia Montgomery is unapologetic. She tells it like it is and does what she wants, but on the inside she suffers from her emotionally painful past, which she refuses to confront. One day, she decides to drop out of college and run away by herself, a young woman's journey for self-discovery. She winds up in Washington, D.C. looking for fun and adventure, but the trip is not what she expects. Along the way, she is urged to face her true emotions and her unpleasant past. Nadia tells the story of a young woman's journey of running away in the 21st century and the feelings of inadequacy, isolation, and longing for something "more" that so many of her peers experience today.

Committee: Barbara Karman (Advisor); Edward Dauterich (Committee Member); Kimberly Winebrenner (Committee Member); Joy St. James (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2017, English

The inspiration for this manuscript came originally from my travel to Half Moon Bay: a surprisingly intimate community nestled in the San Francisco Bay Area. What ultimately emerged was a story about a boy's coming of age with some things I myself witnessed at that age: broken friendships and promises, a slow dissolution of who I was, and who my family was. While much of Birch's story is his on, it is also mine, and all ours. What most compelled me to write this though, was how trauma during our teenage years can haunt us into our adulthood. Such is the case with Birch, and the occasion for him telling this story, many years after the fact.

Committee: Joseph Bates Dr. (Committee Chair); Cathy Wagner Dr. (Committee Member); Brian Roley Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2016, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

The following stories contained in this thesis were all written and revised in fiction-writing workshops at Cleveland State University in pursuance of the MA degree. Each story is either autobiographical or semi-autobiographical, and each portrays the protagonist pursuing a romantic goal as he struggles against adverse circumstances. The setting and characters are developed in each story to challenge the protagonist in a myriad of ways and force him to act in pursuance of his goal. The basic situations and results vary somewhat. In “A Dolphin and a Seal,” a young boy attempts to impress an older girl, but the consequence is such that he is forced to retreat back into childhood. In "Blood," he realizes that he is a very different being than his father, and in an effort to connect with a girl about his age, he commits an act of defiance which evidences a step forward toward manhood and a break with his father. In “Bad Butterflies,” the same character, now an adult, is pursued by a too-young student and a too-old and otherwise unacceptable teacher as he attempts to connect with his own love interest. In the end, he recognizes the sheer randomness of it all and learns to appreciate what he does have. I believe that in each case, the conclusion reached is that the events and people which populate our lives are often at odds with our own inner desires and needs, and that regardless of the results of our efforts, we ultimately must create our own sense of meaning. Thus, this collection displays a decidedly existentialist bent. Over the past two years, I have revised each story a number of times in accordance with the suggestions of my instructors and fellow students at Cleveland State University. I believe that now each story works in conjunction with the others in this collection as well as on its own.

Committee: Ahmad Rahman MFA (Committee Chair); Caryl Pagel MFA (Committee Member); Michael Geither MFA (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2016, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

If you start looking at 19th century French literature with the figure of the prostitute in mind, it becomes fairly obvious that this particular type of character is omnipresent everywhere – in fiction and in reality. Sometimes even, the prostitute is supposedly the main character of a novel, of a play or of a short-story. However, this complicated figure does not seem to be given quite the attention she deserves, and the readers often find themselves closing the book without clearly understanding her. In this thesis, we will thus try to show how 19th century authors create and describe the world of prostitution in Paris, but also question the consequences within the texts of the very typically masculine gaze that seems to rule a world where women – and especially prostitutes – cannot have any power over themselves.

Committee: Audrey Wasser Pr. (Committee Chair); Elisabeth Hodges Pr. (Committee Member); Anna Klosowska Pr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Comparative Literature; European Studies; Gender Studies; Language

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2015, English

This collection of short stories tracks its protagonist from the onset of adolescence to the confused aftermath of college, and is about his repeated and doomed attempts to live free of uncertainty.

Committee: Lee Martin (Advisor); Erin McGraw (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts; Literature

MFA, Kent State University, 2014, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

The themes and focuses of each essay in this collection are all largely coming-of-age stories, loss of innocence stories, and some fish out of water stories, though the sub-genre of the collective work is not memoir, but rather personal essay. When I use the term stories I mean only in the capacity that I draw from my personal experiences to illustrate a larger, more abstract idea that I then explore, similar to the structure of an academic essay—though with more creative license—just using largely my own experience in place of supportive and illustrative research. The overarching theme of the work itself is an examination of the relationship between fantasy and reality. Not only do I explore this relationship in the content of my essays, but in the writing style as well, as I frequently experiment with blending fiction into my nonfiction, thus paralleling the relationship. As with most creative works, this focus is exploratory. I do not make any promises, gambles, or explicit hypotheses about the end results, in part because the writing I do is highly subjective, but also because good creative writing is often more about the journey than the destination, and planning the end result ruins the process of writing it. With that said though, I hope to show, using my own experiences as example, that the transition from child to adult is a struggle, largely because of the disillusionment that comes with it, the suspension if not expulsion of childhood fantasies sacrificed for grown-up reality. And yet, fantasy still plays an integral part in adult life, it's just often relegated to fantasy, whereas as for a child, fantasy is the majority fabric that defines reality—Mom and Dad are superheroes, mythical entities like Santa and the Easter Bunny are accepted without question, play is driven by imagination that pours from the minds of children filling in the massive gaps in reality they don't understand or aren't even aware of yet similarly to how adult societies have his (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Giffels (Advisor); Chris Barzak (Committee Member); Craig Paulenich (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts; Journalism; Literature; Personal Relationships; Personality

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2013, English

This is a novel that sets out to tell the story of one family affected my mental illness, the Morgan's. At its baseline, this novel tells the story of a family who has been rocked by their mother's bipolar disorder and her subsequent actions. However, this piece also endeavors to entice and empower the reader to discover the Morgan's in a modular, non-linear, multi-generic style. The structure and genres are meant to heighten the mystery surrounding the mother's disappearance and highlight the experiences of the individuals in the family. For example, parts of the novel are told through the teenage daughter's diary entries where the reader may experience Aiya more intimately and hear her voice clearly in the midst of confusion. Ultimately, "Journee" presents the mosaic of this family's life.

Committee: Margaret Luongo MFA (Advisor); Timothy Melley PhD (Committee Member); Joseph Bates PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Fine Arts; Language; Language Arts; Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2007, English

Evans, Theresa Marie. M.A., Department of English Language and Literatures, Wright State University, 2007. Down at the Bowl: A Novel. Novel set in late-1970s Cincinnati, on its traditionally conservative, Catholic west side. Karen is a sheltered seventeen-year-old girl, who gets a job bussing tables at a bowling alley restaurant. Unlike the friends she has struggled to fit in with throughout high school, Karen finds she is immediately welcomed into the group of teenagers who work there. She tries to become more street smart like her new friends, but finds herself jolted by their casual attitudes towards drinking, drugs, and sex. Along with the coming-of-age theme, the story addresses issues of homosexuality in a time when gays were just beginning to come out publicly. Karen struggles with her search for truth and love against the seventies' backdrop of social upheaval and economic insecurity. While the subjects are serious, the first-person narrator has a sense of humor and enduring hope that reflects the bittersweet and fleeting nature of teenage melodrama.

Committee: Erin Flanagan (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, American

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2007, English

My Life as a Pinball is a coming-of-age, first-person narrative about a female protagonist, a thirteen-year-old girl named Alex who bounces back and forth between parents—her mother's house in Ohio and her father's house in Florida. The novella is set mostly in Florida and the plot revolves around a developing girl who is searching for agape. Alex's parents don't know how to be nurturing, as she bounces through her narrative. Her ideas about sexual love and parental love are skewed by her experience with sexual abuse. But this fourteen-year-old also clings to a dream of an ideal sexual love that is selfless. In her desire to find what she needs both for healthy sexual development, she finds ways to cope with the abuse by using her imagination and becoming, as she calls herself, “a steely marble.” Alex explains her life in her breezy teen's lingo.

Committee: Brian Roley (Advisor) Subjects:

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2006, English

Courting the Virgin Mary is the coming of age story of the child mystic Marianne Price. Marianne grows up in a lake town that functions in two capacities: as a retreat campground for a fundamentalist sect of the Christian Nazarene church and as a resort for wealthy vacationers. Thematically, the novel explores the duality of the body and spirit as Marianne struggles to reconcile what she perceives as the antithetical natures of her sexuality and her spirituality, the lake serving as the physical space in which the secular and sacred combine. Structurally, the novel is constructed using an omniscient narrative that alternates close proximity and sympathy between the four main characters of the story.

Committee: Brian Roley (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, American

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2004, English: Creative Writing

The Origins of a Circle is a collection of short stories almost entirely interconnected by a first person narrator, Christopher Saxton. The primary focus of this compilation is the relationship between the narrator and his father, a seafood salesman who deals with his life, as well as his illness, though silence, adultery, and alcoholism. With these stories, I attempt to examine the often problematic, circular courses of behavioral characteristics, such as inclinations toward absence and silence that pass from one generation to the next. By putting characters in situations where they must choose to speak or choose to stay silent and by primarily using first person narration, I seek to show how these decisions are sometimes made. I have chosen to focus on the notion of how passive-aggressiveness can be used within familial relationships as a means of both cruelty and survival.

Committee: Kay Sloan (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, American