Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2011, English

Raw is a collection of poetry that has been in the making for quite some time and addresses issues the “common” man and woman are faced with on a daily basis. The poetry within this manuscript speaks to primordial urges and desires that are buried deep deep down, in places that only the imagination can explore. These visceral poems are “raw” in the sense that they will create an immediate reaction within its readers. Raw is a collection of poetry that cannot be ignored based on its subject matter and content. Committee: Albino Carrillo (Advisor); Andrew Slade PhD (Committee Member); Bryan Bardine PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Gender; Gender Studies; Literature; Modern Literature

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2010, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Dana Gioia's controversial book Can Poetry Matter? challenges poets to write in traditional forms to expand poetry's readership beyond the “subculture” of the university. In response to Gioia's position, my thesis considers the mind-numbing trends in today's entertainment and places importance on innovation to suggest that there is potential danger in Gioia's call to conform. If the artists of a society mold their work like a commodity to be consumed by the masses, this lack of originality could stint creative progress and hinder, rather than encourage, readers' interests. Gioia's position is currently a reference point for contemporary debates about poetry and society. My position offers a new suggestion to general readers: put forth individual effort and pursue professional instruction to learn how to read poetry in order to acquire a broader appreciation for the ways poetic form enriches communication. Furthermore, what is classified as difficult poetry depends upon the canon of a culture. Writers should not be required to reach a set audience or limit their innovation.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2024, English (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation is a series of epistolary devotional poems expressing the similarities between romantic and religious fixation, as well as the complexities of being a woman in a distinct American subculture of a college community affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The accompanying essay argues that the artistic mediums of the devotional and gothic can counteract the literary sterility that is a side effect of unrestrained postmodernism.

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2014, Creative Writing/Poetry

Stellar Autopsy is a collection of original poetry that considers the relationship between loss and memory. The poems in this manuscript use landscape to compose elegies for childhood and family, lost time, and the self. In blending narrative voices and lyric moments, the speaker in section one embodies the chaos of grief, the wandering and dislocated sense of being lost after a loss. Bodies and relationships break. Landscapes are varied, strange, and quietly threatening. Often, poems are resigned to the knowledge that time is fleeting, and relationships, whether damaged or brilliantly meaningful, all have an inevitable end. Gradually, the speaker uses violence and fractured syntax to soothe suffering and to ground the body in a place. In section two, the speaker begins to see omens of fertility, to look to the sky for direction, and exercise reason and judgment. Though a resolution is only initiated, landscape remains the instrument by which the speaker approaches examining her relationships. It is this examination that resembles the stellar autopsy—the raw data scientists use to compose the music, or the elegy, of a star's final moments. In their dying, stars fertilize the universe. Planets could not sustain without carbon from dying stars. It is the hope in this kind of departure, the life beyond valediction, that readers consider throughout this collection.

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.

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2023, English

This poetry thesis, Liminal Black, explores the American slave trade and its aftereffects through a speculative narrative that centers black female bodies—spectral and human—as sites of remembrance, revolt, and power in the fight for freedom. My main character is a young African priestess sold to American slave dealers. Feeling betrayed by her God and kinsmen, she renounces her power and African memories. For years, she serves as a breeder on a plantation, only resisting after supernatural manifestations cause her to question captivity. She then leads an unsuccessful slave revolt and is gruesomely murdered. For most of this first-person non-linear narrative, she is a ghost without memories. Through flashbacks and time leaps, I build layers of past, present and continuous experiences by facilitating interactions with human and non-human elements. She joins the fight for freedom, existing well into the 21st century while documenting and reflecting on history. Through our ghost we learn how black women, often forgotten, have fought for freedom. Her memory loss highlights how slaves were required to engage in acts of erasure or memory-bending, and this exploration of memory and remembrance helps emphasize reclamation of power as it pertains to roots, remembrance, and bloodlines.

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, English

無月、雨月 no moon, rain moon is a collection of poetry that explores language, memory, family history, relationships, ritual and festivals, and the complexity of identity. It's interested in looking at the rifts between the poet's languages and cultures, as well as the ways in which the two come together, both in terms of identity and in terms of poetic and artistic intention. Through an exploration of the natural world, seasons, and the sensory, the intensely internal voice is linked to myth, in retelling and reinventing longstanding stories, as well as developing a personal myth of the self. It is dedicated to her Japanese grandmother, with whom she shares a birth month, astrological sign and Chinese zodiac sign.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2018, English (Arts and Sciences)

The dissertation is divided into two sections: an essay titled “The Evolution of Contemporary American Poetry of Witness: C. K. Williams, Claudia Rankine, and Aracelis Girmay” and a poetry collection titled Limitrophe. “The Evolution of Contemporary American Poetry of Witness: C. K. Williams, Claudia Rankine, and Aracelis Girmay” discusses recent poetry that testifies to experiences of extremity, such as racist violence, the global migrant crisis, and environmental catastrophes. This essay traces the roots of poetry of witness to Carolyn Forche's 1993 anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness and describes how witnessing was defined in the context of the twentieth century. I then demonstrate the ways in which twenty-first-century American political poets have challenged the genre's original articulation, expanding the category of who counts as a witness and which events are worthy of being witnessed. The writers I discuss here reframe the act of poetic testimony by expressing self-awareness, doubt, and complicity; by placing microaggressions into the category of atrocity; by investigating the possibilities for technologically mediated and nonhuman witnessing; and by invoking a witnessing that is collective and global in scope. Limitrophe is composed of poems that investigate how individuals can most ethically participate in communities, using the context of the neighborhood as a motif. The poems enact a self-conscious witnessing of local happenings, often revealing their speakers' complicity within systems of oppression. This collection questions the limits of intimacy within romantic and platonic relationships and meditates on how connections are influenced by facets of identity, such as gender, class, and race.

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

This thesis explores Polish emigration through poetry from the present of the third generation in terms of loss of familial patriarchs, loss of the Polish language as an American monolingual English speaker, and loss of ethnic group identity. That is, this thesis explores what it means for a Polish American to be foreign to oneself. The speaker of these poems, in order to connect with an identity larger than herself, tries to regain a sense of Polish national identity by speaking to the dead patriarchs of her family and meditating on their deaths. By doing so, she attempts to make some kind of sense of her grief and of her life. This thesis utilizes formal restlessness and the themes of language, prayer, memory, dream, nature, drink, and work to connect the speaker with the unseen world that is now absent to her in the physical, visible world in which she dwells.

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2010, English: Creative Writing

Of Selves & Singings presents poems exploring form, diction, lineation, musicality, linguistic patterning, rhyme, meter, mode of presentation, pagination, performative sound media and animation. Neither acting in accordance with nor setting the stage for a centralized artistic modality, these poems resist the idea of a normative practice in terms of both text and media. The relationship between poems is paradoxical. They are meant to be entirely alike in that they are meant to be entirely dissimilar. The purpose of this variance is to test whether the individual poem projects a unique set of internal architectures which require a methodology in separate acts of poetic creation.

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2009, English

CONCRETE EVIDENCE: A COLLECTION OF POEMS VERSIFYING THE CITY is a poetry manuscript that contemporizes “thinking into the heart,” as the Romantic Period poet, John Keats, put it, and the forms used for such thought. As modernity started to unfold, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Romantics were inspired by their immediate and natural environment of scenic, pastoral expanses that served as the basis for versified meditations. However, CONCRETE EVIDENCE: A COLLECTION OF POEMS VERSIFYING THE CITY is composed on the objects of the urban environment, its inhabitants and their relationships, and it speculates, aesthetically, on how 21st century subject matter changes formal poetics. The manuscript is intentionally funnel-shaped in that it begins wide then hones in on the specific effect of the city on people. It is organized in three parts: 1. CONCRETE EVIDENCE The section, CONCRETE EVIDENCE, is a wide-lens poetic rendering of urban objects: transportation, garbage, buildings, work, people, sky, and pavement. It is intended to be a meditative treatment of the sights of the metropolis through observations that can be gleaned by any eye. The poems frame identifiable images in poetic forms and language to discover how each influences the other. How will the urban environment change rhyme, versification, diction and shifts in thought that are characteristic of the form, and what aesthetic choices can be made to satisfy form and function successfully—if this is at all possible? 2. VISAGE AND PERSONA The focus of this section of poems is pointed to urban and suburban people and how their relationships have been shaped by their environment. How do environmental elements prompt the interpersonal relationships and resulting events that mark the profile of suburban dwellers? VISAGE AND PERSONA examines the urban environment's effect on us. 3. SPECULATION Writing poetry and approaching problems poetically changes me over time. The turn inward, that it takes to offer a (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2008, Graduate School

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2021, English

Tin Roof Affairs is a book-length collection of poems that explores rural life, labor, domesticity, sexuality, and gender roles among working class Americans. It calls for readers to consider the nature and consequences of love, in all its manifestations, and how the human need to love and be loved both enriches and complicates our lives. Several of these poems were composed using found text from sources such as mid-century handwritten letters, The Farmer's Almanac, Reader's Digest, and YouTube, drawing attention to our culture's interdependent relationship with reading, writing, and other media over the past century.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Arts and Sciences: Classics

This dissertation examines the role of elegy in the Thebaid by Statius, from allusion at the level of words or phrases to broad thematic resonance. It argues that Statius attributes elegiac language and themes to characters throughout the epic, especially women. Statius thus activates certain women in the epic as disruptors, emphasizing the ideological conflict between the genres of Latin love elegy and epic poetry. While previous scholarship has emphasized the importance of Statius' epic predecessors, or the prominence of tragic allusion in the plot, my dissertation centers the role of elegy in this epic. First, I argue that Statius relies on allusion to the genre of elegy to signal the true divine agent of the civil war at Thebes: Vulcan. Vulcan's erotic jealousy over Venus' affair with Mars leads him to create the Necklace of Harmonia. Imbued with elegiac resonance, the necklace comes to Argia with corrupted elegiac imagery. Statius characterizes Argia within the dynamic of the elegiac relicta puella and uses this framework to explain Argia's gift of the necklace to Eriphyle and her advocacy for Argos' involvement in the war. By observing the full weight of the elegiac imagery in these scenes, I show that Argia mistakenly causes the death of Polynices and the devastation at Thebes as the result of Vulcan's elegiac curse. Next, I analyze Hypsipyle's elegiac role in the text in two distinct ways. I first argue that Statius uses elegiac vocabulary from multiple points of view to describe Hypsipyle and her narrative. Her depiction of the Lemnian massacre is indebted to the elegiac topos of militia amoris, and her experiences with Jason, leader of the Argonauts, is characterized by servitium amoris. Then, I examine this elegiac background via Julia Kristeva's theoretical perspective. Influenced by the association between the elegiac relicta puella and the Kristevan semiotic chora, I expand Hypsipyle's connection to this topos vis-a-vis Kristeva's feminine, counter- (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, History of Art

Francois Dufrene (1930-1982) is the most underrated and understudied French artist of the second part of the 20th Century. Of interdisciplinary bent, he began his career as a poet, inventing the genre of sound poetry, thereafter involving himself in politics and experimental film before ultimately focusing on a visual practice involving posters found along Parisian boulevards. An active figure in the cultural world of post-war Paris, he participated, often as a founding member, in many influential groups, including the poets who called themselves Lettristes, the political provocateurs called Situationistes, and the artists associated with Nouveau Realisme. On account of these activities, Dufrene is frequently mentioned in writings about the period and the movements in which he participated; however, his own work has yet to be fully studied in its own right. My dissertation rectifies this situation by shedding light on the impact of Dufrene's commitments, tracing the underlying threads that tie the varying aspects of his seemingly disparate oeuvre together. I argue that Dufrene's often overlooked writings are connected to his innovations with sound poetry, experimental film, and his later visual works. My analysis emphasizes the artist's continuing interest in probing the underlying structures of any established medium that he took up. What is more, I show that Dufrene maintained consistent political ideals and revolutionary positions throughout his career, which inform his work even as they illuminate the social, cultural, and political events of his time, a period of great civil unrest in France.

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2018, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

In this collection of poems, the issue of damage-based thinking and desire-based thinking is being examined. It is being examined through the use of several different types of poetry techniques. Within the poems, the past, the present, and the future are examined and asks a larger question: How can we, as people take the daily violence that we encounter and find – and/or work our way to – joy.

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

This project comprises a digital edition of a selection of letters by American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), including all known letters written by the poet between 1889 and 1895, and hosted online by Colby College Libraries' Digital Collections. The edition is based on work started last century by Professor Wallace L. Anderson of Bridgewater State University, and left unfinished by him at his death in 1984. Professor Anderson collected a vast quantity of Robinson's letters from various repositories and private parties around the country. He transcribed them and provided annotations and textual notes for about three-quarters of them. For my project, I have edited, updated and corrected a substantial portion of Anderson's transcriptions, as well as completed fresh transcriptions of my own, checking them for accuracy against Robinson's holographs held at Harvard and the University of Virginia. I have formatted the new edition so as to more accurately represent the holographs, and have added my own textual notes and annotations to those of Anderson, along with an introductory critical essay detailing my methods and principles. It is of primary importance to me that these letters be accessible to both the scholarly community and the general public, with a view to maximizing their usefulness for literary and historical research. I have settled on digital publication as the best means to achieve this end because it will render the letters accessible to anyone with a computer and internet connection, free of charge. The project of publishing the remainder of Robinson's letters in this format is expected to continue beyond the dissertation.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2017, East Asian Studies

Yu Xiuhua is a contemporary Chinese poet who became a sensation in China after her poem “Crossing Half of China to Sleep with You” (Chuanguo daban ge Zhongguo qu shui ni) went viral in 2015 via the popular Chinese messaging platform, WeChat (Wexin). As a woman with cerebral palsy who did not complete high school and lives on a small farm in rural Hubei Province, Yu's popularity intersects with her various identities, making her not only an interesting poet but also an interesting public figure. This project aims to translate a selection of her poetry in a queer-feminist mode for a contemporary English-speaking audience of politically engaged poets and writers. Drawing on a long history of feminist translation practices that visibly “womanhandle” texts in order to attend to both the author's and the translator's agency, alongside Aimee Carrillo Rowe's call for a politics of relationality and queer theory's notion of failure as a mode of resistance, these translations challenge a discourse of fluency and the resultant invisibility of the translator in standard English translation. This project thus contributes to a feminist translation practice of accountability, collaboration, and play and promotes an “ecology” of translation that values how different translations interact with each, whether symbiotically or antagonistically. Building on that foundation, these translations enact a practice of vulnerability that acknowledges and honors the failure inherent in translation as it attempts to work across difference and the power dynamics embedded in that difference. The tension between attending to the poet's style and poetics and making visible the translator's own processes of engagement is not relieved but rather presented as an integral part of the final translation. Ultimately, this project makes room for more varied and nuanced consideration of ethical reading approaches for those positioned in the Global North translating work by those positioned in more vulnerable (open full item for complete abstract)

BM, Kent State University, 2014, College of the Arts / School of Music, Hugh A. Glauser

During the Middle Ages, oral poets often sang the tale of the hero Siegfried, his murder, his widow Kriemhild';s revenge, and the downfall of the Burgundian kingdom. A medieval epic poem written in Middle-High German, the Nibelungenlied is widely known among German citizens and scholars alike. Its historical and mythological roots include the defeat of the Burgundians during the Volkerwanderung (Great Migration Period) and the legend of Siegfried. I applied my own knowledge of medieval Germanic literature and music by performing this work in its original language, and this paper discusses the research and planning that went into my performance. Medieval epic poetry was often sung when performed, and the Nibelungenlied is no exception. To prepare the performance, I selected sections of the text to perform and set them to the Hildebrandston, a melody that is believed to be similar to that of the Nibelungenlied, whose original melody is no longer known. I also examined certain phonological aspects of Middle High German so as to present the text as authentically as possible. I accompanied my singing of the Nibelungenlied on a lap dulcimer, a three-stringed, fretted instrument and member of the zither family. I used variations in dynamics, vocal color, and accompaniment to enhance the dramatic aspect of the performance. After my investigations, I was able to consider the cultural context and reception of the Nieblungenlied, as well as interpret its many themes such as honor, duty, betrayal, revenge, and destruction. The entire work can be viewed as a commentary on the shift in ideals from heroic victory to lawful rule and order. In completing this project, I have had the opportunity to explore the relationship between literature and music in their historical and cultural context.

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2009, English

Gypsy Soul, Wolf Spirit is a collection of thirty-six poems; the majority of the poems are written in - or evolved from drafts written in - iambic pentameter. Writing formal poetry was a challenge I decided to embrace because I believed that it would allow me to evolve as a poet. The themes that connect these poems are represented by the collection's title: Gypsy Soul, Wolf Spirit. There is the dominant thematic presence of both the natural world and the spiritual realm within the collection. My intention was to lift the reader to a state of mind, through language, where he or she could get lost in the peaceful beauty of nature - even when that beauty is found through powerful images of the bear or wolf - and feel the spontaneous gypsy soul of the divine universe.