Grief

Overview "Homecomings and Other Ghost Stories is a story collection that investigates the push and pull between grief and memory. Within these stories, the very act of remembering presents itself as a form of grief, where nostalgia becomes an act of mourning and the fallibility of memory is its own kind of loss. In grappling with these themes, characters are either running from their pasts or deeply indulgent in them. For the main character in the flash story, "The Outside Room," precious memories...

Overview

"Love You, Darling is a novel about a young woman named Grace Donahue and her struggle with alcoholism. The main narrative takes place from 2017 to 2019, beginning in her final year of college, when a personal tragedy upends her relationships with family and friends. Over the next two years, she grapples with loss, love, addiction, the stress of adulthood, and what it means to find oneself amid the chaotic currents of modern life." -- Abstract

Overview "'Miss February' consists of several chapters from a potential memoir with the same title. The memoir follows a young girl's journey through the tribulations of grief and early-onset mental health issues. The project is divided into three central parts, "Past," "Present," and "Future," and this thesis contains a majority of the content for both the "Past" and "Future" sections. In "Past," we see the protagonist grow up around their similarly affected mother and in the wake of many...

Overview "Plague Days & River Roads follows the protagonist, college junior Liv Ford, as she returns to her hometown in order to understand how and why her friend Juniper died—and whether the mystery of who Juniper's mother was related to her death. As she dives deeper into her memories with Juniper, Liv begins to piece together the shards of her eccentric family through her relationships with her own mother and with Juniper's father and brother during August 2020. The novel is a musing on grief,...

Overview "My thesis is focused on themes of grief, loneliness, and the natural world. One of my goals for these poems was to take myself out of them, and to be an observer of my surroundings. There is also an emphasis on the connection of self to nature, and how that can sometimes be neglected. Considering these themes, another intention for this project was to employ as many forms possible. I utilize fragmentation as well as more traditional forms such as the sonnet. My title provides readers with a...

Overview "Self-Induced Exorcism Inside an Empty House is a cerebral road trip of poems exploring what it means to leave and be left, both physically – death, the leaving of a lover — and esoterically — what happens to the body and the mind when the things that have kept us stable leave? What happens when we exorcise the things that are holding us back or holding us together? Self-Induced Exorcism explores how grief manifests — how, even before loss, the anticipation of it can shape the way we move...

Overview "This thesis explores threads of identity, weaving together influences that shape the sense of self, including ancestry, childhood, culture, and religion. These themes spread across three sections; "on a loom" is a meditation on interfaith upbringing and the reconciliation of two belief systems, "heirloom" relates to paternal ties, and "bloom" speaks to maternal heritage. The collection highlights two matriarchs and how they lived out their individual cultures (Jewish and Colombian) and...

Overview "Applied Theatre practices are used to build community amongst populations of people in diverse settings with and without prior experience participating in the performing arts. This thesis reflection explores the impact Applied Theatre practices can have on building community with people who have experienced grief through the lens of loss. The creative process of building an Applied Theatre workshop is examined in a collegiate setting from building and designing curriculum, reflective...