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Filtering by: Degree Name Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) Remove constraint Degree Name: Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) Resource Type Masters Thesis Remove constraint Resource Type: Masters Thesis

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  • Connections

    Creator:
    Millet, Terrance Lane
    Abstract:
    This thesis, a collection of short fiction, attempts to surface some of the discrepancy between inner and outer lives, between who these characters want to be and who they've become, between the lives they might have had and those they've chosen because the former are too chancy and the latter...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Living by the wayside and other stories

    Creator:
    Buchanan, Sherry
    Abstract:
    Living by the Wayside and Other Stories explores the tension between control and dependence and how that tension affects the ability to sustain intimate relationships. These are stories about women who struggle for independence, but experience the cost of self-rule as isolation. Living by the Wayside and Other Stories focuses...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • The practice of home

    Creator:
    Goodrich, Charles
    Abstract:
    If home is the hearth, a place of safety and centeredness, it is also the portal, the magic door. From home we go out into spaces more humanized and technologized, or into spaces more natural, more other-than-humanized. We dress up and head downtown, or we pack up and head for...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Stillness

    Creator:
    Lont, Steven
    Abstract:
    This collection of stories explores moments of stillness in human relationships: moments during an argument when there is nothing to say, moments of quiet contemplation which precedes inevitable--and often unwelcome--life changes, moments of frustration, confusion, despair, and grace. In the chaotic lives of these characters, stillness is neither tranquil nor...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • The long house

    Creator:
    Harris, Gregory A.
    Abstract:
    The Long House explores belonging and commitment. Jennifer Hawley, an American graduate student in linguistic anthropology, arrives in the early 1990s in Long Awan, a Dayak village in the remote highlands of Borneo. Her research concerns oral history among Punan families, traditionally nomadic, which have recently decided to settle in...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • The dry country

    Creator:
    Van Handel, Lucinda S.
    Abstract:
    Set in the dryland farming country of Eastern Oregon in the late 1950's, this novel follows a year and a half in the life of a young girl as she comes of age. A water rights dispute, the plight of nearby ranchers, disappointments in her own family and a harrowing...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • There were bears and rumors of bears

    Creator:
    Miftaraj, Andre M.
    Abstract:
    There Were Bears and Rumors of Bears is a collection of stories that explores spiritual injury and recovery using a variety of interior and exterior narrative approaches to depict the profane and sacred, the mundane and non-ordinary, aspects of experience. In each story, the characters encounter situations in the physical...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Scenes from the Tarot

    Creator:
    Stephens, Nia C.
    Abstract:
    Scenes from the Tarot is a novella that explores the desire to control time. The narrator, Truth Aiken, spurred by fear of her own death, recounts the story of her sister Beauty's death and its effects on Truth's highly unusual family. Proceeding backwards through time, Truth describes her tumultuous relationships...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • You stay here

    Creator:
    Bluhm, Michael A.
    Abstract:
    You Stay Here is the beginning of a novel that centers on the notion of family, community, and the expectations that drive our interactions within these circles. The novel tells the story of brothers Mills and Nance O'Malley as they interact with their parents, Richard and Margaret. The brothers own...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Hamilton Falls

    Creator:
    Peters, Patrick J.
    Abstract:
    Hamilton Falls is a screenplay about a young attorney who returns home from WWII, is appointed District Attorney, and begins investigating an old murder. In the course of the investigation, he discovers that his mentor, the former district attorney, may have been the murderer. The story follows the film noir...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • The Yogiebogeybox

    Creator:
    Boothman Duyck, Tracy
    Abstract:
    The Yogiebogeybox is a novel-in-stories. This novel explores spiritual transcendence and the connection of art to that spiritual journey. A variety of points of view are employed in the narrative in order to depict the journey of the protagonist, Ant Malo, through this journey. Some of the narrative threads are...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Down the Road

    Creator:
    Morrison, Rowan
    Abstract:
    Down the road is a collection of short stories written in the post-Stonewall tradition of gay men's literature, which has focused on works that reflect gay experience and specifically autobiographical fiction; a desire to write for gay readers without having to explain circumstances or points of view to readers unfamiliar...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Penitence

    Creator:
    Jaramillo, John Paul
    Abstract:
    In 7 composite stories--shifting from the roads of Southern Colorado neighborhoods, the fields and unpaved roads of Northern New Mexico, and the streets of Culver City, California--Penitence follows Relles Ortiz and the bleak peripheral existence of the voiceless suburban people living in disorder and disorientation within the harshness of their...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Foodmaster and three stories

    Creator:
    Starr, Peter W.
    Abstract:
    The purpose of this thesis was to create a sustained piece of fiction that both represented my growth as a writer throughout my time at Oregon State University, and wove together a mixture of imagination, language, and creativity. My hope was to write a novella that incorporated and drew from...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Outside our periphery

    Creator:
    Sharp, Kimberly A.
    Abstract:
    The characters in each of these pieces exist outside the periphery of the so-called norm. In "Through Parted Curtains," "What They Do Besides Eat," and "Two Lambs," June wishes to enter the adult world that tends to exclude her (though she will only enter conditionally). June is, of course, about...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • The fading

    Creator:
    Ni Bhraonain, Lisa
    Abstract:
    As I began to explore the evocative nature of language, the creation of themes and images, and the rhythm and beauty of words that I feel must accompany meaning, I discovered that I had always seen and heard and felt the world as many of my characters do; in this...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Steelhead

    Creator:
    Willis, Stephen E.
    Abstract:
    The thesis is the first third of a novel entitled Steelhead. The story takes place in and around a small southern Oregon town in the summer of 1967. The narrator, eighteen-year-old hot-rodding Emil Reese, discovers hippies swimming naked in the river near his house. The hippies, newly arrived from San...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • West of Ellis

    Creator:
    Tafolla Young, Kathryne M.
    Abstract:
    Ellis, a booming mid-sized town in California's Central Valley, is packed with farmers and commuters, and plagued with a dwindling sense of itself and its history. Set against the backdrop of a failed murder-suicide, a secret affair and a wealthy local mogul's attempt to develop the town into something it's...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • The Gospel : according to Matt

    Creator:
    Weber, Joshua D.
    Abstract:
    The Gospel: According to Matt is a novel, told in the first person, simple past tense, depicting the struggle of a young man attempting to make sense of his relationship with his estranged father as he wrestles with a growing crisis of faith. Matt is deeply sincere in his desire...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Headwater

    Creator:
    Martens, Jacob L.
    Abstract:
    These essays are an attempt to rebuild memories that explore the nature of work and family. They explore how work knocks against the joints of the body and against the joints between family members, and, as time passes, how the next generation inherits the family line of work only to...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Always talk to strangers

    Creator:
    Buck, C. Nathan
    Abstract:
    Always Talk to Strangers contains the first seven chapters to a novel. The novel focuses on the friendship between Amanda and Maria, two fourteen-year-old girls who are experiencing their last summer before high school in Madison, Wisconsin. Their friendship is a complicated one: Maria was kidnapped four years ago, the...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • The athlete and two stories

    Creator:
    McDonnell, Peter A.
    Abstract:
    The purpose of this document is to display a portion of the work I have completed over the last two years. The Athlete is the recently written opening to a novel of the same name. I've decided not to excerpt a longer section of the novel because the novel isn't...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Six stories

    Creator:
    Kovatch, Sarah
    Abstract:
    The purpose of this document is to display a portion of the work I have completed over the last two years.
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Winter ocean

    Creator:
    Baker, Jessica A.
    Abstract:
    This thesis is a work of fiction.
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • The matter between them

    Creator:
    Shumway, Charity D.
    Abstract:
    A collection of short stories about the Gardner family, spanning several generations, but focusing on the children of Len and Laura Gardner, Brooke, the second oldest, in particular. Set primarily in Utah, the collection tells the story of family members' struggles with one another, with their religious faith, and with...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Comic toast

    Creator:
    Ruch, Alison Louise
    Abstract:
    Comic Toast is a novel depicting a transition period in the life of the comic book artist character, Monica Holliday. This document includes a prologue, which provides details of a trauma in Monica's distant past, in order to inform Monica's adult reactions to the situations she finds herself entangled in....
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Rose, thou art sick

    Creator:
    McIntyre, Katharine L.
    Abstract:
    This thesis is the first third of a novel in progress called Rose, Thou Art Sick. In the selection, Rose loses her mother in a freak accident in Boston, is threatened by her evil uncle Charlie, and packs up and moves to Kansas to live with her father, whom she...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • b

    Creator:
    Oleson, Wendy E.
    Abstract:
    This thesis is the first third of a coming of age novel called i. In this selection the central character, Bea Bouvier, prepares to see her estranged mother on a cruise ship to the Bahamas. She hopes her parents will decide to reunite as a family, though it becomes increasingly...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Things I lost in Istanbul

    Creator:
    Bush, H. Takken
    Abstract:
    This thesis is the first half of a novel in progress called Things I Lost In Istanbul. In the selection, Simon Wells, an American expat living in Turkey, is trying to ignore the changes taking place in his life and in Istanbul--his adopted home and sanctuary. The novel tracks Simon's...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • On top

    Creator:
    Richter, Amanda M.
    Abstract:
    This collection of stories spans a range of content: the personal, the domestic, the political, and the downright terrifying. In “Ilka the Flyer,” a young man is faced with his own crisis and that of his veteran uncle. Sister relationships bloom and fade as the entire family deals with changes...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Patoka : four stories of Southern Indiana

    Creator:
    Drew, Christopher M. (Christopher Max)
    Abstract:
    These stories are an attempt to give a distinct literary voice to the people and places of rural Southern Indiana. They also strive to deal with certain elements indigenous to that region, some of which can be described generally as the tension between modernization and tradition, family and marriage as...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Northwest of normal

    Creator:
    Larison, John J.
    Abstract:
    Northwest of Normal is the first part of a novel that takes place along an imaginary Oregon river called the Ipsyniho. The story grows from valley’s fertile loam like a blackberry vine, entangling a group of locals—fly fishing guides and midwives, artists and dope growers—just as a posse of wealthy...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Commercial

    Creator:
    Aguilar, Joseph R.
    Abstract:
    This novel-in-progress is an attempt to struggle with the complicated process of forging one’s identity in the murk of urban Northwest life. The protagonist of this piece is confused, to put it lightly: bi-racial, torn between the affections of divorced parents, unsure about his religious views, and baffled by his...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Ms. Miles is missing

    Creator:
    Wisniewski, Stephanie E.
    Abstract:
    Ms. Miles is Missing—the beginning of a novel—is the story of a woman who, in her early thirties comes to realize that the life she is living is not the life she wants. She yearns for her lost childhood, and tries to come to terms with her mother’s death. Martha...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Shuddering blood

    Creator:
    Kroll, Adam L.
    Abstract:
    This collection of six individual writings, both fiction and creative non-fiction, is an exploration in narrative first-person voices and multiple themes, such as the loss of innocence, modernization versus traditions/myths, the California Central Valley, death, creativity, language, change, and the pressures of the future. Though abstractly linked at times, these...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • May we all wake up one by one

    Creator:
    Ludden, Jason
    Abstract:
    May We All Wake Up One By One is the beginning of a novel set in the West African country of Guinea. The story follows Sean Wake, a twenty-something American who finds himself working for the Feed the World Program as the country falls apart around him. While his co-workers...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Many sparrows

    Creator:
    Gustie, Michael J.
    Abstract:
    This collection of poetry explores faith and isolation while questioning the ability of language to adequately express subjective experience. Gustie has provided a deeply contemplative, though rarely completely serious, romp through the lives of others who, ultimately, are reflections of the self. The three sections of the collection establish a...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Half-life : essays

    Creator:
    Fath, Lauren
    Abstract:
    Lauren Fath, in her non-fiction collection Half-Life: Essays, examines the underpinnings of her upbringing in suburban Fort Wayne, Indiana, focusing primarily on familial relationships and the importance of hindsight in understanding how our families make an imprint on our lives. By looking at our relationships through the lens offered by...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Mirage

    Creator:
    Houghton, Melissa G.
    Abstract:
    This collection of poems spans a range of content. They pose many questions that consider issues surrounding identity, perception, and the relationship between the self and other. The collection consists of four parts. Parts I and IV explore the self and other by using personal experience and persona. Part II...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Kiddie pool : stories

    Creator:
    Haskins, Isabelle
    Abstract:
    Kiddie Pool is a collection of eight short stories dealing in general terms with themes of culpability and control. The characters in the stories have their share of problems—car accidents, domestic violence, manic depression, obesity, unexpected deaths, truth or dare, religious crises—but they are resilient souls who keep on keeping...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Modern apostles

    Creator:
    Casas, Ruben
    Abstract:
    Modern Apostles actively attempts to blur the line between academic scholarship and narrative fiction for the purpose of satirizing the social and the political assumptions of its contemporary moment. By appropriating the loudest voices in dominant American culture, the inter-textual narratives (1) call attention to the voices that go unheard,...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Beneath this roof : stories

    Creator:
    Carpenter, Claire
    Abstract:
    These stories follow the lives of women in a variety of roles—housewife, deli employee, artist, bird keeper, and sitter for the elderly—and at different stages of life. In “Beneath this Roof,” a young housewife’s life is rocked by a visit from an old friend who has changed in unexpected ways....
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • The mercurial : stories and essays

    Creator:
    Dmitriev, Vladena Aleksandra
    Abstract:
    Vladena Aleksandra Dmitriev, in her collection of fiction and nonfiction The Mercurial: Stories and Essays, examines the conflicts inherent in language, whether in her own experiences as a non-English speaking immigrant from the Soviet Union to the submersed anger and resentment that emerges quietly in disintegrating relationships. What unites these...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Freeway : poems

    Creator:
    Dickey, Eric Wayne
    Abstract:
    This collection of poems focuses on a range of content. They pose many questions that consider issues surrounding driving, cars and independence, as well as masculinity, fatherhood, domesticity and parental identity. The collection consists of three parts, Freeway, Menace, and Control. Freeway contains poems on driving and cars, some of...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Porchless staircase

    Creator:
    Jordan, Robin Lee
    Abstract:
    Porchless Staircase is a collection of poetry investigating a wide range of themes: consumerism, death, sexuality, alcoholism, religion, writing, family, and, most frequently, isolation. At times toying with notions of the sublime and surrealism, the confessional and the imagistic, these poems vary in form, process, and style, but are loosely...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Wild west love songs

    Creator:
    Hinderliter, Robert
    Abstract:
    The eight stories in Wild West Love Songs explore issues such as loss, suffering, and betrayal, but perhaps the most consistent theme is the examination of the ways we are haunted by our past. All the protagonists in these stories are haunted. Sometimes they are haunted literally, by a ghost...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Visible man

    Creator:
    Boisvert, Jon
    Abstract:
    This collection of poems discusses the human body, the desires to have control over that body, and the memories contained within. In some poems, the body is overt; in others, the probing spills from man into the animal world, and even poems that depict landscape often do so in bodily...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Music for strings

    Creator:
    deTal, Vicki
    Abstract:
    In this collection of linked stories, four characters navigate space between selves they’ve been and those to come. Alice must invent an autonomous identity after her husband dies in a bike crash. As she casts about to populate a new life, a geographer, a violinist, and a clarinetist emerge at...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • Leaving the body : an elegy

    Creator:
    Harwell, Sarah
    Abstract:
    The death of a child is, for many, a fear too terrifying to imagine. The poems collected here explore this difficult loss; they examine the realities that form, and fall away, after the realization of a parent?s worst fear. Through the poems? speaker, a bereaved mother, a multitude of worlds...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis

  • After we lost the wind

    Creator:
    Watterson, Jaclyn
    Abstract:
    My thesis is a collection of short stories in which I explore themes like loss, identity, and memory. The collection includes both short stories and short short stories, and through in-depth exploration of character and form, the stories here attempt to fit into a tradition of writers articulating the experiences...
    Resource Type:
    Masters Thesis