English Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2766

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    Beyond Vérité
    (2013) Rowser, Anna L.; Casey, Maud; Creative Writing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Beyond Vérité is a collection of fictional short stories exploring what happens when characters' perceptions of truth get shaken up. Landscape plays a central role in this collection, from the deceptively dangerous beauty of Yosemite, to a reserve in Madagascar where the surreal becomes possible, to the Mojave Desert where it can be difficult to determine reality from illusion--or fact and fiction, as in the "Hole Card," a retelling of the legend of Death Valley Scotty. In each story, the landscape is harsh yet indifferent and reflects the characters' current struggle, from Bryan's relationship with his mother in "Ranger Danger," to a zoo curator's more recently lost son in "Keeper," to Lindsay's compulsive fixation in "Beyond Vérité," to Meg's pervasive guilt in "Why They Call It Death Valley."
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    Behind a Crystal Veil, A Novel-in-Progress and Stories
    (2011) Nissan, Jenna; Norman, Howard; Creative Writing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This novel-in-progress and collection of stories aims to explore the role of collective memory and storytelling within families. Each narrative is interested in investigating what parts of heritage are intuitively known by younger generations, as well as what pieces of family history are lost over the years. The concept of the title, Behind a Crystal Veil, stems from the idea that when looking back on the past, there are some memories that can be seen anew by younger generations through storytelling, yet other aspects of heritage that will always be obscured and veiled by the passage of time.
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    Inheriting Fear: A Collection of Short Stories
    (2008-05-05) Snider, Jeffrey; Lewis, William H; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Inheriting Fear is a collection of fictional short stories that examines several subjects and themes, including identity; concepts of community; adoption; religion; familial responsibilities regarding aging, gender, tradition and generational conflicts; and, social and political violence, racism, classicism and suppression, particularly involving American Indian characters and culture. Settings include suburbia, a West Virginia coal mine, Senegal and watermen communities on Chesapeake Bay. Many of the stories investigate the art of storytelling and how that art is integrated into everyday lives and history.
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    Daughters of the Diamond
    (2005-04-29) Von Euw, Michelle Helene; Norman, Howard; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Daughters of the Diamond is a collection of nine stories exploring the intimate connection between women and baseball. Wives, lovers, sisters, and daughters; observers, fans, and athletes; the nine individual protagonists each experience the pull of the diamond in a unique way, either because of childhood assimilation into the sport, because of what the game means to the men they love, or because they find something in baseball that doesn't exist anywhere else in their worlds. Whether on the minor league fields of Maine and North Carolina, in the stands of Fenway Park and Camden Yards, or at a card show in Virginia, baseball is the thread that connects these women, and to each one of them, it is more than merely a game. In the tradition of Kinsella, Updike, and King, these stories all evoke the mysticism of the sport, but from a uniquely feminine perspective.
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    At Ease with Mr. Wrong and Other Stories
    (2004-05-12) Manus, Emily Michelle; Casey, Maud; Norman, Howard; Creative Writing
    This collection of short stories explores the minutia of everyday existence while questioning what it is that makes up a life. In examining this overarching question, the stories often stray into the surreal while taking the reader into moments between couples navigating their relationships, to workplaces where characters explore the implications of their professional decisions, into the glut of physical objects that reflect, and personify one's interior life, and finally into characters' minds, where they privately question what most troubles them. In scrutinizing, consciously or unconsciously, what their lives consist of, these stories present characters profoundly stuck in a flawed existences (as suggested by the collection and story title "At Ease with Mr. Wrong"), navigating a quotidian world of partial truths or imagined realities. Overall, the stories hold a common thread of characters attempting to formulate who they are in relation to the people and objects that surround them everyday.