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The Cruel Daughter
No full textThe poems in this dissertation discuss a range of topics, from the partitioning of the Asian subcontinent to Alice in Wonderland, from Batman villains to moths.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Englis
The Dupe
No full textThis dissertation consists of original poetry written between 2012 and 2016 during my time in the PhD program at Georgia State University. It is accompanied by a brief introduction which discusses a variety of techniques that make a poem or song “successful,” as well as an explanation of how I have applied these techniques in my own writing.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Englis
Consume Her
No full textConsume Her weaves the threads of autobiographical accounts of restaurant service work, the history of the American circus, and the thematic mechanisms of reality television. The collection seeks to investigate, through a critique of late-stage capitalism, the ways in which love, desire, trauma, entertainment, and leisure have been commodified. The common denominator of these poems is consumption, specifically a critical look into the linguistic and historical nuances of consumption. The poems are not formally arranged into sections but are linked through series arcs, loosely grouped into the following thematic categories: Restaurant/Food, The Circus, and Reality TV. At their core, the common denominator of these poems is the idea of spectacle as an intentional shift in attention—how we distract and are distracted and what we see and do not (or are not meant to).Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Englis
Frenzied, Desperate Birds
No full textAnthem Fanning’s life revolves around Victory Orchard. Her grandmother works there, her best friend lives there, and her life has never made much sense beyond those photo-ready acres of peach trees. The orchard is her happy place, and she would choose it over anywhere. Anthem has a high school diploma now, her best friend has returned for the summer from his first year of college, and Hunt and Tamera, the new people in town, reject Anthem’s belief that the orchard in Brunswick, Georgia is the center of the universe. Every place has a history. The sprawling backdrop of farmland that Anthem knows too well once contained slaves. As Hunt and Tamera force Anthem to confront the history of her beloved orchard and the present realities of black life in America, Anthem learns to cope with a burgeoning ambivalence to her home.Master of Fine Arts (MFA)Englis
The Old Biology Book
No full textA series of poems written primarily in free verse. Dominant themes include the natural world and art.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Englis
Humunculus
No full textHumunculus is a collection of 50 poems written from 2010 to 2015. Written in free verse, Humunculus features poems containing saints and mythical creatures, American and European cities like Burlington, New York, Prague, and Venice, encompassing thousands of years of culture and religion. Humunculus explores mythology in daily life through the guise of traditional mythological entities like St. Mark and The Golem and through cultural rites of passage. I’m seeking to unearth the lineage of man to myth, writing about new and old myths.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Englis
The Rhetorical City: (Re)Arranging and (Dis)Placing Atlanta's Urban Space
No full textIn this dissertation spatial arrangement and placement are considered par excellence among the instrumental functions of rhetoric. I unsettle the canon of arrangement in consideration of the spatial turn. Approaching space by way of arrangement brings to bear a different range of phenomena and is a departure from the prevailing practices of existing scholarship on rhetorical memory places. Rhetorical arrangements of space, their deep structure and underlying coherence in public discourse, are contingent and unstable. Arrangements of space widely circulating in public discourse furnish provisional order to orient life, politics, and planning. Arrangements of space have inherent thresholds, limits periodically exposed and contested in public discourse warranting displacement. Despite displacement, traces of past arrangements of space are preserved in public documents and leave lasting impressions on the built environment. Accordingly, space may be viewed as a layered rhetorical document; a work in progress whose surface writing has recorded over imperfectly erased remnants of earlier drafts. Former arrangements of space and their displacement may be uncovered and interpreted by the critic.
The methodology I develop in this dissertation, a rhetorical cartography, entails evaluating numerous arrangements and displacements of space across time. I analyze arrangements and displacements of Atlanta’s urban space to demonstrate the methodological import of a rhetorical cartography. Rhetorical invention and (re)arrangement of Atlanta is the city’s most enduring and pronounced characteristic, aggressively made and remade through forms of boosterism that has been labeled the “Atlanta Spirit.” The first chapter details rhetorical invention and arrangement of Atlanta as a regional railroad center, recognized as the “Gate City of the South.” The second chapter introduces pivotal displacement of Atlanta as urban space became centrally rearranged within the logics of race, as the “City Too Busy To Hate.” In the third chapter I focus on arrangements of Atlanta as an “International City,” linked with discourses of global economics and multiculturalism. The fourth chapter analyzes recent rearrangement as “Sustainable Atlanta,” linked to environmental discourses, with ecological and planetary scope. The cartography evinces the rhetorical vitality, multiplicity, and openness of Atlanta’s urban space.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Communicatio
The Knot
No full textThis thesis is a collection of original poems written during my time at GSU in the Master of Arts program.Master of Arts (MA)Englis
