2013 UMKC Theses - Access Restricted to UMKC
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The items in this collection are theses that are available only to members of the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.
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Item Unnamed Lands(University of Missouri–Kansas City, 2013) Sawin, Nichola A.; Hodgen, Christie, 1974-This collection of short fiction and plays represents an exploration of twenty-first century gay culture, viewed from the vantage point of successive lifestages: childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, maturity, and old age. These texts cumulatively display a broad approach to experimentation as they range in style from realism to postmodern absurd farce, magical realism to historical reimagination, and from romance to coming-out narratives. This collection examines territories that are both personally potent and potentially dangerous, testing what is acceptable for public consumption and pushing the range of accepted values. Characters come to terms with mourning, homophobia, self-identification, the failure of language, cross-cultural miscommunication, humor as deflection, the nature of theatre, voyeurism and exhibitionism, ostracism and solitude, abuse (sexual, physical, and emotional), and the limits of empathy. Through testing the boundaries and conventions of twenty-first century gay experiences, these plays and stories help to flesh out what it means to be moving beyond an “Other” status for the LGBTQIA community.Item But Rather Becomes(2013) Grist, James Edgar; Terrell, WhitneyThis collection of female-driven short fiction explores the ways that girls and women are victimized, excluded, empowered, misled, or left to their own devices within contemporary patriarchal American culture. Feminist rhetoric appears with some frequency in an attempt to spark academic contemplation. Each story (with the exception of the closing essay) puts a female protagonist in a position of agency against her respective exterior and interior obstacles, then sets the character free to do as the character wishes. These women are often engaged in traditionally “male” enterprises, such as developing computer software, studying as a chemist, or seeking violent revenge, in an effort to disgender a whole myriad of behaviors and pursuits that have no basis in biological sex. Stylistically, the collection pairs colorful recreations of suburban reality with detailed imaginary worlds, showing that not even formal expectations are gender restrictive, and a range of maximalist voices are used to explore every corner of these worlds. Most importantly, in each story, the protagonist struggles against an issue that could plague any human being, not just a woman.Item How We Know Them(2013) Cross, Megan Nicole; Hodgen, Christie, 1974-This multi-genre collection—including fiction, flash fiction, and a play—explores the roots of connection implied in familial relationships and structures. These works question—sometimes stepping into the supernatural to do so—how family relationships and structures can thrive despite hardship and loss, or fail in spite of their outward appearance of faultlessness. Some child characters in these works seek to establish identities in fragile familial networks, and others wholly reject the roles demanded by those familial networks. Married couples struggle to define the nature of their partnership. Separated family members seek to reestablish lost bonds, to endure painful bonds, and to create new bonds with whatever person, animal, or company seems most amenable. Many of the pieces in this collection take place in Midwestern communities and embody the reliance on and need for connection in the region’s sprawling, sparse landscape.Item Emerging from the Ground: The Meaning of Messiah in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle(2013) Cordero, Ruth Estrella; Londré, Felicia Hardison, 1941-Pittsburgh playwright and poet August Wilson wrote a series of ten plays in which each play is set in a different decade of the twentieth century. This series of plays is often referred to as the Pittsburgh Cycle. The following thesis discusses the ways in which the Pittsburgh Cycle, as a body of work, performs a search and rescue mission whose aim is the restoration of black American memory and history. By discussing the work as a whole as well as particular plays in the Pittsburgh Cycle, this thesis traces the recurring thematic and symbolic similarities between the plays and their protagonists and Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth. The thesis outlines the salient points in the Jewish salvation narrative as understood from a messianic Jewish perspective, that is, from the perspective that Yeshua is indeed the Jewish messiah and the fulfillment of the Jewish story of redemption and salvation. After defining the Jewish narrative in terms of Yeshua, the thesis then discusses the ways in which black Christians in America have adopted and adapted certain characters and themes from the Jewish messianic narrative in order to make sense of their own personal and political struggles. Finally, I discuss the ways in which August Wilson included certain elements of the Jewish narrative in his own work. My research included detailed readings of interviews with August Wilson and the Pittsburgh Cycle, as well as extensive analysis of literary, dramatic and historical scholarship regarding Wilson’s work. I divided my study of black history into two basic categories. The first was the particular people mentioned by August Wilson in a speech he delivered in 1996 at the Theatre Communications Group National Conference in which the playwright described his artistic roots. The other category was that of the black church, including its history, its theology and its attendant political and social expressions, especially during the twentieth century. I restricted my research on Yeshua of Nazareth to a few select Biblical scholars with different theological backgrounds all of whom approach the subject of the Jewish Biblical narrative in strict historical terms.Item Falsetto With Sour Cherries(2013) Varanka, Barbara Kristina; Boisseau, Michelle, 1955-In this master thesis, the candidate presents her collection of original poems, accompanied by a critical introduction, which explains her writing and revision process. In the critical introduction, careful attention is given to three poems in particular, the purpose of which is to look at those particular poems as the most exemplary of the candidate’s revision process. The candidate asserts, through her critical introduction, and in the poems themselves, how much her poetry has developed during her graduate work at the University of Missouri – Kansas City.