The Critical Introduction, titled "James Merrill's Queer Muse," uses Queer Theory to analyze Merrill's creative process when writing The Changing Light at Sandover. It argues that Merrill queers the heteronormative orientation ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] "Of the Burning" is a hybrid collection of nonfiction essays and sermon-poems. The narrative threads weaved through the collection include original ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] My dissertation "Hao" examines the relationship between maternal subjectivity and language. The pictogram in the title, a linguistic sign from the 12th ...

"Mr. Boswell Peels an Orange" is a dissertation in two parts. Part I is a critical essay that explores the concept of the "lyric object," which is a physical, man-made object that appears in a lyric poem. This object forms ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Scriptorium is a book-length collection of poetry that wrestles with religious subjects, with its core questions being about religious authority. The ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This dissertation examines how, over time, the American long poem has been utilized as a genre in which to model democratic order. Specifically, it ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] "If I had to tell the story in one line or two, I would tell it this way: I loved her and she did not choose me, though I believed she would." At 28, ...

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Our Family Walks is a coming-of-age narrative that explores what it means to be an African American/multiracial boy growing into manhood during the ...