Browsing English Language and Literature Electronic Theses and Dissertations (UMKC) by Thesis Advisor "Terrell, Whitney"
Now showing items 1-20 of 23
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American Anxiety: Stories
(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2017)This collection of stories largely deals with anxiety felt by people in small-town, rural America in the twenty-first century. Ranging from an old woman afraid of change to a veteran returning home to a people’s militia ... -
Another Beast Entirely
(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2018)This thesis is a collection of works written and rewritten over the course of my time in the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Master of Fine Arts Creative writing program. It includes short stories, nonfiction ... -
The Brain is an Iceberg
(2012)The stories in this collection focus on utilizing formal experimentation in order to illuminate the struggles of characters. For example, the title story focuses a couple that enters a photo booth and leaves with a doomed ... -
Burning Houses: A Novel
(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2016)When Cat Byers’ mother dies and leaves her and her sister a surprise inheritance of 10 million dollars and 500 acres of oil land, a woman adrift must overcome her unresolved past and a mysterious stalker to discover ... -
But Rather Becomes
(2013)This 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 ... -
Cake for Fighting
(2019)Although individual freedom is so integral to western ideology, the idea that culture can supersede an individual’s basic human rights is surprisingly common in the United States. This is due to another western value: ... -
Confluences
(2022)This collection of poems, essays, and fictional stories is meant to mirror a confluence of rivers, made navigable by threads—or currents—that weave through and redirect my life. Some of my life’s water (so far) has been ... -
The Death Of Greater Man
(2013)While many of the stories in this collection deal with the population and physical space of the state of Nebraska (both in the current era and in speculation on the state’s future), every story in the collection deals ... -
Discomfort
(2014)The stories in this collection are concerned with the lives of middle class Midwestern people who all feel some sense of discomfort or inability to feel at ease in their lives. Throughout this collection there are examples ... -
Forced Perspective
(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2017)This collection of eleven short stories explores the constant struggle between our expectations for our own lives and our responsibilities to others, as well as the unexpected instances of suffering that have irrevocable ... -
Human Tire Fire
(2016)I have titled this collection Human Tire Fire because that's the image I picture when I look back over the period of time in which I created these stories. The tire fire is the signifier I see for myself. Putrid. ... -
Like where you're from is so great
(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2012-06-19)The stories in this collection focus on leaving, staying, and coming back to the small town of Buffalo, Missouri, and how those decisions impact the characters who make them. Three of the stories are centered around Milford ... -
Navigation errors
(University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2019)Navigation Errors is a collection of personal essays that explore the ideas of religious fundamentalism, humanity’s place in—and relation to—nature, physical and mental challenge, paradigm shifts, and the mistakes that ... -
No Place Like Home
(2015-06-02)This collection of stories portrays a variety of lives dealing the aftereffects of loss. In “Robert the Lionheart” a boy seeks the DNA of his parents to recreate them and struggles with what that might mean. In “Weeds” ... -
Oakaville
(2020)This collection is comprised of short stories and flash fiction, all revolving around the same fictional town of Oakaville, KS, dealing with the themes of home, nostalgia, love, coming of age, family dysfunction, ... -
Our End Times
(2021)In the spirit of novels like The Mothers and The Incendiaries, Our End Times explores the pain of leaving faith communities. Daniel and Ethel are caught up in a sex scandal in their small, Pentecostal church. They leave ... -
Rabid and Other Stories
(2022)Rabid and Other Stories is a collection of short prose set in small-town Missouri exploring wealth inequality, family relationships, and toxic masculinity through the lens of rural America. The characters in these thirteen ... -
Sex and Jesus: Notes from a Pastor's Daughter
(2021)This thesis is a collection of nonfiction and poetic works that represent the author’s output as a candidate for Master of Fine Arts. These personal essays and poems are interested in intersections and unlikely combinations: ... -
Sublime Underdogs
(University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2017)It is my hope that this collection of stories, Sublime Underdogs, uncovers the beauty and the pain in unique aspects of the human experience: a lonely young woman who is terrified of getting cancer, for instance, or a ... -
Swallowing frogs
(University of Missouri -- Kansas City, 2019)This collection is comprised of short fiction, poems, two essays, and one short script. The work contained revolves around themes of mental illness, disillusionment, gender dynamics, and the difficulty of knowing others. ...