Major

English

Advisor

Lisberger, Jody

Advisor Department

Women's Studies

Date

5-2015

Abstract

For this project I set out to write a hybrid novella-memoir, while reading novels by authors generating work of a similar aim. I also took an offset printing course to learn how to print completed work, because I was interested in being able to myself make a book. Throughout, the intention of this work was an exploration of the density of the imagination and the self - all the lives we create, even if we never live them.

During my time at the University of Rhode Island, I have made repeated visits to cetain arguments and ideas, questions that intrigue and grapple for my attention. Even as I changed majors and colleges, I circled back to some of the same ideas and curiosity about how plurality operates and is occurring in all areas of study in the many ways humans process the world around them.

As an evolving species, humans are in constant flux, however, our narratives and language might lead us to believe we are pattern-seeking creatures and bound to make assertions of stability. My writing project tries to reckon with the more abstract and unrealized places of hidden selves- false lives and real ones, and their interactions with one another. With the support of my mentor, Dr. Jody Lisberger, author of Remember Love and director of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island, we explored the operations of the plural and evolving self through literature and the writing and revision of my own work. The literature portion of the project was a study of style and prose, from classic literature to modern graphic novels.In studying these various styles and techniques, I began to see more ways to help my own plural and complex voice take shape.

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