This thesis consists of a collection of poems. By virtue of its content and arrangement, the collection ruminates on and attempts to work through the problem of corporeality and bodily experience: the anxieties surrounding illness, mortality, and the physicality of contemporary life. This collection explores the tension inherent in the mind/body duality and, rather than prescribing solutions, offers multiple avenues and perspectives through which to view bodily experience, as well as how that experience affects an individual’s identity, agency, and sense of self.

The chakra system consists of seven energetic vortexes ascending up the spine that connect to every aspect of human existence. These vortexes become blocked and unblocked through the course of a life, these openings and closings have physiological and mental repercussions. Knowledge of these physical and mental manifestations, indicate where the chakra practitioner is in need, the practitioner can then manipulate their mind and body to create a desired outcome. These manipulations are based upon physical exercises and associative meditations for the purpose of expanding the human experience. As a poem can be thought of as the articulation of the human experience, and the chakra system can be thought of as a means to understand and enhance that experience, it is interesting and worthwhile leap to explore the how the chakras can develop and refresh the way we read and write poetry. This critical preface closely reads seven poems, one through each chakra, finding what the chakras unveil. Here, each chakra is considered for its dynamic creative capabilities and for its beneficial potentiality in the reading and writing process, finding each chakra provides tools: idea generators with the potential to free the poet from usual patterns of creativity while broadening …

The problem is the investigation of the possibility of an alternative theory of literature that attempts to show literature's relation to human consciousness. A phenomenological theory of literature is presented as a comprehensive theory of literature as opposed to extrinsic theories that are not comprehensive. The basic assumption is that a comprehensive theory of literature must take into account literature's relationship to human consciousness. The shortcomings of traditional modes of literary theory are discussed in order to provide grounds for the proposed intrinsic alternative. The philosophical foundations for the proposed alternative are laid in the phenomenology of Husserl, Ingarden, Heidegger, and the French existentialists. These four positions are mediated through the introduction of the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Finally, the proposed alternative theory of literature is applied to the test case of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim.

Failure to Yield is a collection of creative nonfiction that explores themes of presence and emotional connection and expression. The seven essays, which include three flash essays, explore the themes by reflecting on such topics as marriage, parent-child relationships and addiction. The collection is woven together by the author's relationships with her parents and children and by her experiences growing up in a small town in Iowa.

Outer Edges of the Middle Kingdom is a narrative by the author about his two years as a teacher in the People's Republic of China. Organized chronologically, the account begins in August, 1985, and ends in June, 1987. The narrator describes meeting students at Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, designing English classes for English majors, daily episodes in the classroom, and interaction with Chinese colleagues. The narrative alternates between life on a university campus and extensive trips the narrator made to various cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunming, Guilin, Harbin, Hohot, and Guangzhou. Also recounted are the narrator's reactions to the student demonstrations of December, 1986, and the resulting anti-bourgeois liberation campaign of January-April, 1987.

Have You Ever Had Broken Heart? is a collection of essays that interrogate memory, loss, and grief through the intersection of personal narrative, films, the actress Frances Farmer, and woman saints and mystics from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries who were punished for daring to speak to G-d. The essays engage with autotheory and include a myriad of forms, such as segmented, one sentence, and hybrid works. The films discussed range from the philosophical, such as Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light (1963), to Graeme Clifford's biopic, Frances (1982), to catechize the grief of the persona losing her mother and sister to a hit and run car wreck in June 2022. The persona traverses the realm of the mystics and saints, including Marguerite Porete, Sor Juana Inez De La Cruz, and Joan of Arc, examining their respective quests to experience the unseen and often silent divine, while questioning her longing for G-d, and simultaneously believing G-d cannot exist. Yet, within this confusion, she finds herself immersed in memories which carry the presence of her mother's love.