Award Date
May 2019
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
English
First Committee Member
Maile Chapman
Second Committee Member
Doug Unger
Third Committee Member
Megan Becker
Fourth Committee Member
Vincent Perez
Fifth Committee Member
Mark Padoongpatt
Number of Pages
110
Abstract
Floating Head Touching Earth is a collection of short stories centered on themes of identity, historical and intergenerational trauma, familial duty, and self-discovery delivered through prose that is often tinged with surreal or strange elements. Inspired by the craft of writers like Flannery O’Connor and Aimee Bender, my work seeks to explore the power that seemingly small or forgotten experiences can have on one’s psyche in ways that ripple throughout a lifetime. The stories are organized in a manner that track an unraveling of the body, history, relationships and the minds of its various protagonists. The Buddhist mudra, or gesture, of “touching earth” is often depicted to represent the moment Buddha obtained enlightenment. Floating Head Touching Earth is a gathering of the narratives of many such “floating heads” and their individual attempts to understand themselves and those around them.
Disciplines
Creative Writing
File Format
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Cahall, Carrieann, "Floating Head Touching Earth" (2019). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 3581.
http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/15778409
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/