Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 13
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Poetry
- Creators: Ball, Sally
Description
Claiming Impossible Bodies is a collection of poetry and collage exploring gender and sexuality through the lens of the vampire. For this project, I researched various representations of the vampires through folklore, classical and modern literature, film, and pop culture. The liminality of the vampire allows such figures to take different forms and identities, ranging from dark and grotesque creatures, such as the succubus or incubus from mythology, to modern sex-icons, like Edward Cullen from the Twilight Saga. Considering this wide range of performances by vampiric figures throughout history, the poems in this manuscript seek to deconstruct the binaries that vampires live between and expose the liminality in social norms that attempt to define our identities and shape our performances.
ContributorsWitter, Genevieve Michelle (Author) / Ball, Sally (Thesis director) / Meinen, Avery (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description"Heirloom" is a short collection of fourteen poems.
ContributorsLaLone, Skyler Elizabeth (Author) / Ball, Sally (Thesis director) / Hummer, Terry (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2014-05
DescriptionPoems
ContributorsCinquepalmi, Anthony (Author) / Ball, Sally (Thesis director) / Dubie, Norman (Committee member) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Abstract The Space Between Us is a poetic project about the grieving process. Formally, the piece is seven sections of prose couched within a crown of seven sonnets. The first-person sections of prose allow for personal discussion in the confessional tradition of my own lived experience of grief, while the sonnets are a fictional conversation between David Bowie and Stephen Hawking in 1973. The claim of this piece is that death creates space. When a loved one passes away, what we inherit is a gap. What is the role of this gap in the world? How do we interact with it, see it, interpret it, or touch it? Can we put our hands on its form? Can we put it into words? And if the exploration of this space does lead us to words, should they be shared? The round form of the sonnet crown echoes the cyclical motion of questioning, and its allegorical themes: grieving as a black hole, the boundaries of language, the subjectivity of conversation, the limits of space, the dehumanization of obsession, the space between you and who you are perceived to be, and the clash between artistic desires and scientific discoveries.
ContributorsVan Slyke, Laura Marie (Author) / Hogue, Cynthia (Thesis director) / Ball, Sally (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
“In the Dark Room” consists of a body of poetry with accompanying visual art exploring themes of tenderness, violence, memory, and distortion. The poems revolve around the self, the beloved, and the body. The speaker reflects on notions of harm and love towards themselves and others as relationships begin to decay, fogging the mind of the speaker, leaving them feeling as if they are trapped in a haze, their sense of time, warped. The title of the project reflects this, as a dark room is commonly used to develop film photographs. The idea of developing images leads to ideas of perception and performance. The poems encapsulate the gauze the speaker lives in by balancing precise, physical details with emotionally charged moments of urgency prompted by the speaker’s uncertainty and desperation. Questions and commands are utilized to draw out the inner action in the speaker’s mind as well as to illuminate different layers present in the work. The corresponding photography and collage serve to highlight the emotional depth of the pieces, as well as add accessibility and interest for the public. The photographs function as stills from a film, adding an element of movement, inspiring visceral emotions that elevate the written work, while the collage ties the mediums together by reflecting central imagery through the inherent fusion of the form. The body of work aims to translate vulnerability into a relatable human experience by exploring the confusion caused by emotional wounds.
ContributorsSamons, Karson (Author) / Ball, Sally (Thesis director) / Diaz, Natalie (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This Cannot Be Forest Bathing is a collection of poems that deals with how we see ourselves in the greater picture. Reflecting on one’s experiences and trying to project the future is challenging for a young person, and these poems are my way of accepting that life, and the future, are both ever-changing. The practice of “forest bathing,” known as shinrin-yoku in Japan, means to ‘take in the forest.’ This form of meditation and self-cleansing is associated with a form of therapy. Shinrin-yoku utilizes techniques or treatments that focus on bettering physical and mental health through nature. During a “forest bath,” the participant is able to relax through being outside; in calmness, one is able to think clearly. For my collection, I wanted to emphasize this self-reflection as a dark meditation instead of a stereotypically peaceful endeavor. The title is a manifestation of disbelief, as I realized ‘I am with nature, in a moment of rest, and should be enjoying myself, but I am lost and feel trapped instead of being found. I still think about who I am as an individual, my anxieties, and of the future.’ As I am usually inspired by nature, all of my works were written either in connection to, or physically within the outside world. I find closure and relief through writing, and I hope that my poetry connects people together in our dark moments, reminding the reader that they are not alone. In youth, we are lost but never alone, even in the most tumultuous of times.
ContributorsNino, Alexa Sophia (Author) / Ball, Sally (Thesis director) / Erin, Noehre (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-12
Description
Same Bed is a twelve-piece book of poetry that explores the theme of sexual violence. The speaker of the poems is processing the trauma surrounding her rape which leads her to explore her own family's dynamics regarding gender, power, and acknowledgment of sexuality. The speaker also observes the broader issue of how society reacts to rape and the effects that can have on a survivor of sexual violence. In the peak of the manuscript, the speaker pieces together part of her own police report, pinning her own voice and perspective against her rapists.
ContributorsPetersen, Gabrielle Nicole (Author) / Ball, Sally (Thesis director) / Kelsey, Meghan (Committee member) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The following collection of YA prose poems have been designed to inspire and promote literacy among adolescents via its layers of depth and context while offering a productive and positive outlet for maturing emotions. By harnessing these emotional and psychological forces, we can inspire adolescents to use reading and writing to find meaning in their lives. These poems provide young adults with themes that reflect the growing pains and types of coming-of-age experiences that they can relate to and that helps them to make sense of their world. As educators, we want our students to fall in love with reading and writing. We must recognize that literacy is another significant developmental need of young adults and that YA poetry helps to bridge the gap between children's stories and adult classics thereby allowing for a smoother transition. This collection of poetry means to challenge our students to self-reflect and develop their own unique connections with the text. Adolescents need to be made to laugh and cry about issues concerning them, issues treated seriously and respectfully. Teenagers are on a journey of self-discovery and they are still trying to figure out who they are. Their need for peer acceptance must be balanced by their need for individuality. The following collection of poems makes use of a YA voice that transcends time and addresses issues concerning young adults of any multicultural generation.
ContributorsLepage, Michael Jean-Pierre-Kaina (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis director) / Ball, Sally (Committee member) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Waltz, is a collection of poems written to play along the boundaries between sound, language, and meaning. As a vehicle for exploration, the poems in Waltz, commandeer themes of nostalgia, love, loss, and abstraction, all of which build up and break each other down to create something of a nonlinear narrative, and concomitant sketch of the poet.
ContributorsAieta, Joseph (Author) / Ball, Sally (Thesis director) / Liston, Chelsea (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Erosion: A Collection of Poems consists of ten prose poems that explore the processing of trauma through a single lens. We follow the work’s main character as she navigates recovery following a medical trauma in Peru from which she ought to have died. The pieces challenge the readers to immerse themselves within her narrative to understand the isolation that trauma ushers in, as she struggles to know her own newfound aloneness.
While the poems illustrate the complexity of one’s experience with both PTSD and its stages of recovery (e.g., emergency, numbness, intrusive/repetitive, integration), they are anchored in the sensory, the concrete. Amidst the terror of the symptoms at the most basic, raw level, she attempts to reclaim selfhood, which involves wrestling with philosophical suicide, reconciling realities, numbness and the widening of a barrier, stunning intimacies, the craving to feel, and both the desire and the need to connect authentically without being able to satiate such inclinations.
Influenced by the works of Frank Bidart, Claudia Rankine, James Longenbach, and Carolyn Forché, the pieces rely heavily upon rhythm and spacing, imagery, and associative linkages throughout the work to craft a sense of physical, intellectual, and emotional movement within the space.
The collection focuses upon the narrative of one survivor of trauma, and though traumas may be experienced differently, and while PTSD may manifest itself in profoundly diverse ways, the pieces aim to capture the shared foundation of the experience — the isolation and the pure, unadulterated pain — in order to cast a universal veil onto the exploration, providing the audience with insight into one of trauma’s most important facets.
While the poems illustrate the complexity of one’s experience with both PTSD and its stages of recovery (e.g., emergency, numbness, intrusive/repetitive, integration), they are anchored in the sensory, the concrete. Amidst the terror of the symptoms at the most basic, raw level, she attempts to reclaim selfhood, which involves wrestling with philosophical suicide, reconciling realities, numbness and the widening of a barrier, stunning intimacies, the craving to feel, and both the desire and the need to connect authentically without being able to satiate such inclinations.
Influenced by the works of Frank Bidart, Claudia Rankine, James Longenbach, and Carolyn Forché, the pieces rely heavily upon rhythm and spacing, imagery, and associative linkages throughout the work to craft a sense of physical, intellectual, and emotional movement within the space.
The collection focuses upon the narrative of one survivor of trauma, and though traumas may be experienced differently, and while PTSD may manifest itself in profoundly diverse ways, the pieces aim to capture the shared foundation of the experience — the isolation and the pure, unadulterated pain — in order to cast a universal veil onto the exploration, providing the audience with insight into one of trauma’s most important facets.
ContributorsBacon, Lauren Whitney (Author) / Ball, Sally (Thesis director) / Irish, Jennifer (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05