Browsing by Author "Altschul, Andrew, advisor"
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Item Restricted Betterment(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Thomas, Michelle, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Levy, EJ, committee member; Mao, KuoRay, committee memberBetterment explores a possible near future in the Southeastern Michigan town of Harwood, fifteen years into recovery from a pandemic caused by the virus H1X1. In Harwood, neglected infrastructure of pipes and waste management led to the spread of contaminant poison which laid the groundwork for a medical crisis. Although the town was able to recover, the pandemic intensified racial segregation and severely restricted the mobility of minority communities (primarily African American) in terms of housing, healthcare, and employment. Corinne Matlock, sister to the first minority to die in relation to H1X1, tries to navigate the grief of her brother's death, protect her younger brother from meeting the same fate, and avoid stepping outside of the new rules of society, the punishment for which is being sent off to a quarantine center, possibly indefinitely. This dystopian novel looks at the story of an individual as well as her community, as they struggle to survive in a world where the laws were written to erase them.Item Restricted Breastshot(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Loveland, Grace, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Ausubel, Ramona, committee member; MacKenzie, Matt, committee memberBreastshot is an exploration of human suffering through the lens of the fantastic. In a series of short, interconnected stories, this novel imagines a world where magic, witches, and gods exist alongside pop stars and fast food burritos. As characters search for meaning in a world that has changed overnight, issues of absurdity and faith are addressed as avenues for exploration and understanding.Item Restricted Coraline Connors, a catechism(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Clark, Megan, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Vara, Vauhini, committee member; Diffrient, Scott, committee memberBelow is the story of Coraline Connors, a sixteen-year-old Catholic, lesbian runaway. Coraline is mouthy, irreverent, and acerbic, but, above all else, Coraline is a lost kid looking for a place to belong. Told in first-person point of view, this novel follows Coraline's journey from her childhood home in rural Pennsylvania to the Cambridge, Massachusetts radio station in which she was conceived. This thesis is interested in girlhood, coming of age, queer identity, and religion—in particular how the latter two intersect. It is dedicated to all the real-world Coralines.Item Restricted Desert grey(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Hayes, Esther Marlena, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Ausubel, Ramona, committee member; Bowser, Gillian, committee memberThis collection of short stories and essays engages both the infertility of a landscape rendered unrecognizable by environmental change and the enduring fertility of the bodies that live there. The majority of the collection takes place in my first home—the deserts of Nevada. This is a landscape that has been abused both for its infertility and its fertility. It has been a site for nuclear tests and a dumping ground for waste; it has had tunnels carved into its mountains for the gold and the silver in its veins. In places real and invented, my characters—both real and invented—ask how to move forward. Will we be forgiven for what we have done?Item Restricted First days on Planet Nine(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Harnden, Emily, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Doenges, Judy, committee member; Wong, Cori, committee memberThis work is a collection of short stories interested in examining the ways we experience grief; what it looks like to lose and how we might find light in such dark. The protagonists of these stories are young women: daughters, granddaughters, sisters, who are struggling to contend with fresh loss in all its manifestations. In exploring the complexity of losing those we love most, these stories are compelled by the question that if grief is inevitable, how do we navigate? The stories do not offer answers, so much as investigate the strangeness of the landscape of grief and the ways in which that territory often oscillates between realism and fabulism.Item Restricted Small bits of color: stories(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) McDonough, John, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Levy, E. J., committee member; Khrebtan-Hoerhager, Julia, committee memberThis collection of stories, written over the past three years, is concerned with the way relationships (with an emphasis on the platonic, but also including sexual, familial, and professional) shape an individual's self conception. Alternating between the stories of Katie (a twenty-seven-year-old nanny) and Johnny (a twenty-nine-year-old bar worker), these two young Chicagoans come of age in the way so many do—by confronting personal loss, professional disappointment, and the ever-shifting definitions of what it means to be a person in the twenty- first century. As Katie takes steps towards restarting her life on the opposite side of the country, Johnny struggles to understand the implications of living as a privileged white person in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Via their relationships with the people that surround them, these characters grow and change, facing down their pasts and moving closer to their futures.Item Restricted Something in the bone: stories(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Greenlee, Benjamin Mace, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Candelaria Fletcher, Harrison, committee member; Bunn, David, committee memberA collection of eight fictional stories exploring what it means to be human in an often inhumane world. Written in a variety of points-of-view and styles, these stories examine relationships, gender, violence, the environment, and self-hood, all in an effort to offer solace for the negative emotions we all feel.Item Restricted The rewilding: a novel(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Barnhart, Hannah, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Ausubel, Ramona, committee member; Niemiec, Rebecca, committee memberThe Rewilding explores the social, political, and environmental history of Yellowstone as a place—the national park, the ecosystem, and the human community—and examines the ways in which that history of place intersects with cultural definitions of nature, cultural values assigned to nature, and human relationships with the natural world. The primary narrative follows the story of a young woman named Wren who, after discovering that her suburban, upper-middle class upbringing has inadequately prepared her for a conventional career path, decides to take a road trip to the west coast after she graduates from college. Along the way, she meets Millie, a woman with whom she falls into an instant infatuation and who convinces her to abandon her original plan and join her for a summer-long stint in Gardiner, Montana. Wren and Millie camp among whitewater rafting guides and start a campaign to save the gray wolves, who are in danger of being removed from the endangered species list. In different and overlapping ways, Millie and Wren struggle to navigate the landscapes of queerness, sexual autonomy, river-running, respect, tolerance, social power and ultimately, belonging. One of the fundamental questions at hand in the novel is: what makes a person (human and nonhuman) fit into a landscape, and how can the presence of that person change the landscape? What is the value of those changes, and who gets to decide?Item Restricted This is how it was(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Pagliari, Nicole, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Ausubel, Ramona, committee member; Chatterjee, Sushmita, committee memberThis Master's thesis is a collection of short stories that interrogate instances of racial aggression against Filipino and Filipino-American women alongside the existential dread of being a young woman and regret and robots in varying quantities and combinations. These stories all share a common goal of analyzing poignant moments of reckoning for their female protagonists of varying physical presentations, socio-economic statuses, and stages of life while also experimenting with speculative elements and voice.Item Restricted "Trigeminal: linked stories from Alexander M. Morrison"(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Morrison, Alexander M., author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Levy, E. J., committee member; Pedrós-Gascón, Antonio F., committee memberThe trigeminal nerve is the fifth cranial nerve, and it is responsible for sensations and motor functions in the face. Trigeminal literally means "thrice-twinned," as the trigeminal nerve has three major branches processed through the central nervous system. I imagine these eight stories to be, in their own sense, thrice-twinned, grouped within one of three designations: Audi, Vide, or Tace. These terms come from the following Masonic saying: "Audi, vide, tace, si vis vivere in pace," which from Latin translates to, "Hear, see, be silent, if you wish to live in peace." Few of my characters, if any, manage peace, although all bear witness. In their own groupings, these stories are linked through, among other things, recurrent characters, shared conflicts, and similar settings. Together, as a group of eight, they are also linked through theme: class distinctions, relationship to place, broken and whole families, and what it means to navigate a changing world, both on a personal and a larger level. Jean Rhys once said that "all of writing is a huge lake." There is water here, in each of the eight—sometimes a glass on a bedside table, sometimes a shallow stream, sometimes a mountain lake, sometimes the Pacific Ocean. It is my hope that this piece feeds that "huge lake" of which Rhys speaks.Item Restricted What it was like when I was alive(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Ziffer, Emily, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Levy, EJ, committee member; Yalen, Deborah, committee memberThese stories are interested in the ways that language, cultural heritage, and physical location influence identity. Moving through different historical time periods and countries, the characters in these stories grapple with questions of self-definition: how much are we defined by our inherited cultures and values and how much are we defined by what we choose to love and claim as our own? In seeking these answers, the characters are forced to confront the tenuous landscape between who they want to be and who they are expected to be. While there is a sense of loss embedded in this kind of self-discovery, there is also the joy of learning how the world, if we let it, has the power to surprise us, and open us up to the possibilities of love.