Mountain Scholar :: Browsing by Author "Cooperman, Matthew, committee member"

Browsing by Author "Cooperman, Matthew, committee member"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 21

Open Access
A thing of things: Critter comfort
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Hagerman, Haley Leilani, author; Plastini, Johnny, advisor; Reip, Dave, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Harrow, Del, committee member
This paper explores physical and theoretical layers behind the thesis show Critter Comfort which ultimately aims to immerse and enrapture the viewer in overwhelming giving. Split into four parts, the paper starts with the first two sections give with a more empirical mindset of the installation through exploring the situation of a museum setting, and the art thing(s) on display. Parts three and four deal with the intangible of what goes into creating art with tension, and the quintessential part beauty plays on a surface and metaphysical level. Ultimately this paper is an indulgent explanation of exactly why I made the type of installation I did for my thesis capstone show: to create and share what I find beautiful.
Restricted
A version
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Wesely, Nicolas D., author; Beachy-Quick, Dan, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Jazz Harvey, Madeline, committee member
At surface level "a version" enacts a poetic exploration of form and its myriad influences on creative intent and execution, with particular interest in that mysterious echo of formal play—the sestina. A deeper investigation of the thesis reveals the intricate movement of how poetic self might be realized through the navigation of these various, highly active, literary lineages, which themselves arrive as echoes of past, present, and future writings, experiences, and hopes, here largely circling military history, myth, family, physical body, and love. This thesis exhibits the movement toward, and simultaneously away from, the constraints of form, asking how it is that creativity enters into free flowing abundance through formal parameters; highlighting those moments when repetition deviates from defined meaning and achieves a polyvocality of authorial lineage; a version of a version that has always been and never been before. Here the sestina is pushed into sprawling forays of liturgical praise and negation. It assumes forms and roles meant for other times and spaces, and by so doing, shows its adaptability (and so too our own) toward an immediate presence of modern poetics.
Restricted
Bundy girls
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Ash, Summer, author; Ausubel, Ramona, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Khrebtan-Horhager, Julia, committee member
Bundy Girls is a novel about dark obsessions, female friendship, and the dangers of adolescence. The story's narrator is a high school girl with a crush on one of the most notorious serial killers of the 20th century, Ted Bundy. Her intense bond with her best friend, who is also a Bundy fanatic, led the pair to found the 'Bundy Girls Club' with a group of peers who also enjoy dressing up as serial killers and publishing zines about Bundy. When a classmate goes missing, the girls see an opportunity to use their true-crime knowledge to start their own investigation. But when the mystery gets too close there is more than just friendship at stake for the Bundy Girls.
Restricted
Gather me
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Bailey, Daniel, author; Steensen, Sasha, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Diffrient, David Scott, committee member
The poems in GATHER ME oscillate between the holy and the profane while seeking to deconstruct God and create a new system of belief. The poems also deal with a universal you and an I that can be split infinitely and regathered into a new being.
Restricted
Guest
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Zamora, Felicia, author; Beachy-Quick, Dan, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor, committee member
To view the abstract, please see the full text of the document.
Restricted
Humans raised by humans raised by humans
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Killmeyer, Sam, author; Dungy, Camille T., advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor, committee member
Humans Raised by Humans Raised by Humans is a collection of poems concerned with inheritance, particularly the things we inherit without knowing that emerge and unravel at unexpected times.
Open Access
Malicious innocence
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Swihart, Sam, author; Osborne, Erika, advisor; Lehene, Marius, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member
My work represents an exploration of warfare through the lens of children both in and out of the combat zone. Because warfare is such a multifaceted enigma, many of its aspects become overlooked in favor of grandiose narratives that speak towards its glorification or abhorrence. In the past, art was used to ennoble warfare as a kind of sport for the aristocracy, while legitimizing conflict through the actions of the ruler and state. However, beginning in the nineteenth century, there was a shift in propaganda that focused more intensely on the role of the individual soldier. By the twentieth century the focus had shifted largely away from the valor of individuals, instead focusing ever more on the abject qualities of modern warfare. These narratives all share a common theme that is primarily focused on the actions of individual soldiers or units, their heroism, and the horrors they endured. Yet children often play an ancillary role in many of these narratives, either providing a source for pity, or showing desperation while emphasizing the loathsomeness of an enemy. For this reason, I have chose to tackle the subject from a different angle – that of the child’s involvement both in play as well as combat. By exploring the often overlooked role of children both in actual conflict as well as the social roles of children on the home front in times of war I hope to examine not only the effects of battle on the child, but also the cultural conditioning of children to further perpetuate the cycle of violence through the reinforcement of societal norms. To achieve this I have been playing off the duality of chaos by juxtaposing imagery of children at play with imagery of war and its consequences. Throughout this exploration my work has made several dramatic aesthetic shifts in an effort to communicate this sense of chaos – psychologically as well as physically. By combining traditional, indirect painting methods with contemporary photorealism, I hope to create visual tension between areas that are fully rendered as well as areas that are under developed and deliberately obscured. I have also begun the use of photo collage in the creation of my paintings in an effort to further destabilize the visual field and to bring an additional air of uncertainty to the narrative. Furthermore my palette has shifted away from a traditional, limited palette to incorporate a variety of colors. These help to emphasize the more unsettling aspects of the subject. By incorporating these elements of painting into the work I hope to represent a sense of disorientation that echoes the abstruseness of war itself.
Restricted
Melissa untitled
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Hohl, Melissa, author; Steensen, Sasha, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor, committee member
The poems in Melissa untitled investigate the name and the act of naming as they relate to identity and imagination. The name is an indicator of the person or the place, of course. Further, though, the name constitutes a part of the individual (person or place), for the name can stimulate one to conjure (or can help one in conjuring) an image of (and thought about and feeling towards) the individual. Thus, the name informs image, thought, and feeling (in both 'reality' and the imagination). How far can one write into, and out of, the name? The name, then, is a threshold of public and private space, of inside and outside; it is permeable and a place of division within the language of proximity, of togetherness. However, the name is not foolproof; indeed, it falls short. It does so because it is permeable. That which is permeable is by definition not fixed, not stable. The poems in Melissa untitled reflect this instability through and throughout their language. In the writing process, many poems let mistakes lead them. What I mean by this is, for example, in the second poem in the collection, "A deep sunflower god-yellow," the final line reads, "all of them were god" (4). In fact, what the poet actually intended to write was, "all of them were good," but because she forgot the extra "o" that is necessary to make "good," she was left with "god"—and she liked it. There's something a little bit off balance, both in the head and off the tongue, when one reads the final two lines of that poem—"The first and last 25 minutes of my life / all of them were god" (4). One can feel the tongue being pulled towards "god" and "good" at once. This is a kind of confrontation one must have with the language and oneself in Melissa untitled. It’s familiar in a strange way. The form of many of the poems echoes an off-balance-ness as they work with atypical—albeit organic unto themselves—stanza shapes. They also play with and perhaps even agitate the space on the page. They do this in part to call attention to movement as part of the modern landscape, which therefore makes it a part of the modern identity. The poems disorient to reorient. Moreover, the fragmentation (of thought, of distance) that occurs between stanzas and in some cases from line to line is, I suspect, a way of evoking imbalance and perhaps revealing it as a place of potential fertility. Whether the speaker in the poems is navigating a physical, linguistic, or psychological landscape—real or imagined—it is helpful to have at hand the four-pointed star to indicate and remind the wanderer of the four cardinal directions. The four cardinal directions act as a reminder of intention amid imagination. In Melissa untitled, the four-pointed star signifies a break—a breath—in the text.
Restricted
Mosaic disturbance
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Brant, Cedar, author; Beachy-Quick, Dan, advisor; Dungy, Camille, advisor; Harrow, Del, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member
In ecology, the most resilient landscapes are ones that experience a mosaic of disturbance. This means small swaths of windfall, wildfire, and beetle kill across a landscape that create a patchwork of forest dynamics. A mosaic of disturbance increases diversity, making the land more resilient to larger, potentially-catastrophic disturbance. These poems I trace the lineages of damage in the world and in the individual. What kinds of damage open us to the world in ways that become essential to our understanding of ourselves and others? These lines often lead back to an idea of home. These poems ask how one makes a home, even as those places—physical, emotional, ecological—are always in a mosaic of damage and change. These poems accrue as an inventory, using science, myth, and symbol as organizational nets to trace patterns of disturbance and regeneration across the boundaries between self and the rest of the world.
Restricted
Of
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Bohn, Jerrod E., author; Beachy-Quick, Dan, advisor; Steensen, Sasha, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Prince, Eric, committee member
My thesis manuscript entitled Of is a book-length collection of poems broken into five sections. Over the course of the book, the poems move from concerns over the nature of the erotic to an examination of how consummation of the flesh can give rise to a creation. In this case, what is created or birthed is the hymn or song that names the world. Along with this naming comes an anxiety over language’s relationship to the natural world: by affixing names and “meaning” to natural objects are we allowing words and phrases to replace the actual objects themselves? Moreover, does language risk misnaming an object which, in a sense, causes damage to that object’s integrity that can be difficult to repair or recover? Drawing on Classical Greek and Roman poetry, ritual, and mythology as well as Judeo-Christian cosmology and iconography as source material, Of attempts to break down and reunite dichotomous ideas that ancient cultures viewed as harmonious rather than opposed. These dichotomies include: the Apollonian / the Dionysian, male / female, erotic / spiritual, song (poetry) / meaning (naming), and language / natural objects. The book remembers that the preposition “of’ is relational, that all things are always “of” or “emanated from” something else.
Restricted
Opening of absent
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Vogler, Brad, author; Beachy-Quick, Dan, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; DeMirjyn, Maricela, committee member
Collection of poems.
Restricted
Ours the experiment
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Lozeau, Adam, author; Steensen, Sasha, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Howkins, Adrian, committee member
Ours the Experiment is a poetry manuscript that examines topics of love, war, spirituality, and otherness. Consisting of five series, Ours the Experiment begins with the allegorical telling of the story of a nineteenth-century lynching. Its second series deals with love, loss, and loneliness, while also formally examining the influence of song and music on memory and storytelling. Its third series is an epithalamion, telling the history of a love that culminates in marriage and the story of the other loves nurturing and surrounding that relationship. Its fourth section examines the remnants of common biblical stories in both Western culture and in an individual mind, and its fourth section, "Going," is a single long poem chronicling a life-long friendship challenged by one man's choice to go to war. A poetic introduction and a collection of annotations of works influential in the writing of this manuscript are also included in this thesis.
Open Access
Places as sites of experience
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Allen, Sonja, author; Faris, Suzanne, advisor; Osborne, Erika, committee member; Moore, Emily, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member
I am sensitive to my environment, and to how perceptions of an experience within a particular geographic location are effected through the relationship of body, object, and place. My work oscillates between human induced and natural systems, and continues to reveal questions regarding the complex relationship between Americans' and the land in the 21st century. Through the process of mining and manipulating large quantities of earth I reference the land as a resource, while acquainting myself to the specific features that set this landscape apart from the rest of North America. The focus on the landscape translates into my art practice, where I explore how a person's sense of self-identity might become altered through experiences within different places and in light of changing landscapes.
Restricted
:Plainspeak, WY:
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Doxey, Joanna B., author; Steensen, Sasha, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Lehene, Marius, committee member
This manuscript is a work of poetry.
Restricted
Press
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Nolte, Andrew, author; Steensen, Sasha, advisor; Moseman, Eleanor, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Didier, John C., committee member
Press is a poetic manuscript and symbolic ode to the author's complex relationships with his beloved and the design element of typography. Titled Press in part for the definition of typography as well as the action of early letterpresses, Press has two distinct sections. Part one explores the rush of newness and exploration within any creative relationship, while part two looks at the domestic and comforting warmth of the familiar. Both sections deal with a physical, emotional, and psychological space shared with the beloved and the page from the reader's perspective. The poems within each section represent the building of for mentioned relationships and are broken up by fragments, which represent the particles floating in between each print of a letterpress, with each print representing a poem, and the fragments slightly changing and distressing them to make them honest, original, and real.
Open Access
Reciprocity through drawing
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Davis, Rachael Lynn, author; Lehene, Marius, advisor; Kokoska, Mary-Ann, committee member; Ryan, Ajean Lee, committee member; Lundberg, Thomas, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member
My drawings are founded in visceral moments of reciprocity with nature. I am seeking the quality of my experience as a living being within the larger living being of our planet. My drawings consist of a repetitive white line symbolizing what this experience might look like. The intent of these lines is to describe the relationship of feeling and vision, to convey micro and macro oscillations of my perception of the earth, and to represent the sacred essence of life. My motivation lies in a need to convey a depth of concern and reflection concerning our present ecological crisis.
Restricted
Refrains
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Truslow, Matthew Robertson, author; Beachy-Quick, Dan, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor, committee member
A refrain is the line or lines repeated in music or verse. The poems that compose my thesis repeat themselves formally (the'’re all sonnets) and thematically. The central figure of the poems is Lester Lovely. Lester is a composite persona of my anxieties and poetic influences. He is made of parts of me and the things I know about but he is not the author and should not be read as such.
Restricted
Still, the West
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Mucklow, David, author; Dungy, Camille, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Fernandez-Gimenez, Maria, committee member
Still, the West is a collection of poems organized in two sections. The first section centers around the history of barbed wire, mending fences, and a familiarity with the place of Northwest Colorado. The second section deals with displacement, centering around poems exploring Eastern Colorado plains towns, and prairie landscapes. As a whole, the collection examines the place of the American West in work, landscape, and place.
Restricted
The family contracts
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Wernsing, Sarah, author; Dungy, Camille, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member; Fernandez-Gimenez, Maria, committee member
The family contracts is a manuscript of poetry that explores the nexus of motherhood, family history, and place, particularly the suburbs as the site of the family home. It is a work at once expansive in its reach toward the past and also incredibly insular in its exploration of the construct of the suburbs and their place in American life and motherhood. It interrogates the demands of motherhood and the ways in which motherhood is shaped by family inheritance. The manuscript attempt to marry ecopoetics with a feminist perspective to recognize the damage that American suburban life inflicts upon women as well as the land around us. The manuscript is divided into four sections, the first and third of which are section-length poems and the second and fourth of which are a collection of multiple poems put together. The first section brings into conversation the life cycle of plant with the movement of generations of mothers and daughters. The second section focuses more on epistolary poetry that explores family inheritance and what motherhood means within the speaker's particular family context. The third section moves back and forth in time and place between William Bradford's Of Plimouth Plantation, the speaker's grandmother's life, and the interactions between speaker and daughter. The fourth section issues out of the personal and family history of the first three sections. It is entitled "suburban georgic" and follows the georgic tradition of recording the season changes, attempts at farming, and instruction on living in a particular location within a particular climate.
Open Access
Unbelievably deep: a chronological assessment of the Hells Midden site (5MF16), Castle Park, Colorado
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Little, Spencer T., author; LaBelle, Jason M., advisor; Van Buren, Mary, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, committee member
During the 1940s, the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History conducted archaeological investigations of sites in the Castle Park region of the Yampa River. One of these sites, Hells Midden, was recognized early in this work as a significant site for the depth of deposits and their ability to provide a sequence of occupation within this region of the Yampa Canyon where many Fremont sites had been recently described. The cultural stratigraphy at this site, exceeding four meters in depth, was expected to provide a chronological sequence which could be used for relative dating of other sites in the region. Intensive excavation of the site in 1948 and '49, and smaller excavations in 1940 and '47, revealed an intact stratigraphic sequence at the site with relatively high densities of material deposits. Despite recognition of the site's potential, little work has been done with the assemblage since the initial curation and reporting. This thesis summarizes the results of a reanalysis of the Hells Midden assemblage. Research goals for this project were derived from questions the initial archaeologists had about these deposits: how old are they?, and how did settlement strategy expressed at the site change through time? The results of thirteen radiocarbon dates of the assemblage show a deep sequence of occupation, beginning intensively in the early Middle Archaic era (from a depth of 350 cmbs) and continuing through the Fremont occupations; an absence of dates was noted for the Late Archaic era despite contiguity of the stratigraphy. Fremont occupations were shown to agree with the sequence secured through previous radiometric work at nearby sites. For the second question, a comparison of the assemblage collected from each excavated context in 1948 and '49 was conducted by ranking multiple quantifiable metrics derived from artifactual analysis. These data, when compared with notes of the excavators and description of features through much of the site's vertical extent, suggest a relatively intensive use of this site throughout the period represented by the radiocarbon sequence, with a marked increase in the sedentism expressed by inhabitants during the Formative era Fremont occupations. The sum of these results offers insight into the Hells Midden site which makes it ripe for comparison to the regional archaeological record.