Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Semester of Graduation

Spring 2026

Department

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

This dissertation is a combination of a critical paper and creative work. The critical paper is titled “The Essential Narrator: Ideology, Form, and Queerness in Andrea Lawlor’s Mortal Girl” while the creative work is a collection of short stories and flash fictions titled All Our Small Gods. The critical paper deals with queer narratology, narrators themselves, and the ideology that those narrators possess as characters, and attempts to answer the question, “What happens when a narrator and a character are at odds ideologically?” The collection All Our Small Gods is a collection of stories based on finding a touch of the numinous, and what that means for people seeking (or sought out by) higher powers. The collection features realism, science fiction, and fantasy stories, each connected by a through-line where the stories evoke a feeling of wonder, awe, rage, or terror.

Date

2-6-2026

First Committee Chair

Maegan Shea

First Committee Member

David Squires

Second Committee Member

Yung-Hsing Wu

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Available for download on Friday, August 01, 2031

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