Unexpected Intimacies: A Scrapbook of Critical Fictions

Abstract

Drawing on works at the intersections of feminist theory, studies in writing process and craft, rhetoric, and contemporary literature, this thesis employs critical discourse analysis, close reading, and creative writing as methodologies to position creative writing as a rigorous academic pursuit that requires interdisciplinary knowledge to create compelling flash works. Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature by Guattari and Deleuze, Critical Fictions: The Politics of Imaginative Writing (Discussion in Contemporary Culture) edited by Philomena Mariani, and Workbook: Memos and Dispatches on Writing by Steven Heighton are just a few titles that give this collection of multigenre-flash writings its theoretical backbone. In their own way, the flash works––flash fictions, prose poems, lyric essays, and hybrid writing––comprising this collection argue for the importance of minor literature’s role in resisting existing master narratives by examining themes of grief, girlhood, community, queerness, loss, language, family, and desire. Rural American landscapes often serve as a backdrop, adding another critical lens through which these multigenre pieces can be interpreted, highlighting issues of religion, culture, and class struggle traditionally rooted in rural settings.