Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

8-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department

Humanities

Degree Program

Humanities, PhD

Committee Chair

Maxwell, Kristi

Committee Member

Luginbill, Robert

Committee Member

Omer-Sherman

Committee Member

Stone, Nomi

Author's Keywords

Poetry of witness; PTSD; war on terror; iliad; sophocles; odyssey

Abstract

This dissertation is a historically and rhetorically grounded creative project exploring the traumas of war. This project is divided into three broad chapters, each using a different (and relevant) approach to cover the content contained within that chapter. The first chapter relies on that historical grounding, exploring the history of PTSD as it is currently understood, before exploring ancient Greek poetry and theater and both the historical and military contexts for each, before finally discussing modern warfare and the “Forever War” of the American War on Terror that lasted for nineteen years. With the historical grounding set, it moves into a rhetorical grounding, explaining the theoretical frameworks of poetry of witness and the theoretical frameworks of epic poetry. With the second chapter comes the creative project, the poetry collection from which the dissertation draws its title. Relying heavily on the classic forms suggested in the Homeric epic (and modern translations thereof), it does not explain itself and rather exploits the haste and uncertainty that can be created by this decision, in order to mimic the grand, but often confusing, sensation of being in the military. Nothing explained, nothing explored, everything experienced. Finally, the project concludes with notes about the choices made during the poetic project, aiming to provide deeper insight into those decisions and give background to any of the more obtuse mythic or modern references. It resolves the many uncertainties produced in the second chapter, but only in a retrospective way: one has to survive the experience of war and take a good bit of thought before one can try to come to understand it. Only with time are the wounds healed. This project aims to provide insight to those outside of these experiences, to allow those who have lived in the shadow of the forever war to see into it more. However, critically, it has also served as a cathartic and recuperative process for the writer to heal. Which of these is the more important component of the project is up for debate.

Download

Share

COinS