Date of Award

5-21-2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS)

Department

Liberal Studies

First Advisor

Mary Crone Odekon

Second Advisor

Grace Burton

Abstract

To challenge myself beyond writing an analytical research paper, I decided that the best way to encapsulate my interdisciplinary experience was to do an interdisciplinary project. Since my area of focus was about the relationship between fiction and nonfiction, my thesis would be as well. This project consists of several sections of analytical work with chapters from an ongoing work of fiction sandwiched (I hope, illustratively) between. The story, called The Bathymetrist, is about Milo Finn, a teenaged girl who spends summer days in a row boat out on a pond behind her house. She begins to map the bottom of the pond by dropping a plumb bob on a length of marked twine, but discovers a spot that cannot be measured. The plumb bob drops and keeps dropping until Milo runs out of twine. Her best friend, Flax, is frightened by this bottomless hole, but Milo is intrigued and begins to spend much more time at the pond than with her friends, creating rifts that reveal what lies beneath the surface of her relationships and her expectations of herself and others.

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