Date of Submission

Spring 2024

Academic Program

Written Arts

Project Advisor 1

Michael Ives

Abstract/Artist's Statement

“Mother” re-imagines the human perception of the state as a mother wolf and explores the development of state structure through a lens of history and myth. The collection traverses the space from the conception of the state to it’s inevitable death. There are poems directly addressing the Mother figure, along with pieces that break down other aspects of the state, which can be viewed as individual expressions of humanity under a state system.

With this work, I explore what the modern state is inside of the human psyche, while looking deeper into what makes state structure so attractive to us; while also emphasizing how destructive the state is and has been, even as we remain convinced of it’s necessity. The singular detail that the state is characterized as being female and not masculine is especially important, as the collection also seeks to draw special attention to the underlying matriarchy existing within a traditional patriarchal structure— a twist on the traditional “Great Mother” figure, who is present in countless religious traditions. The entire collection binds her very being to state structure, and operates with the assumption that she is the state. This all culminates into the misperception that the state is a tool of humanity, when it is we who are the tools.

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Open Access

Creative Commons License

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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