Fall Capstone Presentations
by Callisto Martinez ’26 & Lucy Flack ’27
This semester, those who filled the DeWitt Wallace Library’s Harmon Room to hear the English department’s literature and creative writing capstone presentations on December 3rd and 4th were treated to delicious chocolate cake, hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles, and, most anticipated of all, a plethora of fascinating capstone presentations. Presentation topics ranged from sex with eldritch beings, small town crime families, and desolate islands with mysterious diseases on the creative writing side, to reinventions of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), grief and continuing bonds with lost loved ones on the literature side.
On December 3rd, the capstone lineup featured students who participated in Professor Emma Törz’s novella writing capstone. On the second night, presenters alternated between those who had spent the semester crafting a novella (or comic book!) and those who researched and wrote a literary analysis in Professor Coral Lumbley’s capstone. While literature capstones highlighted various types of analysis and texts, from poetry to film, each presentation engaged with themes related to re-imagining in different ways, as one audience member pointed out during the Q&A. Similarly, several creative writing capstones captured coming of age narratives across a variety of genres, including science fiction and urban fantasy.
Capstone Presentations Night One
Liam Lynch: “Ash, Fire and Blood”
To start off the evening, Liam Lynch shared about his urban fantasy novella, which features the differing perspectives of two main characters: Sasha and Mira. Between the two, neither character is presented as a clear antagonist or protagonist as they struggle over what should be the role of the Timeless, a group of immortal beings, in society.
Zoe Frank: Cowgirl Style
Written in just two weeks after a spark of inspiration and rapid change of plans, Cowgirl Style is Zoe Frank’s politically poignant lesbian sex novella. Cowgirl Style centers on Nova, who decides to go on a road trip after dreaming about having sex with Lake Isabella and encounters some women, but mostly eldritch beings, to have sex with while hopping from motels to truck stops.
Charlie Chinander-McFaul: Herein is Love
While laughter from many attendees bounced off the Harmon Room’s walls, Charlie Chinander-McFaul experimented with a Southern accent reading a sermon from his historical fiction Herein is Love. The novella revolves around two feuding preachers traveling through Northern California, near Mount Shasta on a stagecoach in the late 1850s. As they travel further into the wilderness, a strange infectious disease ravages their stagecoach.
Birdie Keller: Lethe
Set on a barren ocean island plagued by a mysterious disease, Birdie Keller’s novella Lethe immerses readers in a story of government corruption and widespread amnesia. Narrating one of the main character’s actions with the pronoun “you,” Lethe experiments with second-person point of view. Keller was inspired by Sofia Samatar and Octavia Butler’s short stories, and The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin.
Colin Massoglia: Rulers of the Hidden City
While writing Rulers of the Hidden City, Colin Massoglia was inspired to consider his narrative from the perspective of who most readers would view as the morally abhorrent antagonists. Inspired by classics like HP Lovecraft’s works and Lord of the Rings, as well as contemporary media like Warhammer 40K, “Rulers of the Hidden City” tells the story of an order of knights with reprehensible goals and the emergence of resistance, for the wrong reasons, within the order.
Xavier Pittman: Hellbana, Music for the Monsters
Breaking with conventions of novella writing class, Xavier Pittman decided to bring together visual art and musical inspiration in a comic. Hellbana, Music for the Monsters follows a musical band of monsters defying the laws of the “beautiful” to upend a world that persecutes humans, elves, and dwarves as “monsters.” Pittman drew inspiration from the bands Hyro the Hero and Fever333, as well as season two of Arcane.
Capstone Presentations Night Two
Natalie Pollock: “Writing to Relate: Continuing Bonds Theory and C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed”
Natalie Pollock’s capstone presentation brought together her two majors, English and philosophy, to illustrate how C.S. Lewis’s memoir A Grief Observed, written in response to his wife’s passing, facilitates a grieving process and helps us relocate loved ones we no longer share the material world with. Her analysis offers grief as a neutral experience, rather than a negative one, that creates opportunities for transformation and connection.
Wesley Henry-Mitchell: Verity Jones and the Phantoms of Paris
Drawing inspiration from Indiana Jones and Renaissance grimoriés, Verity Jones and the Phantoms of Paris tells the story of two friends, Jones and Kitty, on vacation in Paris before their senior year in college. Their unique sidegig, performing exorcisms, challenges their friendship and introduces new adventures as well as Sailor, a gloomy individual who is definitely not possessed.
William Chapman-Renaud: Renaissances of Modernism: Pound and Rexroth’s Encounters with Classic Chinese Poetry
William Chapman-Renaud presented on Ezra Pound and Kenneth Rexroth’s experimentation with translations of Chinese poetry and how it evolved both Pound and Rexroth’s own styles and literary modernism as a whole. Chapman-Renaud contrasted Pound’s previous poetry before his work with translations to his work after, noting the significance of changes in rhyme and meter as well as imagery.
Kien Nguyen: Not a Snake but a Cormorant
Inspired by the gay mafia Tumblr sensation “Goncharov,” among other works, Kien Nguyen answered many long-unheard pleas for a gay mafia story that is actually real. The spaghetti Western novella revolves around the witty wandering musician and storyteller, Clyde, and his mischief related to the Cormorant crime family in the small town of Renville.
Olivia Worcester: Condemned to Living Death: Collective Fixation on Adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Olivia Worcester got everyone excited about the soon-to-be-released 2024 adaptation of “Nosferatu” with her analysis of remakes and adaptations of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Worcester examined how, in contrast to Dracula himself, adaptations give an afterlife to texts, films, and other media and questioned what made Dracula so suited to this type of reimagining.
Cassandra Wright: The Last Summer on Spiteman’s Rock
Featuring a cast of five high school graduates adventuring through their last summer together before going their separate ways, Last Summer on Spiteman’s Rock explores coming of age within an interspace sci-fi setting. Over the course of several vignettes that make up the novella, the characters — Minty, Isa, Jamie and twins Drew and Alex — collectively contend with their individual struggles and differences to move forward in their own stories.