Theses and Dissertations Collection

Blurring the lines between memoir, autofiction, dream and screenplay, The Moving Image follows a narrator in motion, navigating the landscape of youth in a constant state of transience. Unfolding against terrain that is by turns urban and bucolic, the collection examines the overlay of internal and geographic topographies. As the narrator negotiates boundaries within social, familial, and romantic relationships, her world is textured with elective affinities, chance associations, and subcultural alliances. The work also explores the narrator’s chronic illness, and personal and collective health in a shifting environment. As the narrator’s body begins to err, the camera focus begins to tighten, and the lens narrows; her personal and relational ecosystems grow and deteriorate in mysterious ways, mirroring the way a body might change. With a ticket in her hand, she toggles between a solitary instinct and an interdependence in a network of community, where she creates her own internal world full of possibility.