Date of Award
8-2024
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School
Humanities
Committee Chair
Dr. Joshua Bernstein
Committee Chair School
Humanities
Committee Member 2
Dr. Olivia Clare Friedman
Committee Member 2 School
Humanities
Committee Member 3
Dr. Monika Gehlawat
Committee Member 3 School
Humanities
Committee Member 4
Dr. Charles Sumner
Committee Member 4 School
Humanities
Committee Member 5
Dr. Alexandra Valint
Committee Member 5 School
Humanities
Abstract
“Beware a Woman in a Black Dress” is a PhD dissertation pairing a creative work with a critical preface. The creative work, ahis novel, follows an autistic woman attending a cosplay event in rural Maryland. While chaperoning her teenaged sister and attempting to find a way to fulfill a variety of social activities she finds contradictory—such as being both a chaperone and the fun-loving sister that her sister wants—she struggles with what to do with her late aunt’s estate. Originally inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, the novel also takes inspiration from detective books ranging from Doyle’s to those by Agatha Christie and Josephine Tey. While the narrator is not a detective, she struggles with questions of filling different social roles as many detective characters in fiction do, and is haunted throughout by deceased women who feed the mysteries surrounding her.
Copyright
Hannah Christie Feustle, 2024
Recommended Citation
Feustle, Hannah, "Beware A Woman In A Black Dress" (2024). Dissertations. 2261.
https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/2261