Body Composition

by Evans, Kelley E.

Kelley Evans's dissertation consists of a collection of personal essays, which foreground the experience of the body. In four sections – Sensation, Chaos/Control, Movement, Inward/Outward – she considers her body and the bodies of loved ones in states both elevated and debased, in social space and in the mind. In her critical introduction, "Canon(icle) for the Personal Essay," Evans proposes a reflexive and constantly reinvented personal essay canon as a corrective for the hegemony of memoir in the field of creative nonfiction. Examining texts by Eliza Haywood, Margaret Fuller, Jamaica Kincaid, and Etel Adnan, Evans seeks to add diverse voices to the canon and to add innovative techniques to discussions of craft.