Doctoral Dissertations
Date of Award
5-2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Major
English
Major Professor
Benjamin F. Lee
Committee Members
Cornelius Eady, Amy Billone, Emily Bivens
Abstract
Midwest Strip Club, explores ideas of home, belonging, and loneliness. Written during the pandemic and its aftermath, the collection thinks about the various shapes isolation takes and the effects it has on our relationships with our environments and with each other. While dealing with heavy subjects, the poems balance heaviness with levity, often incorporating humor through self-parody and confession while speaking to and playing with the history of poetry, taking up a range of traditional forms to explore subject matter —the portrayal of love on The Bachelor or Twitter joke formats—that both work with and push against these formal traditions. The collection turns toward “precarious-girl humor” to help navigate the loneliness and stagnation felt by the generations most affected by the pandemic. Utilizing self-abjection comedy to critique technology, popular culture, and to complicate depictions of millennial life, Midwest Strip Club performs a sort of psychological stripping: at times awkward and too exposed, but leaving the audience unable to look away.
Recommended Citation
Wright, Kate, "Midwest Strip Club: A Collection of Poems. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2025.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/12442