Date of Award
5-1-2026
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
Creative Writing
First Advisor
Jordan, Judy
Abstract
Testimony of a Mad Woman is a poetry collection that examines the intersections of madness, womanhood, and survival within personal and cultural contexts. The poems give voice to a speaker who has been silenced, pathologized, and fragmented, reclaiming her narrative through acts of testimony. Moving between memory and displacement, the collection engages with themes of mental illness, bodily autonomy, violence, and desire. The figure of the “mad woman” is reimagined not as a condition to be contained but as a site of resistance and truth-telling. Through monologues, lyrical fragments, and shifting voices, the poems explore how institutions, familial, medical, and societal, attempt to discipline the female body and voice. Recurring images of hunger, confinement, and rupture shape the emotional landscape of the collection, revealing the tensions between silence and expression. Ultimately, these poems assert the necessity of speaking from within fracture, transforming madness into a form of witness and survival.
Access
This thesis is only available for download to the SIUC community. Current SIUC affiliates may also access this paper off campus by searching Dissertations & Theses @ Southern Illinois University Carbondale from ProQuest. Others should contact the interlibrary loan department of your local library or contact ProQuest's Dissertation Express service.