Date of Award
Spring 2025
Language
English
Embargo Period
4-3-2027
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College/School/Department
Department of English
Program
English
First Advisor
Edward Schwarzschild
Second Advisor
Elliot Laura Tetreault
Third Advisor
Lynne Tillman
Keywords
fiction; incarceration; Cleveland; Columbus, Ohio; state violence
Subject Categories
Fiction
Abstract
“Big House” is the third section from Conjoined States, a novel that depicts the United States’ dependence on forced labor, incarceration, and surveillance. In 1971, two years after Ohio’s governor deploys the National Guard to violently suppress a protest in Columbus, Ella Schmidt and her parents relocate to Cleveland, where they experience renewed displacement due to racism. The child of an Austrian father and Barbadian mother, Ella endures bullying in middle school but finds solace in high school in the writings of Jane Addams. Inspired by Addams’s career in social work, Ella dreams of repairing Cleveland’s abandoned houses so their former residents can return. Two people believe Ella’s plan could change the city: her outspoken Puerto Rican classmate, Rita Lugo, who insists Cleveland will benefit from Ella’s presence no matter what; and Mrs. Leonardi, a teacher who offers to help Ella enact her plan—but only in exchange for intel that could lead to Rita’s arrest. Informed by Critical Race Theory and loosely based on Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, “Big House” combines real accounts of police brutality with imagined details that empower the surveillance state, offering a glimpse of what happens when schools and churches operate as intelligence arms for the police.
License
This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.
Recommended Citation
Bird, Key K., ""Big House," from Conjoined States" (2025). Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present). 125.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etd/125