The Honors Thesis Journey: Shannon Moore

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Shannon Moore, a senior Honors English and journalism major with a minor in education, is currently working on her Honors Thesis! Like many other Honors students, she is taking a class with peers as part of her thesis journey.

The class, Truth/Telling: Creative Nonfiction in Its Many Guises, is taught by Professor Connie Griffin. According to Moore, each class involves analyzing nonfiction works, followed by creating original pieces inspired by the readings. Through the class, Moore has discovered different mediums to express herself creatively.

“There's a lot of conversations within our class about form, process, bending the form and how we can experiment with different methods, whether it's poetry, short stories, long form narratives or multimedia aspects, like video, photos and things like that.”

Moore is thankful for taking the class and values the insights she has gained. She also appreciates the sense of community she has built with the ten other students in her class. Most of the class is devoted to workshopping their creative pieces, which has brought the students closer together.

Moore also notes how her perspectives have changed on the ideas she had of the non-fiction genre.

“Before this class, I didn't really like nonfiction. I thought of it as memoirs or books about science, but nonfiction can be about my friends or I've written about my job, exploring family and romantic aspects of life. Through this class, I've realized that I enjoy writing creatively in nonfiction. I enjoy writing about my life, even though it's kind of hard sometimes because I never really have before.”

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This past spring, Shannon studied abroad in Galway, Ireland.

Although she hasn’t finalized her thesis topic, Moore is exploring many ideas in her class and feels emboldened by its open, collaborative atmosphere. Through this collaboration, she has realized that she wants to write about her journey of discovering her identity at UMass.

“Through college, I've come into my own and I've had a lot of great experiences. I've studied abroad, my sister's given birth to two kids, I’m discovering who I am and how I navigate friendships, romantic relationships, my family, career, body image and all of these complicated themes. College has been a wonderful experience, and I want to try and replicate that in my thesis.”

As Moore is being exposed to the multitude of ways one can express oneself through nonfiction, we are excited to follow along and encourage her throughout her journey! 

Watch the video below to hear from Shannon!