Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/So-Long-Cowgirl
Defense Date
2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
Craft/Material Studies
First Advisor
Hillary Fayle
Second Advisor
Susie Ganch
Third Advisor
Bohyun Yoon
Abstract
So Long, Cowgirl is a work of creative nonfiction that engages with topics of memory, mythmaking, and inheritance. Through retellings of Greek myth, light academic prose, and non-fictional essays, the work serves as a meditation on my artmaking practice as well as a kind of quarter-life crisis memoir. By likening my own family’s long history with addiction and cattle farming to the mythological, cow-cursed line of Europa, I use the symbology of cattle as a stand-in for generational trauma and as a focus for introspection on how events far in the past continue to echo through time.
Rights
© Colin Goodpasture
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-6-2026