Digital Commons Network^™

“Siento Que Siempre Tengo Que Regresar Al Inglés”: Embracing A Translanguaging Stance In A Hispanic-Serving Institution, Sandra I. Musanti, Alyssa G. Cavazos

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This chapter centers on our reflections and pedagogical moves as two bilingual educators at a Hispanic-Serving Institution on the borderland region of South Texas, a predominantly bilingual and bicultural community. Specifically, the chapter documents how we embrace a translanguaging pedagogical stance. Translanguaging practices are identity markers and represent the complex ways bilinguals use their linguistic repertoire to communicate across contexts and to negotiate social identities (García & Li Wei, 2014; Martinez-Roldán, 2015). Drawing on García, Johnson, and Seltzer’s (2017) conceptualization of a translanguaging “corriente,” we describe our translanguaging stance and moves as we, respectively, design and teach two undergraduate courses: …

Transfer Of Variable Grammars In Third Language Acquisition, Ramsés Ortín, Carmen Fernandez-Florez

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research on linguistic variation suggests that usage patterns are deeply embedded in native and non-native speakers’ knowledge of grammar. This study explores the transfer of these variable sociolinguistic patterns at the initial stages of third language acquisition. We elicited narratives in Portuguese from two mirror-image groups of sequential Spanish-English bilingual early learners of Portuguese. Their production of variable subject pronoun expression was analysed. When comparing the two groups with regards to the linguistic factors that constrain subject pronoun expression, evidence of transfer from Spanish and not from English is consistent for both groups. We conclude that variable linguistic information is …

About Men: A Retrospective Into The Evolution Of The Male Form Through The Female Gaze, Laura Briseño

Theses and Dissertations

It is philosophized that subjectivity is founded on subjection, a subjection based on the view point of the viewer. Through the centuries the idea of the male form has been transformed through various representations from the context of art, architecture, and culture from Ancient Greece (Classical period of 5th and 4th centuries BC) to Contemporary art (1946–present).

The purpose is to create an exhibition that provides a female gaze on the representations of the male form through or in art. Examining how and why male forms are represented in the content we know them as of current curation. Which brings …

Might Be Tragic: The Lonely Voyeur In Narrative Art, Alexandria Canchola

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper discusses the work displayed as it might have been seen in the exhibition, Might Be Tragic. The work is inspired by and draws from narrative fiction, blurring the distinctions between our perceptions and our creations of reality. When one observes a narrative, they are unwittingly fulfilling voyeuristic tendencies by vicariously experiencing others realities or falsehoods. The exhibition challenges how narrative can function in a space. The process of walking through the exhibition, Might Be Tragic, brings the book, Not That Tragic, to life in a three-dimensional format exploring the intimate relationship one has with …

Redefining The Mfa: Artistic Pragmatism For The Twenty-First Century, Cristina Ann Correa

Theses and Dissertations

The twenty-first century economy demands a culturally-adaptable and technologically-innovative workforce. Despite the expansion of creative industry, at least half of academically-trained artists will work in fields unrelated to their studies. Statistics reflecting employment changes every three years parallel twenty-first century, pragmatic realities. Job seekers must consistently adapt and add to acquired skill sets to remain marketable.

Visual artists constantly engage in research and experimentation to move their practice beyond comfort zones. While many artistic processes can be learned through the internet, books, and observational study, the road to a career in academia must begin with a Master of Fine Art …

Investigating Faculty Across The Disciplines Perceptions And Practices Of Reflective Writing In Community Engaged Courses: A Comparative Study, Marcela Hebbard

Theses and Dissertations

Recently, research in composition studies and Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) has focused on understanding better how student reflective practices assist on their transfer of writing knowledge across contexts (Yancey et al., 2014; Taczak & Robertson, 2017, Lindenman et al., 2018). However, not much research has been done that investigates faculty beliefs and practices about reflective writing, how they use it to measure student outcomes and achievement in community engaged courses and the implications this might have for the transfer of knowledge and practice of writing. This study draws primarily on activity theory to better understand whether there is a …

Other Lives, Shawna J. Kennedy

Theses and Dissertations

This work is one of fiction, dealing with characters and concepts of ‘otherness’ and social displacement. This work is further sub-categorized as a work of fantasy or urban fantasy fiction where the standard rules of reality do not apply.

Art Of Katharsis: A Study Of Creating Abstract Expressionist Art In The Quest For Emotional Release And Healing, Maria Fatima Lai

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper discusses the art seen in the exhibition, Katharsis, is a body of work inspired in the quest to validate suppressed emotions pulling from personal experiences of grief and abandonment. The methodology behind the work explores the artistic process that enables the transformation of pain and grief. The research is guided by understanding the artist’s process through therapeutic methods found in abstract expressionism. Art produced in pain, allowed a process of healing and honest forgiveness. The vicious cycle of feeling trapped in the idea of letting go when you have not allowed yourself to understand, threatens the …

Epistemic Violence In Beowulf, Joseph W. Krippel

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the more than two centuries of scholarship on Beowulf scholars have engaged in a consistent controversy in interpretation revolving around the issue of Christian versus pre-Christian content in the poem. While scholars largely agree that the understanding of the poem depends on understanding this content, scholars still widely disagree on what that understanding should be. The history of this problem is summarized, moving from viewing the poem as primarily pre-Christian, to general agreement that it is primarily Christian, to the current climate of viewing the text as hybridization. The thesis then proposes that, following the theories of Michel Foucault …

Healing And Resistance Through Humor: A Literary And Cultural Analysis Of Chicana And Latina Cultural Production, Victoria E. Valdez

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes elements of humor used by Chicana cultural producers (poets, performance artists, stand up comediennes) to subvert negative stereotypes of Chicanas. Chicana humorists have challenged harmful images of Mexican American women through poetry, prose, performances, and stand-up comedy. While Américo Paredes created a scholarly foundation for the study of Chicano humor, it is evident that Chicanos and members of dominant society mock Chicanas with their brand of humor. I argue writers like Michele Serros and Lorna Dee Cervantes resist dichotomous Chicana imagery and instead create and add to Chicana representation with humor. This thesis examines performance artist Maria …

Flow: Fluid Meditations: The Study Of Creating Fluid Art As A Form Of Meditation, Eva Marie Williamson

Theses and Dissertations

This study describes the relationship of creating fluid art as a form of meditation. This type of art is relatively new [to include] within universities and within the art profession. Little research and writing exists at the doctoral level. Through the practice of the student, this study focuses on the process of creating fluid art as an experience to fit the method of meditation.

This study takes an academic and working artist approach as derived from documentation practices and creation of a body of work. The approach views the documentation of creating fluid art as a form of meditation as …

Traducir En Pro De La Educación Del Pueblo: La Labor Traductora De La Sociedad De Amigos De La Educación Popular, Gabriel Gonzalez Nunez

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Este trabajo pone en relieve una labor desempeñada por la Sociedad de Amigos de la Educación Popular (SAEP) que, si bien no es desconocida, tampoco ha recibido suficiente atención por parte de historiadores y académicos. Se trata de los esfuerzos traductores desplegados por los integrantes de la SAEP en su celo por introducir en el Estado Oriental del Uruguay nuevas e innovadoras ideas en cuanto a la educación y su función social. El trabajo contextualiza esta labor dentro del papel histórico de la traducción en el continente americano, para luego dar paso la descripción de los esfuerzos traductores llevados a …

Nuevo Santander The Unrealized Archaeological Potential Of A “Civilian” Province In Northern New Spain, Russell K. Skowronek, Christopher L. Miller, Roseann Bacha-Garza

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

In 1746 the Viceroy of New Spain called for the founding of a new province to be located between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River. Between 1748-1755 two dozen civilian communities of farmers and ranchers were established by the province’s founder José de Escandón. Many towns were founded along the banks of the Rio Grande where there was access to water and lands for agriculture and grazing. Each town served as the administrative, economic, and ecclesiastical hub for surrounding land grants and ranches. Were it not for the work of W. Eugene George, Mindy Bonine, and Mary Jo Galindo, …

Interdisciplinary Biliteracy: Leveraging Biliteracy Development For All Bilingual Learners, Sandra Mercuri, Sandra I. Musanti

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Review Of Mestizos Come Home!: Making And Claiming Mexican American Identity. By Robert Con Davis-Undiano. (Norman: University Of Oklahoma Press, 2017)., Teodoro Garcia Iii

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Gothus: Konstruction Und Rezeption Von Gotenbildern In Narrativen Schriften Des Merowingischen Gallien By Christian Stadermann (Review), Erica Buchberger

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Scholarship on the construction of early medieval identities has grown tremendously in recent years, with a number of edited collections, monographs, and articles examining ethnicity, religion, and the strategies of identification used by contemporary authors to situate themselves in a changing post-Roman landscape. The majority of these, though, focus on self-reflection – Franks concerned with Frankish identity, or Goths concerned with Gothic identity. Christian Stadermann’s Gothus is a particularly interesting and useful book precisely because it breaks out of this mold by investigating Gallic and Frankish views of their Gothic neighbors. As Stadermann illustrates, an outsider’s perspective is just as …

From Accordion Roots To Conjunto Music: An Unlikely Journey, Manuel F. Medrano

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

The article presents information on accordion and conjunto music. It mentions that Narciso Martinez, a young pioneer accordionist from northern Mexico began a musical collaboration with bajo sexto player Santiago Almeida from South Texas and formed the conjunto. It also mentions that conjunto pioneer Valerio Longoria has revolutionized what Narciso Martinez had begun before World War II. It also mentions that Eva Ybarra has faced the most obstacles in achieving recognition as an accordionist.

La Corrida De Las Corvinas, Manuel F. Medrano

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of attending the Central Junior High School in Brownsville, Texas and coping miserably with adolescence.

Strengthening The Reader Self-Efficacies Of Reluctant And Struggling Readers Through Literature Circles, Elena M. Venegas

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although a subskills approach to reading instruction is merited in improving the reading skills of struggling readers, struggling readers also benefit from balanced literacy instruction. An overemphasis on reading subskills arguably minimizes students’ enjoyment of reading and motivation to read and may inevitably result in the formation of reluctant or struggling readers. In turn, this may diminish the self-efficacies of reluctant or struggling readers. I designed an embedded multiple case study framed by social cognitive theory to explore the potential influence of literature circles, a balanced literacy instructional strategy, on the reader self-efficacies of reluctant and struggling readers in Grades …

Vision And Christomimesis In The Ruler Portrait Of The Codex Aureus Of St. Emmeram, Riccardo Pizzinato

School of Art & Design Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Gospel book known to scholars as the Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14000) is a lavishly decorated manuscript produced in 870 for the Car­olingian king and subsequent emperor Charles the Bald (823-877). Although the manuscript has been much admired and its art frequently reproduced, many questions remain concerning the Codex Aureus and its miniatures, both individually and as parts of a program. This article examines the relationship between text and image in the two full-page miniatures, which represent the enthroned Charles the Bald facing an image of the twenty-four elders adoring the Lamb. It reads …

Mapping Opposition In The Sonora- Arizona Borderlands: A Critical Recovery Of Federico Ronstadt’S Memoir Borderman, Diana Noreen Rivera

Literatures and Cultural Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Federico Ronstadt’s Borderman, a memoir written between 1944 and 1954, recounts the businessman’s immigration to Tucson and his life in the Sonora- Arizona borderlands during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Paradigms of opposition that inform the recovery of early Mexican American memoir and autobiography—centering the life writings of elite, dispossessed Mexican Americans and Hispanic immigrant literature written in Spanish—have discouraged study of Ronstadt’s English-language, seemingly assimilationist memoir. In my critical recovery of Borderman, I argue that it should be read as part of the legacy of oppositional literature written by people of Mexican descent in the …

Influences Of Egyptian Lotus Symbolism And Ritualistic Practices On Sacral Tree Worship In The Fertile Crescent From 1500 Bce To 200 Ce, J. Andrew Mcdonald

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many conventional features of world tree motifs in the ancient Near East—including stalked palmettes, aureoles of water lily palmettes connected by pliant stems, floral rosettes, winged disks and bud-and-blossom motifs—trace largely from Egyptian practices in lotus symbolism around 2500 BCE, more than a millennium before they appear, migrate and dominate plant symbolism across the Fertile Crescent from 1500 BCE to 200 CE. Several of these motifs were associated singularly or collectively with the Egyptian sema-taui and ankh signs to symbolize the eternal recurrence and everlasting lives of Nilotic lotus deities and deceased pharaohs. The widespread use of lotus imagery in …

Beyond America: Cross-National Context And The Impact Of Religious Versus Secular Organizational Membership On Self-Rated Health, Laura Upeniks, Steven L. Foy, Andrew Miles

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Studies using data from the United States suggest religious organizational involvement is more beneficial for health than secular organizational involvement. Extending beyond the United States, we assess the relative impacts of religious and secular organizational involvement on self-rated health cross-nationally, accounting for national-level religious context. Analyses of data from 33 predominantly Christian countries from the 2005–2008 World Values Survey reveal that active membership in religious organizations is positively associated with self-rated health. This association’s magnitude is higher than the magnitude of associations between many memberships in secular organizations and health. The positive association between involvement in religious organization and self-rated …

Using The Rhetoric Of Video Games To Teach The Praxis Of Critical Analysis, Jeffrey B. Doyle

Theses and Dissertations

Research has shown that video games can be successful at teaching concepts and skills to students at various grade levels. To explain how this might work, theoretical work is done to connect the concept of flow from psychology to procedural rhetoric. With the inclusion of Foucault’s theories of power, video games are shown to not be isolated experiences but connected to the power dynamics of society. In video games, these dynamics can be seen through the problematic portrayals of marginalized peoples as well as the hostile community that has developed online surrounding video games. To account for these issues, but …

Linguistics In Secondary Education: Teachers' Perceptions Of Linguistics In The Classroom, Ayla Aizza Galvan

Theses and Dissertations

Theoretical linguistics is an area of English study focusing on the abstract components of language: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. By 11th and 12th grade, students in the United States have been tested on linguistic concepts, as per state examination standards. English Language Arts teachers can introduce theoretical linguistic investigation and terms to their students, but this is not happening. The paper reviews why theoretical linguistic analysis is not thoroughly implemented in classrooms, successful classroom linguistic investigation in other countries and some U.S., and how linguistic investigation can be part of classroom curriculum. The research incorporates survey data from …

The Witch, The Blonde, And The Cultural "Other": Applying Cluster Criticism To Grimm And Disney Princess Stories, Valerie F. Garza

Theses and Dissertations

The Brothers Grimm and the Walt Disney Company have produced popular fairy tales for large audiences. In this work, cluster criticism—a rhetorical criticism that involves identifying key terms and charting word clusters around those terms—is applied to four Grimm fairy tales and four Disney princess films. This study aims to reveal the worldview of the rhetors and explore how values present in Grimm tales manifest in contemporary Disney films. Disney princess films in this study have been categorized as “White/European” and “Non-White/Cultural ‘Other.’” Because film is a form of non-discursive rhetoric, an adaptation of cluster criticism designed for film was …

Panopticism In A Digital Age: An Examination Of Transmedia Reimagining Jane Eyre, April L. Gonzales

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine how content creators, Nessa Aref and Alysson Hall have reinterpreted the original character Jane Eyre in a modern and social media era. The main struggle emphasized is that between an ideal self and societies expectations. Societies expectations and the expression of self are both more influenced by economics and business. The creators of The Autobiography of Jane Eyre heavily emphasize the motivations behind appearances. The creators shift Jane’s character so she is able to navigate within these expectations and the influence present in a digital world.

Lunatics And Idiots: Treatment Of The Mentally Ill And Mentally Disabled Population In The Rio Grande Valley, 1860-1962, Emily Gray

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the conditions the mentally ill and mentally disabled population in the Rio Grande Valley faced during the era of the asylum in the United States, from 1860 until 1962. The treatment options for the citizens of the Rio Grande Valley are compared with the treatment of the mentally ill in the nation as a whole, as well as in the state of Texas. The Rio Grande Valley has been geographically distant from large population centers, and the state of Texas neglected to place any state-funded health care centers in the region until the 1960's. The Rio Grande …

Gender Politics And Dualistic Othering: Possession, Christianity And The Repudiation Of The Maternal/Feminine In Desire Under The Elms, Aamir Aziz, Sulaim Sarfraz

Journal of South Texas English Studies

No abstract provided.

Living Clocks And Mouments: African Americans In The Sound An The Fury, Edward Mahoney

Journal of South Texas English Studies

No abstract provided.