Digital Commons Network^™

The Power Fantastic: How Genre Expectations Mediate Authority, Angela Rose Cox

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reconciles academic and popular uses of the term genre, concluding that genre is a transmedial, mutable, associative, recognized system regulated through tacit understandings of prestige and power in a given Social space. The study employs a digital humanities method (dependent on digitally facilitated data analysis), conducting descriptive discourse analysis on collected online discussions from fan spaces concerning the fantasy genre and matters related to fantasy. In this way, I construct an image of the fantasy genre, and genre in general, as a multimodal space in which material freely passes between traditional and new media and participants actively negotiate …

Revision And Re-Writing As Adaptation: Using Adaptation Theory To Encourage Student Recognition Of Rhetorical Situations, Alicia Claire Troby

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many students don’t want to revise their writing, or do so in small, surface-level ways. This has been an issue many composition instructors have faced over the years, and there is a large body of scholarship about revision and the writing process by many in writing studies. From Nancy Sommers, Janet Emig, Donald Murray, and others, to more recent publications “post-process,” composition instructors and writing studies scholars are concerned about revision and the role it plays in students’ learning to write. As a strategy for teaching bigger-level revision, I implemented the use of adaptation theory (reading/watching and doing adaptation) as …

Selling College: Student Recruitment And Education Reform Rhetoric In The Age Of Privatization, Paige Marie Hermansen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the success of for-profit colleges and universities (FPCUs) as a socio-cultural phenomenon that hinges on distinct public discursive strains and neoliberal rhetorics. This project examines the role of language in creating and sustaining particular discourses of higher education and how those discourses are reinforced and reflected in channels of discourse like documentary films and advertisements.

In the context of shifting demands on and representations of higher education, this project critiques the evolving rhetoric of American education and the shift toward a wider acceptance of privatization efforts, as well as the effect this shift has had on prospective …

Social And Emotional Development And Language Outcomes In Mixed Income Preschool Classroom Environments, Misty D. Newcomb

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Two different publicly funded preschool programs exist within Arkansas: Head Start and the Arkansas Better Chance (ABC) program. Though philosophically similar, the different programs have dramatically different income eligibility guidelines resulting in classrooms with differing levels of economic diversity. Independent samples t-tests were conducted on initial, final, and growth scores in Personal and Social Development and in the area of Language and Literacy Development. The program with higher income guidelines had higher initial and final scores, but mixed growth scores. Multiple regression analyses indicated that starting score was the single greatest predictor of growth and of final scores. Growth was …

Toddlers And Technology: An Examination Of How The Digital Surround May Be Related To Prototypic Vocabulary Development And Social Interactions During Play, Hannah Biarnesen Hutcheson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study sought to examine how the digital technology that surrounds young children may be related to prototypic vocabulary development and Social interactions during play. Twenty-six families in the Northwest Arkansas region with children between 15-36 months of age participated in the study. Thirteen children attended a campus preschool, six children attended a grant-funded local preschool, and seven children, all from the Northwest Arkansas area, were part of an earlier home-based study. The materials for the study included a developmental-technology use questionnaire and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Archival videotaped play sessions with the seven home-based children utilized a “Little …

“Between The Yes And The No”: Alternative Ontologies And Literary Depictions Of Mysticism In Borges And Mahfouz, David Shane Elder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the advent of the modern era and the subsequent age of Enlightenment, the rational tradition has enabled the West to assert command of a large area of the globe and its population. While advancing the conditions of living for many, rational structures have also been used to control and repress others. The theosophy of the medieval Islamic mystic Ibn al-ᶜArabī, with its basis in irrational thought, offers a counterpoint to the rational and empirical traditions, the Social orthodoxies to which these epistemologies contribute, and the ontologies with which these epistemologies and orthodoxies are correlated. Yet mystical expression is very …

Twice Heard, Paradoxically (Un)Seen: Walking The Tightrope Of Invisibility In Palestinian Translated Fiction, Mona Nabeel Malkawi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the translators’ invisibility in postcolonial translated Palestinian fiction. On one hand, this analysis revolves around the ethical stance of translators towards authors in a postcolonial theoretical framework. On the other, it brings postcolonial translation scholars’ approaches into practice and examination. Therefore, this study provides a critical analysis of reading novels in translation as both a channel of decolonization from Oriental and imperial discourses and an aesthetic catalyst for freedom in exile, specifically translated by Trevor LeGassick, Elizabeth Fernea, Salma Jayyusi, Adnan Haydar, and Roger Allen. The intriguing paradox of the translator’s invisibility is inherent in the contradiction …