Digital Commons Network^™

Developing A Curriculum For Tefl 107: American Childhood Classics, Kendra Hansen

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

In the last few decades, schools have begun to teach culture concurrently with language. Many teachers see value in teaching culture along with language. However, there are few guidelines on what to teach and what materials to use when incorporating culture into a language class. The purpose of this study is to examine the cultural experiences of native English speakers in the United States to develop a curriculum for the TEFL 107 American Childhood Classics course at Minnesota State University Moorhead. A survey was administered to the student body and the results analyzed with descriptive statistics to discover the most …

Fostering Friendships Between Chinese International And American High School Students, Kai Tai Chan

Theses and Dissertations

Current research revealed that international students adjust more optimally to the host country when they have host-national friendships (e.g., Hechanova-Alampay, Beehr, Christiansen, & Van Horn, 2002; Hendrickson, Rosen, & Aune, 2011). The researcher aimed to study and examine the process of sociocultural adjustment for Chinese international high school students. Specifically, the present study focused on the perspectives of Chinese international high school students to: a) gain an overall understanding of Chinese international students’ perception of intercultural friendships with American high school students and b) identify factors that afford and constrain intercultural friendships between the two student groups as perceived by …

Cross-Culture Research: Comparison Between Chinese And American Art Education, Ye Liang

Theses and Dissertations

Education systems in China and the United States are very different. Chinese educator Hong Wang compared the two education systems and came to a conclusion: Chinese education wins in the starting point, while American education wins in the end point (Cheng, 2014). Chinese students learn more things, take challenging courses, and do well in academic accomplishment. However, examination-oriented methods in the Chinese education system may kill students’ interest in learning. Even though Chinese students learned fast in the starting points, they failed in the terminal points as they lost their interest in learning (Chen, 2014). Many educators and scholars think …

Words Are A Pipe, Kyle Michael Utter

Theses and Dissertations

A painter retraces the steps he took in making one of his paintings from beginning to end. Rather than explicitly ascribing a series of concerns or goals to his studio practice in general, he recounts the material choices he made over an 8 month period of making a specific painting of an interior landscape. The essay begins with a consideration of the written word and its potential shortcomings in describing the creative process. Warned of writing’s pitfalls, the reader proceeds onto a meandering path of written introspection as the painter reflects on his art-historical references, his sources of imagery, his …

Native America's Pastime: How Football At An Indian Boarding School Empowered Native American Men And Revitalized Their Culture, 1880-1920, David Gaetano

Honors Papers

This thesis analyzes the impact of football on student-athlete identity at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It explores the origins of Pratt’s racial ideology toward Indians and evaluates his motivations for opening Carlisle as well as his inconsistent attitude toward the game of football. The thesis asserts that the members of the Carlisle football team maintained a form of cultural continuity through the game by making it something of their own.

Towards Food Justice: Strategies Of Community Engagement For Local Food Nonprofits, Garrett Stern

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Nonprofit Studies Capstone Projects

Over the past two decades there had been a significant shift in American values around food and health. The increase of diet-related illness and the growing awareness of the local food movement have helped to shape the discourse on healthy, nutritious, sustainably grown food. Food justice advocates and organization have inserted social justice principals of equity and self-determination into the dialogue of health and food. There has been a similar shift in the nonprofit sector in regard to local food programing, with local food nonprofits advocating for equity and inclusion in nonprofit food programing. Community engagement is key to putting …

Exploring The Acculturation Preferences Of Bangladeshi-Muslim Second-Generation American Immigrants In New York City., Jakir Hossain

Senior Projects Fall 2019

The purpose of this study is to apply previous frameworks of acculturation to evaluate the acculturation preferences of the Bangladeshi-Muslim second-generation American immigrant population in New York City. This thesis attempts to understand the acculturation preferences of the aforementioned population by analyzing how they view their Bangladeshi ethnic identity and their Islamic religious identity in relation to their American immigrant upbringing. To do this, participants have been organized into acculturation preference tracks based on John Berry’s acculturation preference model. This thesis will then explore possible explanations for why differences between these acculturation preferences exist and why certain individuals found themselves …

"Woven Into The Deeps Of Life": Death, Redemption, And Memory In Bob Kaufman's Poetry, Peter Davis

Pomona Senior Theses

The scholars who have taken up the task of writing about Bob Kaufman have most often done so in response to a perceived demand: the lack of Kaufman scholarship, readership, anthology, publicity, canonization. The basis of this need is clear: Kaufman is almost never included as even a third-string Beat, a fringe Surrealist, or an underappreciated Jazz performer. To the committed readers of Kaufman – and almost all of his readers seem to be committed ones – it’s unforgivable. These various canons, major (mid-century American poets, Beat poets) and minor (Jazz poets, American Surrealists), are clearly missing one of their …

Condom Use Among Urban African American Adolescent Females, Jaquetta Marie Reeves

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Background: Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are one of the most common global health problems, having a profound impact on sexual and reproductive health worldwide. The CDC estimates that approximately 20 million new infections occur each year in the U.S., and almost half of them are among adolescents age 15–24. Despite government initiatives on STI prevention programs for adolescents, there is dearth of knowledge regarding the lack of condom use among adolescent high school students, especially concerning African American females who live in urban areas.

Purpose: The purpose of this research was to explore attitudes towards condoms, subjective norms and …

Study Of American Wood Pellet Stove Emissions, Sergio Gamarra

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Problem: The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) had not specified emissions performance standards for pellet burning stoves. Instead they were lumped in with cordwood burning stoves. IRETI’s decision to pursue this baseline study was guided by Minnesota’s concurrent “2025 Energy Action Plan” and the EPA’s pellet stove testing method development. Wood pellet fuel, a renewable resource, and the technology developed to utilize it for residential heating should be further studied to examine how together they both stand up to newly developed EPA emissions testing methods. This will establish a benchmark for testing American technology, thus guiding IRETI’s efforts of introducing foreign …

The Fiction Of Women In Contemporary American Literature : The Borderlands Of Intersectional Feminism, Postcolonial American Studies, And Creative Writing, Skye Anicca

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A collection of nine short stories entitled THE TROUBLE WITH BRIGHT GIRLS is unified by women’s diverse coming-of-age experiences in late twentieth century transnational America. The story collection relies on techniques that highlight dislocation—temporal skips and wide temporal frames, fragmented and recursive narratives, borrowed genres, absurd premise, anti-heroines and anti-epiphanies—which gesture toward collective human experiences while troubling notions of universal knowledge and values and resisting redemption or closure. The critical introduction situates the collection through the theoretical lens of intersectional feminism, informed by Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the borderlands, and in relation to field of multiethnic/transnational literature of the U.S. …

Skin And Other Stories, Brenna Croker

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The horror genre is a broad umbrella under which a number of subgenres and subcategories fall. Skin and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction stories which take on the horror genre. These stories serve to explore, test, and defy the conventions of the horror genre, making use of its tropes and traditions in some instances, abandoning and rejecting them in others. The stories in this collection connect to a number of horror subgenres, including body horror and environmental horror, in an attempt to define and exemplify these categorizations. Furthermore, these stories make use of the horror genre as …

Unbecoming : A Collection Of Short Fiction, Angélica Luisa Valentín Schubert

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This collection contains nine short stories addressing various concepts and issues relating to contemporary femininity in the United States.

The Context Of African American Emotion Expression: College Campus Influences, Deon Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Theoretical frameworks suggest that African Americans express emotion in context-specific ways that are unique to their familial socialization experience (Boykin, 1986; Dunbar, Leerkes, Coard, Supple, & Calkins, 2017). However, less is known about how African Americans express emotion across familial and public contexts. The current study was interested in exploring the contextual differences in emotion expression among 188 African American/Black college students from 3 different types of college campuses: predominantly White (i.e., PWI), historically Black (i.e., HBCU), and racially diverse. Data were collected via an online survey in which students reported the school they attend, their emotion expression in the …

The Downfall Of Colonial And Dark Romantic Masculinity In The Witch: A New England Folktale, David Miles Harrington

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis discusses the film The Witch (2015), directed by Robert Eggers, specifically, the character of William and his failures as a Puritan man. Puritan masculinity is a surprisingly understudied area of American literature and, to enter into the field, I use William and The Witch as a portal into various historical and literary interpretations of seventeenth-century Puritan maleness. The project takes a palimpsestic approach to these layers of influence on Eggers’s film. From Hawthorne’s Reverend Hooper in “The Minister’s Black Veil” and Young Goodman Brown in “Young Goodman Brown” to real-world Puritans Roger Williams and Samuel Sewall. This thesis …