Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Recognizing Traps And Frightening Wolves: Foxes And Lions As A Representative Of Machiavellian Political Ideology In Shakespeare’S Comedies, Grace A. Powell

Student Scholar Showcase

While William Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets have been discussed time and time again over the past few centuries, one topic that has been less traversed is the connection between his Comedies and Niccolò Machiavelli’s political ideologies. This project will explore references of lions and foxes in Shakespeare’s Comedies and the leaders and monarchs within them to determine how beliefs about Machiavelli’s political ideology influenced Shakespeare’s literature and became symbols for leadership and power. This project will be important for gaining historical context on Machiavellian political discourse and how it was represented in the contemporary dramatic literature of William Shakespeare. I …

James Baldwin's Classroom And What He Can Teach Us About Queer Representation, Matthew Callahan

Scholars Week

James Baldwin writes about the importance of the representation of race in school classrooms in his essay A Talk to Teachers. Baldwin's discourse surrounding the representation of race in schools can be extended to the queer community and the importance of representation in the classroom of these marginalized communities. Combining Baldwin's essays and fiction with educational research, I plan on highlighting the importance of representation of marginalized communities in the classroom and the role that educators play in ensuring that all students feel seen in the classroom.

Meeting The Next Generation: ​ A Cross-Campus Collaboration Via A Scholarship Workshop, Lora Winters, Ruth Monnier

Faculty Submissions

Reaching high school students before they set foot on campus would allow writing centers to increase awareness of services while also making personal connections to students, which has been proven to increase student retention. Targeting these students can be difficult and expensive, but our writing center collaborated with library services and our admissions office to create a program about finding scholarship opportunities/writing scholarship essays that was inexpensive, targeted local high schools, and initial results indicate that this program is beneficial to our university’s recruitment efforts. We will discuss our findings and how this program could be replicated by other institutions.

Refreshing The Research Process, John Venecek, Rachel Edford

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This presentation was given at the Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning Summer 2022 Conference. It was a discovery session designed to share fresh, innovative ideas for teaching research in an informal, personal setting. The hosts presented on their recent collaborations with instructors before inviting attendees to share their “fresh” approaches to teaching research, ideas for collaborations, best practices, and more.

Red Bricks And Yellow Doors – Sinclair Lewis’S Portrayal Of The Church In Main Street, Sarah Matherly

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Three Minute Thesis

Good Grief: Emotional Symbolism In Kate Dicamillo's The Tiger Rising, Sadie Barham

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Textual or Investigative

“A Fascination, Strange And Compelling”: Marriage As The Prevention Of Queerness In Nella Larsen’S Passing, Lillianna Wright

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Textual or Investigative

A New Expression: Owen Barfield And The Progression Of Language And Consciousness, Savannah Splechter

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Textual or Investigative

Helga Crane’S Attempt At Obtaining Societal Power, Natalie Abernathy

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Textual or Investigative

The Benefits Of Reading For Pleasure, And How To Instill A Lifelong Love Of Reading In Students, Anna-Catherine Kueng

Student Scholar Showcase

Reading for pleasure has countless benefits for people of all ages, including social, emotional, and intellectual growth. However, one’s love for reading does not appear spontaneously; it is something that is cultivated inside and outside of school. From being read to by parents, to including literature-based social media activities in the classroom, there are many factors that make students enjoy reading. This research explores specific factors that make people want to read and how K-12 teachers can use this knowledge to become better teachers. As the title suggests, the essence of this research is to answer the question: how can …

Best Books Of The Past 20 Years For Ages 3-6, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

Ages 3-6

Selecting books for preschoolers and beginning readers that engage their attention while teaching values, can be an elusive task. We have chosen some titles that that will cause giggles of amusement, some that may bring wrinkles of concentration to little brows, and others that may raise questions for them to ask adults. All are well-written.

Title reviews are taken from See Me Shine: Developing Character Through Books: Ages 3-6

Finding Eternal Life At The Intersection Of Bergson And Proust, Kelly Capers

Graduate Research Showcase

Finding Eternal Life at the Intersection of Bergson and Proust is a research project that explores the relationship of spirit and matter attempting to answer the question: Does the Proust Effect prove humans have an eternal soul? The Proust Effect is defined as “the vivid reliving of events from the past through sensory stimuli” based on a passage in the novel Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust. Applying quantum mechanics to Proust’s themes of time and memory and philosopher Henri Bergson’s studies of matter and spirit, one can examine how the body and soul connect. Proust’s labyrinth of language offers a …

The Hero's Journey Beyond The Physical, Jasmine Jones

Symposium of Student Scholars

How would one go about integrating a theme of acceptance of self and others into an adventure, comedy, fantasy, and family friendly film? In the film Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the invisible hand of the screenwriters does just that. The importance of this story is in the story structure. The four main characters are used to exemplify how there is an important relationship between plot and structure. Through this, character transformation takes place both physically and emotionally. The characters are presented as four normal people who were sucked into a game and sent on a quest to solve mysteries …

The Matter And (Mostly) Manner Of Mere Christianity, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Presented to a meeting of the Inkling Folk Fellowship (IFF), July 23rd, 2021.

Zoom Session Link: https://youtu.be/F2ZKEPD0YFg

Research Question•Why does Lewis’s work of popular apologetics continue to find a wide readership while other excellent books in the same genre—e.g., Sayers’s Creed or Chaos—do not?

Christianity Today Survey (2000): Most influential Christian books

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1942-44; 1952) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (1937) Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (1932-67) J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (1968) G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908) Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) Richard Foster, …

Desire And Beauty: Ancient Philosophy Molding Modern Cinema In Vertigo, Garrett Johnson, Nicholas Scott Olson

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Textual or Investigative

More Than Misogyny: The Role Of Women In The Ramayana, Sadie Barham, Stephen Bell

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Textual or Investigative

“The Greatest Poet In Ireland”: Yeats’S Changing Perspective On The Sacred Role Of Poet, Lillianna Wright, Nathaniel Ross Valle

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Textual or Investigative

Enriching The American Literary Canon Through Chaim Potok’S Work, Sara Williams, Andrew Walker

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Textual or Investigative

The Gilded Finch: An Exploration Of Class Conflict, Mattea Harrison, James Nutter

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Creative and Artistic

The Potential Positive Effects Of Early Childhood Literacy, Mary Ray, Carolyn Towles

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Textual or Investigative

Best Books Of The Past 20 Years For Children Ages 10-12, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

Ages 10-12

With the thousands of books published for children each year, it is impossible to include every worthy title. In this list we have tried to meet the interests of both genders and a variety of racial groups, putting first compelling plots in which young people demonstrate strong character. In addition, stories must be well-written, attention grabbing, and age appropriate.

Titles are taken from See Me Shine: Developing Character Through Books: Ages 10-12

Writing A Fantasy Novel, Sarah Webb

Honors Projects

The goal of this Honors Project was to write and outline a manuscript for a fantasy novel. Worked into that goal was to create a unique magic system, a world, and a pantheon, which was accomplished through research of other fantasy worlds and other mythologies both fictional and historical. The story revolves around the central questions of identity (including the fluidity of gender and sexuality), concerns of future aspirations, and how education applies to those topics through facilitating conversation; these themes are not commonly discussed in mainstream fantasy. The current manuscript, which houses over 42,000 words, also includes a visual …

(Fun)Ction: Developing Games From A Narrative Standpoint, Julian Barocas

English Presentations

My goal with this project has been to deepen my understanding of why people play games, how to make games narratively compelling, and what technical methods are effective in play. This has allowed me to investigate both the technical, scholarly assessments of board game dynamics while also exploring their real-world applications, successes, and weaknesses. Building on my research, my project has culminated in a full prototype of an original board game that has both narrative structure and an engaging gameplay structure. I have also produced a reflection paper on the experience and an annotated bibliography of my research texts and …

Gen-Ed Revisions And Community Engagement: Opportunities For Alignment And Potential Pitfalls, Lillian Campbell

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

“Glossing” The Text: Gendered Biblical Interpretation In Chaucer’S Canterbury Tales, Karen Knudson

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Not available.

It's Not The End Of The World: An Analysis Of The Similarities In Dystopian Literature And Their Shared Reflection Of The Innate Fears Of Humanity, Marlena G. Kalafut

Scholar Week 2016 - present

This article analyzed common aspects of six major works of dystopian literature to assess their commonalities, as well as their authors’ motivations in writing. Dystopian literature explores the major flaws of humanity, as well as the extent to which society could descend into chaos while simultaneously believing it is creating a better world. This thesis did not argue that within the studied works are all the same dystopian characteristics. Instead, it analyzed select dystopian qualities and made comparisons between the dystopian novels that share them, all of which were impacted by the utopian goals modeled in Plato’s The Republic, …

The Use Of Chinglish (Chinese-English) In The Public Places In China, Kashama Mulamba

Scholar Week 2016 - present

The first linguistic surprise a speaker of English will encounter upon arrival in China is Chinglish. Chinglish is found everywhere in China. Oliver L. Radtke (2007) puts it so well in his book, Chinglish: Found in translation, “I spotted it throughout, often in the most unsuspected places. I found it on hotel room doors and brightly lit highway billboards, construction sites and soccer balls, condoms and pencil boxes” (p. 6). Chinglish is characterized by its humor and sometimes mis-use of grammar. “Chinglish,” says Radtke, “is very funny because of the sometimes scarily direct nature of the new meaning produced …

Debating Immigration: Political Tropes In The Echo Chamber Of Social Media, Chaniece Williams

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Analyzing the statements made by our Political Leaders President Obama and President Trump. President Obama embracing inclusivity towards immigrants, while President Trump embraces exclusivity towards immigrants.

The Varying Implications Of Metaphor Usage In Discourse, Azaria Brown

Student Scholar Showcase

Metaphors are all around us; they are the paintbrush with which our world is created. Though we do not often take heed to the metaphors that are created around us, their presence is guaranteed. Simply put, metaphors are created when we understand one thing in terms of another thing. We use metaphors whenever we need clarity in understanding a concept or idea; in some cases, metaphors are used in different areas of discourse for different purposes. Metaphor use is driven by communication purposes and goals such as the desire to make concepts accessible, to make concepts relatable, in order to …

Diane Di Prima: A Beat Poet?, Shelby K. Miller

Student Scholar Showcase

The Beat Poets were a group of men who wrote counterculture poetry that committed on society. They embraced themes of open sexuality, Buddhism and Eastern religions, and activism. Diane di Prima, called by most literary scholars but not by her contemporaries, was one of those Beat Poets who embraced those themes. Her focus on motherhood and female empowerment is what caused her contemporaries to reject her as an equal. A second focus will the continued rejection of di Prima from the literary canon.