Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Does Introductory Writing Instruction Help Students To Succeed At Montclair State University?, Sean Molloy

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study examines whether Montclair State University (MSU) students who were placed into an introductory writing course between 2005 and 2009 later succeeded as measured by retention rates, academic advancement and available grade data. While available data was limited, retention rates and grade data suggest that most of these students have succeeded so far at MSU. The study also submitted an online survey to former introductory writing course students which asked whether they believe that their experience in that course was an actual contributing cause to their academic success. Survey responses of 68 students confirm that most believe the course …

The Effects Of Coauthoring On Student Writing, Stacey E. Spector

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Teaching student writing can be a very frustrating yet rewarding experience. Because there are so many ways to approach writing instruction and the writing process, there is often a disconnect between teachers’ expectations and students’ performances. A plethora of research has been done on teaching the writing process: peer editing, revising, and other areas of writing instruction. However, not much has been explored in terms of how writing can improve if we ask students to write together.

The goal of having students write together, or coauthor, is to allow them the chance to learn from each other and explore the …

The Struggle Between The Self And Not-Self : The Influence Of Zen Buddhism And The Upanishads In Yeats’S Later Poetry, William Paul Kadar

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis will examine questions about how William Butler Yeats was influenced by his exposure to eastern philosophical thinking. Yeats's work prior to 1927, before his significant and rather esoteric tome A Vision, could classify him as a proto-Romantic, but it was his work after this where we see the influence of an eastern way of thinking. Specifically, this thesis will focus on Yeats's poetry from 1927 on, with references to some of his earlier work to demonstrate how Yeats had already discovered some of the basic tenets of eastern thinking without having studied it. The initial analysis will locus …

A Case Of Identity, Robert R. Sillery

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In this thesis, I examine the writing pedagogy known as identity negotiation. I focus specifically on the models Robert E. Brooke presents in his book, Writing and Sense of Self: Identity Negotiation in Writing Workshops, and in several essays. I also review later adaptations of this theory by such writers as Zan Goncalves, Nancy Welch, Lad Tobin and Bronwyn Williams. Finally, I will discuss practical applications of identity theory in the STRUGGLE program in Pittsburgh and in programs that are affiliated with the National Writing Project.

Throughout, I analyze and affirm Brooke’s argument that identity negotiation is so woven into …

Life Beyond The Scarlet Letter, Shauna Ciarco Demarco

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter recounts the events that occur during a time span of seven years that follows an adulterous encounter between two of the novel’s three protagonists. This act took place before the novel begins and details of it are never disclosed to the reader. The novel’s focus remains fixed on the events that occur after the symbol of this sin, the scarlet letter “A,” is placed upon the breast of Hester Prynne. While Hester boldly and steadfastly confronts a new life as a scorned woman and single mother, the father of her child, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, is …

A Divided Family : Examining The Physical Displacement In Robert Olen Butler’S A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain, Alex William Csedrik

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In Robert Olen Butler’s A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, the collection focuses on the Vietnamese that emigrated to America because of the Vietnam War. Through these short stories, Butler illustrates the physical displacement of the characters, and their new role within their new home, America, as the Other.

Throughout examining the physical displacement and the characters’ status as the Other, this thesis focuses on the after effects of the Vietnam War. Each character attempts to cope with their displacement and Other-ness through a variety of methods including exploitation of their Other-ness for monetary gains, using their sexuality to …

Beyond Berenice : Edgar Allan Poe As A Magazine Editor, Critic, And Supporter Of Women, Karen Affinito Greco

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

While Edgar Allan Poe was editor of the New York-based Broadway Journal and the Literati o f New York in the mid 1840s, he was very supportive of female writers of the time period. Poe gave women writers including Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, and Frances Sargent Osgood key placements in the Broadway Journal and the Literati o f New York and most often favorable reviews. These actions and feelings of support were in contrast to the overall feeling of the time period, which was that women should not venture outside the domestic arena into the literary world.

This thesis …

Preparing Low-Income Middle And Secondary Students To Participate Effectively In Academic Discourse Through Writing, Franc Lacinski

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Students from low-income families often perform poorly on formal assessments in language arts. Examining data using the 2008-2009 State of New Jersey Department of Education School Report Cards, a comparison was made between low-income districts and affluent districts in three areas: High School Proficiency Assessment Language Arts Literacy Scores, SAT Verbal Scores and SAT Essay Scores. Students from low-income districts performed significantly lower in these areas than students from the higher income districts and from the average performance rates for the State of New Jersey. This lag in performance affects students’ choices for higher education, for job opportunities, as well …

‘But They Would Not Teach Her To Play’ : Child Heroines, Fantasy, And The Victorian Debate On Female Education, Nicole Papaioannou

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

For England, the nineteenth century was a time of transformation. The landscape of England changed rapidly as industrialization and urbanization took hold of the nation. The population boomed, and children overpopulated cities and towns. With so many youngsters running about, mass education became a major public concern. By the midnineteenth century, the sad state of the nation’s public education system had been exposed by the Newcastle Committee, and reforms were beginning to take place.

In particular, the education available for females came under scrutiny. Many lower class girls left school unable to read, write, or perform basic mathematics, while middle …

Defining A Metaphorical Space To Speak From : Exploring The Relationship Between Women And Place Within Gloria Naylor's The Women Of Brewster Place And Toni Morrison's Sula, Adriana Maria Immediate

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis explores the complex yet indispensable relationship that exists between the Black female character and place in Gloria Naylor’s novel The Women of Brewster Place and Toni Morrison’s novel Sula. The representation of place, both landscape and homeplace, are examined through a close reading of language, particularly through metaphorical elements. Naylor and Morrison employ metaphorical elements to not only emphasize each woman’s intimate engagement with her sense of place, but also to acknowledge the transformative powers that place wields over each woman’s identity. For each woman that has been suppressed and silenced within a patriarchal society, the home becomes …

Disrupting Social Order : The Widows Of Pride And Prejudice And Sense And Sensibility, Jacklyn Grace Ievoli

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis explores the power struggle between the widows and young men in Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. The focus is specifically on the power struggle regarding marriage: the widow endeavors to arrange the man’s marriage, while the man fights to regain his agency and masculinity by manying whom he chooses. This thesis examines the implications of these struggles between male and female and arranged and companionate marriages.

This thesis will also discuss the stylistic reflection of these struggles in the text. Jane Austen gives us male characters who are under the domination of a wealthy widow. While …

Gendered Spaces In James Joyce’S Dubliners, Cynthia J. Hacker

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis paper, entitled Gendered Spaces in James Joyce’s Dubliners, will explore Joyce’s use of the special environment, both public and private. Joyce designed the built spaces in his stories to reflect the way space was gendered in his time. Each space, whether it was the home, the street, the pub, or a church, was indicative of a pattern of power relationships between men and women. Within these gendered spaces, power relationships were constructed, individual consciousness formed, and national identity debated.

In Joyce’s stories, women occupy the space of the home in a way that suggests it is their expected …

Lost In A Lie : Examining The Language Of Storytelling, Lying And Untruths In Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot, Demons And The Brothers Karamazov, Anastasia Shamin

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis will focus on the liars in three of Dostoevsky’s major novels: The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot and Demons. It will consist of three chapters devoted to one character (liar) from each novel. I will focus on several definitions of lying by examining the concepts of untruth and misfire, which will help to differentiate the characteristics of each character’s motivations, as well as the consequences that their words have on the discourse within the novels. This project’s primary focus will be in exploring the rhetoric of lying by studying the style of each liar’s verbal delivery. The degrees and …

Gods As Parental Figures In Euripides’ Alcestis, Hippolytus, Iphigenia In Aulis And Tauris, Valbone Dushaj

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The relationship between father and child seems to be a tumultuous one in the Greek tragedies, particularly in Euripidean tragedy. Father and child frequently do not have a loving and unrestrained relationship, but rather a distant, stoic bond void of communication. In Alcestis (438 B.C.), Hippolytus (428 B.C.), Iphigenia in Aulis (406 B.C.), and Tauris (414-410 B.C.), the children, Admetus, Hippolytus, and Iphigenia, deal with disregard, mistreatment, and abandonment by their fathers, Pheres, Theseus, and Agamemnon. Doomed to die, these children often hold their fathers accountable, indirectly or directly, as murderers in their passing. Even as the unwritten law of …

The Rhetorical Construction Of Reader-Writer Identities In Contemporary Fiction Reviews, Katherine G. Giannisis

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The New York Times Book Review is a prestigious, well-known, and widely-read publication. Each Sunday, countless readers turn to the reviews published in the Times for critiques of recently released contemporary fiction. The reviews are written by individuals of experience: novelists, short-story writers, nonfiction writers, professors of Literature, and editors of literary publications. However, in recent years, many websites have begun to publish online book reviews written by everyday readers. Goodreads.com, created in December 2006, is a social networking site devoted solely to reviewing and discussing books. My project examines the identity of the reviewer who writes for The New …

The Bachelor Narrator Motif In The Sketches Of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Carol L. Anderson

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis examines the bachelor narrator motif in seven of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s sketches, published between 1831 and 1843. Hawthorne’s narrators are artists, alienated from society in general, and from women in particular. Moreover, they are modeled upon the figure of the European flaneur, the idle ‘man about town’ who believes he can read the character of the stranger in the crowd. In these first person narrations, Hawthorne explores the problems of subjectivity (involving self-concept, including the split between the conscious and the unconscious, and the gap between the mind and the material world) and the problem of knowledge (involving the …