Creative Writing Commons^™

Making Then Meaning, Ben Denzer

Masters Theses

This is an artist talk contained within a book. It is 816 pages and 49 minutes long. Closed captions run across the spreads. A video of this talk can be watched on bendenzer.com/making-then-meaning

At RISD, I’ve been prompted to expand the scope and tools of my practice and to reflect on questions of meaning in my work.

I spend my days making things, but I’ve never really had good answers to questions of why I make the things I make, or what their meaning is. I don’t think there are simple answers to these questions.

I think meaning comes from …

Brave Spaces, Radical Openness, And Youth Loneliness, Taylor Curry, Mariah Thomas, Riese Munoz

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

It is no secret young adults, no matter where in the world they come from, face social pressures with the potential to be isolating. For today’s youth, not only are they feeling the commonplace anxieties about fitting in, finding success, and uncertainty of the future, but these anxieties are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Young adults from all over the globe report feeling more anxious, more depressed, and more lonely. However, it is also no secret that deliberate community building, creation of art and writing as a means of self-exploration, and participation in spaces designed for acceptance fend off these …

Social Emotional Learning In An Elementary School, Abigail Cook

Master's Theses

This action-research study used a mixed-methods approach to help determine and observe the benefits of social emotional journaling in the classroom, specifically its impact on a students ability to recognize their personal emotions and self-concept. Data was collected both quantitively [sic] and qualitatively in a fifth-grade classroom to note the changes before implementing social emotional learning and after implementing it. This study discusses the term “social emotional learning” and provides a discussion on the impact of journaling for the students and any other implications observed. Although the results are mostly positive, the research discovered during the study concluded …

Quickwrites And The Quest To Reverse Writing Reluctance, Jenna Dunn

Honors Projects

Current research suggests that students’ enjoyment of writing will positively impact their writing achievement (Graham, 2007; Bulut, 2017). Given this trend, the following study explores the extent to which quickwriting, a teaching strategy developed extensively by Linda Rief (2003, 2018) as well as Donald Graves & Penny Kittle (2005), impacts the attitudes of reluctant writers. A total of nineteen eleventh-grade students were interviewed in three focus groups. All of the students within the study experienced three weeks of regular classroom quickwriting along with one week of a quickwriting extension workshop prior to participation in the focus groups. Students were asked …

Anti-Racist Pedagogy: A Practical Means Of Building Bonds Between Marginalized Students And Instructors In The Composition Classroom, Santa-Victoria Pérez

English (MA) Theses

Framed by the existing scholarship in anti-racist pedagogy, this thesis is inspired by Charise Pimentel and Octavio Pimentel’s dream of building coalitions with marginalized students, Steven Alvarez’s framework for academic biliteracy, and Marcos del Hierro’s advocacy for incorporating discussions about contentious social issues in the classroom. This research draws mainly from works by rhetoricians and compositionists of color who report that working through and pushing past the discomfort and tensions of politically charged topics in the classroom are crucial for an anti-racist writing program (Prendergast, 1998; Villanueva, 1999; Clary-Lemon, 2009; Inoue, 2015; García de Müeller and Ruiz, 2017). By reflecting …

Through Critique And Beyond: Speculative Fiction As A Tool Of Critical Pedagogy, Syd Thorne

Master's Projects and Capstones

This field projects centers around the issue of hopelessness among teachers and students and examines the genre of speculative fiction as a potential tool for cultivating critical hope in the classroom and as an asset to critical pedagogy. Utopian pedagogy and critical pedagogy make up the theoretical framework of this research and project development. The research explores the use of speculative fiction in three areas: activism and identity, student engagement, and utopian performance. The review of the literature demonstrates that the use of speculative fiction in the classroom has the potential to engage students in conversations about social justice and …

Approaches To Narrative Instruction For Second Language Learners, Mathew Peters

MA TESOL Collection

Narratives have reemerged as a dominant form of rhetoric over the last fifty years. This dominant use of narrative discourse has only increased with the rise of social media. Walther Fisher (1987) proposed the narrative paradigm as a unifying theory of human communication. His major claim is that people are inherently storytellers and that people use a narrative rationality and a logic of good reasons to inform their beliefs, values, and actions. This paper utilizes his theories, along with recent findings in neuroscience, to establish an argument for greater inclusion of narratives into second language teaching. Narratives can have a …

The Writing For Healing And Transformation Project, Heather Elizabeth Osborn

Education Doctorate Dissertations

As a qualitative action research study, the purpose of The Writing for Healing and Transformation Project was to facilitate more inclusive writing strategies and to promote individual and collective healing on issues of social suffering and oppression (Kleinman, Das, & Lock, 1997; Pennebaker & Smyth, 2016) for diverse students at a community college located in the northeastern United States. The 18 participants in the study included students in my English II literature and composition course. The theoretical framework encompassed Pennebaker’s (2016) “writing for healing” paradigm, advocating the use of expressivist writing and “social suffering theory,” examining how power structures affect …

The Uses, Understandings, And Values Of Student Strucutral Assisting Metatexts In College First Year Composition Courses, Joseph Ryan Dundovich

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a look into the perceptions, views, and experiences of first-year composition students into being offered a large amount of choice/agency in their major summative writing projects, but also accountability and guidance during their process in the form of resources called ‘structural assisting metatexts’. The major question that guided this study is the following:

- How do first year composition students use, understand, and value forms of structural assisting metatexts during the writing/creation process?

The two parts of the writing process that were specifically researched in conjunction with their correlating metatexts are the topic selection (with the Proposal …

Through The Scholastic Looking Glass: The Pedagogical Potential Of Textual Deformation For Poetic Studies, Taylor Dietrich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the pedagogical usefulness of the antithetical reading model of textual deformation for the study of poetic works. No formal pedagogical plan exists for the education of students in poetic studies through textual deformance. This thesis does not go as far as structuring one in its entirety. Rather, it surveys the digital humanities landscape, showing a collective affinity within a number of textual studies approaches that advocate for textual deformance as useful for interrogating texts, and aligns the overlapping symmetries within those working methodologies with pedagogical imperatives like those embedded in Ryan Cordell’s Kaleidoscopic Pedagogy Laboratory—the intent being …

Teacher-Educators’ Conceptions About Materials In Elt Classes At Lele-Uls, Ana María Hurtado Carvajal, Paula Andrea Martínez Perdomo

Licenciatura en Español y Lenguas Extranjeras

Este estudio busca identificar las concepciones de los profesores y las maneras de vivir el material en las clases de inglés en el programa de Licenciatura de Español y lenguas Extranjeras en la Universidad de La Salle. Este estudio se desarrolla con tres profesores de inglés usando entrevistas no estructuradas, cuestionarios de preguntas abiertas y observaciones. El estudio sigue un diseño de investigación fenomenológico. Los resultados muestran que los maestros conciben los materiales como mecanismos que tienen un papel importante en la clase que facilita el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje. Los profesores articulan sus preferencias en los materiales. Cuando los materiales …

Sistematización De Cuentos/Relatos De La Comunidad Mocagua, Anderson Santos Ortega, Fredy Andrés Santos Toro

Sistemas de Información, Bibliotecología y Archivística

No abstract provided.

Mutual Vulnerability And Intergenerational Healing: Black Women Hbcu Students Writing Memoir, Zelda Lockhart

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study sought to gain insight into the unique experiences of Black women students who were writing memoir toward the goal of self-definition in a Black feminist learning environment at a Historically Black College/University (HBCU). Two teaching methods included personal plot (an extension of expressive writing that offers writing prompts for emotional closure), and biblio-fusion (a combination of expressive writing and bibliotherapy) (Lockhart, 2017a; 2017b). Interviews were conducted with six Black women participants and triangulated against their personal essays and online journal responses. Personal plot, a form of narrative analysis was used to construct paragraphs on what each …

Walking As Ontological Shifter: Thoughts In The Key Of Life, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With walking as ontological shifter I pursue an alternative to the dominant modernist episteme that offers either/or onto-epistemologies of opposition and their reifying engagements. I propose this type of walking is an intentional turning towards a set of radical positions that, as integrative aesthetic and therapeutic practice, brings multiplicity and synchronicity to experience and being in an expanded sociality. This practice facilitates the conditions of possibility for recurring points of contact between the interiority perceived as ‘body’ and the exteriority perceived as ‘world.’ While making evident the self’s at once incoherence with it-self, it opens to a space beyond the …

On My Grind: Freestyle Rap Practices In Experimental Creative Writing And Composition Pedagogy, Evan Nave

Theses and Dissertations

My work is always necessarily two-headed. Double-voiced. Call-and-response at once. Paranoid self-talk as dichotomous monologue to move the crowd. Part of this has to do with the deep cuts and scratches in my mind. Recorded and remixed across DNA double helixes. Structurally split. Generationally divided. A style and family history built on breaking down.

Evidence of how ill I am.

And then there’s the matter of skin. The material concerns of cultural cross-fertilization. Itching to plant seeds where the grass is always greener. Color collaborations and appropriations. Writing white/out with black art ink. Distinctions dangerously hidden behind backbeats or shamelessly …

The Museum Of Small Things: Original Poems And Rationale, Domonique Williams

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This independent study consists of an original children's collection of poems and an accompanying rationale. In addition to the poems, this study includes an examination of child development theories, the benefits of inquiry based teaching and learning, and makes a case for the value of family, museum, and school relationships.

Teaching Creative Writing In The Age Of Common Core, Casey Unverferth

Honors Projects

The core of my honors project includes a 12-day unit plan for teaching creative writing in the form of narratives. I created lessons for 12 days, created the materials needed for each day, and created a website where my work has been displayed for my future classroom. The website link is: teachcreatewrite.weebly.com. All materials for the unit plan are broken down by day, and I chose to expand upon 3 days in a short lesson plan template.

Young Adult Fiction Writing In The Classroom: Emily’S Investigation And Insights, Emily Westfall

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project explores the field of young adult literature, while also discovering the creative writing process required to develop a young adult novel. The project is organized into three separate parts. Part One focuses on young adult writers and the literature they create, along with the benefits of using these novels in a high school classroom. To benefit my future career as a future writing teacher, I researched the process required to write a fiction novel, specifically one in the young adult genre. Within this section, sources are cited such as experienced teachers and the scholarship on young adult literature. …

A Study Of The Efficacy Of A Word Processor On The Creative Writing Done By Fourth Grade Students, Mary E. Caver

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

A Program-Approach To The Study Of Poetry, Rex Alan Romack

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.