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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner
With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner
Whittier Scholars Program
My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …
More Than Fiction: Representations Of Youth In Young Adult Dystopian Fantasy Fiction And Its Importance, Daman Mcconnell
More Than Fiction: Representations Of Youth In Young Adult Dystopian Fantasy Fiction And Its Importance, Daman Mcconnell
University Honors Theses
This article takes on a comparative analysis between Young Adult Dystopian literature like Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows and Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, focusing on how adolescents are represented in the discussion of Dystopian Fiction. Though mainly focusing on Six of Crows, these novels can be considered places where society and the world these characters live in are unforgiving and restrictive, forcing the growth of these adolescents to accelerate toward adulthood. Within Six of Crows lies the representations of antagonists going against the youth as adults with twisted senses of morality. In addition, this article also discusses …
The Enigmatic Self: An Ongoing Exploration Of Literary Selfhood From The American Renaissance To Contemporary Young Adult Literature, Helene Leichter
The Enigmatic Self: An Ongoing Exploration Of Literary Selfhood From The American Renaissance To Contemporary Young Adult Literature, Helene Leichter
Honors Theses
Assuming the near impossible task of sorting through and delineating various conceptions of the self in and throughout literary and civil history, literary critic Irving Howe adopts a highly perceptive and profoundly analytical approach to the enigmatic individual. In the article quoted above, "The Self in Literature," Howe consolidates what he believes to be the most promising attempts at coding and decoding abstractions of the self across numerous literary, philosophical, and sociological texts. The success of Howe’s analysis lies in his ability to simultaneously embrace and scrutinize seemingly incompatible notions of bodily and spiritual discourse. With the knowledge that such …
Bodies Of Silence And Space: Victimhood, Complicity, And Resistance In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Sana H. Mufti
Bodies Of Silence And Space: Victimhood, Complicity, And Resistance In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Sana H. Mufti
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
This thesis examines the complexity of resistance and the conditions of power for women in The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Using feminist theory, theories of neoliberalism, and Dominionism, this thesis works to understand the ways in which victimhood and complicity influence resistance in totalitarian regimes. I argue that neoliberal ideologies skew understandings of freedom, agency, and power in a way that ensures individuals, specifically women, remain trapped in the system. Focusing on reproduction, I examine how Gilead controls women’s bodies and reproductive abilities to ensure a future for itself. The Eve-Complex is one way that the state integrates itself …
Naturalizing The Border: Eco-Justice Poetics In Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe And All The Stars Denied, Regan Postma-Montaño
Naturalizing The Border: Eco-Justice Poetics In Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe And All The Stars Denied, Regan Postma-Montaño
Research on Diversity in Youth Literature
No abstract provided.
This Was The World And I Was King: Land And Identity In Scottish Children's Literature Of The Golden Age, Rodney Fierce
This Was The World And I Was King: Land And Identity In Scottish Children's Literature Of The Golden Age, Rodney Fierce
Dissertations
This dissertation focuses on Scottish cultural identity and its erasure in nineteenth-century British children’s literature as successful Scottish authors became known as British authors, and British children’s literature was canonized as the genre’s first Golden Age. Specifically, it explores the ways that Catherine Sinclair, George MacDonald, R. M. Ballantyne, Robert Louis Stevenson, J. M. Barrie, and Helen Bannerman—six popular nineteenth-century Scottish authors—maintain a sense of Scottishness in their adventure fiction. By reading the texts in the historical context of the authors’ biographies, I demonstrate that the land in their works and the benevolent colonizers allowed to control it in some …
“My Brand Is Sick Girl”: Identity Formation In The Young Adult Chronic Illness Novels The Fault In Our Stars And Sick Kids In Love, Natalie Thompson
“My Brand Is Sick Girl”: Identity Formation In The Young Adult Chronic Illness Novels The Fault In Our Stars And Sick Kids In Love, Natalie Thompson
Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations
This thesis explores the identities of the chronically ill protagonists in The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and Sick Kids in Love by Hannah Moskowitz, specifically by looking at the young protagonist’s self-identity, their relationships with their family members, and the romantic relationship they have with the chronically ill male lead. John Green, who does not identify as chronically ill, writes a novel that ultimately reflects ableist ideas of the medical model of disability, which sees disability as a problem to be solved by medical intervention, and compulsory heterosexuality through the portrayal of Hazel and her relationship with …
Teaching Issues Of Identity Through Multicultural Young Adult Literature, Emily M. Withers
Teaching Issues Of Identity Through Multicultural Young Adult Literature, Emily M. Withers
All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023
Despite changing demographics of high school classrooms, teaching practices and literature remain similar to decades-old practices focusing more on literary devices and symbolism than on topics relevant to the students. Many teachers don’t have the time to find new novels. And when they do find the texts, they are often at a loss for how to properly teach the novels. This thesis is a three-part paper advocating for teaching identity to high school students using a blend of classic literature and contemporary multicultural young adult literature. The first section focuses on personal experiences and research illustrating the need for more …
Queer Identity Construction In Benjamin Alire Sáenz’S Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe, Frank Ur
Senior Capstone Theses
Young Adult Literature has been consistently growing in popularity within recent years for its exploration of various topics such as LGBTQ Identity. Specifically, this canon of literature has begun the inclusive process of portraying minority voices and their navigation of queer identity. In this essay I explore Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s young adult novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Specifically, I explore the novel's main character and narrator Aristotle Mendoza. I move to examine the characteristics of machismo, heteronormativity, and internalized homophobia to analyze how Aristotle’s identity is at first made up by these characteristics and how …
Creating A Multiracial Lesson Plan, Clayton Davis
Creating A Multiracial Lesson Plan, Clayton Davis
Capstone Projects and Master's Theses
The purpose of this project is to teach students about multiracial identity issues. Multiracial populations in the U.S. continue to grow and it’s important for educators to address the needs of these students. A 5-E multiracial literature lesson plan was created for second grade that incorporates KWL and Text-to-World teaching strategies. A second grade class were read two children’s picture books, each featuring a biracial protagonist, and were asked to discuss and evaluate the content and commonalities of these stories. Students recorded what they learned in this lesson in their KWL’s. The results reveal that some students understood the problems …
The Book That Made Me: A Girl, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner
The Book That Made Me: A Girl, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner
Faculty Publications
In this installment of The Book That Made Me, a series from Public Books reflecting on the books that have changed our lives, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner reflects on the freedom he received—to become a whole other person, in a whole other place—from an unexpected source.
Engaging The Religious Dimension In Significant Adolescent Literature, Rickey Cotton
Engaging The Religious Dimension In Significant Adolescent Literature, Rickey Cotton
Selected Faculty Publications
This article discusses the religious dimension in contemporary adolescent novels of recognized merit. It notes psychological and sociological studies indicating that religion is a significant factor in the actual lives of both adults and adolescents and observes that consequently it can be expected that quality literature will reflect this reality. A functional definition of religion was used to address the practical and varied ways religious or religious-like dynamics are engaged by adolescent characters. Religion was defined as whatever individuals do to come to grips with profound existential issues—questions dealing with ultimate issues. An examination of works by three major writers …
Memories Cloaked In Magic: Memory And Identity In Tin Man, Anne Collins Smith
Memories Cloaked In Magic: Memory And Identity In Tin Man, Anne Collins Smith
Faculty Publications
In Replications: A Robotic History of the Science Fiction Film [Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995], J. P. Telotte argues that "through its long history, one that dates back to the very origins of film, this genre [science fiction] has focused its attention on the problematic nature of human being and the difficult task of being human." [1-2] The thesis of the book, he states, is "relatively simple—that the image of human artifice ... is the single most important one in the genre. [...] Through this image of artifice, our films have sought to reframe the human image …
Angela Johnson: Award-Winning Novels And The Search For Self, Kaavonia M. Hinton-Johnson, Angela Johnson
Angela Johnson: Award-Winning Novels And The Search For Self, Kaavonia M. Hinton-Johnson, Angela Johnson
Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications
It was over a decade ago when Rudine Sims Bishop (1992) prophetically dubbed Angela Johnson as possibly one of "the most prominent AfricanAmerican literary artists of the next generation" (616). At the time she had four picture books to her credit, but the following year she would publish her debut young adult novel, Toning the Sweep. From there, a number of other award-winners would follow and the total of young adult books would increase to eleven and counting. To date, Johnson has three Coretta Scott King Awards, a Michael L. Printz award, and the "Genius Grant" on her list of …