English Language and Literature Commons^™

Attending To Conditions That Facilitate Intercultural Competence: A Reciprocal Service-Learning Approach, Rachel M. B. Collopy, Sharon Tjaden-Glass, Novea A. Mcintosh

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

Although service-learning can support the development of intercultural competence, it has also maintained power differentials, reinforced privileged perspectives, and strengthened deficit thinking. Recent research has investigated the conditions within service-learning associated with positive change in diversity-related attitudes. We extend that work, conceptualizing a reciprocal service-learning (RSL) approach that integrates conditions posited by contact theory and the process model of intercultural competence into service-learning’s core features of reflection and reciprocity. In an RSL approach, transformational reciprocity at the participant level supports cultural awareness, interdependence, and parity between participant groups. We created an RSL experience and measured change in three attitudes fundamental …

Aiscrima E Checchi Italian-American Dialect And Development In The New Millennium, Elizabeth Loyacano Pedrotti

Honors Theses

The Italian-American identity is inextricably linked with language. Italian immigrants and their descendants have formed a culture in the United states with a dynamic history, particularly when it comes to language use and perceptions. This study examined multigenerational Italian Americans’ perceptions of English, Italian, and the unique Italian-American dialect; it aimed to discover changes in the usage of Italian-American dialect over time. Italian Americans in the Dayton area were interviewed and presented with surveys to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. Results indicate that while overall usage and recognition of Italian-American lexical items has decreased dramatically since the 1980s, younger …

‘How Little I Cared For Fame’: T. Sparrow And Women’S Investigative Journalism At The Fin De Siècle, Laura Vorachek

English Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the work of an overlooked female journalist, T. Sparrow, arguing that her career reveals the difficulties female journalists faced when negotiating between the expectations of middle-class gentility and the demands of investigative journalism.

Sparrow asserted her gentility rhetorically, in part because female reporters who took up investigative reporting were vulnerable to criticism for assaying beyond domestic subjects. Moreover, incognito investigative reporting often brought celebrity to its practitioners, which challenged the convention of middle-class female modesty.

Sparrow, therefore, strove for a delicate balance in her career—assuming the stance of a middle-class woman who lived among the poor, someone …

Access, Oppression, And Social (In)Justice In Epidemic Control: Race, Profession, And Communication In Sars Outbreaks In Canada And Singapore, Huiling Ding, Xiaoli Li, Austin Caldwell Haigler

English Faculty Publications

This article investigates issues of social injustice experienced by various oppressed groups in SARS outbreaks in 2003, paying particular attention to medical care workers in Canada and Singapore, with many of them being immigrants from East Asia and Southeast Asia. It identifies communication strategies employed by civic networks, especially nonprofit organizations, to help marginalized groups acquire institutional and literacy accesses so that they could respond more effectively to such injustices in complicated and multicultural contexts. Through combined use of Jost and Kay’s work on the three types of social justice (2010), oppression (Young, 1990), and access (Porter, 1998), this study …

Genre Controversy: Human Universality Or Plagiarism In The Dystopian Genre?, Taylor V. Kingston

Honors Theses

In a fusion of behavioral psychology, evolutionary psychology, and literary analysis, this thesis considers the possibility that human nature dictates the types of rhetoric utilized in any given genre. Operant conditioning emerged as the governing device in a case study of the dystopian genre since readers must be made to associate fear or hope with particular government structures. Implicitly then, literature is molded into its genres by the human desires addressed by that genre’s reigning themes. This “mold” seems to have created a strain of novels within the dystopian genre that are so similar there have been accusations of plagiarism. …

Speculation And The Emotional Economy Of 'Mansfield Park', Laura Vorachek

English Faculty Publications

At the midpoint of Mansfield Park (1814), the Bertram family dines at the Parsonage, and card games make up the after dinner entertainment. The characters form two groups, with Sir Thomas, Mrs. Norris, and Mr. and Mrs. Grant playing Whist, while Lady Bertram, Fanny, William, Edmund, and Henry and Mary Crawford play Speculation, This scene is central not only because Speculation reveals certain characters' personalities, but also because another type of “speculation” occurs during the game as the players contemplate or conjecture about one another. Moreover, “speculation” in the sense of gambling functions as a metaphor for the vicissitudes of …

Review: 'Action Chicks: New Images Of Tough Women In Popular Culture', Ione T. Damasco

Roesch Library Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Crossing Boundaries: Land And Sea In Jane Austen's 'Persuasion', Laura Vorachek

English Faculty Publications

Jane Austen suggests in Persuasion the pressures that the increased mobility of the middle class placed on the established aristocratic society in her time. Anne Elliot especially brings to light the inherited assumptions of her society. She can marry within her social rank (Mr. Elliot or Charles Musgrove) or marry below her (Wentworth at age 23), but either is a choice within the limits established by her society. One owns land or one does not. But when Wentworth returns a man of name and wealth, he is not a member of the landed gentry nor is he below Anne in …