English Language and Literature Commons^™

‘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 …

Activism, Community And Cultural Heritage: “Communitism” In Creek Literature, Rachel Maria Cain

Honors Theses

"Communitism" refers to literature that encourages activism by celebrating and promoting American Indian communities. This thesis investigates how the literary works, The Fus Fixico Letters (1902 – 1908) and Drowning in Fire (2004), are communitist by supporting specific political and social changes in Creek communities. Through The Fus Fixico Letters Alexander Posey promoted his progressive political convictions, including that Creeks should embrace land allotment and endorse the creation a separate state for American Indians. Drowning in Fire, by Craig Womack, takes place throughout 1904 – 1993 and relates traditional Creek stories and practices to modern life. The novel delves …

Poetry And The Post-Apocalyptic Paradox: North American Indigenous Disruptions To The Westernized Self, Joseph Benjamin Ziegler Ferber

Honors Theses

This three-chapter project explores the work of three poets, each identifying with different North American indigenous tribes. Their work challenges western poetic conventions and notions of individualism to offer alternative worldviews and complicate mainstream oversimplifications of American Indian identity. Brandi MacDougall investigates assumptions of the Western Self represented by the "I" Perspective common in Western thought; Sherman Alexie revises the sonnet form to portray the complexity of how contemporary American Indians navigate the blending of capitalist institutions and native traditions; Kristi Leora offers readers an enlightened conception of self-hood by balancing processes of western socialization with native cosmology. Ultimately, this …

Degree Of Change: The Ma In English Studies, Margaret M. Strain, Rebecca C. Potter

English Faculty Publications

From the publisher: As the needs of those seeking an MA in English studies have evolved, so too have the degree’s mission and identity. Margaret M. Strain and Rebecca C. Potter, editors of Degree of Change: The MA in English Studies, argue that the MA is positioned in a dynamic contact zone—“a place where disciplinary knowledge, student need, and local exigencies interact and where disciplinary identity is constantly negotiated.”

Looking primarily at stand-alone master’s programs, this volume examines the design, delivery, and value of a master’s degree in English in the twenty-first century and challenges the characterization that MA programs …

Teaching Anglo-American Academic Writing And Intercultural Rhetoric: A Grounded Theory Study Of Practice In Ontario Secondary Schools, Amir Kalan

English Faculty Publications

This qualitative research project is a grounded theory study of the experiences of five EAL (English as an additional language) academic writing instructors with intercultural rhetoric. Following the academic conversation about contrastive/intercultural rhetoric, this investigation explores narratives of classroom practice in Ontario secondary schools in order to underline L2 writing activities that are sensitive to intercultural rhetoric. This paper includes explanations of the phenomenon of intercultural rhetoric as identified by the interviewed instructors and lists practical strategies employed by the participants. These strategies are organized in three categories: (1) strategies that use the potential of students’ first languages and mother …

Adolescent Literacy And Collaborative Inquiry, Rob Simon, Amir Kalan

English Faculty Publications

In a teacher education classroom in Toronto, groups of middle school students, teacher candidates, and university researchers, members of our research collaborative, the Teaching to Learn Project (Simon et al., 2014; Simon & the Teaching to Learn Project, 2014), discuss projects developed from curricula they coauthored for Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1986). Maus documents Spiegelman’s father’s recollections of the Holocaust and the author’s own struggles to come to terms with what it means to be the child of a Holocaust survivor.

Youth and teachers involved in the Teaching to Learn Project collectively worked through what historian …

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 …