English Language and Literature Commons^™

Herrick's Wild Civility, Martin Corless-Smith

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

When one reaches for a book to take on a trip there might be any number of reasons for making a choice, but undoubtedly preeminent for me is company. I find that more often than not I take Herrick. And I have wondered why this is. Part of the reason is that he is at once familiar, and so I bring the familiar with me as one might a friend, but he remains somewhat enigmatic. I have been reading his Hesperidesfor longer than I care to recall, and it is not as if I haven't finished reading it so …

When Students Write Literary History: Regionalism, Populism, And Literary Value In A Gold Rush Magazine, Tara Penry

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

At my urban university in the Intermountain West, English majors enter a course called Literature of the American West with expectations formed from a global media culture of genre paperbacks and Hollywood films. They are skeptical about the literary value of popular forms such as westerns. Some fear that anything written for wide distribution and money must violate what Henry James called the artist's "conscience." James well knew his own answer when he asked about the nineteenth century Western writer Bret Harte some thirty years after the westerner's first success, "Has he continued to distil and dilute the wild West …

Teaching White Papers Through Client Projects, Russell Willerton

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

White papers are increasingly prevalent in business and professional settings. Although textbook resources for white paper assignments are limited, a white paper assignment completed for a community client can provide a learning experience that students enjoy and that strengthens ties between the university and the community. This article describes a way to approach the white paper assignment in a communications-focused course and identifies resources to support white paper assignments.

What Is Esl?, Gail Shuck

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Much has been said about the diversity in the population we often refer to as ESL students. Although the bulk of the research on secondlanguage writing in the 1980s and 90s was concerned mostly with international students with visas to study in the US, significant attention in the last decade has been paid to an important distinction between international students and US-resident learners of English. Several books have been written about resident linguistic minority students (Harklau, Losey, and Siegal; Ferris; Kanno and Harklau; Roberge, Siegal, and Harklau) and the ways in which their needs as writers differ from the …

Collaboration: Talk. Trust. Write., Jim Fredricksen

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

We have long recognized English classrooms, at all levels, as sites ripe for collaborative activity among students; when students read, write, and learn together, the classroom becomes a microcosm of the work we do as professionals in the field. In writing, collaboration can be vital. Collaborative writing often leads to projects that are richer and more complex than those produced by individuals, potentially engaging multiple audiences in broader conversations. However, collaboration can also present its own particular set of challenges, ranging from the practical (How do authors find each other and determine publication avenues?) to the more theoretical (Is the …

A Motorcar Runs Through It: Imagining The Unwritten Western Book, Tara Penry

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Address to the Thomas Wolfe Society, Thirty-Fifth Annual Meeting, 25 May 2013, Boise, Idaho.

In the last session this morning, David Radavich said, “Ultimately, Thomas Wolfe did not find the home that he was seeking. He remained restless... [and] his true home was in writing.” I too would like to talk this evening about the relationship between home and community on the one hand and restless motion on the other. I am interested in Wolfe’s thoughts about homes and communities in A Western Journal, and in the way—had he lived—westerners themselves might have continued to influence him as he …

How The Axe Falls: A Retrospective On Thirty-Five Years Of Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Performance, Linda Marie Zaerr

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

This retrospective represents a new approach to using historical performance as a tool for understanding medieval narrative performance. The core of the article traces how an individual performer’s interaction with a stable medieval text both indicates directions medieval performers may have taken and suggests the limitations imposed by modern performance conventions. The discussion touches on issues of adaptation and translation, variation in troupe composition and audience, expectations of modern audiences, impact of costume choices, and limitations of audio and video recordings as documentation of live performance. Juxtaposing eight performances of a single passage clarifies how performance can transform a text, …

The Muslim Refugee Family: On The Way To Citizenship, Heidi Naylor

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the spring of 2001, just before the world went post-9/11, my husband approached me about hosting an Afghan refugee family of four. I was hesitant. But my reservations-lice, tuberculosis, the loss of solitude-seem petty and insulting now. In the end, they were out-weighed by his enthusiasm.