English Language and Literature Commons^™

How To Play A Poem By Don Bialostosky, Jayme Stayer

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Don Bialostosky has long been admired as a writer of dense texts aimed at theory-minded academics and addressing Bakhtin and rhetoric. With How to Play a Poem, Bialostosky plays to a different audience, positioning himself as “something of a popular entertainer,” to use T. S. Eliot’s improbable self-description in the wake of The Waste Land. Aimed not at theoreticians but average teachers of poetry, Bialostosky’s text attempts to make Bakhtin accessible for the college and high school classroom. For my own audience here, I offer a conflict-of-interest disclosure: Bialostosky directed my dissertation over twenty-five years ago, but there is little …

Textframe: Cosmopolitanism And Non-Exclusively Anglophone Poetries, Michael N. Scharf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project proposes a replacement for some institutional-archival mechanisms of non-exclusively anglophone poetry as it is produced under racial capitalism and archived via its universities and grant-bearing nonprofits. The project argues specifically for the self-archiving of non-exclusively anglophone poetry, and by extension of poetry, in a manner that builds away from US-dominated, nationally-organized institutions. It argues that cosmopolitanist norm translation, as advocated by various critics, can function as part of a critique of institutional value creation used in maintaining inequalities through poetry. The US-based Poetry Foundation is currently the major online archive of contemporary anglophone poetry; the project comprises a …

English Department Source Book, Lisa Roy Davis, Michael Schueth

Book Gallery

This guide provides both practical and theoretical resources for teaching college-level writing. The following pages include basic course descriptions, descriptions of state-mandated student learning outcomes, basic administrative logistics and procedures, grade and attendance reporting, Writing Center referrals, and other information that allows you to more fully focus on teaching successfully. Beyond these basics, this resource also provides a larger discussion of the theoretical foundations and approaches for how we teach. We have added an annotated bibliography as well as sample assignments that spotlight a variety of approaches to teaching composition, argument, research, literature, technical writing, and creative writing.

To associate …

Wounds And Writing : Building Trauma-Informed Approaches To Writing Pedagogy., Michelle L. Day

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation builds a trauma-informed approach to writing pedagogy informed by writing studies scholarship about trauma and inclusive pedagogy, clinical social work literature on trauma-informed care, and interviews with nine current University of Louisville writing faculty about their experiences academically supporting distressed students. I identify three central touchstones—“students are coddled,” “teacher’s aren’t therapists,” and “institutions don’t support trauma-informed teaching”—in scholarly and public debates regarding what to do about student trauma/distress in higher education. After exploring the valid concerns and misconceptions underpinning these touchstones, I illustrate how clinical research offers a way forward to help writing instructors develop more complex understandings …

There Is A Secret Heart, Dru Farro

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

late 14c., originally in grammar (in reference to certain nouns that do not name concrete things), from Latin abstractus "drawn away," past participle of abstrahere "to drag away, detach, pull away, divert;" also figuratively, from assimilated form of ab "off, away from" (see ab-) + trahere "to draw," from PIE root *tragh- "to draw, drag, move."

“To drag away” I find particularly evocative.

“The candidate must ensure that the abstract refers to all the elements that would make the thesis worth consulting.”

I find this, of course, to be a paralyzing requirement. This thesis is not worth …

Lesson Plan For Teaching Mohsin Hamid's "Exit West", Keyan Shayegan , '22, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

A lesson plan for teaching this novel to college and university students. After completing the lesson plan, students should have an enhanced understanding of the following learning goals: the similarities between different types of internal and external migration, and the effects migration has on individuals and their senses of identity; why nativism is so prevalent, the negative impact it has on humanity, and how it can be overcome by shared experiences between people; how authorities such as governments and mass media corporations use technology to deter immigration, via both force and influencing the public, in ways that dehumanize immigrants; how …

Lesson Plan For Teaching Mohsin Hamid's "Exit West", Ruby Guerrero , '22, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

A lesson plan for teaching this novel to high school grades 11-12, community college, and/or college and university students. This lesson is planned for three weeks and three times a week, but I recommend that teachers revise these plans as needed in order for the lesson to fit their class schedules. Learning Goals: students will be able to identify stereotypes of migrants and refuse to accept these as proper understandings of people; students will be able to reclaim their identities using the novel as a basis for this outcome; students will learn to identify the different types of narration, how …

Confirmation Bias: Misinformation In Society, Refutation As A Pedagogical Solution, And The Turn Of The Screw, Crystal Veber

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the societal implications of confirmation bias through the analysis of the characters and criticism of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, and the application of modern psychological and pedagogical studies to demonstrate a similar misunderstanding of truth in society. The aim of this study is to provide an approach to teach students that the plausibility of a belief based on selective evidence is insufficient justification for validation. Such flawed logic insidiously erodes one’s trust in objective truths, instead promoting subjective truths that are misinformed by media forms like fake news, biased claims, and unfiltered online content. …

Data Diving Into “Noticing Poetry”: An Analysis Of Student Engagement With The “I Notice” Method, Scot Slaby, Jordan Benedict

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

This paper explores students’ engagement in reading poems, examining data on their self perceptions of their confidence and competence in reading poems before, during, and after using the “I Notice” methodology as adapted from The Academy of American Poets’ unit plan, “Noticing Poetry” (Slaby, 2017). The data was collected over the course of a month from January 9 through January 30, 2018 and involved five classes of one hundred general English tenth grade students across three teachers’ classrooms at Shanghai American School’s Puxi High School Campus. Data indicates that the “I Notice” method and the “Noticing Poetry” unit and its …

Why Analyze A Sonnet? Avoiding Presumption Through Close Reading, Devon Madon

Faculty Publications & Research

In the first session of my Introduction to Shakespeare course, I always teach one of Shakespeare's best-known sonnets: Sonnet 130, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun:' I open with this sonnet because students frequently think that they know what the poem is about. W hen I ask the class, someone will usually give me the most common misreading of the sonnet: the speaker tells his mistress that she does not look like other women, but he loves her all the same. Rather than dismissing this reading, I ask many questions. How did you reach this conclusion? What do …

Flipping The Jane Austen Classroom, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

The contemporary Austen classroom might appreciate cultural and racial diversity, examine popular culture’s distortions of the original texts, and consider multimodal ways of reading. This paper reflects on a course that “flipped” the research process in order to “find” Austen and her works in the popular culture and to evaluate our understanding in the twenty-first century. Students discovered the commodification and distortion of “Jane Austen” and conducted research for creative projects to learn more about the social, cultural, and historical contexts of the written texts.

Textual Mediation In Simulated Nursing Handoffs: Examining How Student Writing Coordinates Action, Lillian Campbell

English Faculty Research and Publications

In clinical nursing simulations, a group of students provide care for a robotic patient during a structured scenario. As care is transferred from one group to another, they participate in a patient handoff, with outgoing students passing key information onto incoming students. In healthcare, the nursing handoff is a critical and perilous communication moment that is mediated by a range of participants and texts. Drawing on observations and video recordings of 52 simulation handoffs in the United States, this article examines how two student-designed texts – a collaborative patient chart and individual notes – are leveraged during the handoff. I …

Teaching Language Variation In The Classroom: Strategies And Models From Teachers And Linguists, Michelle D. Devereaux, Chris C. Palmer

Chris C. Palmer