Other English Language and Literature Commons^™

To Build A Better Textbook: Developing A Literature Curriculum For Today’S Christian Schooling, Abby L. Cockrell

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis explores the educational philosophy and the creative process behind the creation of a new textbook and curriculum. The goal of this new textbook and curriculum is to help persuade high school students to view literature as an avenue of life-long learning. The plan to develop this textbook and curriculum is built on five objectives: a recognition of the need for holistic education, the implementation of differentiated teaching methods, the cultivation of student interest, the reflection of diversity within classrooms, and the integration of modern technology. This plan will be proposed in the creation of a textbook for use …

The Texts We Play: Avatar Creation And Racial Invisibility In Role-Playing Video Games, Daniel L. Archer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project sets out to address problems of racial inequalities in role-playing video games as part of a growing field of video game studies in literary criticism. As these games are an increasingly popular form of entertainment in contemporary culture, their potential effects on players cannot be ignored. If these games continue to reflect society in a way that perpetuates racist stereotypes, social progress will halt. In order to study these games from a literary perspective, then, this project combines both narratological and ludological approaches to video game studies in order to bring about new insight from two strong perspectives. …

A Linguistic Comparison: Stress-Timed And Syllable-Timed Languages And Their Impact On Second Language Acquisition, Madeline M. Conlen

Honors College Theses

Acquisition of a second language can be a challenging task because no two languages are alike in their structure, syllabification, pronunciation, rhythm, etc. Also, after speaking one language for any amount of time, the speaker becomes accustomed to the specific qualities of that language; therefore, learning to speak another language takes extra effort because it is essentially rewiring the brain to think differently in many ways. One important element of language is prosody, or the patterns of stress and intonation in language (Dilley et al 237). The subsector of prosody that is to be studied is rhythm, explicitly isochrony and …

The Art Of The Process: The Creation And Production Of Wrinkles In Our Clothing, Julia Alexandra Yancey

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Wrinkles in Our Clothing

One night after a party Andrew realizes that he has never truly lived. Christine finds her passion somewhere she never thought she could have it. These two young adults, making their way through college, realize that now is the time to decide how they will choose to live their lives. They face the challenges that most young adults face such as societal expectations, a parent’s ideal image of their child, and having the courage to take that first step. Although these two do not meet in the lives of their characters they appear to know each …

Flannery O'Connor And The Poetics Of Prayer: The Analysis Of A Prayer Journal, Emily Wilson

Masters Theses

Prior to the recent discovery of her college prayer journal, kept between 1946 and 1947, knowledge of Flannery O’Connor’s religious influence and activity had been restricted to her letters and published works, such as Mystery and Manners and The Habit of Being. Works such as these shed light onto O’Connor’s background and religious views, making her Catholic faith obvious and explicit. This prayer journal exposes a new aspect of her faith – that is the personal relationship between herself and God shown through narrative. Her prayer journal makes it clear that her external expression of faith, showcased in most of …

Stories Of Single Mothers : Narrating The Sociomaterial Mechanisms Of Community Literacy., Kathryn Elizabeth Perry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In light of the increasing significance of community activist scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition and given the overwhelming nature of institutional educational inequity, this dissertation takes a close look at specific literacy practices and the corresponding networks that shape these literacy practices at a community literacy organization. Based on interviews with participants and staff at a local nonprofit called Family Scholar House (FSH), this project paints a complex picture of each stakeholder’s perspective on successful literacy. First, I employ Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to analyze three specific literacy moments at FSH: an application for government assistance, a financial aid appeal letter, …

Lingua Franca: An Analysis Of Globalization And Language Evolution, Abigail Watson

Honors Projects

This project details the evolution of languages and how globalization and advances in communication have effected smaller language groups. A world community in which communication is standardized by a Lingua Franca is in most cases harmful for isolated language groups without many speakers. The extinction of language is harmful for human society and culture, and there are many different ways to help prevent language extinction.

This project includes an essay, an animation, six illustrations, and a coloring book that all relate to endangered languages.

Animacy And Alienability: A Reconsideration Of English Possession, Jaimee Jones

Senior Honors Theses

Current scholarship on English possessive constructions, the s-genitive and the of-construction, largely ignores the possessive relationships inherent in certain English compound nouns. Scholars agree that, in general, an animate possessor predicts the s-genitive while an inanimate possessor predicts the of-construction. However, the current literature rarely discusses noun compounds, such as the table leg, which also express possessive relationships. However, pragmatically and syntactically, a compound cannot be considered as a true possessive construction. Thus, this paper will examine why some compounds still display possessive semantics epiphenomenally. The noun compounds that imply possession seem to exhibit relationships prototypical of inalienable …

Life At The Meridian: The Subjectivity Of Ethics In The Works Of Albert Camus And Friedrich Nietzsche, Clancy E. Robledo

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This paper endeavors to respond to the questions: can ethics can be unbound from its traditional rootedness in religious systems? If so, what contributions did Nietzsche make to liberate value from the shackles of Western morality? To what degree is Camus one of the “new philosophers” Nietzsche calls for in On the Genealogy of Morals?

In an attempt to demonstrate that ethics can and do exist vividly in the realm of the non-religious, this paper will begin by illustrating the metaphysical door Nietzsche opens through his use of aphorisms in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and his investigation of the history …

The Weird And The Wonderful: Poetry Dedicated To Exploring Social Stereotypes Surrounding Mental Illness And The Misfit, Sarah Grace Bryant

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

A collection of poems exploring how society deals with the mentally ill and others that don't fit into social norms. Some are biographical, others are observations.

“The Languages Of Other People”: The Experiences Of Tutors, Administrators, And Students In A South African Multilingual Writing Center, Nicole Bailey

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This ethnography, conducted at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, conveys the experiences of tutors, students, and administrators in a multilingual writing lab. As the number of both multilingual and international students in American universities increases, more writing centers in the United States have begun to explore the idea of multilingual tutoring. This study offers implications for establishing American multilingual writing centers based on data that emerged from observations and interviews conducted at Stellenbosch. Several themes emerged from the data that have important implications for American centers. First, there must be a clear understanding of what defines a multilingual writing center. …

The Role Of Sequence In The Experience Of Mathematical Beauty, Leslie Dietiker

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In this article, I analyze the aesthetic dimensions of a sequence of mathematical events found in an unusual first grade lesson in order to demonstrate how sequencing may affect an individual’s experience of mathematical beauty. By approaching aesthetic as a sense or felt quality of an experience in context (Sinclair, 2001, 2011), this analysis explains how sequence can affect the way mathematical objects or actions are experienced by an individual. Thus, rather than questioning whether or in what ways a set of mathematical objects are beautiful or not, this paper addresses under what conditions is the mathematics in play beautiful. …

Negotiating Gender And Sexuality In Contemporary Turkey, Jaspal Kaur Singh, Mary Lou O'Neil

Books

Turkey is often visualized as a modern nation-state having a perfect balance of Eastern and Western cultural mores and traditions within dominant ideological constructions and representations, but on closer inspection, one can detect conflicts and contradictions within various texts—particularly in regards to depictions of gender and sexual identity. Upon its foundation as a nation, Turkey embarked on a state-centered, elite-driven path toward modernization and Westernization while also seeking to produce a monolithic culture. At the time, it was widely believed that Turkey could not rank among modern,

Western countries without the emancipation of women. As a result of the founding …

The Quotidian In Naguib Mahfouz’S The Cairo Trilogy, Kenneth Strickland

Masters Theses

Naguib Mahfouz said that his primary concern in writing was freedom. This study defines the Quotidian as Naguib Mahfouz uses the concept in his seminal work, The Cairo Trilogy to reveal changes in characters’ subjectivities as they gain access to freedom. Using a Foucauldian theory of power and Homi Bhabha’s Third Space illuminate how freedom emerged as the daily rhythms and accouterments of life changed during the early twentieth century in Cairo. In the novel, characters, whose subjectivities were delimited by imposed strictures, find new opportunities to define reality with some sense of autonomy. The thesis examines the changes in …

Narrative And The Reconfiguration Of The Humanist Subject In Robbe-Grillet, Ballard, And Ligotti, Zachary L. Acosta-Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the utility of the novels, short stories, critical writing, and generically indistinct work of Alain Robbe-Grillet, J.G. Ballard, and Thomas Ligotti in developing a critique of the contemporary manifestations of liberal humanist social, economic, and political subjectivities. To this end, the concurrence of formal fragmentation and sublime aesthetics in early Gothic fiction models the manner in which narrative structures can appropriate structural tropes of dominant institutions, critically reflecting ideological fracture. Read according to the assemblative approach outlined by Deleuze and Guattari, these authors serve as a productive and incisive response to the hegemony of capitalist territorialization with …

Crystal's "Making A Point: The Persnickety Story Of English Punctuation" (Book Review), Mark Tubbs

The Christian Librarian

A review of Crystal, D. (2015). Making a point: The persnickety story of English punctuation. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 378 pp. $24.99. ISBN 9781250060419

Reflective Teaching And Self-Efficacy Beliefs: Exploring Relationships In The Context Of Teaching Efl In Iran, Mehdi Babaei, Arman Abednia

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This article reports on a study that explored the relationship between reflective teaching and teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. Two questionnaires, the English Language Teaching Reflection Inventory (Akbari, Behzadpoor, & Dadvand, 2010) and Teachers’ Efficacy Beliefs System-Self (TEBS-Self) (Dellinger, Bobbett, Olivier, & Ellett, 2008), were distributed among 225 Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers. Pearson product-moment correlation analysis showed a significant positive relationship between the general factors of teacher reflectiveness and self-efficacy. Standard multiple regression identified Efficacy for Learner Engagement as the only predictor of teacher reflectiveness and Meta-Cognitive Reflection as the only predictor of teacher self-efficacy. Finally, the interconnections …

Life In Translation, Marion W. Copeland

Animal Sentience

This commentary emphasizes Broom’s (2014) attack on “the widely stated human prejudices” that prevent modern humans from understanding and communicating with animals of other species. As a student and scholar of what is now referred to as literary animal studies, I find one of these biases — anthropocentrism (human exceptionalism) — of particular concern because much of the literature I study is valued only for its concern with animals presented as so remarkably similar to human beings that they are read as symbols or allegorical representations of the human rather than real animals: when some of these animal characters speak …

Animal Welfare And Animal Rights, M.E. Rolle

Animal Sentience

This overview of Broom’s book, Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014), considers the role the book could play in the animal rights debate. In a thoroughly researched and objectively presented text, Broom lays out information that could place doubt in the minds of decision-makers. By highlighting not just the ways animals resemble humans, but also the ways humans resemble animals, Broom shines a light on a solidly grey area in the animal rights debate.

The Philosophy Of Ecology In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath, Stephanie A. Steinbrecher

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the possibilities for ecocritical study in fiction through John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. Major ecocritical interpretation has yet to gain much traction in novels; by focusing on human nature, this form’s “anthropocentric” posture seems itself to be antithetical to ecocritical efforts, which aim to unseat humans as the center of the moral universe. However, by analyzing The Grapes of Wrath’s formal, narratorial, and thematic valences, I argue that principles of social justice concurrently imply environmental justice in the philosophical currents of the text. Tenets of deep ecology and Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” …