English Language and Literature Commons^™

We Were Just Like Them A Collection Of Short Fiction, Jacqueline Derobertis

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Women Of Shakespeare’S Hamlet In Modern Film Adaptations, Meredith Will

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Educating Wonder Away: Charles Dickens' And Lewis Carroll's Attack On Victorian Education, Kolbie Astle

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Charles Dickens lived during a time when great change was occurring for both the lower and upper classes in Great Britain. The Industrial Revolution brought on new technologies that made it possible to mass-produce products of all kinds, effectively eliminating the need for great amounts of independent workers and farmers. Children's education, too, was a controversial topic that underwent much consideration in Parliament, especially because many of the country's children were working alongside the adults in the factories. Beginning in 1833, new legislation gave government-funded grants to schools and allowed children breaks during work hours specifically for their education, and …

Best Practice Recommendations For Publishing A Student Anthology, Ariel Peterson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This document describes the publication process for student anthologies and provides a list of specific, actionable recommendations for students and instructors publishing student anthologies. These recommendations are based upon a literature review of anthology concepts and my own experience publishing a student anthology, Voices in Print, for Utah State University's Intermediate Writing classes. I will introduce the topic of student anthologies with a brief description of their uses and benefits and then describe the publication process with a list of specific recommendations.

Connecting To The Community: Service-Learning Methods In An Esl Classroom, Chelsey Sara Funk

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

High school English as a Second Language (ESL) students often feel separated from their schools and communities. These feelings of separation can lead to low engagement and low achievement despite the students' desire to do well in school. One method used to counter low engagement in mainstream classes is service learning, but there is little research on service learning with ESL students. In this study, an existing group of 9th grade ESL students was taught and observed to determine the feasibility and effectiveness of using service-learning methods. The project endeavored to tie academic work to community involvement and therefore increase …

Exploring The Potential Of Video Games As Educational And Story-Telling Tools, Kelsen Amy Kitchen

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

For my honors thesis, I have attempted to explore the potential of video games as educational and storytelling tools. The central questions I formulated before beginning this project are twofold:

1. How can video games be used as tools to educate players?

2. How can video games be used to tell stories, and how are they unique from other storytelling methods?

In pursuit of the answer to the first question, I conducted a literature review of articles that explored the educational and cultural potential of various video games. The articles that I surveyed were diverse, ranging from studies of elementary …

Motherless Women Writers: The Affect On Plot And Character In The Brontë Sisters’ Novels, Laci J. Baker

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Through the use of biographical materials, and three selected works from Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte, parallels were found between their lives, character design, and the plot of their works. The lack of a mother figure in the lives of the Bronte sisters caused their upbringing to differ from that of other children, and as a result influenced their perspective of the world. Motherless female characters were found in each of the three novels by the Bronte sisters and in each instance commonalities were shared with the author of the work, to a degree that indicates that the lives that …

Give Us A Gender Neutral Pronoun, Yo!: The Need For And Creation Of A Gender Neutral, Singular, Third Person, Personal Pronoun, Elizabeth J. Elrod

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This essay outlines the problems associated with the history and current absence of a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun in the English language. The combination of the social and grammatical consequences of this language gap results in pronoun choices that are either politically incorrect or verbose. Experts’ attempts to fill this language gap have failed to take root on any widespread basis; but, interestingly, middle school children in Baltimore, Maryland created and started using “yo” as their own gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun. Stotko and Troyer’s (2007) study on this development sheds some light on exactly how students use “yo” …

Back To The Future: Taking A Trip Back In Order To Move Forward In Octavia Butler’S Kindred, Zakary H. Lafaver

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Slavery is something that cannot be taken lightly. Even Butler says no matter how harsh the slavery in her novel is, it does not compare to how gruesome actual slavery was: “As a matter of fact, one of the things I realized when I was reading the slave narrative…was that I was not going to be able to come anywhere near presenting slavery as it was. I was going to have to do a some-what cleaned-up version of slavery, or no one would be willing to read it” (qtd. in Kenan 497). Octavia Butler knew that if she presented slavery …

The One Man Crew: The Creating And Sustaining Of A Master Folk Artist, Heidi Jean Williams

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Folk art is the art of everyday life. Framing homes can be artistic when done with a degree of exemplary expertise. Jerry Saville is a master folk artist because of his special skills and techniques exhibited in his trade of carpentry. This research provides a glimpse into a carpenter’s life to discover what creates and sustains a master carpenter. Through desire, drive, dedication (time/practice), life experience/opportunity (apprenticeship), purpose, and a community of support, Jerry Saville became a master folk artist.

The Irish Protestant Imaginary: The Cultural Contexts For The Gothic Chapbooks Published By Bennett Dugdale, 1800-1805, Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Middle-Earth's War On Terror: A Post-9/11 Reception Study On The Works Of J.R.R. Tolkien, James William Peebles

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates how Americans can and do interpret Tolkien's works in light of 9/11 and its proximity to Peter Jackson's film adaptations hitting theaters.

Queer Tastes: An Exploration Of Food And Sexuality In Southern Lesbian Literature, Jacqueline Kristine Lawrence

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Southern identities are undoubtedly influenced by the region's foodways. However, the South tends to neglect and even to negate certain peoples and their identities. Women, especially lesbians, are often silenced within southern literature. Where Tennessee Williams used literature to bridge gaps between gay men and the South, southern lesbian literature severely lacks a traceable history of such connections. The principal objective of this thesis is to explore the ways in which southern lesbians manipulate food metaphors to describe their sexual desires and identities. This thesis only begins to lay out a history of southern lesbian literature as many lesbian writers …

We’Ve Got The Blues, Deno P. Trakas, Sue Shuping, Kameron Union

Arthur Vining Davis High Impact Fellows Projects

At the Byrnes Freshman Academy, English 2 Honors students are the top students. They attend English class for one semester, 90 minutes a day, and enjoy in-depth understanding of different cultures. They have the ability to analyze and evaluate new material and use it to further expand their knowledge and create original and unique projects.

“We’ve Got the Blues” provides a unit of study for English 2 Honors that encourages students to develop an understanding of the blues and how it applies to literature. The unit enables students to gain an appreciation of the blues while understanding its historical significance. …

The Diathesis-Stress Model Of Corruption By The Ruling Ring: Nature, Power, And Exposure In J. R. R. Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings, Faith R. Holley

Student Scholarship

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the One Ring seems to exert power over some characters more than others. Though these differences could seem like an oversight or a lack of continuity, they also offer the opportunity to examine the effects of the differential power of the Ring. If the Ring is addictive, as Tom Shippey claims in The Road to Middle Earth, then it is possible to examine the etiology of addiction to the Ring (126). In this thesis, I present a psychological reading of Tolkien that relies on a modern psychological theory, namely the …

A Neglected Source For The Mortdant And Amavia Episode In The Faerie Queene, David Lee Miller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Jocelyn Swigger, Associate Professor Of Music, Musselman Library, Jocelyn Swigger

Next Page

In this new Next Page column, Jocelyn Swigger, Associate Professor of Music, shares with us which authors and books are her “comfort foods,” how she has introduced meditation to her daily practice as a musician, and one of the few things she likes about Twitter.

Land Of A Million Poets, Dorothy Bouzouma

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Caudill College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Morehead State University in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in English by Dorothy Bouzouma on April 25, 2014.

A Posture Of Removal: Mary Rowlandson’S Location, Position, And Displacement, Aaron Cloyd

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Drawing on work from autobiographical studies that distinguishes between but correlates position and location, this paper examines Mary Rowlandson’s situatedness in The Sovereignty and Goodness of God and argues that she is a figure of removal and displacement. Although Rowlandson seeks to position herself through voice, actions, and text, such expressions of agency occur within the locating structures of culture, expectation, and memory. The resultant tension between self- positioning and other-locating leaves Rowlandson perpetually removed as she is unable to fully reposition herself within any significant site.

Six Poems On Sixteenth-Century Maps, Jeremy Dae Paden

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Enclosed are seven poems that explore the topic of mapping. Six of these form part of a series of ekphrastic poems on sixteenth-century "mappa mundi." They use the trope of the "cosmographic heart" or the "cordiform map" to tell the story of early European and American contact. Four of them use actual sixteenth-century mappa mundi (Fineaus's cordiform map, Bunting's clover-leaf map, Hand an anonymous Flemish map that uses Ortellius's cordiform map as the face of a jester) as points of departure. These maps by iconographically distorting the world make visible through representation the Early Modern Europe had with understanding the …