English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Dutch Smuggler's Story [Abstract], Devin T. Murphy

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Dutch Smuggler’s Story, is a novel about Jacob Jonker, a Sea Captain, whose secret, early life comes to light in the wake of his arrest for human trafficking. Jacob grew up in a fishing family in Holland, and was conscripted into the German Navy as a teenager in 1943. Due to his seafaring ability, he was used as a test dummy for a new Nazi weapon, a one person midget submarine. When Jacob has success as a midget sub operator, he is bestowed The Knight’s Cross by the Germans as a propaganda ploy to lore more Dutch youth …

Living Well: The Value Of Teaching Place, Catherine M. English

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation is a teaching memoir that examines the implementation of a place conscious pedagogy as a means to teach sustainable living practices into a secondary English classroom in a rural Nebraska school. It is framed upon the premise of instilling five senses of place consciousness into students as defined by Haas and Nachtigal (1998) including living well in community or a sense of belonging; living well spiritually or a sense of connection; living well economically or a sense of worth; living well politically or a sense of civic involvement; and living well ecologically or a sense of place. I …

Green Worlds And Ecosemiotics, Paul Siewers

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

"Overlay landscapes" in Early Insular literatures, and how they connect early medieval cosmology with current-day ecosemiotics..

Dancing With Don: Or Waltzing With "Expressivism", Bronwyn Williams

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What's New On Jane's Bookshelf?, Jane Leeth

Articles

When I’m not teaching, I’m scouring bookstores and websites for interesting new releases in children’s and young adult literature. My dogs don’t even bark anymore when the UPS man shows up at the front door with a box of books; he’s sort of become part of our family.

I’ve listed here a handful of books that recently piqued my interest—whether I was intrigued by the topic, the aesthetic post-modern appearance, and/or what I can do with the text in the classroom.

Romantic Transports: Tabitha Tenney's Female Quixotism In Transatlantic Context, Rachel Carnell, Alison Tracy Hale

English Faculty Publications

A literary criticism of several books including "Female Quixotism" by Tabitha Tenney, "The Female Quixote" by Charlotte Lennox, and "Angelina" by Maria Edgeworth is presented. According to the authors, these novels constitute a transatlantic genre which highlights the moral and cultural complexities faced by women in the 18th and 19th centuries. Particular focus is given to the novels' political contexts. Realism, the French Revolution, and republican government are also discussed.

What You Should Know (And Probably Don’T) About Teaching Ells, Nicole Sanchez

The Utah English Journal

As an intern teacher at a middle school in Payson, I struggled on a daily basis to juggle all the balls a teacher keeps in the air: trying to come up with engaging lesson plans, differentiated instruction, classroom management, connecting with parents, and so on. In January, just as I was finally getting to a point where I felt somewhat confident, Ana arrived. She had just moved to Utah from Mexico and was a brand new English Language Learner (ELL). Her vocabulary consisted entirely of “hi” and “good.” I was baffled as to what I could do. How could I …

Poem No. 106, November 2011, Huntsville Literary Association (Huntsvile, Ala.)

POEM

The Huntsville Literary Association was founded in 1967 to provide a community for writers, readers, and artists through workshops, readings, and educational programs. One of their key contributions is the literary magazine titled POEM which showcases original writings from both established and emerging writers. This issue features poems from various writers.

Professional Writing In The English Classroom: Student Writers As Problem Solvers In Literature Classrooms, Jonathan Bush, Leah A. Zuidema, Dawn Reed, Katie Greene

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The article reports on the role of student writers in the U.S. to enhance the study of literature in the classroom. High school teacher Dawn Reed shares how students' professional writing served as a starting point for deeper study and advocacy of American literature. It provides an overview of Katie Greene's assessment system that creates flexibility while providing a model of evaluation which can be adapted for other professional writing experiences.

Organizing For Antiracism In Writing Centers: Principles For Enacting Social Change, Moira Ozias, Beth Godbee

English Faculty Research and Publications

We move through the chapter in three parts. First, we define organizing and answer the question of whether we in writing centers should do this work by showing how we already are. Second, we identify guiding principles consistent with the aims of antiracism as well as the collaborative and dialogic pedagogies of writing centers. Drawing on cross-disciplinary research, we articulate three frameworks for organizing: (1) direct action organizing (Bobo, Kendall, and Max 2001); (2) a balance of strategies and tactics (Alinsky 1945; Mathieu 2005); and (3) a dialectic approach (Papa, Singhal, and Papa 2006). We find the most potential in …

Into The Lion's Den: Joy Davidman And Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Don W. King

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Looks at Davidman’s involvement with Hollywood—her short and unlamented stint in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Junior Writer Program in 1939, and her movie reviews for the Communist Party of the USA newspaper, New Masses, in 1941–1943. Davidman’s incisive wit, impatience with any hint of phoniness, and passion for social, racial, and gender justice come through clearly in her writing.

The Strange And Surprising World Of Curriculum Reform And Its Consequences For Eighteenth-Century Studies, Ann Campbell

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Despite every conceivable obstacle, including innumerable departmental, college, and university committees seemingly created for the sole purpose of impeding change, both my university’s core curriculum and my department’s literature curriculum have in the span of the last two years been dramatically revised, or "reformed" as the university refers to the process, for the first time in thirty years. I have regarded this strange and surprising process with alternating wonder, anxiety, disorientation, and denial, much like Robinson Crusoe when he is first stranded on his island. Although neither "savages" nor "wild beasts" threatened me, I felt wholly isolated as our university’s …

"Beowulf: The Monsters And The Critics" Seventy-Five Years Later, Michael D.C. Drout

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Scholar Guest of Honor speech, Mythcon 42. A discussion of the continuing influence of Tolkien’s famed Beowulf essay on its seventy-fifth anniversary. Shows how the essay both opened up and limited later Beowulf scholarship, and draws some interesting parallels with the current state of Tolkien scholarship. Along the way, questions the wisdom of believing everything an author says about his own work, and asserts the value of familiarity with critical history.

Editorial, Janet Brennan Croft

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

Thresholds To Middle-Earth: Allegories Of Reading, Allegories For Knowledge And Transformation, Andrew Hallam

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Alexei Kondratiev Student Presentation Award, Mythcon 42. Begins by strongly questioning Tolkien’s own assertions about allegory, and draws on a wide range of theory and scholarship to show the subtle operation of a deep pattern of allegory in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings centered around imagery of readers and reading, thresholds and journeys.

The Pearl Maiden's Psyche: The Middle English Pearl And The Allegorical-Visionary Impulse In Till We Have Faces, T. S. Miller

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Lewis’s firm assertion that Till We Have Faces is not the least bit allegorical is challenged through its parallels in plot and theme with the highly allegorical Middle English Pearl. The deep allegorical structures in both revolve around seeing truly and falsely, and blindness both intentional and ignorant.

Is A "Christian" Mystery Story Possible? Charles Williams's War In Heaven As A Generic Case Study, Sørina Higgins

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Examines War in Heaven’s radical upsetting of the detective novel norms promised in its first few paragraphs and shows how Williams uses and subverts these conventions and leads us to contemplate, instead of a mystery and its solution, an insoluble Mystery with a capital M.

Christian, Norse And Celtic: Metaphysical Belief Structures In Nancy Farmer's The Saxon Saga, Marek Oziewicz

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Introduces a young adult historical-fantasy trilogy, The Saxon Saga by Nancy Farmer, and elucidates the value of its multicultural approach in our distrustful and fragmented age. The respectful representation of three conflicting cultures in the novels—Christian, Norse, and Celtic—demonstrates to young readers that people may hold vastly different metaphysical views and yet may have many core values in common, enough to forge a relationship of mutual trust.

The Great War And Narnia: C.S. Lewis As Soldier And Creator, Brian Melton

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Looks at influence of World War I in Lewis’s autobiography and on war in Narnia, correcting mistaken search by some critics for deep-seated war trauma in Lewis’s life. Reinforces that Lewis and Tolkien were not psychological twins, had differing personalities going into the war, and came out of it with different approaches to dealing with war in their fiction. The Chronicles being children’s books, Lewis operated under certain self-imposed restrictions in writing them, and yet managed to convey some realistic lessons about war learned through his own harrowing experiences. Also addresses the issue of gaps in Lewis’s autobiography.

The Lord Of The Rings' Interlace: The Adaptation To Film, Emily E. Auger

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

An investigation of how Tolkien’s interlacing narrative technique is translated in the recent film trilogy, and in particular, Jackson’s method of interlacing Isildur’s story, Gollum’s torture in Mordor, and Elrond’s expanded council with foreshadowings and re-echoings of dialogue and visual cues.