English Language and Literature Commons^™

Full Issue

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Stevens, Key West, And The Supreme Fiction, Tyson M. Lies

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Ogunian Heroes And Grand-Masters: The Rise Of Moral Systems And Language In Shaping Tragedy In "The Man Who Would Be King" And Death And The King's Horseman, Harini Angara

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Contributors

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Adventures Of Kody A Children's Visual Storybook And Interactive Web Site, Matthew L. Walsh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In order to experience unconditional love, prejudices must be exposed and overcome. People often meet others with a disability or handicap and unknowingly treat these individuals negatively. As a middle school teacher, I have often witnessed students behaving cruelly towards those that are different. When my dog became a paraplegic I was inspired to develop a project to assist young readers in the development of conscientious actions towards individuals with disabilities. This document chronicles the development, procedures, and outcomes of the process behind that artistic endeavor. The artistic elements of this thesis project are a written children's storybook and an …

The Moderating Roles Of Gender And Anti-Gay Prejudice In Explaining Stigma By Association In Male Dyads, Stephen D. Jefferson, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Using a convenience sample of 157 undergraduates, this study explored the likeability ratings of target characters from selected film clips who were described as gay or heterosexual as they associated with a gay-described foil character (i.e., a character against which the target is compared). As predicted, male respondents who strongly endorsed anti-gay prejudice viewed gay-described targets more favorably than heterosexual-described targets when each target was paired with a gay foil. Further, this pattern of biased ratings by high-prejudice male participants against our heterosexual target differentiated these participants from both low-prejudice male and high-prejudice female respondents. In contrast, but as hypothesized, …

Students, Faculty And "Sustainable" Wpa Work, Thia Wolf, Jill Swiencicki, Chris Fosen

English Faculty/Staff Publications

In lieu of an abstract, here is the chapter's first paragraph:

Despite several cycles of reforms spanning the last fifteen years, we three composition colleagues were unable to achieve widespread student engagement in our required one-semester writing course. At California State University, Chico, the WPA oversees faculty development and program assessment for a first-year writing program that serves 2700 students each year with over 100 sections of first-year writing. Several different WPAs experienced fatigue as they undertook challenging and often unproductive work: resisting an outdated California State policy on the aims and goals for General Education, including what constitutes appropriate …

The Elephant In The Room : A Metacritical Analysis Of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Racism, Megan Grady

Graduate Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

Interpretations Of Medievalism In The 19th Century: Keats, Tennyson And The Pre-Raphaelites, Shannon K. Wilsey

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis describes how different 19th century poets and artists depicted elements of the medieval in their artwork as a means to contradict the rapid progress and metropolitan build-up of the Industrial Revolution. The poets discussed are John Keats and Alfred, Lord Tennyson; the painters include William Holman Hunt and John William Waterhouse. Examples of the poems and corresponding Pre-Raphaelite depictions include The Eve of Saint Agnes, La Belle Dame Sans Merci and The Lady of Shalott.

Tragic Pleasure In Shakespeare's King Lear And Othello, Luella Fu

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis is an examination of reader or audience response to Shakespeare’s tragedies. Primarily, it identifies key pleasures that Shakespeare’s King Lear and Othello offer. The complementary nature of these two plays is such that the analysis of their various pleasures allows for an in-depth treatment of the topic and also reflects the diversity of emotional response elicited by Shakespeare’s tragedies. The kinds of pleasure addressed in this study are catharsis as explained by Aristotle, the delight of violent passion as advocated by DuBos, pleasure from details in the work, satisfaction from the coherence of the tragedy, and pleasure in …

Laying Bare The Sins Of The Father: Exploring White Fathers In Post-Apartheid Literature, Casey M. Reck

CMC Senior Theses

This Thesis is an exploration of white fathers in three post-apartheid novels: Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples, Nadine Gordimer's The House Gun, and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace. By examining the link between private white hegemonic masculinity and the apartheid government, the Thesis analyzes the transitional process as these men try to adopt less authoritative identities.

La Vilaine, Cordelia Solomon

CMC Senior Theses

When her sister goes missing, Kattel Macé must fly to France to find her. While the police are cooperating, they have no leads to go off of forcing Kattel to start her own investigation. In her search, Kattel stumbles across evidence that implicates her own family members in her sisters mysterious disappearance.

Authentic Education: The Example Of Hrotsvit Of Gandersheim, Phyllis Brown

English

The Emmeram-Munich manuscript, produced around 980, contains nine of ten surviving verse narratives by Hrotsvit of Gandersheim arranged with her six plays, a poem depicting scenes from the apocalypse, and several prayers in verse, all contextualized by a series of prefaces, dedicatory poems, epilogues, and a letter to learned patrons ("sapientes. . . fautores"), who had read her work and encouraged her. Nearly everything we know about Hrotsvit's life, education, and intentions as a writer must be gleaned from this manuscript, in which she names herself multiple times. In her preface to the legends she also names two teachers, Riccardis …

Phillis Wheatley’S Abolitionist Text: The 1834 Edition, Eileen Razzari Elrod

English

The problem presented to readers by the late eighteenth-century poet Phillis Wheatley is nearly as well known as her poetry. Alongside many readers’ expressions of admiration, others have registered suspicion and disapproval, first in the eighteenth and then again in the mid- and late twentieth centuries. And nearly all of Wheatley’s critics acknowledge the centrality of the poet’s life in responses to her poetry. Whether the questions were framed in terms of literary authorship in the context of racist assumptions (as they were in the eighteenth century) or racial (as well as gendered) authenticity in the context of assumptions about …

The Colonizing Impulse Of Postcolonial Theory, John C. Hawley

English

What some see as the ongoing collapse of English as a discrete discipline has been hastened along by postcolonial studies, but many have argued that this deconstruction has been true from the start, that literary studies in general "has speculated continually about the intellectual foundations within which its key questions are framed and which make it possible, and how things might be otherwise" (Moran 46). Robert Miklitsch for example, suggests that "literature . . . was once implicitly interdisciplinary, encompassing, as Hazlitt indicates, science as well as philosophy" (Miklitsch et al. 258). Nonetheless, writes David Glover, "whatever criteria one uses …

A Research Project Contributing To African American Children's Literature Based In The 1950s Time Period In Midwestern Culture, Paula Noelle Bolander

Graduate Research Papers

African American characters have been portrayed in children's literature since the 1800s. There is a lack of information available for children to learn about African Americans from the 1950s time period in the Midwest. Therefore, a nonfiction trade book based on African American culture in Burlington, Iowa will alleviate the gap in children's literature for the United States in the Midwest. The nonfiction trade book was based on Evangeline Ray's life growing up in Burlington, Iowa, in the 1950s. The vignettes portrayed in the book were created on the basis of 15 interviews with the researcher over a period of …

The Portrayal Of Grandparents As Caregivers In Young Adult Fiction, Susan Christine Bunch

Graduate Research Papers

The number of children and young adults being raised primarily by their grandparents continues to increase (Landry-Meyer & Newman, 2004). If either the grandchild or grandparent is suddenly thrust into a different family structure it can create challenges. Some young adults turn to the characters in literature as models for how to cope with life challenges (Hughes-Hassell & Rodge, 2007). It was the purpose of this quantitative study to explore physical health, mental and emotional health, and lifestyle and social challenges faced by grandparents and grandchildren when the grandparents are the primary caregivers, and how those challenges are portrayed in …

A Need For Picture Books Showing Girls Playing Organized Team Sports, Lisa A. Heiden

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this project was to create a children's picture storybook depicting female characters participating in competitive team athletics. The book shows a young girl learning about the game of basketball and sharing the experience with her older sister. The researcher has a long history of athletic participation and a deep passion for sports. These experiences allowed the researcher to capture the essence of the sport of basketball and create a picture book for children that engages the reader and possibly encourages participation in athletics for children of various ages. The book gives young, athletic girls an early experience …

Hidden Alphabet On The Farm: Can You Find It? : A Research Project, Sandra Greufe

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this research project was to introduce young children to agriculture and provide a new and interesting way of looking at the alphabet. Researching the use of alphabet books to introduce children to agriculture shows that presenting the alphabet in a new and exciting way is beneficial to teaching children the alphabet (Norton, 2007). Studies show the movement of people to urban areas corresponds with decreased knowledge of agriculture ( AFBF A, 2006c). Hidden Alphabet on the Farm: Can You Find It? presents the alphabet to young children in a new and exciting way and teaches children about …

Laughter And Tears: A Qualitative Content Analysis, Apra Loomis

Graduate Research Papers

Young adult literature often focuses on different problems associated with adolescence. Humor may provide a strategy for alleviating the tension associated with such problems in realistic fiction. The purpose of this study was to describe the use of humor in current, positively reviewed young adult literature in dark topics such as depression, death and suicide. Themes that emerged included humor as a coping device, self-defeating humor, and affiliative humor. Humor as a coping device was shown to increase with age as a way to deal with stressful situations in a study by Fuhr (2002). In a study by Erickson & …