English Language and Literature Commons^™

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 …

Review Of Baptism Of Fire: The Birth Of The Modern British Fantastic In World War I, Ian A. Isherwood

Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Publications

The Great War had a lasting influence on literature and literary culture in Britain. Spanning the ‘brows’ of literary taste were authors writing in response to the cataclysmic violence experienced by the war generation, at both the war front and the home front. The war's shadow permeated all aspects of cultural expression; its experience found authors who, with varying degrees of success, wrote on its lasting influence to a readership that, as the decades wore on, grew increasingly afraid of another world war. One of the responses undoubtedly influenced by the war was the genre of fantasy. As one of …

Children's Literature As A Catalyst For Social Change, Lyndsey Reynolds

Senior Theses

This thesis is the amalgamation of a creative writing project and an exploration of the ways that children’s literature influences and draws from social justice causes. It started after reading Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls and realizing that children’s books are not as simple as I remember them being. This book inspired me to consider the power of children’s literature to push young readers to be aware of and thoughtfully engaged with political, social and cultural conversations. The first phase of my thesis was exploring the relationship between social justice and children’s books by reading scholarly materials. In these …

Diversity In Ya: A Look At How Book Description Language Talks About Race, Brittney Finato

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

When exploring young adult literature, it is specifically important to research racial diversity because it can help show particular stereotypes, biases, and tropes that may be used in YA overall. This helps inform current issues or excellencies in the canon and leads to broader discussions about the importance of racial, and other, diversity in books generally. By developing methods to isolate racially diverse books in YA, extracting specific language from their Goodreads copy, and talking broadly about overall themes, I will analyze the types of language that book descriptions use when talking about race, if they do at all.

The Discourse And Value Of Being An Independent Publisher, Rachel Noorda

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

Publishing did not have independents enter self-discourse until the 1960s when media conglomeration created a need to distinguish other publishers from this network of corporate giants. But rather than decimating the independent publishing landscape, the corporate conglomeration of book publishing has opened a space for independent publishers to thrive (Simon and McCarthy, 2009; Schiffrin, 2001; Hawthorne, 2014, 2016; Kogan 2007, 2010), in part because of the social currency that positioning themselves as independent in discourse affords. In order to analyze the use, purpose, and meaning of independent in publisher discourse, this article conducts a content analysis on mission statements of …

"You Da Man":Performing Masculinity In Disney's Mulan, Katie Kline

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

My project investigates how Mulan's performance of masculinity is rooted not only in appearance but in the embodiment of premodern Chinese virtues. Mulan's successful performance of masculinity challenges static gender binaries and the concept of gender being rooted in appearance.

From Desire To Obsession: Gender And Bodies In The Netflix Series "You", Morgan Bates

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

A personal interpretation of the themes of stalking in the Netflix series "YOU", exhibiting the relationship between stalking, gender, and bodies.

Debating Immigration: Political Tropes In The Echo Chamber Of Social Media, Chaniece Williams

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Analyzing the statements made by our Political Leaders President Obama and President Trump. President Obama embracing inclusivity towards immigrants, while President Trump embraces exclusivity towards immigrants.

Care, No Matter What: Planned Parenthood's Use Of Organizational Rhetoric To Expand Its Reputation, Karyn Keane

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

This paper analyzes uses of organizational rhetoric on Planned Parenthood's website to market itself as a provider of holistic healthcare rather than just an abortion provider.

Monsters, Marines, And Feminism In The 1980s: A Look At Ellen Ripley From Aliens, Summer Reardon

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

The battle between Ripley and the alien mother symbolizes how women of the 1980s were grappling with their changing roles of motherhood brought about in part by their increased power over their own reproductive health, as well as broadening career options for women. During this time, more women began to take on non-traditional gender roles in the workplace, the family, and in society. Ripley's character reflects this the growing wave of feminism, and presaged a more assertive and adaptable woman, while still demonstrating devotion to her adoptive offspring.

From River Road Plantations To The Underground Railroad: Bringing The True Story Of American Slavery To The Present Racial Divide, Kari Lutes

All NMU Master's Theses

Much of the discourse in the nation is centered on the racial divide in America. This essay traces that divide back to American slavery, using a visit to five historical plantations and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad to illustrate the persistence of injustice beyond slavery to Jim Crow laws, color-blind rhetoric, and mass incarceration. At each plantation, I encounter a varied history of slavery and find that many of these historical sites trivialize the experience of the enslaved. The Whitney Plantation is the exception, focusing solely on the stories of the enslaved and revealing the power of narrative to undo …

"A Vision Of Greyness": The Liminal Vantage Of Illness In Heart Of Darkness, Cheryl Hindrichs

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

In Heart of Darkness, illness and physical vulnerability provide a sense of defamiliarization that enables what Virginia Woolf described as the exile's perspective, which in turn allows for a critique of normative regimes. Marlow's outsider perception of the physical qualities of imperialist Europeans in contrast to subjugated native Africans suggests an ambivalent aesthetic morality that is characteristic of modernist irony. This ambivalence is particularly significant in the frequently overlooked scene in which Marlow falls ill and nearly dies. The perspective Marlow acquires in his own experience of illness ultimately frames both his final encounter with Kurtz and with the …

Writing On Demand In College, Career, And Community Writing: Preparing Students To Participate In The Pop-Up Parlor, Kelly J. Sassi, Hannah Stevens

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

The Writing on Demand Unit is an important part of the College, Career, and Community Writers Program. In this article, we review the literature on C3WP; contextualize the writing on demand unit in relation to the other instructional resources in C3WP; explore five big ideas about writing on demand; and describe an approach to teaching this unit that includes some preliminary results of teaching this unit in a rural, Native American high school. The five big ideas that inform its use are the following: 1) emotions matter, 2) everyone does it, so provide reasons for writing on demand, 3) time …

“Power In Repose”: Sleep And Agency In American Literature, 1875-1916, Hannah Leigh Huber

Theses and Dissertations

“Power in Repose” argues that American literature provided its own response to the cult of wakefulness that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. Narratives by authors Henry James, Charles Chesnutt, Edith Wharton, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman emerged from a time in which conceptions of rest were reshaped by the coalescence of America’s Protestant work ethic and industrial advancement. By complicating the separation of public and private space, my chosen texts present characters exhausted by the permeation of the supposedly impervious aspects of modernity, such as artificial light, traffic commotion, and round-the-clock labor and social activity. Marginalized figures are …

A Conceptual Mapping Approach For Presenting A Practical Past: Addressing Responsibility Through Contextualization In Information System Design For The Ward One Mobile Application, Sadia Obaid Khan

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents and documents a model for telling history through technology using the Ward One application for iOS mobile devices as a test site for the idea of conceptual mapping. The historical-information delivery system was created to mobilize the rhetoricity of representation that is a procedural necessity of technological mediation.

The paper begins by explaining the exigence of the app—to tell the history of an African-American community displaced from the land now occupied by the University of South Carolina as a result of racially discriminating housing policies in Columbia, SC and across the United States. It then addresses the …

Beginning At The End: Reimagining The Dissertation Committee, Reimagining Careers, Amy J. Lueck, Beth Boehm

English

In this article, we forward a perspective on interdisciplinarity and diversity that reconsiders the notion of expertise in order to unstick discussions of graduate education reform that have been at an impasse for some fortyfive years. As research problems have become increasingly complex so has demand for scholars who specialize narrowly within a discipline and who understand the importance of contributions from other disciplines. In light of this, we reimagine the dissertation committee as a group of diverse participants from within and beyond the academy who contribute their knowledge and skills to train the next generation of scholars and researchers …

Course Syllabus (Sp19) Coli 214b--Literature & Society: "A.I. And Other Radical Humanisms In Cyberpunk And Science Fiction", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

As that which we call “technology” continues to evolve as both concept and practice, we discover ever more inventive ways to answer its call, and science fiction seems to serve as a universal standpoint from which global societies manage to confront, question, and reimagine the nature of our shared humanity as a radically technical relation. While the growing social pervasiveness of artificial intelligence and the attendant encoded transformations of “the human” appear, together, to form a relatively absolute horizon of political thinking, social agency, and aesthetic experience, it seems certain that our current crisis also offers us …

“Thanks To ‘X’ For Beta-Ing!”: Fan Fiction Beta Readers In The Writing Center, Regan Levitte

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this thesis, I pose the question: what can we learn from fan fiction beta reading practices that can be applied to the writing center? Through interviews of writing center consultants who have had beta reading experiences, I consider what collaborative practices they have transferred into their writing center consultant skill sets. This project records how their affinity groups supported their literacy habits, and which dynamics of power and embodiment meant the most to them in these two discourse communities.

Combining historic texts on what ideal writing center pedagogy looks like, I explore how writers could interact with acknowledgement of …

Deforming Normalcy: Deformity And Disability In William Blake's Art, Seolha Lee

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines William Blake’s verbal and visual art from the perspective that disability is a physical and mental condition that is viewed by society as deviant. Prior to modern conceptions of disability in Britain, the deviation was labeled as “deformity.” This thesis demonstrates various ways in which Blake illustrates deformity, and through this, prefigures the modern sense of disability in his art. I argue that Blake’s representation of deformity in his poetry and drawings is intended to reveal the precariousness of the “normal” human body and inform the reader and viewer that normality is an illusion. The age of …

Englands Happie Queene: Female Rulers In Early English History, Emily Benes

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This paper examines the historical records and later literature surrounding three early mythic and historical British queens: Albina, mythic founder of Albion; Cordelia, pre-Roman queen regnant in British legend; and Boudica, the British leader of a first-century CE rebellion against the Romans. My work focuses on who these queens were, what powers they were given, and the mythos around them. I examine when they appear in the historical record and when their stories are expanded upon, and how those stories were influenced by the political culture of England through the early seventeenth century. In particular, I examine English attitudes toward …