The 1979 Ottawa Conference And It's Inscriptions: Recovering A Canadian Moment In American Rhetoric And Composition,
2016
Old Dominion University
The 1979 Ottawa Conference And It's Inscriptions: Recovering A Canadian Moment In American Rhetoric And Composition, Louise Wetherbee Phelps
English Faculty Publications
[First Paragraph] In May 1979, Aviva Freedman and Ian Pringle hosted an international conference on "Learning to Write" at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, featuring a concentrated assemblage of eminent scholars as speakers and respondents. Those present sensed immediately that they were part of a momentous and historic event. Janet Emig, who delivered her famous "Tacit Tradition" speech at the conference, remembered it later as "the single most electric professional meeting I ever participated in" (Emig 1983, n.p.). Many delegates saw it as the rightful successor to the landmark Dartmouth Conference of 1966, and when Anthony Adams, the closing speaker, …
"Don't Read This!": Lemony Snicket And The Control Of Youth Reading Autonomy In Late-Nineteenth-Century Britain,
2016
The College of Wooster
"Don't Read This!": Lemony Snicket And The Control Of Youth Reading Autonomy In Late-Nineteenth-Century Britain, Brittany A. Previte
Senior Independent Study Theses
This independent study investigates adult authority in youth literature in late-nineteenth-century Britain. Examining both sensational literature known as “penny dreadfuls” and the didactic magazines The Boy’s Own Paper and The Girl’s Own Paper, this project analyzes how rhetoric enforced middle class ideology outside of the classroom and shaped the youth reading experience. In an urbanizing, industrializing Britain, anxiety about social mobility ran high, and youth consumption of penny dreadfuls received suspicion due to their supposedly subversive content. This study argues that penny dreadfuls actually reinforced the social order, mirroring didactic literature in their construction of conservative adult authority. In …
Powerlessness Repurposed: The Feminist Ethos Of Judy Bonds,
2016
Old Dominion University
Powerlessness Repurposed: The Feminist Ethos Of Judy Bonds, Mary Beth Pennington
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Gay Habits Set Strait: Fan Culture And Authoritative Praxis In Ready Player One,
2016
Old Dominion University
Gay Habits Set Strait: Fan Culture And Authoritative Praxis In Ready Player One, Kevin Moberly, Brent Moberly
English Faculty Publications
(First Paragraph) Gwendolyn Morgan reminds us that medievalism and authority are complementary fictions.1 Recognizing that the "past with which we identify actually reflects our present needs," she examines the way that contemporary writers establish the authority of their works by adapting, if not explicitly fabricating medieval sources.2 The result, she argues, is a kind of "double practice of medievalism," one that invokes the authoritative power of the Middle Ages by appropriating the medieval appeal to auctoritee, which is to say the pretense of "citing real and invented classical authorities" to both disguise and justify authorial invention.3 Morgan …
Inspection,
2016
Old Dominion University
Inspection, Alicia Defonzo
English Faculty Publications
Endure an inspection with Alicia DeFonzo.
Apportioned Commodity Fetishism And The Transformative Power Of Game Studies,
2016
Old Dominion University
Apportioned Commodity Fetishism And The Transformative Power Of Game Studies, Ken S. Mcallister, Chris Hanson, Judd Ethan Ruggill, Carly A. Kocurek, Tobias Conradi, Kevin A. Moberly, Steven Conway, Randy Nichols, Jennifer Dewinter, Marc A. Oullette
English Faculty Publications
This chapter explores the ways in which the field of Game Studies helps shape popular understandings of player, play, and game, and specifically how the field alters the conceptual, linguistic, and discursive apparatuses that gamers use to contextualize, describe, and make sense of their experiences. The chapter deploys the concept of apportioned commodity fetishism to analyze the phenomena of discourse as practice, persona, and vagaries of game design, recursion, lexical formation, institutionalization, systems of self-effectiveness, theory as anti-theory, and commodification.
Off The Road: Imperialism And Exploration In The American Road Movie,
2016
Pitzer College
Off The Road: Imperialism And Exploration In The American Road Movie, Andy Wright
Pitzer Senior Theses
This essay explores the imperialist nature of the American road movie as it is defined by the film’s era of release, specifically through the lens of how road movies abuse the lands that are travelled through. To accomplish this, my essay analyzes a classic road movie, Easy Rider, a more contemporary parody, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, and the futuristic film, The Martian. All of these films treat everything that which is not the metropolitan traveller in a distinctly oppressive sense, and each time a new generation of filmmakers makes a road movie, it becomes …
Voice In Verse: Four Outstanding Mentor Texts,
2016
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Voice In Verse: Four Outstanding Mentor Texts, Pauline Skowron Schmidt
English Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
A Quandary Of Errors: The Problem Of Innocence In Paradise Lost,
2016
Hollins University
A Quandary Of Errors: The Problem Of Innocence In Paradise Lost, Mandy Moore
Undergraduate Research Awards
When Milton’s Adam and Eve fall in Paradise Lost, everything changes: the earth tilts, the animals begin to eat each other, Sin and Death enter into the world. The course of history for all of Adam and Eve’s children depends on that single moment. Whether their Fall is fortunate or catastrophic, it does cost them not only their beautiful paradise but also their innocence, their pure existence. That they were innocent to start with seems obvious—Milton reiterates over and over, in as many ways as possible, that Adam and Eve remain innocent until they Fall. However, in several scenes …
Hearsay Evidence: Legal Discourse, Circumstantiality, And The Woman In White,
2016
Pepperdine University
Hearsay Evidence: Legal Discourse, Circumstantiality, And The Woman In White, Matthew Finley
Global Tides
In Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, Walter Hartright begins the narrative by stating that, because “the Law is still … the pre-engaged servant of the long purse,” he has arranged the novel to reveal the truth (5). The author, then, puts the law on trial by engaging the interplay between legal questions of witness credibility and testimonial evidence and their impact on social factors such as class and gender. The law’s emphasis on externality leads the system to privilege the snakelike Fosco over the heroic Walter, Laura, and Marian, signaling the courts' capital offence. Although the novel is …
The Use Of Eportfolios To Support Metacognitive Practice In A First-Year Writing Program,
2016
St. John Fisher University
The Use Of Eportfolios To Support Metacognitive Practice In A First-Year Writing Program, James Bowman, Barbara J. Lowe, Katie Sabourin, Catherine Sweet
English Faculty/Staff Publications
Recognizing the importance of meaningful reflective writing as an integral component to the portfolios used in the first-year program (FYP), faculty questioned whether a newly developed electronic portfolio offered any pedagogical benefits over the existing traditional paper portfolio. Of particular interest for this work was whether the use of ePortfolios might positively impact students’ metacognitive skills. A study conducted with students and faculty in the FYP evaluated student understanding of purpose, significance, and relevancy in their reflective writings. Findings indicate that while both types of portfolios, electronic and traditional paper, contribute positively to students’ learning related to “connections to the …
Father Of All Destruction: The Role Of The White Father In Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Cinema,
2016
University of Kentucky
Father Of All Destruction: The Role Of The White Father In Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Cinema, Felicia Cosey
Theses and Dissertations--English
Since September 11, 2001 a substantial number of English-language, post-apocalyptic films have been released. This renewed interest in the genre has prompted scholars to examine the circumstances within western society that make post-apocalyptic films appealing to audiences. The popularity of these films derives from a narrative structure that reinforces conservative notions of good and bad and moral absolutism. The post-9/11, post-apocalyptic film typically features a white male hero who, in one way or another, reestablishes the pre-apocalyptic social order through proclamations of mandatory and prohibitive laws that must be adhered to by the survivors. The hero of post-apocalyptic film does …
Southern Transfiguration: Competing Cultural Narratives Of (Ec)Centric Religion In The Works Of Faulkner, O’Connor, And Hurston,
2016
University of Kentucky
Southern Transfiguration: Competing Cultural Narratives Of (Ec)Centric Religion In The Works Of Faulkner, O’Connor, And Hurston, Craig D. Slaven
Theses and Dissertations--English
This project explores the ways in which key literary texts reproduce, undermine, or otherwise engage with cultural narratives of the so-called Bible Belt. Noting that the evangelicalism that dominated the South by the turn of the twentieth century was, for much of the antebellum period, a relatively marginal and sometimes subversive movement in a comparatively irreligious region, I argue that widely disseminated images and narratives instilled a false sense of nostalgia for an incomplete version of the South’s religious heritage. My introductory chapter demonstrates how the South’s commemorated “Old Time” religion was not especially old, and how this modernist construct …
The Convergance Of Arcadia,
2016
University of Kentucky
The Convergance Of Arcadia, John Duncan
Theses and Dissertations--English
The Convergence of Arcadia is a story about people losing things. Stretching from the Jim Crow South, the Korean War, New York City and central Kentucky circa 1980, this story follows a one armed man who has given up on life, a sheriff haunted by his past, a Korean War veteran with a terrible secret and a family broken from suicide. The Convergence of Arcadia follows three families as their fates are inextricably wove together in the tradition of Southern Gothic literature.
The Age Of Intervention: Addiction, Culture, And Narrative During The War On Drugs,
2016
University of Kentucky
The Age Of Intervention: Addiction, Culture, And Narrative During The War On Drugs, Ashleigh M. Hardin
Theses and Dissertations--English
While addiction narratives have been a feature of American culture at least since the early 19th century’s temperance tales, the creation of the Johnson Intervention in the late 1960s and the corresponding advent of the War on Drugs waged by U.S. Presidents have wrought significant changes in the stories told about addiction and recovery. These changes reflect broader changes in conceptions of agency and the relationship of subject to culture in the postmodern era. In the way that it iterates the imperatives of the War on Drugs initiated by Richard Nixon, the rhetoric of successive U.S. Presidents provides a …
Strong, Independent, And In Love: Fighting Female Fantasies In Popular Culture,
2016
University of Kentucky
Strong, Independent, And In Love: Fighting Female Fantasies In Popular Culture, Allison P. Palumbo
Theses and Dissertations--English
During the late 1970s and 1980s, feminist critics like Janice Radway began to reconsider so-called women’s genres, like romance novels and soap operas and melodramas, in order to address the forms of subversion and expressions of agency they provided female audiences. However, in spite of greater willingness to consider the progressive potential in romance narratives, there has been little such consideration given to stories of romance for the fighting female character—defined as a protagonist who uses violence, via her body or weapons, to save herself and others. The fighting female has received a good deal of attention from critics like …
A Culture Of Rape: In Twentieth Century American Literature And Beyond,
2016
University of Kentucky
A Culture Of Rape: In Twentieth Century American Literature And Beyond, Lisa M. Schroot
Theses and Dissertations--English
This project examines rape culture in American literature and society, exploring factors of rape culture through the narratives of literary protagonists and current women alike. Each chapter is grounded in a work of literature, which serves as a lens through which to analyze a factor of rape culture, and is then broadened in scope to incorporate recent court cases that have had significant sociocultural impacts. The introduction includes a critical review of rape in feminist theory, from Susan Brownmiller to Ann J. Cahill. The first chapter treats the rape of Dolores Haze and victim blaming in Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 Lolita …
Patriarchal Trauma In Appalachian Literature,
2016
University of Kentucky
Patriarchal Trauma In Appalachian Literature, Michelle Justus
Theses and Dissertations--English
Patriarchal Trauma in Appalachian Literature examines the effects of subjugation on women as it is represented in three novels set in Appalachia. I define patriarchal trauma as an act causing mental anguish to a woman and perpetrated against her because she is a woman. I use the term to encompass violent, catastrophic harms but more particularly to pinpoint the traumatic effects of the quotidian, systemic deprivation of women’s autonomy. Reconsidering classic texts such as James Still’s River of Earth and Robert Morgan’s Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage as narratives of women’s trauma establishes a lineage on the subject, …
Comanche Boys,
2016
University of Kentucky
Comanche Boys, Benjamin D. Honea
Theses and Dissertations--English
Comanche Boys is a novel that was written and revised during Benjamin Honea’s time at the University of Kentucky. The novel focuses on Brandon, who lives in rural southwest Oklahoma, and how the arrival of two people in his life, one old and one new, changes his future irrevocably. Taking place at the intersections of modern American and Native American life, the narrative explores history, culture, mythology, faith, despair, racism, poverty, vengeance, and justice. The struggles of the past and present, the lost and reclaimed, propel and pervade the lives of the characters.
Hat And Man,
2016
University of Kentucky
Hat And Man, Sean L. Corbin
Theses and Dissertations--English
Rapid life changes can lead to a certain amount of cognitive confusion if not full dissonance. Events take on new meaning. Images stand for new ideas. Through prose poetry, surrealism, deadpan humor, and word play, this thesis gives the sudden advent of fatherhood, domestication, intellectual exhaustion, and shifts in mental and physical health new shapes.
