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Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter, Vol 31, No. 2, The Sinclair Lewis Society

Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter

“Translating Arrowsmith: An Interview with Rusty Allred”

“A Contemporary Review of Lewis’s Biography: Charles Shain’s Review of Sinclair Lewis: An American Life by Mark Shorer,” By Shaun F. Richards

“Lewis and Thompson Featured in Freedom’s Furies: A Review of Freedom’s Furies: How Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand Found Liberty in an Age of Darkness by Timothy Sandefur,” by Ralph Goldstein

“Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, and “The Slap Heard ‘Round the World'”

“What Were They Reading Then?: Raw Gold by James B. Hendryx,” by Sally E. Parry, Illinois State University

“Lewis’s Additions to the New Republic‘s “‘Good Books That …

Unfairy Tales And Other Refugee Stories: Creating Relations Through The Humanitarian Imagination In Mohsin Hamid's Exit West And Helen Oyeyemi's Gingerbread, Gabriella Pishotti

Graduate Student Scholarship

Contrary to many analyses of refugee narratives that focus on how their subject matter becomes compromised by issues of authority, believability, and expectation, this article explores how refugee novels such as Mohsin Hamid's Exit West and Helen Oyeyemi's Gingerbread lean into such problems in a way that appeals to the humanitarian imagination. These novels recognize the incomprehensibility of the refugee experience and play upon this reality by intermixing their stories with fairy tale elements. In doing so, the tropes of fairy tales provide these stories with greater narrative flexibility while making the unfamiliar realities of refugees comprehensible through familiar narrative …

The Linguistic Reimagining Of Natural Elements In Gerard Manley Hopkins' Nature Sonnets, Leah Rice

Student Works

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a Victorian poet and Jesuit priest now numbered among the major English poets. When the first edition of his poems was published posthumously in 1918 by his friend Robert Bridges, it “baffled more readers than it converted” (Martin 50). Nevertheless, despite this original reticence to accept Hopkins as a poet, the tests of time and scholarship has proven his depth and continued relevance of study.

Strategies Of Liberation And Empowerment In Maya Angelou's And Audre Lorde's Black Feminist Literature, Lydia Jernigan

Student Works

The progression of second-wave feminism in America saw Black feminist writers such as Maya Angelou and Audre Lorde utilizing literature, and notably poetry, to resist against their oppression, due not only to their gender but also to their race. Lorde states in her 1977 essay, “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” that poetry, for women, “is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” One of the aims of Lorde’s explicitly political poems—as …

Designing "Writing For Health And Medicine": Course Arcs, Anchors, And Action, Elizabeth L. Angeli, Lillian Campbell

English Faculty Research and Publications

This article details how we developed a hybrid rhetoric of health and medicine and technical communication writing course in response to a call for a health sciences writing course. We anticipate that other institutions may be experiencing similar demand for these courses and thus introduce our process and course design as models for meeting this growing curricular need.

Capacitating Community: The Writing Innovation Symposium, Jenn Fishman, Abigayle Farrier, Aleisha R. Balestri, Barbara Clauer, Bump Halbritter, Darci Thoune, Derek G. Handley, Gitte Frandsen, Holly Burgess, Lillian Campbell, Elizabeth L. Angeli, Louise Zamparutti, Jenna Green, Jennifer Kontny, Jessica R. Edwards, Jessie Wirkus Haynes, Julie Lindquist, Kaia L. Simon, Kayla Urban Fettig, Kelsey Otero, Margaret Perrow, Maria Novotny, Marie Cleary-Fishman, Maxwell Gray, Melissa Kaplan, Patrick W. Thomas, Paul Feigenbaum, Sara Heaser, Seán Mccarthy

English Faculty Research and Publications

The topic of this symposium, capacitating community, invites CLJ readers to consider what makes community possible. This piece showcases one means, small conferences, via a retrospective on the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national scope that has hosted writers and writing educators annually in Milwaukee, WI, since 2018. Through a quilted conversation pieced from hours of small-group discussion, twenty-nine participants across academic and nonacademic ranks, roles, and ranges of experience offer insight into the WIS as well as the nature and value of professional community.

Gollum From Medieval Tragedy To Liberal Tragedy In J. R. R. Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings, Masoud Tadayoni, Mohsen Hanif

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

J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium represents different archetypal myths that constitute a diverse treasury of literary genres. Tragedy in variegated forms also appears in many of his mythological tales and characters. Gollum in The Lord of the Rings experiences a unique instance of tragedy when it is compared with Tolkien’s earlier sketches of the genre. We demonstrate that the character Gollum sustains a twofold type of tragedy that originates from Tolkien’s perception of medieval and modern spirits of thought. Raymond Williams in Modern Tragedy draws upon historical traditions of tragedy to survey different characteristics of “modern tragedy”. According to him, the cornerstones …

Centering Diné Literacy In Ela Classrooms: Developing Co-Conspiratorship For Indigenous Sovereignty, Shaadiin King , '23

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

No abstract provided.

Robert Burns’ Poetic Style Through His Poetry, Songs, And Correspondence, Abigail Druckenmiller

Senior Theses

This thesis explores connections and contradictions within the songs, correspondence, and poems of Scotland’s bard, Robert Burns. A selection of works from each of these categories is presented to compare the ways Burns writes verse, lyrics, and letters. Through this thesis, I analyzed his work looking at subject matter, use of the Scots dialect, structure, and poetic devices in order to offer holistic commentary on Burns’ style in a way that includes his letters more heavily than most other Burns scholarship. Overall, I thought Burns remained a consistent man of conviction and societal criticism throughout my findings, as well as …

After Erasure: Contingency And The Persistence Of Subjectivity, Nathan Deprospo

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation examines the relationship between contemporary posthumanist discourse in rhetoric and composition and the Hegelian dialectic. My basic premise is that the ethical and philosophical aspirations of posthumanist discourse—embrace otherness, improve social relations, foster inclusivity—are undercut by a persistent conservatism and destructiveness that runs throughout the social body. This is a Hegelian point: one should not treat social ills, such as racism, sexism, or classism, as merely unfortunate, cosmetic side effects of social organizations, but rather as fundamental human tendencies. For Hegel, there is a tendency towards exclusion, towards negating otherness, that is inherent in human subjectivity, and which …

Identity In Literacy Narratives: Toward Reflexive Pedagogy In First Year Writing, Laiken Elizabeth Harrigan

Theses and Dissertations

An ongoing discussion for composition pedagogues is the relation of individuals’ identities and discourse histories in relation to academic discourses. In this thesis, I argue that academic discourse cannot be entirely separated from personal discourse, as individuals are always in conversation with their discoursal histories and identities. In order to better understand how students perceive their relationships to academic discourse, I analyze how First Year Writing (FYW) students experience the discourse of FYW— where they either intertwine their identities or we see their personal identities collide with the academic space. I used open coding to conduct a textual analysis of …

Communicative Kissing With Alien Poetry: New Muses In Neil Gaiman’S “How To Talk To Girls At Parties”, Leanna Ashley Herbert

Theses and Dissertations

The representation of women in the fiction of Neil Gaiman is a topic that seems to obsess scholars, critics, fans, and (likely) the author himself. It is imperative that closer scholarly attention be paid to the figure of the muse, a figure defined in contemporary culture by her representability, as she appears across Gaiman’s works. This thesis traces the evolution of m/Muses or muse-like figures in the fiction of Neil Gaiman, arguing that the short story “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” imagines an empowering evolution for those who are objectified or silenced by the assumption that they are …

Trends In Young Adult Literature: A Quantitative Approach To Characterizing The New York Times Young Adult Bestsellers Of 2020, 2021, And 2022, Anna Wehmeier Giol

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

Understanding how a book becomes a bestseller is one of the biggest mysteries in the publishing industry. This research paper focuses on YA bestsellers and uses a quantitative methodology to try to solve the mystery. Its main objectives are to (1) review the current trends in YA literature and (2) find patterns and similarities in the text of YA bestsellers. By building a dataset and analyzing the 175 books featured in the “Young Adult Hardcover” bestseller list of the New York Times for 2020, 2021, and 2022, the study shows that YA bestsellers share characteristics and patterns, such as the …

Reactions To Latinx Children’S Picture Books From Indie Presses: An Analysis Of Online Consumer Reviews, Karina L. Agbisit

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

This study analyzed online consumer reviews of children's picture books published by three small, independent presses focused on providing representation of Latinx people and culture. Reviews showed an overwhelmingly positive reaction to the use of bilingual text. Reactions to the use of illustrations support research indicating a preference for bright, colorful images. Additional themes that emerged in reviews include the timeliness of a bilingual book about expressing feelings in the first year of the Covid pandemic; the importance of personal connections to expressions of culture and traditions in the text; the pros and cons of using photographs instead of illustrations; …

The Dragon And The Railway Station, Verlyn Flieger

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

The curious substitution of Bletchley Station for Paddington Station between two versions of “On Fairy-stories” may have a simple origin in Tolkien’s interest in code-breaking, but on investigation (as with most things Tolkien-related) goes deeper.

Masculine Desire And Feminine Imitation: Contextualizing Heterosexual Relationships In Sister Carrie, Jennifer L. White

Master of Arts in Classical Studies

Theodore Dreiser is generally considered one of the greatest American naturalist authors across the genre. His depiction of life is gritty and harsh, his characters at the mercy of their natural impulses and their unforgiving environment. However, there is also a sentimental element to Dreiser’s work, especially in his portrayal of romantic relationships. In the face of unrelenting adversity, there is a glimmer of possibility in the longing for meaningful human connection, if only under different circumstances. While Dreiser’s naturalistic approach suggests that such relationships can never be truly fulfilling due to either the innate frailty of the participants or …

Stolperstein/Stumbling Stone For Holocaust Survivor Otto Heimann/Bob Hymann, Bochum/German, Toronto/Kanada Und New York, Ny, Usa, Courtney Conte, Mona Eikel-Pohen

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

The documentation tries to capture the life of Holocaust survivor Otto Heimann/Bob Hyman who spent his youth in Bochum-Langendreer, Germany, and was forced by the National Socialists to leave parents, home, and country. The documentation does not claim to give a full picture, just an insight into Otto Heimann's/Bob Hyman's life.

It will be read out on June 6, 2023 in Bochum, Germany when a Stolperstein, a stumbling stone, will be place near Alte Bahnhstraße 6 in Bochum-Langendreer, Germany, to commemorate Otto Heimann/Bob Hyman, so that we and future generations may learn from history.

Diese Dokumentation versucht, das Leben Bob …

On Parallel Paths: Learning Through Case Studies In The Writing Pedagogy Course, Alyssa Devey, Christina Saidy, Mohammed S. Iddrisu, Seher Shah, Marlene A. Tovar

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article reports on a case study project assigned in a writing pedagogy course. The authors, four graduate teaching assistants and their professor, share their case study questions, experiences, and challenges. Via the case study assignment, the TAs identified parallel experiences they shared with their students. Recognizing parallel paths helps first-year TAs reflect on their experiences as teachers and learners, build connections with students, and develop sustainable teaching practices beyond the first year. The authors share strategies for identifying parallel paths and encourage TA educators to incorporate them into the writing pedagogy course.

Desire And Marketizing English Version Of Education As A Commodity In The Linguistic Market In Bangladesh, Mohammod Moninoor Roshid Professor, Shaila Sultana Professor

The Qualitative Report

In recent years, the globalization of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) policy has grown exponentially, driven by socio-economic, political, cultural, and educational desires and forces. Despite having a well-established elite English-medium education in Bangladesh, EMI-based, a new type of education system has emerged recently at primary and secondary levels called English-version (EV) education. This paper investigates parents' desires to choose EV schools for their children and how those desires contribute to marketizing EV schools as a new and popular commodity in the education market of Bangladesh. Data were collected using open-ended questionnaires from 120 parents of primary school …

Subject-Verb Agreement In Existential Constructions In Contemporary American English: A Corpus-Based Study, Ekab Al-Shawashreh, Mohammad Al-Omari

Association of Arab Universities Journal for Arts مجلة اتحاد الجامعات العربية للآداب

This study investigates the variable subject-verb agreement in existential constructions in the Corpus of Contemporary American-English (COCA). While variable subject-verb agreement in existential constructions has been extensively studied in many varieties of English, we study this variation in a particular corpus to find out the correlation between the distribution of the standard and non-standard subject-verb agreement variants in American-English and a number of linguistic factors (tense, contraction, kind of plural and adjacency of subject and verb). To achieve this goal, a total of 375 tokens of standard and non-standard agreement in existential constructions are extracted from the corpus and coded …

[Preview Of] Linguistics And Psychoanalysis A New Perspective On Language Processing And Evolution, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio

Bookshelf

This groundbreaking, provocative book presents an overview of research at the disciplinary intersection of psychoanalysis and linguistics.

Understanding that linguistic activity, to a great extent, takes place in unconscious cognition, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio systematically demonstrates how fundamental psychoanalytic mechanisms—such as displacement, condensation, overdetermination, and repetition—have been absent in the history of linguistic inquiry, and explains how these mechanisms can illuminate the understanding of the grammatical structure, evolution, acquisition, and processing of language. Reexamining popular misunderstandings of psychoanalysis along the way, Bonfiglio further proposes a new theoretical configuration of language and expertly sets the future agenda on this subject with new …

Vol. 42, No. 9 - Whole No. 282, Eleanor M. Farrell

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Vol. 42, No. 7/8 - Whole No. 280/281, Eleanor M. Farrell

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Vol. 41, No. 7 - Whole No. 268, Eleanor M. Farrell

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Vol. 42, No. 6 - Whole No. 279, Eleanor M. Farrell

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Vol. 42, No. 5 - Whole No. 278, Eleanor M. Farrell

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Vol. 42, No. 4 - Whole No. 277, Eleanor M. Farrell

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Vol. 42, No. 3 - Whole No. 276, Eleanor M. Farrell

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Vol. 42, No. 2 - Whole No. 275, Eleanor M. Farrell

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.

Vol. 42, No. 1 - Whole No. 274, Eleanor M. Farrell

Mythprint

Mythprint is the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local and written discussion groups.