Digital Commons Network^™

Ralph Hanna, The Penn Commentary On "Piers Plowman", Volume 2: C Passūs 5-9; B Passūs 5-7; A Passūs 5-8, Ian Cornelius

English: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Tracing "Fake News:" The Printing Press, Social Media, And Politics, Aine Doyle

The Criterion

During the 2016 presidential election, “fake news” became a hot topic that shattered the American public’s trust of traditional news outlets and creating even deeper rifts between the two major political parties. Although the election made the American public acutely aware of “fake news”, the practice of appropriating images and quotations and manipulating information to influence public opinion can be traced back to the beginnings of the printing press. In this essay, I discuss how the phenomena of the printing press sets a precedent for other literacy tools—including social media—in how government and religious institutions used it to assert hold …

Review Of Reese, Sam V. S., Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature, And Loneliness, Louisiana State Up, Christina M. Tourino

English Faculty Publications

A book review by Christina Tourino, English faculty, of Sam Reese's book Blue Notes and is in Volume 4 of the Wachtung Review in July 2021.

The Utah English Journal, Volume 47, 2019: Full Issue

The Utah English Journal

No abstract provided.

“Friend Thou Art Often In My Remembrance”, Jay D. Miller

Faculty Publications - Department of English

A recently discovered letter by Elizabeth Ashbridge expands the very small archive of documents related to this important Quaker minister, gives scholars a better understanding of the circles in which she moved, and offers an occasion for reflection on epistolary writing in the eighteenth century. Written to her fellow Quaker Margaret Bowne, the letter fascinates as a dense record of the overlapping transatlantic, commercial, and ministerial connections Friends maintained during the period. It also illustrates the persistence of Pauline epistolary tropes in the context of an ostensibly “secular” familiar letter, reminding scholars of the pitfalls of thinking of the secular …

Mythlore At 50: A Celebration (1969-2019), The Mythopoeic Society

Mythcon Souvenirs

A booklet filled with things you already know, set out fair and square with no contradictions.

• The History of Mythlore, Tolkien Journal, and The Mythlore Index Plus
• The Stat Sheet: Statistics, Superlatives, Lists, and Interesting Facts
• Mythlore Staff and Board Members
• Checklist of Issues and Formats for Mythlore and Tolkien Journal.

Writing For The Humanities, Pamela Jean Stemberg

Open Educational Resources

OER syllabus with assignments for second semester English Composition class, Writing in the Humanities.

Medical Rhetoric And The Sympathetic “Inebriet”: 1870–1930, Carol Reeves

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The modern view of addiction as a progressive brain disease originated in the second half of the 19th and early decades of the 20th centuries. Historians attribute the shift from a moral to a medical concept to the efforts of a small but well-organized band of physicians forming what is known as the Inebriety Movement in the United States and Great Britain. Members aimed to distribute the disease theory to a disinterested and biased medical community, establish protocols for evidence-based treatments, and transfer the management of drinkers and drug users away from religious organizations and penal institutions to the care …

Jabberwocky: An Exploration Of Nonsense And Meaning, Edith Penman

Faculty Research and Publications

Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” stands as one of the most celebrated poems of the English language, not merely for its narrative or poetic structure, but for its inventive use of language and the rich interpretive possibilities it offers. Originally appearing in Carroll's novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), “Jabberwocky” is a brilliant example of nonsense verse, a genre that Carroll virtually perfected. Despite—or perhaps because of—its nonsensical nature, the poem has been the subject of considerable analysis and admiration, inviting readers into a world where linguistic boundaries are delightfully blurred.

Frontierwhorlroamer: Eugene Jolas’S Cosmopoetics, Ania Spyra

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The article analyzes Eugene Jolas’ two multilingual poems “Frontier-Poem” (1935) and “America Mystica” (1937) in the transnational context of European Union and hemispheric conceptualizations of the Americas to show how Jolas worked towards a new paradigm and terminology to name the transnational identities created through mass migrations and unstable boundaries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. With poetic sensibility forged at the confluence of the utilitarian jargon of journalism and the irrepressible plurality of the collective unconscious, Jolas’s cosmopoetics offered the universal language of Atlantica, which, paradoxically, was to be both all-inclusive (consisting of essences of all idioms …

Repression, Renewal And 'The Race Of Women' In H.D.'S Ion, Jeff Westover

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

Steven Yao has called H.D.'s Ion her 'most ambitious feat of translation' (2002a: 83). Two contexts are relevant for thinking about H.D.'s work on this project. One is psychoanalysis, and the other is the scholarship which interprets myth as a narrative reflection of ritual practice. Both contexts are significantly tied to H.D.'s personal life and writing career. Matte Robinson even claims that one of the major characters in the play, Kreousa, 'becomes an extension of H.D.' (2013: 270). This claim may be overstated, but Kreousa's quest for recognition from Apollo does resemble H.D's effort to supply her daughter, Perdita, with …

Swift’S Satire And Joyless Adaptations: An Examination Of Problematic Children’S Editions Of Gulliver’S Travels, Katherine M. Kline

Longwood Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Conceptual Metaphors Of Womanhood In English Literary Works By Indian Authors, Atula Ahuja

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) established the pervasiveness of metaphor in thought and language and provided evidence that metaphor is, in fact, deeply embedded in our conceptual system. Contrary to the original claim that conceptual metaphors are largely universal, in almost four decades after its inception, the CMT researchers including George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have advanced the idea of cultural influence on metaphorical conceptualisation. In recent years, the trend in metaphor research has been to study how metaphor behaves in naturally occurring discourse. It is in this context that the current study explores conceptual metaphors in India’s rich cultural …

Bending Back To Move Forward: Scaffolding Reflection To Develop Student Authors, Liz Thackeray Nelson

The Utah English Journal

When I was teaching high school language arts courses, I used a four-corners activity at the beginning of every year in order to get a quick glimpse of my students' attitudes toward writing. Each corner of the classroom represented a point on a Likert scale: strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, and strongly disagree. I read statements about writing ( such as "I avoid writing whenever possible" or "I like writing my ideas down") and then students moved to the corner that best matched their view. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the majority of students stayed in the …

Beyond A Language Boundary: Encounters With Silence And L1 Spanish-Speakers' Willingness To Communicate In English, John Turnbull

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The descriptive multi-case study asks three adult migrants, first-language (L1) Spanish-speakers from México, about their interpretations of their own and others’ silences as they navigate daily life, jobs, family, and English-language learning in the United States. Subjective opinions about silence, their second-language (L2) acquisition processes, comfort levels in various speaking situations, functions of L2 communication, and affective and social dimensions of language learning are related to participants’ willingness to communicate (WTC), a construct that measures a predisposition to talk, rather than stay silent, in L2 interaction.

The research, through daily language-use surveys and semi-structured Spanish-language interviews with the three English-language …

“Writing Is Hard, But I Think I Like It”: Identity (Re)Construction Of Female Refugee And Immigrant Adult Language Learners In The Us., Svenja Trommler

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This paper examines how identity is reconstructed in second language literacy of adult female refugees and immigrants, and how their prior literacy and language experience influences their current literacy usage which develops slowly due to a lack of suitable education for them in the United States, causing difficulties during their integration process. Responding to the low representation of immigrant women in research, three major research methods to collect the qualitative data were used: (1) prompted journal entries as narrative inquiries, (2) observations and field notes, and (3) semi-structured interviews to understand the participants’ previous and current literacy development and identity …

"Let The Madness In The Music Get To You": Poetic Possibilities From The Black Sonic Underground (Or, "Sound Carries"), Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Literatures in English Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Farre Fetched And Deare Bought" : Cosmetics And Englishness 1570-1625, Marta Josie Schoel

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This study examines cosmetic practice, discourse, and material to explore the ways in which face paint, often made from a mixture of foreign and domestic ingredients, challenges the emergent notion of a pure English identity. Within a broader discourse found in recipe books, anti-cosmetic treatises, public and private documents, and plays for public spectacle—as well as court masques—I examine how early modern performances use cosmetic mixtures as theatrical devices to stage, represent, and negotiate anxieties about England’s increased engagement with the nascent global economy. Worn on the permeable surface of the skin, cosmetic material, such as alum, mercury, and mummia, …

The Magic Of A Strange Sky : Nature And The Mysticism Of Memory In Beckett's Trilogy, Daniel James Warhol

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This essay attempts to examine the later prose of Samuel Beckett within the frame of a growing body of critical research that aligns the author’s universal philosophy of the human condition with Indian and Buddhist philosophies. Inspired by the research of Lidan Lin, in her essay “Samuel Beckett’s Encounter with the East,” and Paul Foster’s Beckett and Zen: A Study of Dilemma in the Novels of Samuel Beckett, I take up a similar line of inquiry, choosing to focus on moments in the trilogy that are concerned with contact between the individual and the natural world. While many critics have …

Visionary Pastiche : Hildegard Von Bingen's Reconciliation Of Divine Experience And Representation, Rachel Lynn Gamarra

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Hildegard von Bingen invents a new rhetorical topos—that of prismatic refraction—which allows her to communicate her divine revelation to others through narrative, artwork, and explication. While her patristic counterparts, Augustine and Jerome, think about rendering the divine only as it relates to their understanding of Scripture, Hildegard exploits rhetoric in order to push the boundaries of human epistemology through grappling with her unique mystical experience. Though Hildegard recognizes that there is a degree of difference between her visions and her representation of them, Hildegard still finds value in language as a communicative tool. Hildegard refracts her divine experience in Scivias, …

Inclusivity In The Archives: Expanding Undergraduate Pedagogies For Diversity And Inclusion, Amy J. Lueck, Beverlyn Law, Isabella Zhang

English

This chapter uses the experience of two undergraduate students conducting research in their university archives to consider the “hidden curriculum” entailed in archival research at some institutions. When diverse identities and experiences are not represented in our archives, we run the risk of communicating a lack of value for those identities, producing a feeling of marginalization and exclusion for some students and foreclosing an opportunity to build solidarity across difference for others. In light of the limited holdings at many university archives and the increased prevalence of archival research in the undergraduate classroom, the authors draw on research from writing …

"Mother Earth, Father God": The Binary Power Of Religion And Gender Codes In The Writing Of Jeanette Winterson And The Music Of Torres, Hannah M. Wilkes

Undergraduate Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

An Investigation Into Willingness To Communicate In English Of Junior Middle School Students : A Case Study On Two Middle Schools Of Kunming, China, Siyu Sun

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This study aimed to 1) explore the degree of junior middle school students’ willingness to communicate in English inside the classroom, and 2) investigate the factors that participants consider can affect their willingness to communicate. Participants included 105 Chinese junior middle school students from two general schools in southwestern China. The research instruments consisted of the Willingness to Communicate Questionnaire (WTCQ) and Student Interview Outline. The data were analyzed through descriptive statistics and content analysis. The results revealed that 1) the participants sometimes willing to communicate in English inside the classroom and 2) Motivation, emotions, the classroom atmosphere and teachers’ …

Lexical Complexity Of Academic Presentations: Similarities Despite Situational Differences, Alla Zareva

English Faculty Publications

The present study examined the lexical complexity profiles of academic presentations of three groups of university students– native English speaking, English as a second language, and English as a lingua franca users. It adopted a notion of lexical complexity which includes lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication as main dimensions of the framework. The study aimed at finding out how the three academically similar groups of presenters compared on their lexical complexity choices, what the lexical complexity profiles of high quality students’ academic presentations looked like, and whether we can identify variables that contribute to the overall lexical complexity …

But What Has Helga Crane To Do With The West Indies? Plantation Afterlives In The Black Atlantic, Rachel Mckenzie Carr

Theses and Dissertations--English

“But What Has Helga Crane to Do with the West Indies? Plantation Afterlives in the Black Atlantic” situates the emergence of the southern gothic in modernist American and Caribbean works as a response to the shifting cultural narrative of the plantation in the twentieth century. In this project, I argue that the plantation seeps out of its place and time to haunt landscapes it may never have touched and times in which slavery is long over. While the plantation system is broadly recognized as a literary, political, and cultural force in nineteenth-century literary studies, I conceive it is also a …

Rewriting The Human-Animal Divide: Humanism And Octavia Butler's "Amborg", Aparajita Nanda

English

The relationship of philosophy and the human-animal divide is a long one. One could begin with the anthropocentric assumptions of liberal humanism that go back to the Great Chain of Being, a concept of the nature of the universe that traces its lineage to antiquity. The term designates three defining features of the universe: maximal diversity of life, a serial communication within each group, and a hierarchical division of all living beings from God to the simplest forms of existence (Encyclopedia Britannica 2015). This essay challenges the liberal humanist emphasis on humans as being the central focus of the universe …

Sleight Of Hand: Gender, Performance, And (In)Sincerity In E. D. E. N. Southworth’S The Hidden Hand, Samantha Martin

Scripps Senior Theses

One of the many cultural anxieties that existed during the nineteenth century in antebellum America centered on the dubious status of authenticity of one’s emotions, gender expression, or socioeconomic class. The fluctuating socioeconomic landscape of antebellum America destabilized the logic of categorization, rendering it an ineffectual means by which to evaluate others’ identities. In her novel The Hidden Hand, or, Capitola the Madcap, E. D. E. N. Southworth explores instead of censures the transformative properties of the self, specifically in terms of gender and class. Her interest in this lack of authenticity, or transparency regarding one’s self and intentions, …

Menippean Satire In The Digital Era: Gary Shteyngart’S Super Sad True Love Story, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

Howard Weinbrot argues that Menippean satire tends to be produced in eras of "broken or fragile national, cultural, religious, political or generally intellectual values" (7). It protests cultural decadence and decline by incorporating contradiction into its form, using "at least two other genres, languages, cultures, or changes of voice to oppose a dangerous, false, or specious and threatening orthodoxy" (6). Although it may feature memorable characters, the Menippean mode primarily targets diseased and dangerous ideas or habits. It is encyclopedic in range and ambition, absorbing and parodying different discourses and genres while constructing a narrative via debates, fantasies, annotations (either …

Burning The Breadboard: A New Approach To The Optimist’S Daughter, Peter Schmidt

English Literature Faculty Works

This paper takes several angles of approach towards more deeply understanding central tensions in The Optimist’s Daughter. Goaded by Fay, the novel’s heroine struggles between her need to control and defend a past she feels is under attack and her intimation that her family’s life and values can’t truly be honored by such methods. The narrator also tells us that Laurel seeks to be “pardoned and freed” (OD 179)—but why, and from what? Welty’s text explicitly connects the possibility of pardon with Laurel forgiving her parents. How might we understand this tie between forgiving others and being pardoned oneself? Key …

Byron's Ambivalent Modernity: Touring And Forced Migration In "Don Juan", Betsy Bolton

English Literature Faculty Works

No abstract provided.