Digital Commons Network^™

Investigating The Growth Of Vocabulary Size And Depth Of Word Knowledge In Iraqi Foreign Language Learners Of English, Akram Basim Mohsin Alfatle

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This study examined the growth of vocabulary size and depth of word knowledge in Iraqi foreign language learners of English (EFLs) over four years of university instruction. The secondary objective was to investigate the influence of language learning and practice variables on the lexical growth of Iraqi EFLs. Tools included the Self-Rated Vocabulary Test (measure of vocabulary size, D'Anna, Zechmeister, & Hall, 1991) and the Word Associates Test (measure of depth of word knowledge, Read, 1998). A self-report questionnaire was used to collect demographic information and language learning variables from participants. Following a cross-sectional method, 120 students (N = 120), …

Immigration And Identity Translation: Characters In Bharati Mukherjee’S Jasmine And Jhumpa Lahiri’S The Namesake As Translators And Translated Beings, Laura Traister

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Bharati Mukherjee’s 1989 novel Jasmine and Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2003 novel The Namesake both feature immigrant protagonists, who experience name changes and identity transformations in the meeting space of Indian and American cultures. Using the theory of cultural translation to view translation as a metaphor for identity transformation, I argue that as these characters alter their identities to conform to cultural expectations, they act as both translators and translated texts. Although they struggle with the resistance of untranslatability via their inability to completely assimilate into American culture, Jasmine and Gogol ultimately gain the ability to bypass the limitations of a foreigner/native …

Unusual Children: Queerishness And Strange Growth In A Wrinkle In Time And The Giver, Olivia Morris

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This project examines two different pieces of modern children’s literature, Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and Lois Lowry’s The Giver, in terms of their protagonists’ respective strange identities. I begin with Katherine Stockton’s theory of sideways growth, which outlines the unusualness often found in child protagonist. I use Stockton’s work as a jumping off point to examine the queerishness of two protagonists, L’Engle’s Meg Murray and Lowry’s Jonas. Meg is unfeminine, and her experiences with language and definitions defy gender binaries and easy definitions; throughout the course of the novel, she learns to embrace her “flaws” (her unfeminine, …

Jazz Epidemics And Deep Set Diseases: The De-Pathologization Of The Black Body In The Work Of Three Harlem Renaissance Writers, Shane C. Hunter

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation argues that the Harlem Renaissance was, in part, a response to Victorian-era medical and scientific racism, and that the three writers on which it centers, Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Wallace Thurman (1902-1934), and Richard Bruce Nugent (1906-1987), participated in subverting these racist discourses. I focus on elements of their creative work that de-pathologize the black body. Specifically, I consider how these writers undermine Victorian-era medical racism that had, by the 1920s, come to inform American racial politics. Hughes’s, Thurman’s, and Nugent’s work from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s is at least partly concerned with undermining medically racist ideology …

Elevating The Translator: Next Steps In Promoting International Literature, Olenka Burgess

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

Enthusiastic readers both inside and outside the publishing industry have lamented the paucity of international literature translated into English. Despite the widely held belief that translated literature doesn’t sell, small presses and literary organizations have emerged over the past decade to take the lead in advocating for more translated literature and more recognition for those who, despite the near impossibility of making a living from their craft alone, continue to spill unfathomable hours into the pursuit of literary translation. In response to this advocacy, media coverage of translated literature has grown considerably, and it is increasingly common to see translations …

Women's Rhetoric And The Romance Novel Genre, Kathryn M. O'Neil

Theses and Dissertations

Romance novel readers and authors often face shaming by those who have power/influence over them; namely the popular media and academic community, who claim the genre is sexist and formulaic. Because of this, women are made to feel guilty for enjoying romance. However, by applying Krista Ratcliffe’s rhetorical listening technique to Janet Radway’s ethnography, Reading the Romance, select romance novel texts, and interviews with ten romance authors, we discover that the romance novel genre is more complex than it gets credit for. Romance novels can be empowering and provide solidarity among readers and between readers and authors. Through the …

Literature As Virtual Reality: An Exploration Of Subjectivity Formation In The Digital Era, Jessica Danielle Schnebelen

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project traces a line of developing subjectivity in the history of mediation. Using Jacque Lacan’s mirror stage to emphasize the relationship between Social identification and self formation, I suggest literary virtual realities further our understanding of human-technology relationships. Examining the evolution of eighteenth and nineteenth century sympathetic consciousness reveals a subjectivity intricately bound to both cognitive and physical spaces. The emergence of the virtual body complicates this consciousness by obscuring physicality and mixing man and machine. To trace this consciousness this project looks at the work of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and a contemporary television writer, Charlie Brooker. These …

Images Of The Other: Race, Gender, And The Imperial Relationship In Heart Of Darkness, A Passage To India, And Burmese Days, Samantha A. Mason

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores themes of race, gender, and the imperial relationship found in three anti-imperial novels and additional related works. In Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness the narrator Marlow and, by extension Conrad himself, systematically silences all African and female voices throughout the novel, effectively making Marlow, a white man, the only person capable of speaking about the horrors of imperialism. Marlow abhors the exploitation of imperialism, but admires the "civilizing" idea behind it, making him a problematic representative for anti-imperial sentiment. In E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India, the main perspective shifts to that of an …

"Mother, I Will": Female Subjectivity And Religious Vision In The Brontës Novels, Amanda Scott

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë have long attracted sustained critical attention, in

large part because of their strong female protagonists. These strong-willed women self-assuredly reject oppression and model new paradigms for the Victorian woman to empower her subjectivity. This subjectivity serves, in turn, not only as the ability to form and express views counter to outworn social prescriptions, but it also serves as the centralized interior focus that allows their protagonists to think of themselves as the foremost subjects of their lives, rather than see themselves as pawns to be moved about in the games of patriarchal hierarchy. This study …

(Re)Constructing American Linguistic Identity: Disrupting The American Linguistic Standard In First Year Composition, Brittany N. Ramirez

Theses and Dissertations

The thesis is a theoretical and analytical perspective on the construction of American Linguistic Identity through a Nationalist lens. By re-theorizing the concept of the nation as a “text”, and nationalism as the “composition” of that nation, this work challenges the dominant historical American linguistic narrative. This narrative is informed by an American Linguistic memory that is based on an Anglo-Saxon linguistic hegemony throughout American history. American linguistic memory has perpetuated a tacit English-Only policy in higher education, primarily through first year college composition courses. The tacit English-Only policy has influenced educators’ perceptions of students in the composition classroom as …

Coming Of Age On Social Media: Platforms For Discussion And Critique On The Novels Of Sarah Dessen, Liza M. Soria

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the way Tumblr and Twitter users converse about a variety of topics in Sarah Dessen’s novels, not predominantly focused on romance. From 2006 to 2016, tweets and blog posts across Tumblr and Twitter platforms have responded to the twelve novels written by Dessen from 1996 to 2015. Incorporating recent social media commentary on a variety of topics within her first six novels from That Summer (1996) to The Truth About Forever (2004) demonstrates how Dessen’s early novels appeals to readers currently on Twitter and Tumblr. In the last decade of Dessen’s writing career, from Just Listen (2006) …

History Of Housewives In First-Year Composition And Effects On Students, Pay, And Pedagogy, Vera Lynn Lentini

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis paper reviews the history of women in the field of composition as a discipline, paying particular attention to the evolution of the role of the writing instructor. Today, first-year composition classrooms are staffed by a mostly contingent and female workforce, which is an ethical problem for writing programs and English departments. As in the larger workforce, service-oriented careers like teaching tend to be underpaid and characterized by deference to the experts, who are in the position of authority. While this scheme seems to have functioned for housewives and breadwinners in the 1950s, in today’s dual-earner couple it is …

Bridges, Not Towers: Connecting Universities And Local Communities For Community Writing Projects, Alicia Remolde

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

It has been argued that by bridging the educational resources of institutions of higher education with local, community literacy initiatives, adult literacy can be promoted outside of the university while imparting teaching and learning experiences to the on-campus community. The purpose is not to impart the values of the Ivory Tower but to create bridges through collaborative work and dialogue to achieve social or political action for the community members. This thesis will show how writing centers can foster transformative community and public writing spaces using the Montclair State University’s Center for Writing Excellence Seminar for Lifelong Learners as a …

Foreign Word Alert, Foreign Word Alert: Rethinking Editorial Approaches To The Italicization Of Foreign Terms, Katey Trnka

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

Several style guides dictate that foreign words in running text be set in italics, but those individuals concerned with marginalization are questioning this rule in increasing numbers. With an eye to authorial intent and inclusiveness, is it time to do away with this stylistic dictum wholesale, or are there valid reasons for keeping this convention in play?

Lost Generations And The Problem Of American Identity : The Emergence Of Racial Nativism In American Culture (1890s-1920s), Gloria Lugo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis problematizes traditional generic groupings (such as realism, naturalism, and modernism) since such categories segregate texts into literary periods defined largely by artificial formalist criteria. These ahistorical distinctions tend to deemphasize social and cultural import and also occlude analyses of texts as cultural products that express the dominant ideology of a particular epoch. A historical analysis focusing on cultural ideology can offer new insights to how various canonical texts perpetuate American mythologies and stereotypes. When interrogating texts of the Progressive and Modernist Eras, a pattern emerges that conflates racism and nativism in an effort to define Americans as elite …

Deconstructing Zombies Of Capitalism : The Walking Dead And New Views Of American Zombies, Jennifer Daly

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study of The Walking Dead comic book series intends to argue that the zombie of The Walking Dead resists classification within a Marxist schema through their blurring of social binary systems of class, race, and gender. Current scholarly criticism of zombie literature, film, and television has a tendency to utilize a Marxist lens to depict zombies as drones of capitalism, and mindless consumers.

The modern American zombie comes from Haitian myths in which zombies are raised to assist the slaves in the field during the day, but many critics have ignored the other half of Haitian stories in which …

Talk To Text, George Gallagher

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis seeks to both examine and embrace the lack of concrete language available regarding what actually happens with students during face-to-face conversations about their wr iting. The context of “conversations” covers a broad spectrum of participants - teacher and student, student and student, student and tutor, as well as student with self - and domains - cognitive, affective, psychological and creative - that are particularly vexing to capture in words. Attempts by authors to weave together such disparate, dynamic forces breed tension. Such tension is good, and, quite often, purposeful. My research seeks to explore how such constructive tension …

The Victorian Influence On Virginia Woolf's Domestic Feminist Aesthetic In Mrs. Dalloway And To The Lighthouse, Heather Mary Greenberg

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis focuses on the function of the Victorian domestic woman in the Modernist novels and essays of Virginia Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse are the two primary texts covered in this study. Woolfs Modernist aesthetic develops out of the Victorian literary tradition and represents a conscious shift away from the literary and social conventions associated with pre-WWI society. Woolf draws upon established Victorian models of femininity, like Patmore’s “Angel in the House,” and traditional Victorian domestic middle-class ideology to center her Modernist novels. Her female protagonists, Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs. Ramsay, represent quintessential Victorian ideals of femininity: …

“Deliberate Voluptuousness”: The Monstrous Women Of Dracula And Carmilla, Judith Bell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Vampire women play a culturally significant role in films and literature by revealing the extent to which deviation from Socially accepted behavior is tolerated. In this thesis, I compare the vampire women of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla to their depictions in recent adaptations. In Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire sisters are representative of the shortcomings of 19th century gender roles, especially in regard to women’s communities. In recent adaptations, the vampire sisters’ revealing clothing, promiscuity, and lack of characterization are still closely connected with villainy, and as in Stoker’s novel, the women’s violent deaths in the …

A Band Of Sisters: Female Detectives, Authority, And Fiction From 1864 To The 1930s, Amanda Renee Schafer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Because mystery and detective fiction have been classified as “popular” genres, the complex ideas and ideologies that the authors work with and within reach a wide and varied audience through formulaic and familiar ways. The perceived conservatism of the genre allows authors to present and pursue distinctly anti-conservative views in disguise. For fictional detectives and, especially female detectives, disguise is an effective tool for solving their cases. Often, these detectives will disguise themselves as someone infinitely more conservative than they are in order to gain access to their quarry. Similarly, mystery and detective fiction wear a cloak of conservatism to …

A Watchman On The Walls: Ezekiel And Reaction To Invasion In Anglo-Saxon England, Max K. Brinson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the Viking Age, the Christian Anglo-Saxons in England found warnings and solace in the biblical text of Ezekiel. In this text, the God of Israel delivers a dual warning: first, the sins of the people call upon themselves divine wrath; second, it is incumbent upon God’s messenger to warn the people of their extreme danger, or else find their blood on his hands. This thesis examines how the Anglo-Saxon applied Ezekiel’s warnings to their own cultural crisis. It begins with the early development of this philosophy by the Britons in the 500s, its adoption by the Anglo-Saxons, Irish, and …

Moving Interpretations : Using Drama-Based Arts Strategies To Deepen Learning About The Diary Of A Young Girl., James S. Chisholm, Kathryn F. Whitmore, Ashley L. Shelton, Irina V. Mcgrath

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Three drama-based arts strategies enhanced middle grades teachers’ and students’ engagement with Anne Frank’s diary and historical circumstances.

Global-To-Local-To-Global: A Model For Tutoring Esl Students In The Writing Center, David Aguilar

Theses and Dissertations

Since its inception, the writing center has always focused on traditional students, and today that tradition is continued in such a way that the overwhelming amount of research dedicated to writing center theory and practice addresses the concerns of those students. However, universities with unique student populations, such as the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley with its majority of Hispanic students, require novel practices within their writing centers. Moreover, much of the linguistic, social, and cultural factors of the region are not well documented and therefore are not addressed by the mainstream theory and practices of other universities. With …

Born Digital Preservation And The Power Of Nostalgia, Emily Ann Pilat

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This work of segmented creative nonfiction examines nostalgia as a force that can impact and aid the preservation processes with regard to born digital works. Through research and personal accounts these segments work in conjunction with one another to evaluate the current state and potential future of digital preservation. Nostalgia in relation to digital technology is studied through concepts such as tech-nostalgia and Skeuomorphism, both of which directly frame digital preservation practices. Unique works of electronic literature are also assessed in relation to challenges in preservation and how the authors, preservationists, as well as audiences respond to the challenges that …

The Closet Conservative: Oscar Wilde's Inadvertent Adherence To Traditional Gender Roles, Rachel Cote

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Typically considered a proto-feminist, Wilde occasionally lets slip a conservative ideology in his adherence to traditional gender binaries within the confines of the romantic sphere. The internalized binary set Wilde most heavily employs in certain writings relates to Artifice/Reality, where men are associated with Artifice and women with Reality. In specific scenes of The Picture of Dorian Gray, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde explores romantic dynamics under the duress of the genders' diverging preference for elements of deception and artificiality in heteronormative romantic relationships. This scheme inherently reinforces the patriarchy and sexism of …

Emily Dickinson: Myth Of The Perpetual Child, Rebecca Faust

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Critics have often described poems of the enigmatic Emily Dickinson, the "Myth of Amherst," as being suitable only for children's literature. In addition to having a well-known diminutive appearance, Dickinson exhibits a poetic playfulness, focuses on simple aspects of Nature, and explores faith and childish subjects and concerns which has led to a narrow understanding and even dismissal of her works as being decidedly "unsophisticated." This paper contends that the use of a child's voice or point-of-view is an intentional one in order for Dickinson to reconcile the conflicting ideologies of childhood, especially relating to the tenets of her orderly …

An Anthropological Exploration Of Latino Immigrant Identity In Contemporary Migration Literature, Laura Hoppe

Honors Capstone Projects

Immigration remains one of the hottest topics of debate in the United States. As a country constructed by immigrants and home to over one million newly admitted immigrants each year, the immigration phenomenon has contributed extensively to the multiculturalism seen in the United States today. While many immigrant groups have historically lived in marginalization, the 21st century has proven especially difficult for Latino immigrants--those from Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Latin America. As the current largest immigrant group, Latinos have received a lot of backlash and discrimination in the U.S. Many of these immigrants, whether they immigrate to the U.S. temporarily or …

We're All Mad Here: Anti-Capitalist Criticism In Arden Of Faversham, Eileen G. Settlemyer

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This essay looks at the portrayal of capitalism in the anonymously written Renaissance play Arden of Faversham. As early modern England shifted to a capitalist economy, the nefarious means that almost all of the major characters employ in order to take advantage of opportunities for social mobility criticizes the greed and brutality that emerging capitalist values encouraged. While many critics criticize Arden for his greed as a landlord, he does not conform to the literary stereotype of the period for greedy landlords, allowing a broader reading of the play. All the deaths at the end of the play, both …

Crushed Violets And Collapsed Daughters: Gutman And Boss Finley And Power In Tennessee Williams' Camino Real And Sweet Bird Of Youth, Faith E. Rivers

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The paper, "Crushed Violets and Collapsed Daughters: Gutman, Boss Finley, and Power in Tennessee Williams' Camino Real and Sweet Bird of Youth," examines two largely overlooked Tennessee Williams' characters and how they exercise their power. This paper argues that Gutman is ultimately the more sinister and powerful authority figure because Williams wrote him during the height of the anti-communist movement, which threatened Williams personally. While both characters share the similarities of suppressing deviants and maintaining their power through the division of those beneath them and the use of rhetoric, Gutman and Boss Finley have striking differences. Boss Finley depends on …

"She Left The Web, She Left The Loom": The Extent Of Agency In "The Lady Of Shalott", Christina M. Cox

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Alfred, Lord Tennyson began writing "The Lady of Shalott" in a time of tremendous social and political change for England. Ten years after it was written, in 1842, a new, heavily-revised version of the poem was published. The Lady's agency (or lack of it) within the two versions of the poem fluctuates; in parts of the 1842 poem, she gains more control over herself, only to lose some of the agency she possessed in the 1832 poem. This paper shows that even after his major editing, Tennyson's depiction of the Lady, while exhibiting some signs of power, perpetuates the lack …