Digital Commons Network^™

Tolkien And Gifted Students: Blending Creative And Critical Thinking, Adam Kotlarczyk

Faculty Publications & Research

In “The American Scholar,” Emerson warns against letting books become tyrants. As education “reformers,” political forces, and other special interests continue to pull modern teachers in so many different pedagogical directions, Emerson’s warning is increasingly powerful. Books tyrannize, Emerson says, when we use them passively by simply absorbing information from them, rather than actively by catalyzing our own thinking and actions with them. In effect, he claims that books are not something simply to be learned, memorized, or analyzed, but should help us to create. Today’s gifted student, her schedule usually overflowing with work and co-curriculars in an environment often …

The Liquid Nature Of Self In Maxine Kingston's Autobiographical Story The Woman Warrior, Evelyn Jablonski

ETD Archive

This work examines the notion of self in the autobiographical narrative of Maxine Hong Kingston. Self-writing is constructing a discursive body, and Kingston presents the reader with a unique articulation of her identity. Conventional autobiographical narratives tend to define a self as an opposition to the other. In such texts the literary discourse is intended to secure the integrity of the self. This image of the self can be called conventional. While the conventional narrative self claims to demonstrate developmental stages of an individual that acquires his or her maturity by the end of the quest, the constantly changing self …

Dress Rehearsal: Word Play And Narrative Construction In The Assembly Of Ladies, Nicola Blake

Publications and Research

In the erotics of theater, words are (theoretically) corporeal. They are up there for public scrutiny. The mind's eye echoes the mind's ear. Words act. They are elements of the: scenic investiture affecting, synesthetically, light space rhythm pattern sound, but they also resound at the deepest level of the: mise-en-scene, through self time memory consciousness as well. Mere words, true. Problematic to the last breath of being. The: material elements of theater - like the: body itself - situate us.

Completeless Show, Kathleen Raymond-Judy 15

Honor Scholar Theses

No abstract provided.

Silas Marner: George Eliot's Most Coleridgean Work?, Jen Davis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In 1861 Henry Crabb Robinson compared George Eliot's Silas Mamer with Coleridge's 'The Ancient Mariner'. He noted the novel's 'great affinity' with the poem: 'A little child, its mother having frozen to death at his solitary hovel, is taken in by Silas [ ...]. It is to him what the blessing of the animals is to the Ancient Mariner.' 1 In 1977, U. C. Knoepflmacher argued that: '[b]oth The Mill on the Floss and Silas Mamer hark back to those poems of severance, loss, and expiation that had haunted the imaginations of Coleridge and Wordsworth at the turn of the …

Use Of Rhetoric In 1960'S Protest Music: A Case Study Of Bob Dylan's Music, Colleen Wilkowski

Honors Program Theses

The purpose of this study is to analyze the use of rhetoric in protest music of the 1960s, using Bob Dylan’s music as a case study. The 1960s was a time of revolution and social change in the United States. Throughout this time, protest music served as an outlet for musicians to voice their support for this change. By conducting a rhetorical analysis, this study assesses the ways in which the tools of classical rhetoric can be applied to the music of this time. The analysis focuses on the rhetorical functions of this music in the context of the protest …

What New Writing Teachers Talk About When They Talk About Teaching, Heidi Estrem, E. Shelley Reid

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

As a discipline with academic roots in pedagogy (Harris 1996), composition studies has fostered increasingly visible and structured programs to mentor new writing instructors. Several recent essay collections compile examples of programs, thoughtfully theorized approaches, and careful explorations of how to best support and nurture new instructors of first-year writing (see, for example, Pytlik and Liggett 2002; Ward and Perry 2002). It is now common that new college writing teaching assistants (TAs) participate in at least one pedagogy seminar designed to guide them through their initial teaching experience and provide an introduction to composition studies (see Dobrin 2005). Additionally, individual …

Removing The Binaries Between Humanity And Nature: The Female Perception Through Science Fiction Utopias, Sarah Gail Farrell

English Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation examines utopian science fictions by women from the early modern era and the latter half of the 20th century. While the utopian genre shifts in time, the project focuses on comparing two time periods in order to discuss the topic of humanity’s place in nature. By examining these two distinct eras, I am able to argue that ecofeminist debates about ecological concerns often center around the human/nature binary. These ecofeminist views, I argue, rely on analyzing certain texts in order to glean the truth about the human/nature dichotomy and to offer solutions to these problems. Using Margaret Cavendish’s …

I Told Him/Her/It/Them?: The Problem Of Epicene Pronouns, Natalie Hall

Undergraduate Research Journal

To determine how Americans have naturally been using epicene pronouns, as opposed to the dictates of prescriptive grammar rules, this study focuses on speech patterns and informal writing. Because of their natural resistance to prescriptions, these two forms of communication tend to be more indicative of the epicenes most commonly used by Americans. 1 In this study, I seek an answer to the question of which epicene is used the most by Americans in speech and informal writing. I will use this information to determine the effectiveness of efforts to change prescriptions and traditions of epicene pronoun usage. After presenting …

The Utah English Journal, Volume 43, 2015: Full Issue

The Utah English Journal

No abstract provided.

The Classroom Graphic Novel: Helping Struggling Students Move From Text Completion To Text Engagement, Stephen Nothum

The Utah English Journal

I love comic books and graphic novels. I love the art. I love the power they have to transport me into another world. I savor the moments I get to use my teeth, tongue, and lips to sound out zany onomatopoeias like "FSSTZZZAMM!" Unlike most comic book enthusiasts, my relationship with the genre began not in my childhood, but during my junior year at Brigham Young University. My young adult literature course required us to read Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese (2006), and I was immediately impressed with how the genre could fuse language and images to explore complex …

Which Side Are You On? The Worlds Of Grant Morrison, Francesco-Alessio Ursini, Adnan Mahmutovic, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Grant Morrison is a key figure among the first wave of authors of the so-called "British Generation" (Sandifer and Eklund). The works of the other two creators, Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore, have been the basis for a wealth of scholarly research within the field of comics studies and whole constellations of literary scholarship (Sandifer and Eklund; Sanders; Krueger and Shaeffer; Millidge). Morrison's fictional worlds, however, remain understudied, despite the fact that, as Marc Singer observes, Morrison's work and career seem to be evenly distributed along a continuum ranging from the alternative Vertigo material to the mainstream superhero comics (Singer …

Making And Breaking The Superhero Quotidian: How All-Star Superman Embodies And Revises The Everyday, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

This essay explores the idea of the everyday in All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Scholars identify the everyday, or the quotidian, as including routine behaviors and ingrained assumptions (e.g., Borland and Sutton), and the construct of the quotidian as culture has been explored in comics (Bramlett). Depending on circumstances, characters may navigate the Metropolis cityscape or the Kent farm, take trips to the moon, explore the Daily Planet office building, and meet otherworldly heroes and villains. Even though much of the world of the superhero is extraordinary and wondrous to readers, the characters themselves nevertheless have a …

Connecting, Helen Walker, Wanda Njoya, Ann Wachira, David Bedsole, W. Keith Duffy

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Helen Walker - Widening Circles

Wanda Njoya - Miracles Happen

Ann Wachira - Using a Model

David Bedsole - To the Dog Next Door Who Barks All Day

W. Keith Duffy - Aisle Four: Ice Cream, TV Dinners, Humility

To The Contrary, Beth Daniell

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Author of one of the most important volumes on literacy and spiritual practice finds that four key insights have guided her work, all of them consonant with AEPL members’ practices.

Book Reviews, Judy Halden-Sullivan, Elizabeth French, Brad Lucas, Candace Walworth, Caleb Corkery

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Judy Halden-Sullivan - Embracing the "Beginner's Mind"

Elizabeth French - Richardson, Scott. eleMENtary School—(Hyper) Masculinity in a Feminized Context. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2012. Print.

Brad Lucas - Ryden, Wendy and Ian Marshall. Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness. NY: Routledge, 2012. Print.

Candace Walworth - Kroll, Barry. The Open Hand: Arguing as an Art of Peace. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2013. Print.

Caleb Corkery - Conway, Jeremiah. The Alchemy of Teaching: The Transformation of Lives. Boulder, CO: Sentient Publications, 2013. Print.

Blended Learning, Blended Lives: School One-To-One Programs, Control Societies, And Late Capitalist Subjectivity, Sarah Nolan

Graduate Thesis Collection

In his 2011 article "Florida Reformers Got It Right," William Mattox uses his son Richard as an example of the benefits of hybrid education, or blended learning, which allows students to combine traditional classroom-based instruction with online schooling. Mattox only briefly praises the benefits of his son's opportunity for customized instruction, and he never tells his reader about the types of classes his son took, or how those classes helped his son reach greater achievements in co llege. Instead, he focuses his attention and (and about half his word count) on the network of acquaintances his son was able to …

White Shadows: Perception And Imagination In Poetry, Madison Chartier

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In the spring of my sophomore year, I enrolled in the introductory course to writing poetry here at Butler University. I am not naturally a poet, but I have an appreciation for reading poetry and, at the time of the course, was curious to try my hand at the craft, despite having had little experience prior to the collegiate level. As may be expected, I ran into obstacles.

I enjoyed playing with language in experiments of sound and rhythm, but, despite the vast array of assonance, consonance, enjambment, and every other technique I employed, the poems I created throughout the …

Transnational Forms, Jennifer Harford Vargas

Literatures in English Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hitchhiking The Labyrinth, Tom Gage

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

James Moffett’s best friend recalls Moffett’s enduring influence on his own extraordinary career, as well as Moffett’s substantial contributions to AEPL.

(Re)Producing (Neo)Medievalism, Kellyann Fitzpatrick

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Addressing a need that Tom Shippey calls out in his seminal essay “Medievalisms and Why They Matter,” (Re)producing (Neo)medievalism endeavors to trace connections, expose errors, and make its voice heard in regard to the ways in which the medieval is employed in academic and everyday life. Focusing on recent evolutions in articulations of the medieval, this project produces a working understanding of the term “neomedievalism” that takes into account what would be considered “popular” forms as well as scholarly treatments, and posits it as a method of reading that acknowledges its own practices as forms of neomedievalism. After surveying existing …

Historical Violence And Modernist Form In Zoe Wicomb's David's Story, Kaelie Rianne Giffel

Theses and Dissertations

The essay brings together Zoe Wicomb’s David’s Story with Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” and (less centrally) Julia Kristeva’s work on “Women’s Time.” I argue that, while Derek Attridge claims that the novel’s modernism emerges from its interrogation of historical crisis, David’s Story is modernist because of its experimentation with nonlinear narrative and an engagement with modern intertexts such as Heart of Darkness and Ulysses. Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” illuminates the structure of Wicomb’s novel, which creates what Benjamin calls a “constellation” of stories that are non-causally yet historically related to each other. …

In Defense Of Marianne Dashwood: A Categorization Of Language Into Principles Of Sense And Sensibility, Ashley Bonin

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Oswald Review Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 17 Fall 2015

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

The Obstacles To And Solutions Of Female Characters' Speech: Beatrice In Dante's Vita Nuova And Purgatorio And Susan In J. M. Coetzee's Foe, Tamara Savage

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes the speaking and silencing of two female characters, Beatrice from Dante’s Vita Nuova and Purgatorio and Susan from J. M. Coetzee’s Foe. The texts are viewed through postcolonial and feminist lenses to show the problems with male characters speaking for female characters and the obstacles the female characters face when attempting to speak. Dante’s solution to this problem is to transform Beatrice from a silent and demure woman into a character who issues commands with a powerful voice. Coetzee’s solution is instead to refuse to provide a solution, since no one but Susan can speak for …

Foundational Practices Of Online Writing Instruction, Beth L. Hewitt (Editor), Kevin Eric Depew (Editor)

English Faculty Bookshelf

This is an Open Textbook available through the Open Textbook Library: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/foundational-practices-of-online-writing-instruction. Reviews are available there.

Foundational Practices in Online Writing Instruction (OWI) addresses the questions and decisions that administrators and instructors most need to consider when developing online writing programs and courses. Written by experts in the field (members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee for Effective Practices in OWI and other experts and stakeholders).... The editors believe that the field of writing studies is on a trajectory in which most courses will be mediated online to various degrees; therefore the principles detailed in this …

The Effects Of A New Method Of Instruction On The Perceptions Of Appalachian English, Michelle L. Compton

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This paper evaluates whether students’ perceptions of Appalachian English improve through a method of instruction that uses dialect literature in the classroom. Most existing methods of instruction tend to portray dialects as wrong, incorrect, or in some way less rule-governed than Standardized English, despite the numerous studies that have demonstrated otherwise (e.g., Labov 1969, Wolfram 1986). The data from this study derives from two groups of students enrolled in introductory composition and communication at the University of Kentucky. Each group is given a pre-test to determine attitudes toward Appalachian English and Standardized English. An experimental group is then exposed to …

A Public Duty: Medicine And Commerce In Nineteenth-Century American Literature And Culture, Heather E. Chacon

Theses and Dissertations--English

Using recent criticism on speculation and disability in addition to archival materials, “A Public Duty: Medicine and Commerce in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture” demonstrates that reform-minded nineteenth-century authors drew upon the representational power of public health to express excitement and anxiety about the United States’ emerging economic and political prominence. Breaking with a critical tradition holding that the professionalization of medicine and authorship served primarily to support and define an ascending middle class, I argue that the authors such as Robert Montgomery Bird, Fanny Fern, George Washington Cable, and Pauline Hopkins fuse the rhetoric of economic policy and public …

Turning Their Talk: Gendered Conversation In The Nineteenth-Century British Novel, Rebecca Beach

Theses and Dissertations--English

Turning Their Talk investigates the pressures placed upon female characters’ communication styles as they enter the heterosexual market in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Villette, and George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. The title of this dissertation derives from a phrase found in each the six novels I examine--“she turned the conversation”—to suggest the subtle control female characters exercise through speech that allows them to achieve tangible forms of social agency. My dissertation argues that novelistic representations of speech mirror the paradoxical roles women historically faced as they balanced societal …

Partial Minds: The Strategic Underrepresentation Of Consciousness In Postwar American Novels, Nathan A. Shank

Theses and Dissertations--English

Partial Minds argues that contemporary American novels strategically break conventionally-defined norms for the representation of fictional minds to highlight unusual character thoughts. Certain states of mind—including traumatic experiences, conflicting feelings, some memories, and the simultaneous possession of multiple identities—are more difficult to represent than others, and so some authors or narrators reject conventional cognitive representations, such as naming feelings, if they seem poor tools for effectively communicating that character’s exceptional quality to the reader. For example, the trauma of Marianne in Joyce Carol Oates’s We Were the Mulvaneys is represented by the narrator, her brother Judd. But in attempting to …