Digital Commons Network^™

"A Bleak, Barren Land": Women And Fertility In The Lord Of The Rings, Dylan L. Henderson

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

Critics, and even the general public, have noted the absence of women in The Lord of the Rings, an absence so glaring that it could hardly be overlooked. Many feminist scholars have, as a result of this deficiency, denounced J.R.R. Tolkien, interpreting this lack of female characters as indicative of repressed misogyny. Others, however, have defended the author, pointing out that the female characters that do exist could be considered role models. This essay offers an alternative interpretation and contends that the absence of women in the novel, though potentially reducing its appeal to modern readers, reinforces one of …

Using Memoir To Explore And Heal Trauma Inflicted By Emotional Abuse, Accompanied By Excavating Me, A Memoir, Amy G. Partain

Masters Theses

"Using Memoir to Explore and Heal Trauma Inflicted by Emotional Abuse, accompanied by Excavating Me, A Memoir" by Amy G. Partain details the use of the memoir's literary genre to process trauma resulting from emotional abuse incurred during childhood and adulthood. The paper includes comparisons of three published memoirs about abusive childhoods. It culminates with the author's memoir recounting emotionally abusive experiences with both her parents and her former spouse.

Children’S Gothic In The Chinese Context: The Untranslatability And Cross-Cultural Readability Of A Literary Genre, Chengcheng You

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

As an emerging literary subgenre in the twenty-first century, Children’s Gothic challenges and blends the norms of both children’s literature and Gothic literature, featuring child characters’ self-empowerment in the face of fears and dark impulses. The foreignness and strangeness that pertain to the genre haunt the border of its translatability. Daniel Handler’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (1999­–2006), written under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket, poses a chain of translational challenges due to its linguistic creativity, paratextual art, and mixed style of horror and dark humor intended for a child readership. To investigate the interplay between Children’s Gothic and its (un)translatability …

"I'M Really Just Scared Of The White Parents": A Teacher's Perceptions Of Barriers To Discussing Racial Injustice, Shimikqua Elece Ellis, Christian Goering

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose - This study explores the perceived barriers that a Secondary English teacher faced when attempting to discuss racial injustice through young adult literature in Mississippi.

Design/methodology/approach- The authors rely on Critical Whiteness Studies and qualitative methods to explore the following research question: What are the barriers that a White ELA teacher perceives when teaching about racial injustice through The Hate U Give?

Findings- The authors found that there were several perceived barriers to discussing modern racial injustice in the Mississippi ELA classroom. The participating teacher indicated the following barriers: a lack of racial literacy, fears of discomfort, and an …

Marginalized Students Need To Write About Their Lives: Meaningful Assignments For Analysis And Affirmation, Nancy G. Mack

English Language and Literatures Faculty Publications

Abstract: The bias against personal experience manifests in writing courses as privileging the citation of scholars, fearing emotional writing, and equating argumentation with democratic ideals. To value the lives and knowledges of marginalized students, the curricular goals, assignments, and activities for writing courses needs to be reconsidered. Culturally sustaining pedagogy explores, extends, and examines the experiences of students. Meaningful, experience-based, narrative writing assignments are suggested: memoir essays, ethnographic research reports, and multigenre interview projects. Analysis activities challenge students to examine a chosen experience through several scholarly lenses. By adding complex analysis to their writing, students gain a challenging new experience …

'Poor Unfortunate Souls': Acculturation And Reception Of Womanhood In Fairy Tales, Dalton C. Whitby

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

This essay examines traditional fairy tales, symbolized by Perrault’s “Blue Beard,” and contemporary ones, illustrated by Disney’s animated film Brave (2012), with the implementation of ideas from theorists Marcia Lieberman and Hans Robert Jauss, to demonstrate that dated conceptions of womanhood prevail in these stories and continue to be received and acculturate children today. Although it is reasonable to assume social changes brought on by feminism would echo in twenty-first-century fairy tales, an investigation of Disney's animated fairy tale films, the modern storyteller aimed at acculturating children, reveals that these stories subversively persist in presenting traditional ideas of womanhood, depicting …

Improving Students’ Confidence And Competence Using Critical Media Literacy Skills In A Secondary English Language Arts Class, Leeanne Kline

Doctor of Education in Secondary and Middle Grades Education Dissertations

This is a dissertation for a six-week action research study that investigated how self-regulated learning strategies can affect students’ perceived and demonstrated critical abilities in discussing informational media texts in the secondary ELA classroom. This dissertation examines topical research, gaps in the literature, and theoretical frameworks to justify the study. The qualitative action research study implemented a version of the Article of the Week program alongside self-regulated learning (SRL) and student-led discussion strategies to collect data on students’ self-reported levels and observed critical media literacy (CML) skills. The purpose of this study was to build upon existing research on SRL, …

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Eng 2100t (Writing I), Andrija Matic

Open Educational Resources

On a practical level, this course will introduce you to the conventions of academic writing. You will learn how to compose an academic essay, using a variety of techniques such as pre-writing, outlining, drafting and revising/editing. The course will also enable you to write an annotated bibliography, compose a literacy narrative, conduct a critical analysis and develop a research-based argument. In addition, you will learn how to cite your sources and present ideas to a wider audience. Each of your assignments will be preceded by a detailed class discussion that will help you generate ideas.

However, since the course theme …

Review Of What Pornography Knows: Sex And Social Protest Since The Eighteenth Century By Kathleen Lubey, Jason S. Farr

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Excerpts From An Anti-Standardized “수능”: A Design-Fictional Approach To Korea, Seo-Young J. Chu, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

"Excerpts from an Anti-Standardized '수능'” experiments with design fiction to disrupt overly rehearsed ways of thinking about Korea’s past(s), present(s), and future(s).

Archival Inversions: Rethinking Knowledge Infrastructures Through The Cuny Distance Learning Archive, Zach Muhlbauer, Stefano Morello, Travis M. Bartley, Nicole Cote, Matthew K. Gold

Publications and Research

In the spring of 2020, doctoral students at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center produced a collective intervention in the knowledge infrastructures of the largest public university system in the United States. The CUNY Distance Learning Archive (CDLA) sought to document and bridge the lived experiences of faculty, staff, and students—particularly immigrant and working-class undergraduates—across the 25 campuses comprising the CUNY system. The archive’s three public-facing collections span the closure of the university, the transition to remote teaching and learning, and the resulting activism of the #CutCOVIDNotCUNY movement pushing against austerity in public higher education. These collections …

Her Precious White Body/Her Tender Black Flesh: The Gothic Link To Black Women's (Mis)Treatment In Real Life And On The Page, Madisty R. Thomas

English Theses & Dissertations

As a work in progress, this thesis explores the interplay between historical and contemporary devaluation of and violence against Black women, materially and discursively, including visual mediums and written text. Specifically, I focus on the gothic novel to illuminate the impact race-based inventions such as chattel slavery and human exhibitions, as well as the generic tropes of the Gothic, have had on Black women’s representation and lived experience via a wide-ranging introduction and close examination of Richard Marsh’s The Beetle. Additionally, the conclusion attempts to suggest how Black women and girls might survive in this antiblack world, thus escape …

“A More Perfect World”: Posthumanism And Technological Integration In A Memory Called Empire, Garrett R. Johnson

Masters Theses

This thesis considers the relationship of technology to the human through a posthumanist lens, questioning what will become of the human an increasingly more-than-human world through an examination of the novel A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine. Through an examination of the imago device from the novel, the thesis evaluates the human experience of memory and the influence of empire. The thesis advances four key concepts: 1. The collapsed divide between the human and the technic through memory and imagination; 2. Technology’s development and use; 3. The user that is integrated with the technic; and 4. The poisonous influence …

Characterizing The Female Main Character, Addison Leana Butler

Masters Theses

The strong female character is a term tossed around writing groups, book clubs, and TikTok as something to both strive to see and critique in literature. This research paper transformed throughout the actual research as it went from a study on cozy fantasy emergence and its effects to strong female characters and how to write them well, to its current iteration along similar lines of writing strong female characters. Qualitative and quantitative data was gathered through the use of a survey that I wrote and put to the field, research done primarily through JSTOR, and interviews conducted with experts in …

Transhuman Bodies: A Survey Of Three Avenues Of Societal Critique From Literature With Cyborg, Android, And Clone Subjects, Wesley Sanders

Student Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to explore three different avenues of societal critique using works in Science Fiction which have as their subjects cyborgs, androids, or clones. In the thesis, I begin by addressing the unique way SF literature comments on gender politics through the use of objectified cyborgs and androids, typically with male creators and would be male masters. Following this, I explore the concept of a semiotic liminality surrounding cyborgs and androids and illustrate how that liminality complicates conceptions of what constitutes a living creature. Finally, the thesis shifts to the commodification of the cyborg where I attempt to illustrate …

“She Never Yet Was Foolish That Was Fair”: Whiteness As Erasure In William Shakespeare’S Othello, Kathryn Croft

Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference

No abstract provided.

Data Lost, Forbidden Or Controlled?: The Archivists Of Horizon Forbidden West, Ashley Lanni

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper discusses the archival and information usage practices of characters within the 2022 video game Horizon Forbidden West. It considers how science fiction settings, particularly those based in post-apocalyptic futures with different technology and information practices, can help us reflect on how contemporary society interacts with information and determines its use. Furthermore, the paper explores the social responsibility informational professionals have toward the world around them through contrasting various groups and characters within the game, positing that the main group's actions are the most morally lauded within the game's narrative.

Nostalgia's Complicated Role In Contemporary Pop Culture, Ethan Clawsie

Pop Culture Intersections

Over the past several decades, there has been a growing trend of nostalgia in popular culture, with the number of remakes, reboots, and revivals of classic films, television shows, and music at an all-time high. Dozens of old TV shows have also been rebooted in the past few years, old movies are being remade, much of the music that’s been released lately has been engineered to sound like it came from the past, and a subset of recent video games either build upon old games (like Pokémon GO), or are made to look and feel like old games (like Flappy …

Barbie: For Better Or Worse, Renee Ho

Pop Culture Intersections

This article covers a history of Barbie, as well as an analysis of the live action Barbie movie. Barbie lovers and haters alike often debate whether the iconized doll is a feminist figure. Those who critique her argue that the messages she sends are superficial, or that Barbie perpetuates an unrealistic beauty standard and causes harm to the mental well being of her audience, especially because most of her target audience is made up of younger, impressionable girls. However, there is no doubt that Barbie can also be a role model for her audience. She was the first doll to …

Self-Listening & Envisioning Audience Exercise & Assignment, Jacob Kose

Open Educational Resources

This assignment and exercise encourages students to pick a formative story, artifact, individual, or moment in their acquisition of language and/or literacy. Students record themselves telling this story, then type that recording, and make choices about how to edit that text.Instructors may invite students to read these aloud, and/or peer edit. Students may also submit reflections and comment on each others' reflection.

Reflections On The Digital Memory Of Trans-Atlantic Slavery, Vinh T. Pham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Within the scope of digital humanities scholarship, this thesis interrogates ‘memory’ as a conceptual frame for remembering Black life, both past and present, in the face of missing historical data and in the afterlife of trans-Atlantic slavery. Such a concept—increasingly taken up as method in the humanities, along with related allusions to the ephemeral, spectral, or haunted—is sought to refuse historiographical and techno-scientific claims to empirical certainty or transparency, and instead affirm its gaps and absences as themselves productive sites for self-reflexive speculation on the complexities of lived experience. Applied to the digital study of trans-Atlantic chattel slavery, memory comes …

Emi (English-Medium Instruction) Across The Asian Region, Kingsley Bolton, John Bacon-Shone, Werner Botha

English Faculty Publications

This article has two main aims. First, to describe the general background to English-medium instruction (EMI) with reference to Outer Circle and Expanding Circle societies in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Second, it analyses data from each of the four case studies in the symposium in this issue in order to identify and explain the background to, and varying forms, of EMI in higher education in Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore, and South Korea.

Emi (English-Medium Instruction) In Cambodian Higher Education, Benedict Lin, Kingsley Bolton, John Bacon-Shone, Bophan Khan

English Faculty Publications

This article is based on empirical research carried out at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), Cambodia, between 2018 and 2019. The research involved both quantitative and qualitative approaches. In the case of the former, the researchers conducted a large-scale survey of students involving 956 respondents, of whom 79 were postgraduate students, while the overwhelming majority were studying at the undergraduate level. The qualitative data collected in this project comprised detailed interviews with undergraduates studying at RUPP. The results of both types of data collection indicated that, although many students faced difficulties in studying through the medium of English, …

Emi (English-Medium Instruction) In Indonesian Higher Education, Kingsley Bolton, Christopher Hill, John Bacon-Shone, Karen Peyronnin

English Faculty Publications

This article reports on the investigation of English-medium instruction (EMI) in Indonesian higher education. Two separate but related studies were carried out. In Phase One, a mixed method approach using a questionnaire and interviews was used at a private university in Jakarta in order to gauge the responses of undergraduates studying a range of subjects through English. The results of Phase One suggested that the students at this university generally had high levels of proficiency in English and coped rather well with EMI. Phase Two of the study involved interviewing 17 educators across multiple institutions, and the results of this …

Emi (English-Medium Instruction) In Singapore's Major Universities, Werner Botha, Kingsley Bolton, John Bacon-Shone

English Faculty Publications

In this article we report on the dynamics of English-medium instruction (EMI) in Singaporean higher education, where we describe the context of EMI with reference to the multilingual background and multilingual practices of university students in their educational as well as personal lives. Our study surveyed over one thousand students from Singapore's six main universities, where we investigated the multilingual backgrounds of students at these universities, their language practices, and their experience of EMI education. Whereas our previous research has focused on the language policies and practices in just one of Singapore's universities, this project surveyed language use in all …

Emi (English-Medium Instruction) In South Korean Elite Universities, Kingsley Bolton, Hyejeong Ahn, Werner Botha, John Bacon-Shone

English Faculty Publications

This article provides an extensive review of previous research on English-medium instruction (EMI) in South Korean higher education. It then goes on to discuss the findings of a 2017 survey at four elite universities in South Korea, which were Seoul National University, Korea University, Yonsei University, and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). While some of the results could be regarded as predictable, there were a number of findings which extended previous research. Despite the extensive complaint tradition about English in South Korea, many of the students in our sample rated their proficiency rather highly. Notwithstanding the extensive …

“I Passed First-Year Writing—What Now?” Adapting Strategies From First-Year Writing To Writing In The Disciplines, Amy T. Cicchino

Publications

This chapter foreshadows challenges you can experience as you adapt your writing beyond your first-year writing course to become a writer in your discipline.1 The essay contains a student scenario, defines key rhetorical concepts within discipline-specific writing situations, and gives you strategies for adapting these rhetorical concepts to new writing situations. After reading this chapter, you will better understand how the concepts introduced in first-year writing connect to the writing you will encounter in your upper-level, disciplinary courses and identify strategies that will help you intentionally adapt writing knowledge to new discipline-specific contexts.

Untenable Spaces And Inconceivable Futures In The 21st Century Anglophone Indian Novel, Shoumik Bhattacharya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As the world sours on the history-ending narratives of forever “growth” and unending “development” and recognizes the climate catastrophe, what stories of the future are left? The question of postcolonial space and its representation is a central concern of this dissertation. Thinking beyond the reasons for, and the histories of, the trashing of postcolonial space, examined by thinkers such as Rob Nixon and Jennifer Wenzel, allows for a consideration of the possibilities of life and thriving in unexpected and supposedly untenable contexts. I will therefore focus on what might be considered deterritorialised spaces: that is, spaces outside the structural ambits …

Doc/U/Ment: Affinities In 20th And 21st-Century Documental Poetics, Katherine Payne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents, analyzes, and builds on the existing literary genealogy of documental poetry. In 2020 Michael Leong proposed the term documental poetry to describe the turn toward source materials in 21^st-century North American poetry, seen in longform research-based poems that explicitly incorporate documentation and seek to intervene in cultural memory. Using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance, I argue that there are clear affinities between 21^st-century poets and their 20^th-century literary forerunners, also that an expansion of the scope of documental poetics is needed. The three nodes of connection I examine are works …

Colonial Investments: The Global Coordinates Of The English Political Imaginary, 1628–1668, Nathan D. Nikolic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The main question my dissertation attempts to address is: what role did the expansion of English colonial trades play in the transformation of English society and government between the Petition of Right and the early years of the Restoration (1628-1668)? My thesis is that during this period, colonial expansion rose to the level of a general national interest and that many early seventeenth-century texts index the complexities and tensions of this development. As a small but very organized group of merchants, peers, and MPs mobilized the military and financial technologies of colonization to support Parliament’s war against Charles I, their …