Digital Commons Network^™

A Quantification Of Magnitude In The Writing Of James Baldwin: A Digital Recovery Work, Robert Tate Morrison

English Theses - Archive

This thesis seeks to utilize a distant reading of seventeen essays written by James Baldwin alongside sustained close readings of three topics within those essays in order to understand why Baldwin has maintained increased popularity when the original historical context of the essays resulted in fame and critical acclaim, but not major literary awards. The author ran these seventeen essays through topic modeling software, and then engaged with critical and scholarly close readings to establish qualitative and quantitative explanations of patterns that exist in Baldwin’s work. By connecting the findings of work under both the digital humanities as well as …

Through Critique And Beyond: Speculative Fiction As A Tool Of Critical Pedagogy, Syd Thorne

Master's Projects and Capstones

This field projects centers around the issue of hopelessness among teachers and students and examines the genre of speculative fiction as a potential tool for cultivating critical hope in the classroom and as an asset to critical pedagogy. Utopian pedagogy and critical pedagogy make up the theoretical framework of this research and project development. The research explores the use of speculative fiction in three areas: activism and identity, student engagement, and utopian performance. The review of the literature demonstrates that the use of speculative fiction in the classroom has the potential to engage students in conversations about social justice and …

The Supporting Role: Cultivating A Writing Life To Prevent And Combat Writer's Block, Molly Elizabeth Hanberry

Masters Theses

Every writer will suffer from writer’s block from time to time, and there are two general schools of thought in dealing with this affliction: wait it out or struggle through. The purpose of this thesis is to illuminate the nature of writer’s block from a fundamental level, beginning with the neuroscience of creativity. From there, it will explore the three root causes of writer’s block: lack of inspiration, burnout, and fear. And finally, with an understanding of its causes, it will be possible to examine ways to combat writer’s block through methods based in neuroscience, personal experience, and professional advice …

Restoring Female Agency: Wicked As A Feminist Fairy-Tale Revision, Erica Nicole Fox

Masters Theses

One method of promoting gender equality that has gained popularity in recent years involves revising the fairy tales, primarily the ones compiled and revised by Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Anderson, and the Grimm brothers, to create versions in which the female characters have agency and purpose outside of furthering patriarchal gender ideals. The primary goal of the feminist fairy-tale revision is to give the female characters agency, not because they are women, but because they are functioning characters within the story. While there are many authors who attempt to create fairy-tale revisions that embody a feminist perspective, not all are …

Praising Papers, Clarifying Concerns: How Writers Respond To Praise In Writing Center Tutorials, Mike Haen

The Writing Center Journal

In face-to-face writing center tutorials, tutor praise is an action that builds rapport and motivates writers (Mackiewicz & Thompson, 2013). Drawing on and extending prior interactional analyses of praise, this article examines writers’ responses to text-based praise across 10 tutorials, with a particular focus on interactional segments in which writers reformulate their previously mentioned concerns in response to tutor praise. Unlike more common responses that signal acceptance of the praise, such as appreciation, overt acceptance, and alignment, this responding action reflects some momentary misunderstanding between tutor and writer in the tutorial interaction. Despite this, these segments also show writers taking …

Faith, Secularism, And The Need For Interfaith Dialogue In Writing Center Work, Anna Sicari, Liliana M. Naydan, Andrea Rosso Efthymiou

The Writing Center Journal

This article argues that religious and secularist identities complement and intersect in political ways with race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality and that they inform writing center practice because belief exists along a spectrum that involves all writing center inhabitants and affects all writing-centered conversations. We suggest that this spectrum of faith is evocative of the spectrums that theorists of race, gender, and sexuality in particular have discussed, yet often faith has been overlooked in discussions of identity in writing center work (Denny, 2010). We propose that theories of race, gender, sexuality and other identities that have served as springboards …

Review: Advocating, Building, And Collaborating: A Resource Toolkit To Sustain Secondary School Writing Centers Edited By Renee Brown And Stacey Waldrup, Jenny Goransson

The Writing Center Journal

The past decade has shown enormous growth in the number of SSWCs and a need for increased scholarship and research from this group. Inspired by the work of previous secondary school writing center director (SSWCD) authors, the content offered in the Advocating, Building, and Collaborating toolkit is rooted in directors’ real experiences in K–12 schools, rather than in the post-secondary context we find in most writing center scholarship.

Agents Of Change: African American Contributions To Writing Centers, Sue Mendelsohn, Clarissa Walker

The Writing Center Journal

African Americans and their contributions to our field’s first pedagogical models and operational structures are absent from writing center histories. This archival research invokes their presence by recounting the stories of five African American innovators—Bess Bolden “B. B.” Walcott, Coragreene Johnstone, Anne Cooke, Hugh Gloster, and Percival Bertrand “Bert” Phillips—spanning four decades at three historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Their stories invite an expansive understanding of writing center work, moving beyond a focus on traditional tutoring and strictly alphabetic literacies and into “strategic literacies”—the survival skills needed to stand up for oneself and one’s community in the face of …

Unicorn Status, Queer Activism, And Bullied Laboring: Lgbtq Writing Center Directors Reflect On Invisible Work, Travis Webster

The Writing Center Journal

This article showcases interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) writing center directors about their administrative work. In it, findings reveal that participant work distinctly departs from recent empirical writing center research about labor (Geller & Denny, 2013; Caswell, Grutsch McKinney, & Jackson, 2016), particularly in ways that practitioners’ invisible administrative work is informed and complicated by their LGBTQ identities. Across 20 interviews, participants communicated that their work extends to making queer activist space through their writing centers; to supporting tutors, students, and colleagues of all orientations with issues central to queer communities and mental health; and to …

Reshaping The Canon: How “Insta-Poets” Are Creating A New Literary Space For Readers Using Social Media, Hannah Salsbery

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Reading and analyzing poetry can be an equally beautiful and frustrating experience. Interacting with a poem allows a reader to access untapped emotions through the words on the page; yet, when not given the tools to understand canonical poetry, young readers are often left at a loss. The rise of “Insta-poetry” gives younger generations of readers access to poems that are both relatable in experience and language. Using Rupi Kaur as a vehicle towards unmasking the importance of the rise of poetry on Instagram, this thesis highlights the importance of reshaping the literary canon to become a more inclusive, diverse, …

Out Of A Darkness: A Collection Of Ramblings, Short Stories, And Poetry, Valerie Anthony

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

A Collection of Poetry, Short Stories and Ramblings

Video Games And Their Potential As Literacy Tools, Jessica Reich

University Honors Program Senior Projects

Video games are an essential part of emergent popular culture, with millions playing games every day. With how popular gaming has become, it is logical to research its full potential as a literacy tool both inside and outside the classroom. This thesis contributes to the discussion of the importance and potential of video games as a literacy tool that can be utilized educationally and through gaming at home. This thesis includes a section for gaming definitions, a literature review on research on video games and their impact on education and literacy skill development, a discussion of video game narratives, and …

Agatha Christie: A Look Into Criminal Procedure And Gender, Carmella Monico

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

With 2020 being the 100^th year since Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published, it seems fitting to celebrate such an accomplished author with a deeper look into the inner workings of her novels. While she wrote mystery novels that involved many detectives, the two most popular are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. This paper will examine these two detectives in regard to the criminal procedure each uses to solve their respective cases. Would her detectives’ work hold up in court then or even today? Additionally, the difference in gender between Poirot and Marple …

Organizational Culture: An Examination Of The Role Of Leadership In Neutralizing The Negative Effects Of Technostress During Operational Shifts, David P. Kirkland

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

COVID-19 created a support problem for public universities across the United States and required that IT departments and professionals alter how they performed in 2020, and perhaps beyond. IT professionals tasked with safeguarding large amounts of data were required to shift to a teleworking posture to continue offering a similar level of service as previously expected. In addition to the technological shift that organizations experienced because of COVID-19, leadership challenges also impacted IT departments across the United States. The rapid shift of operational duties has the propensity to increase technology-related stress, due to employee perception of being successful in their …

Reflections On Award-Winning Books, 1985-2020

The Writing Center Journal

Deidra Faye Jackson and Alice Johnston Myatt

Reflection: ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors

edited by Shanti Bruce and Ben Rafoth, 2004

The Christian Right In Translation: Christian Conservative Discourse In Contemporary American Literature, Elizabeth Richardson Duke

English Theses and Dissertations

Religion in contemporary American politics and religion in contemporary American Literature: are they independent phenomena? Literary scholars have largely assumed so. Scholars have attended to nontraditional, liberal religion in postwar American literature, while overlooking how this literature represents and critiques the rise of the Christian Right. Since white evangelical and fundamentalist Christians allied with the Republican party in the late 1970s, Christian conservatives have transformed American politics. As the GOP’s most influential interest group, the Christian Right has set the terms for many of the last four decades’ most contentious and consequential debates. Historians, political scientists, and contemporary American writers …

Centering The Emotional Labor Of Writing Tutors, Bethany Mannon

The Writing Center Journal

Writing consultants regularly perform emotional labor. They suppress or express emotions to welcome clients and invoke enthusiasm to cultivate writers’ confidence. Because emotional labor performs these crucial functions, it merits focused attention in writing center studies. However, while research has considered the emotional needs that writers bring, scholars have not yet sufficiently examined the affective engagements that consultations require of writing consultants. The first section of this article presents a case for treating affective dimensions of tutoring as labor. The second section analyzes five tutor-training manuals using the Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF) to identify references to emotion and affect …

Composing An Anti-Racism And Social Justice Statement At A Rural Writing Center, Amanda Fields

The Writing Center Journal

This article describes the year-long collaborative composing process of a rural writing center seeking to develop an anti-racism and social justice statement. The author reflects on the way in which rural perspectives are often dismissed, often seen as provincial and hostile towards ideas that might be included in an anti-racism and social justice statement. The piece also connects theories of composing, fluidity, and identity to the writing of the statement and provides a detailed analysis of the lengthy, often challenging composing process used. The author finds that the collaborative composing process, more than the resulting statement, was significant to the …

The Response To The Call For Rad Research: A Review Of Articles In The Writing Center Journal, 2007–2018, Havva Zorluel Ozer, Jing Zhang

The Writing Center Journal

The study examined in this article explored the impact of RAD research on articles (N = 97) in a 12-year period of The Writing Center Journal (WCJ), in 2007–2012 and 2013–2018, to achieve four purposes: 1. to document the amount of replicable, aggregable, and data-supported (RAD) research published in WCJ in two equal periods before and after Driscoll & Wynn Perdue’s (2012) call for RAD research in writing center scholarship; 2. to identify how WCJ articles score in individual areas specified in Driscoll & Wynn Perdue’s RAD research rubric; 3. to provide an understanding of methodological trends in research …

Contingent Writing Center Work: Benefits, Risks, And The Need For Equity And Institutional Change, Dawn Fels, Clint Gardner, Maggie M. Herb, Liliana M. Naydan

The Writing Center Journal

This study investigates and reports on the personal, professional, and programmatic benefits and risks associated with contingent writing center work. Interviews were conducted with 48 contingent writing centers workers, including directors, assistant directors, associate directors, graduate student workers, and tutors. Survey data of the interview participants showed contingent writing center workers are usually White women with advanced degrees. Most of this article focuses on interview data, analyzed using grounded theory. Interviews revealed participants’ understanding of what contingency means and revealed their struggles with instability, insecurity, and uncertainty even while they lauded the flexibility, freedom, and autonomy their contingency afforded them. …

Parent And Child Cookbook For Parental Involvement, Natali Juarez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The agency with the internship opportunity is the Greenfield Branch Library. The purpose of this capstone project is to address the problem of lack of parental involvement. The lack of parental involvement in the community could have major consequences like low academic achievement, low literacy rates, and childhood obesity. The project is a cookbook with healthy recipes consisting of both meals and snacks. The recipes are made specifically for children to be able to make with their parents. The capstone project is a 6 week program. Every Wednesday there is a grab and go bag with a copy of a …

An Analysis Of Class In Composition From 1970-2010, Holland R. Cutrell

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Class and socioeconomic status in composition and rhetoric remains a topic that is felt, yet not often discussed. The language students use is highly indicative of their class background, and everyone has a slightly altered form of discourse they prefer (Zebroski, 2006). My thesis examines the issues working-class students have faced with literacy acquisition and discourse assimilation from 1970s–mid 2000s. My analysis illustrates how composition and rhetoric has evolved from the error-centered and hyper-correct culture of the 1970s to the technologically dominated, media driven production powerhouse that affects every aspect of college and beyond. To most effectively address how working-class …

Murder She Sang: How Contemporary Country Murder Ballads Alleviate Blame, Alyssa Hubbard

Honors College Theses

Murder ballads, or narrative songs centered on a murder and/or its aftermath, were historically used as a tool to emphasize a criminal’s guilt, cruelty, and inhumanity. Ballads centered on women in particular underlined the idea that women are naturally inclined to sin and easily corrupted, and because they were often written by men in an imitation of the woman’s voice, any regret or repentance within them is falsified or exaggerated, intended to warn other women away from committing similar transgressions.

In contrast, contemporary murder ballads, such as those sung by country music artists like Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, and The …

Memetic Rhetorical Theory: An Analytic Model For The Spread Of Information Online, Carleigh J. Davis

English and Technical Communication Faculty Research & Creative Works

Modern discourse is often characterized by such extreme polarization that participants operate from entirely different sets of facts. These alternative facts represent a new line of inquiry for rhetoricians, who must determine how false facts gain credibility. This article outlines Memetic Rhetorical Theory (MRT), a model for understanding how information evolves to become credible in a given environment.

Women’S Acts Of Childbirth And Conquest In English Historical Writing, Emma O. Bérat

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This essay explores how female characters in historical literature written in high to late medieval England shape land claims, political history, and genealogy through their acts of childbirth. Recent scholarship has shown how medieval writers frequently imagined virginal female bodies – religious and secular – in relation to land claim, but less work exists on how they also used the non-virginal bodies of mothers and vivid descriptions of childbirth to assert rights to land and lineage. This essay examines three birth stories associated with conquest or claims to contested lands from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, William of …

Adapting Animals: Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Science, And Media, Kristen Layne Figgins

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin and other proponents of evolutionary theory provided a theoretical framework for discussing the question of humanity’s place in the world. These nascent theories emphasized the shared animal nature of humans and the nonhuman creatures who had once occupied a distinctly lower place on the chain of being. My dissertation addresses the question of how nineteenth-century scientific attitudes about animals were reflected in the literature of the period. By examining culture-texts from the nineteenth century, it is clear that literature was an active participant in extending scientific knowledge, often by playing with the blending categorical …

The Spooky Vein: The Reparative Gothic-Modern In The Works Of Richard A.W. Hughes, Corwin R. Baden

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation explores the dual nature of Richard A.W. Hughes as a marginalized Gothicist and modernist. This duality facilitated the development of the author’s reparative vision for a 20th-century world traumatized by planetary war. The present study utilizes close readings—both surface and symptomatic—combined with archival research to assert that Hughes fashions this reparative imperative consistently across his corpus: in his short stories, poems, novels, stage plays, and screenplays. In his short stories, this vision includes an embrace of the Stranger, a shadowy Gothic figure whose possessions, power, difference, and familiarity lead the human subject from contestation, through representation, and toward …

How “Interested” Criticism Fueled The Formulation Of Nineteen Eighty-Four’S Cultural Afterlife, John Cameron Bosch

All Theses

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four carries a “cultural afterlife” as a result of “interested” criticism, which has a set political/practical barometer or motive. While everyone agrees that the novel presents a frightening dystopia, many also consider it a prophetic piece that illuminates the possible corruption of executive power of a nation thanks to this cultural afterlife; the modern and popular term “Orwellian” resulted from these sorts of analyses and have only escalated in the years since its inception. As a result, within the past decade, multiple scholars, analysts, and journalists have referenced Orwell’s novel as a factual representation of this executive …

Editorial Introduction, Katherine Daily O'Meara, Betsy Gilliland

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.

English-For-Teaching In Higher Education: Discourse Functions And Language Exemplars, Eun-Young Julia Kim

MITESOL Journal: An Online Publication of MITESOL

Increasingly more colleges and universities in non-English speaking countries are requiring instructors to teach in English. Although existing research addresses various issues related to using English as a medium of instruction in higher education, few studies have specifically addressed how to provide language scaffolding to college instructors who are asked to teach their subjects in English for the first time. The study builds on Freeman et al.’s (2015) discourse functions for English-for-teaching and presents a refined functional framework to suit college-level classes. It provides authentic language samples to help instructors prepare to teach in English based on the analysis of …