Digital Commons Network^™

Getting Graphic: Exploring The Inferential Thinking Skills That Are Required To Comprehend Graphic Novels, Angela Brauns

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which graphic novels require inferential thinking skills for comprehension in grades 3-8. The questions asked in this study were: 1. What aspects of content in graphic novel texts require inferential thinking for reader comprehension? 2. What aspects of mood or tone in graphic novel texts require inferential thinking for reader comprehension?

Young Adult Memoir Dealing With Alcohol, Abuse, Infidelity, Violence And Poverty, Kelly Reinhold

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this project was to create a memoir that exposes genuine family issues, such as alcoholism, drugs, infidelity, poverty and abuse, from the perspective of a young adult who lived through these experiences first-hand. The story took place in the early 1990' s when the main character was eleven years old. At the time, she was facing the divorce of her parents and was forced to make painful decisions on her living arrangements and choices within her relationships with her parents and brother.

Publishing The Victorian Novel, Rachel Sagner Buurma

English Literature Faculty Works

“Publishing the Victorian Novel” looks to the methods of book history and literary criticism to ask how we might understand the ways Victorian publishers and authors (alongside editors, publishers’ readers, librarians, and booksellers) worked together to make novels. Paying attention to both the material and literary aspects of this making, the essay examines a few different scenes of novel publication with a particular focus on the way Victorian novelists, publishers, and reading publics understood aspects of the publication process like the serialization of novels, the three-volume novel, and the authority of the novelist and publisher. In an attempt to capture …

Storytelling In Comics: Who, When, And Where In “Here”, Michael W. Hancock

Comics and Graphic Novels

Richard McGuire’s groundbreaking short comic “Here” (1989) revolutionized storytelling possibilities in comics. It may be used within a short story unit to demonstrate familiar elements of fiction, including setting, plot, and character. Moreover, its inventive use of panels within panels to juxtapose past, present, and future can serve as a model for students’ visual rendering of multiple points in time within a single location.

Blowin' In The Wind: The Contribution Of The Weather Underground To The Canon Of Trauma Literature, Caitlin D. Bishop

Departmental Honors Projects

The literature of the Weather Underground Organization is, to a large degree, a single and superfluous voice in an outpouring of other texts drafted by those who directly experienced the horror of the American War in Vietnam. Declarations, statements, and communiqués penned by the organization, later revised into compilations and memoirs, attempted to rile and rouse a generation of activists. Relying heavily on the notion of Vergangenheitsbewaltigung, a German concept of confronting historical trauma, literature of the WUO is shrouded in an intense morality that not only challenges criticisms of the organization, but complicates the designation of domestic terrorism …

Manhattan Transference: Reader Itineraries In Modernist New York, Sophia Bamert

Honors Papers

John Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer (1925) follows dozens of characters through modern New York City. The novel is organized as a fragmented montage and, in this paper, I argue that transit functions as both a central theme and the structuring principle of the text. I compare Manhattan Transfer to works by Walt Whitman and William Dean Howells and draw upon spatial form theory to examine how experiences of urban transportation influence literary forms. Ultimately, I suggest that Manhattan Transfer's modernist form offers readers itinerant ways of perceiving the complicated networks of which cities are made.

Lucidity: A Novella, Rafael Lancelotta

HIM 1990-2015

Lucidity is a novella set in the near future of a man living in a city in the United States as a successful businessman. The novella criticizes the idea of consumerism through Aurora, a character who believes that a drug is being introduced into the water and food supply by the corporate-backed government. Characters find advertising to be almost irresistible, experience strange cravings for things like cheap beer, and are generally preoccupied with the latest products. James Simmons, the protagonist of the novella, finds himself in the lap of luxury. He has a job that pays well, a penthouse apartment, …

The Loathly Lady From Archaic To Modern Tales, Kirsten M. Dresker

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

Relational Dialectics: Friends Or More?, Catherine Ziemann

The Corinthian

In every intimate relationship, there are bound to be some tensions couples will need to overcome in order to carry out successful partnerships and connections. Researchers and theorists study the tensions between couples in order to identify communication strategies that can be used to manage or diminish these dialectical tensions. By analyzing a fictional representation of a relationship, individuals may appreciate it and apply it as a model for their own real-life relationship. How is the theory of Relational Dialectics, as presented by Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery, related to the relationship of Ross and Rachel from the television comedy …

Lights And Shadows - 2013, University Of North Alabama

Lights and Shadows

Art and Literature Magazine

Rhetorical Pragmatism And Histories Of New Media: Rorty On Kierkegaard On The Internet, Steven J. Mailloux

English Faculty Works

This essay begins with Hubert Dreyfus's Kierkegaardian critique of the Internet and then turns to Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatist response, an unpublished text found in the Richard Rorty Papers. After considering these contrasting perspectives, the author proposes a third view, arguing that a rhetorical pragmatist should borrow from both Dreyfus's critique and Rorty's defense. The Internet does enable media users who are unthinkingly complacent in their passionate commitments as well as those who are complacently unthinking in their detached, everyday busyness. But the Internet also provides its own unique opportunities for thinking critically and for challenging complacency. After proposing this more …

"Visibility Is A Trap": Analyzing The Levels Of The Foucauldian Panoptic Gaze In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series, Sarah Marie Bullwinkel

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The structures of power in the Potter universe are both evident and insidious. Whether one considers the disciplinary influences enforced by Headmaster and mentor Albus Dumbledore; The Ministry of Magic's Fudge, Umbridge, and Scrimgeour; or, the power watching over them all: Voldemort, J.K. Rowling presents a world marked by surveillance and self-policing in her Harry Potter novels. These three levels of the Panoptic Gaze discipline Harry in various ways that ultimately result in producing him as a self-sacrificing hero at the series' close. Rowling depicts an individual completely shaped by the authoritative gazes that inhabit his world; even the freedom …

Batwoman And Catwoman: Treatment Of Women In Dc Comics, Kristen Coppess Race

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

DC Comics has existed through the first, second, and third waves of feminism, publishing popular female characters who appeal to a mass market. By focusing on depictions of Batwoman and Catwoman, this paper examines the contrast between the social and political progress forms of feminism promised for women and the increasingly violent treatment of female characters in DC Comics, focusing on Batwoman and Catwoman. M. Thomas Inge maintains that male "comic book heroes [...] tend to fit most of the classic patterns of heroism in Western culture" (142). These heroes are designated by their completion of quests or missions, their …

The Rhetorical Event Of Modern Southern Humor: "A Requisite Element In Discourse", David Allen Wright

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the rhetorical nature and dynamics of Southern humor in the second half of the twentieth century by analyzing, from a distinctly rhetorical perspective, a selection of popular Southern humor texts. It seeks to understand how Southern humor happens--its methods and techniques--and it also seeks to understand, as much as possible, the implications of these events for the various interlocutors and participants involved. By investigating the stylistic, storytelling, and linguistic techniques of Southern humor, while relying on the scholarship of writers in a variety of academic disciplines, I hope to answer the following research question: how does Southern …

Ideologies Of Literacy, "Academic Literacies," And Composition Studies., Bruce Horner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In my contribution to this symposium, I take up the call of this journal in its mission statement for “new interactions between Literacy and Composition Studies.” From the framework of competing ideologies of literacy, I explore points of intersection as well as divergence between strands of what’s known as “composition studies” and what has come to be identified as the “academic literacies” approach to academic literacy. My focus on “academic literacies” rather than the broader area of literacy studies signals at least three of my biases: first, I wish to counter the tendency to allow the cultural norm for academic …

Narcissistic Intertextuality In The Works Of Bret Easton Ellis, Jennifer Grindstaff

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the works of Bret Easton Ellis, specifically his three latest novels: Glamorama, Lunar Park, and Imperial Bedrooms, and identifies the metafictional and intertextual elements in these texts. For my purposes, I am defining metafiction as fiction that draws attention to itself and makes the reader aware that he or she is reading fiction. Intertextual will be defined as elements in the novels that appear in other works of fiction. In the case of Ellis, he is drawing upon and reusing elements from his own fiction. These elements include characters that reappear in novels other than the text …

Engaging The Echoboomers: Creative Strategies For Teaching Analysis And Synthesis, Sirpa Grierson, Heather Wing

The Utah English Journal

The new Utah State Core Curriculum standards require English language arts teachers to better prepare students for career and college readiness using the skills of close reading complex texts (Appendix A, 3) and argument writing (W1, 51). Both of these processes involve the use of synthesis and analysis for problem solving (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, 2011). Yet if we want students to read deeply and learn to write persuasively, we must offer authentic instructional situations that allow our students to access new understandings along with these foundational skills of reading and writing. Helping students become …

The Power Of Using Standards-Based Grading To Assess Student Writing, Whitney Weaver, Angela Hartley

The Utah English Journal

Each year, like many language arts teachers across the state of Utah, we set out to effectively teach our students how to be good writers. Each time we discover exciting and engaging ways to teach writing in our classrooms. However, we have also found that even the best writing practices fall short in the absence of effective writing assessment. Standards-based grading has been, for us, the most successful tool for such assessments.

Standards-based grading is when a teacher creates specific and measurable learning goals to guide the curriculum, conducts frequent formative assessments of the students’ proficiency on these goals, and …

Frankly Speaking, "The Men That Is Now Is Only All Pallaver And What They Can Get Our Of You": Migration And White Slavery In Argentina In Joyce's "Eveline", M Laura Barberan Reinares

Publications and Research

This article analyzes James Joyce’s “Eveline” (1904), looking at the moral panic about “white slavery” in Europe and South America. The article especially focuses on Argentina, the foremost recipient of trafficked women between 1880 and 1930 (and, of course, Joyce’s destination choice for Eveline). By looking at Frank, the sailor who intends to take Eveline to Buenos Aires, this article explores the possible links between Joyce’s story and the sex trafficking industry thriving in Buenos Aires through the Jewish criminal association Zwi Migdal. Frank’s representation allows us to draw this connection because his behavior with Eveline coincides with the seduction …

Teaching Genre Utilizing The Common Core Standards: A Study Examining Students With Disabilities Within Different Academic Settings, Amber Laquet

Masters Theses

Due to a shift to the Common Core State Standards, many teachers are in a state of transition. This thesis examines this transition by taking an in-depth look into three different classroom settings: an 8th grade general education literature and grammar classroom, an 8th grade special education (resource) literature and grammar classroom, and a co-taught 10th grade English classroom. As the Common Core State Standards require more rigorous and deeper understanding of material, the goal of the study is to look specifically into the role of teaching writing genres to students and the acquisition of the genre based on the …

She's A Brick House: August Wilson And The Stereotypes Of Black Womanhood, Amelia Tatum Grabowski

Student Publications

In his Century Cycle of plays, August Wilson tells ten distinct stories of families in or linked to the Hill District, an African American community in Pittsburgh; one play taking place in each decade of the twentieth century. Through these plays, Wilson's audience sees the Hill District and America evolve, while prejudice, oppression, and poverty remain constant. Many scholars argue that sexism provides a fourth common factor, asserting that Wilson portrays the female characters in the male-fantasized, stereotypical roles of the Mammy or the Jezebel figure, rather as realistic, empowered, and complex women. However, close examination of the women with …

The Many Functions Of Taste: Aesthetics, Ethics, And Desire In Nineteenth-Century England, Julia Bninski

Dissertations

The starting point for my analysis of nineteenth-century criticism is the recognition that the word "aesthetic" was not commonly used in English until the early 1800s. For the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, English criticism still relied on an eighteenth-century vocabulary of "taste." For thinkers living in a world altered by social mobility, urbanization, technological change, and mass manufacturing, taste helped make sense of a bewildering array of relationships among individuals, objects, and social groups. As a category associated with consumption, taste foregrounds the charged interaction between aesthetic object and perceiving subject. It raises the question of how we …

An Examination Of The Criteria For The Iowa Children's Choice Award List, Jessica Zimmerman

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this study was to examine the Iowa Children's Choice Award lists for variety of reading levels, topics, and protagonists and compare this to the criteria set by the Iowa Association of School Librarians. A quantitative content analysis was conducted to allow comparison between the last four years of Iowa Children's Choice Award lists. Results showed that all of the texts chosen for the award lists in the last four years fell in the third through sixth grade level according to Fountas and Pinnell. The majority of the texts include a female protagonist making the award lists more …

Minding The Gap : A Rhetorical History Of The Achievement Gap, Laura Elizabeth Jones

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Minding the Gap: A Rhetorical History of the Achievement Gap arose as an inquiry into the rhetorical congestion around the phrase achievement gap in public discourse. Having been used in support of multiple, often competing, education agendas, the phrase seems versatile almost to the point of emptiness, and yet it seemingly retains its persuasive power. Examining the history of the phrase, I reveal that the notion of the achievement gap is rooted in the logic of segregation and the rhetoric of disability, and serves to construct students in ways that paradoxically undermine efforts to expand access to educational opportunity. Although …

Friends Of Bill F. : Alcohol, Recovery, And Social Progress In Southern Fiction, Conor Adam Picken

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In “Friends of Bill F.: Alcohol, Recovery, and Social Progress in Southern Fiction,” I argue that many southern writers use the trope of drunkenness to investigate the South’s often hesitant stance toward social change. The overwhelming presence of hard drinking in southern fiction is so ubiquitous that it becomes nearly invisible, and what distinguishes twentieth century southern literary representations of alcohol from their antecedents is how overconsumption reflects a dis-ease in both the individual drinker and the region as a whole. Emerging from the concept of diseased drinking is the idea of recovery, and by foregrounding recovery language alongside depictions …

Blame : Marriage, Folklore, And The Victorian Novel, Corrie Kiesel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Blame: Marriage, Folklore, and the Victorian Novel contends that the intersection of folk and legal discourses of responsibility and culpability shapes the way the Victorian novel imagines blame. Recent studies have drawn attention to the importance of official legal discourses such as trial testimony and standards of evidence to the development of narrative form during the nineteenth century. However, by attending to folk modes for establishing blameworthiness in Victorian novels, I show that folk and legal standards of culpability are mutually constitutive. The legal system is designed to identify the culpable in a fixed process – codified in slow-changing statutes …

Erotic Transgressions: Pornographic Uses Of The Victorian, Laura Helen Marks

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that while pornographic film asserts itself as the rebellious cousin to the literary and cinematic canon, it nonetheless relies on a particular Victorianness, transgressing and drawing on its perceived repressions and perversions for pornography’s own ostensible subversiveness. Through an analysis of pornographic adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, this project shows that the rupture and rearticulation of social and corporeal propriety constitutes pornography’s persistent appeal. These predominantly American pornographic texts, spanning 1974—2012, appropriate canonical British …

Ulysses In The Age Of Digital Remediation, Melissa Hart Higgins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an in-depth study of the implications of digital technologies and information literacy for the reading and scholarly study of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. Because the reading experience of Ulysses depends heavily on both its physicality and the interaction of the reader with the text, the changes in reading practices and scholarly study brought about by digital adaptations and hypermediations of this novel can offer new modes of understanding and characterizing readers relationships with text, as well as how the readers' digital interactions with Ulysses might engender or inhibit potential interpretations.

Each of the three chapters in this …

Going Hard, Going Easy, Going Home: Death And Dying In 20th Century African American Literature, Chayah Amayala Stoneberg-Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation answers the question: How can art represent the essential human experience of death, particularly when the creative context is one of extreme violence? And, what can be learned about the risks and rewards of the living's relationship with the dead by way of these artistic representations? Further, how do these aesthetic renderings of death construct the ethics of life for survivors? In the case of African America, discussion of, and responses to, these questions have been primarily explored in novelist and creative writing. This dissertation examines these novelistic treatments of death-tropes, or thanatropes in eight novels written by …

Postmodern Humanism And The "Exhaustion Of Easy Life", Mason Beets

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The twenty-first century appears to herald a new epoch, one in which religion and other similar belief systems appear to have run their course. However, this should not necessarily mean that other forms of spirituality and interconnectedness must fade away. Within America, there is a humanistic undercurrent that is gaining strength within our postmodern condition, even as we begin to challenge several of the tenets of postmodernity itself. The groundswell of American humanism has a notable and wholly unintended effect: it ideologically rehabilitates modes or vehicles of thought that might otherwise be labeled as defunct, or inapplicable to the changing …