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The Utah English Journal, Volume 51, 2023: Full Issue

The Utah English Journal

No abstract provided.

Best Practices In Online Course Design That Help Eliminate Learning Fatigue, Valarie Anderson O'Bryan

The Utah English Journal

Even though students have returned to learning in-person in schools, many districts require teachers to maintain an online course (usually using Canvas). When teachers use best practices when designing online learning content, students are less likely to experience frustration and learning fatigue.

Narrative Medicine: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Address Burnout Among The Nursing Workforce, Kimberly D. Perris, Eden J. Donahue, Adrian Matt Zytkoskee, Janelle Adsit

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

Healthcare providers (HCPs) experience unprecedented burnout. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare workforce was pushed beyond its capacity, driving some out of the field, leaving hospitals and healthcare agencies to face unrelenting demand for care. Limited staff and resources challenged organizations to redesign infrastructure and processes to meet COVID-19 safety guidelines while balancing the priorities of finance and people.

Two years into the pandemic, the signs of burnout among nurses in an RN-BSN program surfaced, which paralleled the bitter resentment happening across the nursing profession. Nurses working on the front lines reported feelings of abandonment, lack of resources, staffing shortages, …

Dispatches From The Home Front: Violet Hunt As War Writer And Reluctant Modernist, Heather M. Robinson, Melissa Dinsman

Publications and Research

The life and work of Violet Hunt showcases the tension between modernism’s challenges to Victorian and Edwardian literary and social traditions, and the conservatism, particularly with regard to gender norms, of many of the modernist canon’s key figures: institutions, writers and critics alike. Although her work was well regarded during her lifetime, and she was a central figure in London’s literary scene in the early-twentieth century, Hunt is now best known for her long, and ultimately disastrous, relationship with Ford Madox Ford. Her copious literary oeuvre, comprising seventeen novels, three collections of short stories, and several works of biography, translation …

Treatment Of The Differently Abled: Representations Of Disability From Victorian Periodicals To Contemporary Graphic Narratives, Rachelle Echevarria

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In recent years, a number of efforts have been made to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in academic institutions, the workplace, and to examine and analyze representations of marginalized populations in a variety of literary and cultural contexts. These efforts usually acknowledge past mistakes, emphasizing the idea that history shall not and should not repeat itself. While analyzing the representations of disability is important in its own right, it's also important to understand why these perceptions exist. This thesis suggests that when the representations of disabilities from different mediums and from different time periods are examined in relationship, readers may …

Black Elk Faces East: Beb Vuyk, Cultural Translation, And John G. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks, Frank Kelderman

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This essay examines the work of the Dutch-Indonesian author Beb Vuyk in producing one of the first foreign-language translations of John G. Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks: the 1964 Dutch edition Zwarte Eland spreekt. Published in the Netherlands, Vuyk’s translation connects the 1932 as-told-to autobiography of the Oglala Lakota heyoka Black Elk to the career of one of the most important Dutch-Indonesian authors after World War II, who had a prominent voice in debates on Indonesian decolonization. Linking the literary history of two different colonial contexts, Vuyk’s edition also connects Black Elk Speaks to a Cold War-era history of …

A Close Analysis Into The Portrayal Of Female Protagonists Through The Lens Of Gendered Authorship: Specifically Looking Into The Works Of Jane Austen, Frances Burney, John Cleland, And Samuel Richardson, Isabella G. Beyloune

Honors Theses

I explore the difference in gendered authorship in 18th century English literature. Choosing to focus on authors such as Jane Austen, Frances Burney, John Cleland, and Samuel Richardson, I aim to see if gender of the author matters in giving a realistic portrayal of eighteenth century British female protagonists, and if there actually is a difference depending on that gender (male or female, specifically). To do this, I perform case study comparisons. All chapters include a close textual analysis of the authors’ use of dialogue and narrative style for depicting their characters. Chapter 1 focuses on the comparison between Austen’s …

One Last Month, Or Clancy's Time-Box, Safiyya Bintali

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

One Last Month is a young adult (YA) novella of roughly forty-three thousand words aimed at readers in middle school and in early high school grades. Structurally, it is an “ensemble Bildungsroman”, wherein all the main characters—rather than just one—embark on journeys of emotional growth and are given significant plot focus. Through the characters, One Last Month focuses on the importance and influence of non-romantic love, specifically through homosocial relationships between the novella’s male characters. It also touches on the process of grief beyond the Kübler-Ross structure and, though more subtly, emotional expression in young men. Through one of the …

A Tool For Digital Bibliotherapy: Fostering Emotional Resiliency Through A Visual Novel, Joy Cooper

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Suicide rates among children have risen over the last three years. In Clark County specifically, the numbers doubled between 2019 and 2021. The research for this project sought to find the benefits of bibliotherapy and create a tool to be used for early intervention in children displaying signs of developmental emotional and behavioral concerns. Additionally, the research focused on determining the benefits of bibliotherapy across various mediums with a particular aim on the accessibility of digital formats. The research concluded that bibliotherapy in a digital format is not only beneficial but has a tendency to produce higher engagement among children. …

“By That Daughter’S Most Devoted Affection”: Anxious And Avoidant Attachments In Opie’S Adeline Mowbray, Meghan E. Hodges

Comparative Woman

Attachment theory, or the theory that one’s personality and social development is informed greatly by the infant-parent bond, largely arises in the 1950s with the work of John Bowlby. Although the phenomenon was only then beginning to be scientifically evaluated, it has long been observed that the relationship one has with one’s parents is a determinant factor in one’s development. This work investigates the impact of the failure to heal the insecure attachment Amelie Opie’s Adeline Mowbray (1808). Adeline, having grown up in her distant mother’s intellectual shadow, develops a neurotic attachment to her mother which causes romantic maladjustment in …

Engl 6360 - Descriptive Linguistics For Teachers, Ramsés Ortín

Open Educational Resources - Books

No abstract provided.

Sylvia Plath As A Confessionalist Writer : The Queen Bee, Alexandra Tangarife

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Sylvia Plath is a renowned Confessionalist poet from the early-mid 20th century in America. She frequently compares to her predecessor, Robert Lowell, and her friend and colleague, Ann Sexton. Confessionalism was an emotionally authentic form of poetry that split off from prior poetry, such as Modernism. Modernist founder T.S Eliot wrote in his “Tradition and The Individual Talent,” “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality” (1). Despite this mentality, Confessionalists addressed the elephant in the room: the fragmented and emotionally disturbed nation. …

The Commercialization And Imposed Voices Of Femininity In The Summer I Turned Pretty, Danielle Mcclelland

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This essay seeks to explore and analyze the novel The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. The novel’s ability to maintain relevance as a piece of popular YA literature despite its release over ten years ago makes it an interesting title to study because it demonstrates the concept of a “formulaic text,” which is defined as having, “...simple syntax, frequent repetition, and explicit authorial interpretations” (Smith 31). Additionally, Han’s novel displays the commercialization of femininity and enforces the common heteronormative relationship narrative displayed in this strain of romantic fiction. This essay aims to explore these social phenomena and how …

Abandoned Form : Secularity & Religion In The Eighteenth-Century British Novel, Kasey Waite

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abandoned Form rereads the theory of the novel from a post-secular perspective. Since the early 1980’s, theorists such as Nancy Armstrong, Michael McKeon, and Ian Watt have argued that the novel mimics Western civilization’s journey from irrationality to rationality by embracing secular ideologies and abandoning religious ones. Conversely, Abandoned Form contends that the eighteenth-century novel form depends on an inseparable relationship between the religious and the secular. Rather than being independent of religious influence, the eighteenth-century novel utilizes a dialectical engagement of secular and religious forces to create its formal structures. Focusing on the form of the novel, rather than …

A Dangerous Neutrality: Howard Campbell In Mother Night, Kathryn Alderman

Outstanding Gateway Papers

In this review of Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night, the author determines whether the book should be required reading for English 101 classes. Students, in a generation of apolitical views and the common belonging in middle ground, are often assigned books that do not seem to grasp their attention needed to take anything away from the reading experience. Mother Night has many ways of grabbing and holding this attention while displaying the dangers of running away from history. The author concludes that Mother Night should be required for all English 101 classes.

Fyw: College Writing Basics, Serhiy Metenko, Jeffrey Robin

Open Educational Resources

This book is a curated version of About Writing: A Guide by
Robin Jeffrey. Select chapters from the original book have been rearranged to
follow the class schedule for the Fall 2023 FIQWS Killer Stories
course at The City College of New York. Please reference the syllabus for reading due dates.

A digital version of this textbook can be found on: https://pressbooks.cuny.edu/yourenglishprofessor/

The full textbook by Jeffrey Robin can be found here: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/aboutwriting/

Disability (Book Chapter), Jason S. Farr

English Faculty Research and Publications

This chapter illuminates the historical and literary contexts of disability in Defoe’s time. The essay argues that, though disability is a modern category, Defoe’s writing demonstrates trans-historical continuity by representing it as the product of social relations with political consequences. For instance, in A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), contracting disease transforms characters in highly visible ways, challenging Cartesian views of mind/body duality. At the same time, impairment and epidemic disease facilitate an imaginative reworking of kinship. All of this foregrounds Defoe’s political views about how England should confront the plague. Meanwhile, in The Dumb Philosopher: Or, Great Britain’s …

Perspectives On Usability Testing With Iot Devices In Technical Communication Courses, David Wright

English and Technical Communication Faculty Research & Creative Works

This Article Offers Perspectives on Adopting Smart Home Technology into Usability Testing for Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) Courses. Usability is a Valued Skill for Technical Communicators. However, Usability Testing Methods Have their Problems as Pedagogical Tools. Internet-Of-Things (IoT) Devices and Smart Home Technology (SHT) May Offer Instructors Tools to overcome Some of Those Problems. This Article Details Advantages and Concerns Associated with using SHT for Curricular Usability Testing.

Making A Case For Political Technical Communication (Pxtc), Ryan Cheek

English and Technical Communication Faculty Research & Creative Works

In This Article, I Argue that the Accelerated Adoption of Political Technology during the COVID-19 Pandemic Evinces Exigency for a Rhetorically Grounded Framework to Teach, Research, and Practice Political Technical Communication (PxTC) as a Sub-Discipline. as a Starting Point, I Use a Rhetorical Genre Studies Approach to Identify Political Social Actions that Separate Political Communication Technologies into Four Distinct Genres: Election, Electioneering, Constituent Services, and Punditry.

Kill On The Left Foot, Daniel Collins

Theses and Dissertations--English

This collection of essays and short stories represents experiences during and related to my military service as a Tactical Air Control Partyman in the United States Air Force. Recurrent themes in this collection involve patriotism, fatherhood, masculinity, trauma, and recovery. The work itself represents the study and practice of the elements of fiction and foundational concepts related to creative nonfiction.

Emerging Hues: Essays From The Teneral Stage, Lucy Jayes

Theses and Dissertations--English

This collection of essays features work created and revised over two years in the Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program. They reflect a period of intense evolution in the author’s life and delve into topics of modern-day motherhood and cycles of intimate partner violence.

Echoed Malice: Identity And The Doubled Voice In Gothic Horror, Brandon West

Theses and Dissertations--English

My dissertation argues we would benefit from focusing on the voice when analyzing gothic and horror texts. That is, I contend, there remains significant fertile ground for us to till in these texts if we shift our focus to the voice and its various iterations across these texts’ long history. To demonstrate this point, I delineate three variations of this theme: the doubled voice in the possession narrative, the split voice in the ventriloquist-dummy dynamic, and the inherent uncertainty of the voice without discernable origin. Each of these variations, I argue, offers fruitful readings of oft-studied texts and, moreover, offers …

Myth, Mockery, & Misery: An Evolution Of Disillusion In Modern-War Expression, Richard W. Halkyard

Theses and Dissertations--English

Industrialization in 19th-Century America yielded a regrettable by-product: the modernization of warfare. Mass armies, technological innovation, and unprecedented rates of industrial productivity prompted the creation of machines designed to inspire fear, increase destructive capability, and inflict mass-death. The modernization of warfare altered forever the way war was experienced and represented literarily. Authors who attempted to represent the Civil and Spanish-American Wars, as well as World War I, articulated modernized warfare with a disillusionment which stems from the tragically dehumanizing effects of mechanical violence on an industrial scale. Myth, Mockery, & Misery argues that as far back as 1862, romantic idealization …

Is It Your Fault? Or Is It Mine?, Edan Yager

Soaring: A Journal of Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Revisiting History: Anti-Racialist Afrofuturism In Octavia Butler's Kindred, Brad C. Kelly

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Popular understanding of history is dominated by racial binaries that suggest the Black past and the white past are wholly antithetical to one another. In Kindred, Octavia Butler uncovers interconnections between Black and white Americans that complicate this understanding by having her characters travel to the antebellum period. By uncovering these interconnections, Butler is able to envision a future in which Black and white Americans are reunited through the recognition of their shared, yet vastly differing, sufferings under white supremacy. I have termed this idea anti-racialist Afrofuturism because Butler seeks to dismantle the social construct of race through her illumination …

A Short Time Ago In The Messaging Of Children's Media Very Close By, Katelin Bailey

Capstone Showcase

Most children in the US grow up watching television that tries to teach them some kind of life lesson that they should carry with them as they grow up. The children’s show, Star Wars Rebels, does something similar but goes a step further to handle topics that would be considered more mature, such as the imperialistic nature of empires. The project looks at what the implications of such messages are. With an overview of studies that show how well children understand what they're watching and an examination of why the themes in this show are overlooked, the project seeks to …

“Decorate The Dungeon With Flowers And Air-Cushions:” Virginia Woolf And War, Claire Dumont

Scripps Senior Theses

Virginia Woolf was particularly interested throughout her career in writing about war, ranging from the perspective of a depressed World War I veteran and his wife in Mrs. Dalloway, a dinner party held during an air raid in 1917 in The Years, an argument for the connections between patriarchal society and war in Three Guineas, and a pageant of British history held before World War II in Between the Acts. Woolf specifically writes of war as it impacts spheres away from the battlefield, in a way that is inherently gendered to her experience as a woman …

Visualizing The Permanent Lie: An Examination Of Dystopian Literature Using Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’S Model, Anthony Mitchell

Master’s Theses

This thesis argues for the formation of an evolving canon of literature critical to continued resistance to totalitarianism, focusing primarily on the works of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Ji Xianlin. In crafting the theoretical basis of my study, I rely primarily on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s concept of the “permanent lie” and its related concepts, “survive at any price” and “only material results matter” as formulated in his magnum opus, The Gulag Archipelago. In Solzhenitsyn’s view, the “permanent lie” is rooted in the creation of a virtual reality among individuals trapped in a totalitarian society, in which they must hold …

“Hideous Things Have Happened Here”: Rape Myths, Rape Culture, And Healing In Adolescent Literature, Holly J. Greca

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Adolescent novels about rape are one way to discuss rape and rape culture with a young audience. These novels can depict and challenge aspects of rape culture, including the myths that ultimately reinforce a culture hostile to rape victims. Considering the prevalence of rape in society at large, as well as its prevalence among adolescents, this thesis examines the elements of rape culture at play within adolescent rape novels, which can serve as pieces of activism as they give voice to adolescent survivors of rape. Adolescent rape novels explore the internal struggles of survivors as well as the external process …

“The Weird And The Occult” In Carmilla And “The Portrait Of Roísín Dhu”, Eliza Lehman

Senior Honors and Award-Winning Theses

This thesis brings together two Irish Gothic texts that contemplate queer intimacy and reveal similar logics of imagined Irish Catholicism. By reading Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla and Dorothy Macardle’s 1924 short story “The Portrait of Roísín Dhu” alongside Heather Love’s Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (2007), this thesis examines the literary treatment of Irish Catholicism and queerness as “backward.” In both texts, the embedded narrative undermines the frame, allowing more subversive and complex themes to haunt the hopeful, nationalist frame of “The Portrait of Roísín Dhu” and the patriarchal, imperial frame of Carmilla.