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Book Reviews: Family Style: Memories Of An American From Vietnam, Derick Marchant

The Utah English Journal

Do you ever eat a meal so intertwined with memory that each bite transports you back to the moments surrounding it? For me, it’s paella. The rice dish seasoned with saffron, paprika, and lemon juice puts me right back in small apartments in Spain with my legs under a blanket-covered table, a heater blasting on my legs, laughing and shelling shrimp with Spaniards. I can’t eat paella without craving the company that surrounded me in those warm Spanish apartments. In Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam, Thien Pham chronicles his family’s immigration story via vignettes centering around his …

The Utah English Journal, Volume 53, 2025: Full Issue

The Utah English Journal

No abstract provided.

Improving Small-Group Discussion Through Literature Circle Activities, Reilly Ryan

The Utah English Journal

Consider the following scenarios in which I’ve given students a platform to discuss “high-interest” topics: “Class, I want you to discuss whether you think school should start one hour later than it currently does. I’m going to set a timer for three minutes, and I would like you to continue your discussion during the entire time.” If school start time seems too educational, I might offer an even more accessible topic such as “What is the greatest movie of all time?” or “Where is the best place in town to get a hamburger?” The pleasing cacophony I hear immediately after …

Moving Beyond Summary, Susan E. Anderson

The Utah English Journal

The due date. That dreaded day when 50% of my students have worked their way through the writing process and are ready to turn in their essays ON TIME. They chose topics, researched, organized, wrote rough drafts, edited and revised repeatedly, peer-reviewed, more editing and more revising, cited their sources, formatted, and even applied the hanging indentation to their works cited page. And as the other 50% trickle in their late papers clearly lacking some of these important steps, my next responsibility begins: I start to read 175 essays. With my rubric ready to start assessing, I see a frustrating …

The Uses And Challenges Of Teaching Writing With Artificial Intelligence, Tom Henry

The Utah English Journal

Computers and Composition recently noted: “In less than a year, ChatGPT hit 100 million weekly users which made it the fastest-growing consumer Internet application to date. The ease, practicality, and ability to compose both in text and multimedia has made generative AI technology (like ChatGPT) ubiquitous” (Ranade and Eyman, 2024). Popularity aside, the question should be asked: Can students use AI ethically? A white paper from UNESCO puts forth the proposition that “Technology is never ideologically neutral… New generative AI models and utilities are no exception” (Giannini, 2023, p.3). Collating these claims, there are tasks where AI is ethical and …

Facilitating Dialogue: Leveraging Classroom Literature To Navigate Critical Conversations With High School Students, Kaylee Smedley

The Utah English Journal

The quotation refers to the Contemporary American Thought (CAT) class, a high school course in Chris Crutcher’s Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, where Moby and his classmates navigate complex and controversial issues under Ms. Lemry’s guidance. Encouraged to discuss meaningful topics like children’s rights, war, social class, abortion, and religion, they research, debate, and explore nuances, ultimately drawing scrutiny from parents, the community, and the administration (Crutcher, 1993).

Talent, Passion, And Teaching Writing: A Teacher’S Reflection, Kelley Paystrup

The Utah English Journal

Which comes first, the passion to write or the talent? Every school year I share examples of my written work with my classes, and every time I hear students tell me they can’t write like that; they will never be that talented. I respond that I’ve had more practice and experience than they have, and I earned a Master’s in Writing and Rhetoric, so they shouldn’t compare. I wonder if I should show them my work since it’s discouraging for so many.

Book Review: Something Like Home, Kimberly Stewart

The Utah English Journal

Something Like Home is a poignant exploration of resilience and adaptation. Laura, the protagonist, finds her life disrupted when her parents are forced into a drug rehabilitation program and she must navigate a new environment with an unfamiliar aunt and school. Her initial resistance to accepting this change forms the central conflict of her journey.

Book Review: How To Become A Better Writing Teacher, Merry Gravett

The Utah English Journal

Carl Anderson and Matt Glover’s book How to Become a Better Writing Teacher is an excellent tool to have in your toolbox as a writing instructor. Whether you have a 20-year career in teaching writing or you’re still completing your degree and student teaching experience, this book can provide insight into and impetus for your growth as a writing teacher.

Book Review: Simon Sort Of Says, Sarah Strachan

The Utah English Journal

Nothing ever really changes in Grin and Bear It, Nebraska. Since the town is a research site for the SETI program (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), there is a ban on internet and cell phones that makes getting news from the outside world a little slow. For 12-year-old Simon O’Keeffe, that sounds perfect. Having survived a school shooting two years earlier, Simon has spent far too much time in the spotlight and longs to fade into the background in this new town where no one knows his past. However, blending in proves challenging with his accident-prone Catholic deacon father, his quirky …

Book Review: The Faint Of Heart, Hailey Christensen

The Utah English Journal

Is it better to experience negative emotions with the positive, or to not feel at all? The Faint of Heart, a graphic novel by Kerrilyn Wilson, takes place in a society where scientists have discovered how to successfully remove the human heart without killing the patient. Once a heart is removed, it is placed into a numbing solution, which effectively eliminates the patient’s ability to experience emotion. The procedure quickly gains popularity, and people flock to the hospital to have their heart removed, in an effort to escape feelings of grief, pain, and stress, only to inadvertently remove positive emotions …

Book Review: Remember Us, Lauren Ratliff

The Utah English Journal

Brooklyn in 1990 is all about rapid gentrification and rising social tensions. For Sage, a young black girl growing up in this setting, life is all about change. Her community, her friendships, and even her view of herself are all shifting. Sage questions if she fits into the evolving version of Brooklyn that she sees rising up all around her. Due to her newfound awareness of socio-economic divides as well as rising racial tensions in her neighborhood, she grapples with feelings of losing the only place she’s ever called home. Happy memories of Brooklyn and her community feel disconnected from …

Advancing Literary Interpretation Via Critical Reading Proficiency: A Sustainable Efl Framework For Generation Z, Wesam Khairy Morsi, Walid Abdallah Rezk

English Language and Literature

Abstract—This research investigates the transformative potential of literary analysis in advancing English proficiency among Egyptian EFL learners, particularly those in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. The study focuses on the linguistic and analytical challenges encountered by recent public-school graduates in the Suez Governorate, where English instruction is limited to simplified texts and lacks critical engagement. Unlike their counterparts from language schools in Cairo, these students enter university without placement tests, relying solely on their high school grades, which results in underdeveloped critical reading and thinking skills. Sixty Egyptian students participated in this experimental quantitative research design. Drawing on the …

The 2024 Whippoorwill Award: Gathering Stories Of Indigeneity, Connection, And Belonging, Erika L. Bass, Michael J. Young, Alan Hoffman, Jacqueline Yahn, Monica Roe, Devon Brenner, Chea Parton

The Rural Educator

No abstract provided.

Review Of Before Borders: A Legal And Literary History Of Naturalization, Melissa J. Ganz

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Caedmon Records & The Power Of Youth: How Audiobooks Revolutionized Children’S Literature, Faihaa Khan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The first known spoken-word recording was introduced to the world by Thomas Edison through the invention of the phonograph. Originally intended for a visually impaired audience to read without exertion, the first known recording was a recitation of the English nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb" by Edison himself. The inclusion of a children’s nursery rhyme since the genesis of such an invention has become significant in observing the rise and success of the audiobook industry and its direct impact in increasing literacy proficiency in children.

Interactions between children’s literature and the history of the audiobook have been many …

Good Practice For All Sentence Frames To Support Multingual Students In The Ela Classroom, Genevieve Palestino

The Utah English Journal

The struggle to meet student needs is an ever- present concern for all teachers. Besides English 9, I teach English Language Development (ELD), and I frequently find myself in conversations with other teachers about how to support our school’s multilingual (ML) population. One thing I try to emphasize in my conversations with teachers is that most “extra steps” for MLs are best-practice strategies that will benefit all students. A strategy that can be especially beneficial for students is leveled sentence frames.

Thinking And Writing With Ai As A Dialogue Partner, Jon Ostenson, Johnny Allred

The Utah English Journal

When generative AI burst onto the public stage in late 2022, it took many of us by surprise. After we had time to see what chatbots like ChatGPT were capable of, they filled many writing teachers with a sense of dread. Some of us realized that assignments we had relied on for years would no longer work because they could easily be completed by a chatbot. All of us worried about how this new technology would influence our students’ writing and the way we taught writing.

Me Between The Lines: An Intertextual Search For Self, Jamie Jo Porter

The Utah English Journal

In the winter of 2023, I noticed a general struggle among my AP Literature students to connect and identify with characters and events we were reading about in class. Upon further investigation, I realized that this wasn’t because my students weren’t reading relatable texts, but more because they were still developing a sense of self; in their search for identity, they were not seeing pieces of themselves reflected in the world around them. As a teacher, it pained me to realize that my students weren’t even anticipating that there were things out there in the world that they could relate …

“Charles? We Don’T Have Any Charles In The Kindergarten”: Our Professional Responsibility To Compassionate Self-Reflection, Ben Inouye

The Utah English Journal

Shirley Jackson’s immortal “Charles” recounts the mischievous deeds of Charles, a character created by the equally naughty Laurie. His mother, the narrator, blames her son’s poor behavior on Charles’ influence. She is blissfully unaware that her son is the reason for the kindergarten chaos; she is all too quick to begin searching for the most “haggard” face in the PTA crowd–unable to fathom that she might be the mother responsible for Charles. Such delusion!

As I was pondering the narrator’s lack of self-awareness, I found myself thinking: Oh crap, is that me? Am I the teacher who can’t be honest …

White Horses In The Sky: Or The Magical Place Where Topology Meets Poetry, Sanziana Caraman, Lorelei Caraman

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

What do Shakespearean words, doughnuts, cups of tea, and horses in the sky all have in common with a famous theorem? To discover the answer, we take you on a journey in a strange, enchanted land: the land where mathematics meets poetry. Here we explore how a fundamental literary trope, metaphor, and a fundamental result in topology, Brouver's Fixed Point Theorem, touch and illuminate one another. Delving into the symmetry of this transdisciplinary embrace, we find that it reveals, not only the beauty of poetry and mathematics, but that of life itself: the beauty hidden in ordinary things like a …

The Fourth Road, Aulò, Beyond The Frame, And Maka: A Study Guide, Simone Brioni Dr., Lorraine Hallett

Department of English Faculty Publications

This study guide is aimed to help students explore four documentaries about postcolonial culture in Italy: The Fourth Road, Aulò, Beyond the Frame, and Maka. It is the result of a reflection and collective work by a professor who wrote the films and a teaching assistant and previous student of a course on migration studies. Each film features a prominent African Italian writer, respectively Kaha Mohamed Aden, Ribka Sibhatu, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah and Geneviève Makaping. After a brief plot summary, the study guide includes questions about various elements of cinematic style, such as sound, lighting, and genre conventions. It …

La Quarta Via, Aulò, Oltre I Bordi E Maka: Attività Didattiche, Simone Brioni Dr.

Department of English Faculty Publications

Queste attività didattiche si propongono di esplorare quattro documentari sulla cultura postcoloniale in Italia: La quarta via, Aulò, Oltre i bordi e Maka. Ogni film ha come protagonista una scrittrice africana italiana, rispettivamente Kaha Mohamed Aden, Ribka Sibhatu, Ubah Cristina

Ali Farah e Geneviève Makaping. Ciascuna sezione presenta un breve riassunto della trama, comprende domande sulle storie di Somalia, Eritrea, Camerun e Italia e sullo stile cinematografico (suoni, uso delle luci, fotografia). Le attività esplorano questioni relative all’appartenenza nazionale, alla rappresentazione degli immigrati nei media, alla spazializzazione della memoria e alle geografie intime e affettive che caratterizzano le culture degli …

A Translation Of John Gower's Cronica Tripertita, Robert J. Meindl, Mark T. Riley

Accessus

John Gower's account of the last years of Richard II presents an uncompromised condemnation of the king's reign.

Miscellaneous, Bruce R Johnson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

No abstract provided.

Film Review Of Freud’S Last Session, G. Connor Salter

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Freud’s Last Session, by Matthew Brown and Mark St. Germain, directed by Matthew Brown, starring Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode. Los Angeles: Sony Picture Classic, 2023. 1 hr., 48 min.

Donald Williams, Answers From Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics Of C. S. Lewis, Josiah Peterson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Donald Williams, Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis, (Tampa, FL: DeWard, 2023), 208 pages, $14.99. ISBN: 9781947929289

Charlie W. Starr, King Lesserlight’S Crown, Judith Mcquoid

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Charlie W. Starr, King Lesserlight’s Crown (Wilmore, KY: GlossaHouse, 2023). 103 pages. $9.99. ISBN 9781636630588.

K. Alan Snyder And Jamin Metcalf, Many Times And Many Places: C. S. Lewis And The Value Of History, Matthew Nash

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

K. Alan Snyder and Jamin Metcalf, Many Times and Many Places: C. S. Lewis and the Value of History (Hamden, CT: Winged Lion Press, 2023). 191 pages. $18.99. ISBN: 9781935688525.

Holly Ordway, Tolkien’S Faith: A Spiritual Biography, Crystal Hurd

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A review of Holly Ordway, Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography (Elk Grove Village, IL: Word on Fire Academic, 2023). 480 pages, including Appendices, Glossary, Endnotes, Bibliography, Biblical Index, and General Index. $34.95. ISBN: 9781685789916.