Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Lizard Girl And Other Girl Stories, Melinda Beth Keefauver

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the notable lack of the comic mode in contemporary ecofiction and aims to integrate humor and ecological inflection through the female narrative voice. Comedy and ecology rarely intersect in literary fiction. Ecofiction tends to be unfunny because the category grows out of the nonfiction tradition of nature writing, a genre that yields solemn, reverent, meditative essays that lack humor. Also, works of ecofiction can seem didactic, lacking the complexity, richness, and ambiguity that characterize literary fiction. Furthermore, literary critics often view comedic stories as lacking in literary quality. However, comedy has an intensifying effect on narrative, imbuing …

Writing Duty: Religion, Obligation And Autonomy In George Eliot And Kant, Andrew Ragsdale Lallier

Masters Theses

Connections between George Eliot and Immanuel Kant have been, for the most part, neglected. However, we have good reason to believe that Eliot not only read Kant (as well as many who were directly influenced by Kant), but substantially agreed with him on critical and moral issues. This thesis investigates one of the issues on which Kant and Eliot were most closely aligned, the need for duty in morality. Both the English novelist and the German philosopher upheld a vision of duty that could command absolutely while remaining consonant with human freedom and grounding a sense of moral dignity. This …

Toward A Progressive African Americanism: Africanism And Intraracial Class Conflict In Twentieth- And Early Twenty-First-Century African American Literature, Laronda Meeshay Sanders-Senu

Doctoral Dissertations

In this work, I explore how African American authors and texts have contributed to or confronted what Toni Morrison calls “Africanism” in Playing in the Dark. I argue that the construction of blackness by non-black people and its consequent racial stigma, imbuing skin color with mental and physical inferiority, functions in an intraracial context to obscure the solidarity of all African Americans irrespective of their socioeconomic status. My work spans the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries, investigating representations of the middle class who seek to deny or ignore the impact that a Eurocentric value system has on …

An Implacable Force: Caryl Churchill And The “Theater Of Cruelty”, Kerri Ann Considine

Masters Theses

Churchill’s plays incorporate intensity, complexity, and imagination to create a theatrical landscape that is rich in danger and possibility. Examining her plays through the theoretical lens of Antonin Artaud’s “theater of cruelty” allows an open investigation into the way that violence, transgression, and theatricality function in her work to create powerful and thought-provoking pieces of theatre. By creating her own contemporary “theater of cruelty,” Churchill creates plays that actively and violently transgress physical, social, and political boundaries.

This paper examines three of Churchill’s plays spanning over thirty years of her career to investigate the different ways Churchill has used concepts …

Remediating Blackness And The Formation Of A Black Graphic Historical Novel Tradition, Adam Kendall Coombs

Masters Theses

This study attempts to establish the cross-currents of African American literary traditions and an emerging African American graphic novel aesthetic. A close analysis of the visuality foreground in the visual/textual space of the graphic novel will provide insight into how the form of the graphic novel reconciles and revises more traditional textual literary elements. Such motifs and tropes as the visuality of slave portraiture, Gates’ trope of the talking book, and the paradox of invisibility/visibility within African American creative registers will be used to highlight the creative tradition inaugurated by the African American graphic novel. Each of these elements generally …

The Therapy Of Humiliation: Towards An Ethics Of Humility In The Works Of J.M. Coetzee, Ajitpaul Singh Mangat

Masters Theses

This work asks how and for whom humiliation can be therapeutic. J. M. Coetzee, in his works Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace, does not simply critique the mentality of Empire, an “Enlightenment” or colonialist mode of knowing that knows no bounds to reason, but offers an alternative through the Magistrate, Michael K and David Lurie, all of whom are brutally shamed and “abjected”. Each character, I propose, experiences a Lacanian “therapy of humiliation” resulting in a subversion of their egos, which they come to understand as antagonistic, a site of …

Fire On The Mountain, Clear Light Of Day And Fasting, Feasting: An Exploration Of Indian Motherhood In The Fiction Of Anita Desai, Ashley N. Batts

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

How Jane Austen Uses Marriage To Get What She Wants, Hannah Eberle

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Virginia Woolf's Journey To The Lighthouse A Hypertext Essay Exploring Character Development In Jacob’S Room, Mrs. Dalloway, And To The Lighthouse, Laura Christene Miller

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Immersion, Transformation, And The Literature Class, Christina Vischer Bruns

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

“Transitional space” helps teachers understand how a reader’s transformation happens, and why it is valuable.

My Kanawha, Anne Dipardo

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

A longtime English educator revisits James Moffet’s notion of “agnosis” as she discovers her West Virginia ancestry.

Jaepl, Vol. 17, Winter 2011-2012, Joona Smitherman Trapp, Brad Peters

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Essays

Cristina Bruns - Immersion, Transformation, and the Literature Class

Anne DiPardo - My Kanawha

Kelly A. Concannon Mannise - Who Cares? Exploring Student Perspectives on Care Ethics

Kym Buchanan & Perry Cook - Playing the Believing Game with Dr. Seuss and Reluctant Learners in Science

Elizabeth Woodworth - Being the Unbook, Being the Change: The Transformative Power of Open Sources

W. Keith Duffy - Suffering and Teaching Writing

Helen Collins Stitler - Perfect

Nikki Holland, Iris Shepard, Christian Z. Goering, & David A. Jolliffe - We Were the Teachers, Not the Observers: Transforming Preparation through Placements in a Creative, …

Perfect, Helen Collins Sitler

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Perfectionism can be a form of trauma that composition instructors should be aware of in some high-achieving students.

“Poetry Is Not A Luxury”: Why We Should Include Poetry In The Writing Classroom, Nicole Warwick

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

How can poetry transform academic writing’s “masculine” ways of knowing and communicating into transnational exploration?

Re-Seeing Story Through Portal Writing, S. Rebecca Leigh

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Findings suggest that portal writing can be used as an effective tool for helping young students focus and revise their narrative work.

Connecting, Helen Walker, Jan Buley, S. Rebecca Leigh, Christopher M. Bache, Bette B. Bauer, Rachel Forrester, Laurence Musgrove

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Connecting

Helen Walker - Teaching/Seeing Jesus

Jan Buley - The Realization

S. Rebecca Leigh - Celebrating Ways of Learning

Christopher M. Bache - The Opening Question

Bette B. Bauer - Teaching as a Spiritual Practice

Rachel Forrester - Appalachia Finally in the Spring

Laurence Musgrove - Syllabus

Book Reviews, Judy Halden-Sullivan, Julie J. Nichols, Mary Pettice

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Book Reviews

Judy Halden-Sullivan - Evolution and Criticism

Julie J. Nichols - Boyd, Brian. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2009.

Julie J. Nichols - Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006

Mary Pettice - Dutton, Denis. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. 2nd edition. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010. Print.

Writing And Time, Time And The Essay, Douglas Hesse

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Writing requires time, thought, and most of all, discovery—despite a high-tech world that can’t be bothered with it.

Playing The Believing Game With Dr. Seuss And Reluctant Learners In Science, Kym Buchanan, Perry Cook

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham offers insights for teachers trying to overcome learners’ reluctance.

Front Matter

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Editor's message.

Who Cares? Exploring Student Perspectives On Care Ethics, Kelly A. Concannon Mannise

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Care ethics are influenced by conflicts between crafted theories and how students read those theories in practice.

Being The Unbook, Being The Change: The Transformative Power Of Open Sources, Elizabeth D. Woodworth

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

A director of composition tests and advocates “open education sources” for the development of curricula and programs.

Front Matter

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Editor's Message

Suffering And Teaching Writing, W. Keith Duffy

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

How can spiritual texts help us respond to the burn-out we sometimes experience in our roles as literacy teachers?

“We Were The Teachers, Not The Observers”: Transforming Teacher Preparation Through Placements In A Creative, After-School Program, Nikki Holland, Iris Shepard, Christian Z. Goering

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Teacher preparation at one university shifts pre-service observation to hands-on integration of the arts in an after-school program called Razorback Writers.

Back Matter

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

No abstract provided.

Notes From Teaching At The Ends Of The Earth, Colette Morrow

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Third-world teaching enables one feminist instructor to revitalize her instruction in American universities.