Arts and Humanities Commons^™

On Selvage, Daniel O'Malley

English Faculty Research

The essay for this publication was developed based on the author’s studio conversations with the artist and life experiences, including frequent artistic collaboration with his daughter.

The Library Of Appalachian Preaching: A Digital Repository Of Sermons, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This poster was created for the March 2021 Appalachian Studies Association virtual conference. It introduced conference participants to the Library of Appalachian Preaching, a digital humanities project hosted at Marshall University. The Library offers online access to sermons and other addresses delivered within Appalachia, or elsewhere by preachers with ties to the Appalachian region. The poster provides an overview of all of the major elements of the Library. Information presented includes the three “phases” of the project; demographic information about the preachers; examples of the digitized sermons; and examples of biographical sketches and the User Guide, a Google …

The Library Of Appalachian Preaching: A Digital-Humanities Project At Marshall University, Robert H. Ellison, Larry Sheret

English Faculty Research

This article provides an overview of the sermons in the Special Collections Department at Marshall and a description of the Library of Appalachian Preaching, a project that will make these materials universally discoverable and accessible online. In addition to the sermons themselves, the Library will include biographical sketches of each preacher featured in the project and a robust User Guide, a Google sheet which users can search, sort, and download to help make their research as efficient and productive as possible

Episcopal Sermons In The Library Of Appalachian Preaching, Robert Ellison, Larry Sheret

English Faculty Research

The Library of Appalachian Preaching provides online access to sermons preached in Appalachia, or elsewhere by preachers with ties to the Appalachian region. This article, in a newsletter published by the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church, discusses Episcopal sermons that are currently in the Library, and some that will be added in the very near future. 

Cardinal Newman's Pilgrimage, In His Own Words, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This is the text of a presentation given at Marshall University on October 14 and 17, 2019, to commemorate the October 13 canonization of John Henry Cardinal Newman. As the title suggests, it draws largely upon his autobiography, an autobiographical novel, and his published letters to trace the trajectory of his religious life, from the earliest glimmers in his mid-teens to his conversion to Catholicism at the age of 44.

“To Defend The Citadel Of Its Faith From All Assaults": Hermann Adler And The London Society For Promoting Christianity Amongst The Jews, Robert H. Ellison

English Faculty Research

This article employs sermons as a lens through which to examine Jewish-Christian relations in Victorian England. It focuses primarily upon discourses preached by clergy affiliated with the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, and on rebuttals delivered by Hermann Adler, a London rabbi who would go on to become Chief Rabbi of the British Empire. Attention is also given to reviews of Adler's work, and to responses to those reviews. These reviews and reviews-of-reviews are evidence that there was an active conversation taking place in the pulpit and the press; the article seeks to show that preaching is …

Online Archive Of The Jewish Chronicle, Robert H. Ellison, Larry Sheret

English Faculty Research

The Jewish Chronicle (JC), a weekly newspaper based in London, England, offers free access to the text and video content on its website and subscription-based access to its full-text archive, which dates back to its founding in 1841. The search interface and the OCR underlying the page scans can be problematic at times, but this is nonetheless a valuable resource; over 175 years’ worth of material on Jewish history and the larger social culture will be of interest to scholars in a variety of fields.

Preaching And Sermons, Robert Ellison Ph.D.

English Faculty Research

This essay, published in Volume III of The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, examines the art of preaching during the nineteenth century. Its focus is not the sermons themselves, but rather lectures on preaching delivered to ministerial students in England, the United States, and Canada. Topics addressed in these lectures include not only homiletic theory, but also other aspects of the preacher's work, such as prayer, pastoral visitation, and developing good working relationships with church officers and other members of the congregation.

Turning “Bad Jews Into Worse Christians”: Hermann Adler And The London Society For Promoting Christianity Amongst The Jews, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This paper explores how sermons contributed to Jewish-Christian relations in Victorian England. I begin with a rhetorical analysis of sermons preached on behalf of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, the largest and best known missionary organization of its kind. I then examine a collection of sermons in which Hermann Adler, then rabbi of London’s Bayswater Synagogue and later Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, pushes back against their efforts, offering the “true explanations” of passages which, in his view, had been improperly employed by Christian preachers. Finally, I trace a kind of “feedback loop” in which …

Four Case Studies In Teaching Sermons At A Public University, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

In this paper, delivered at the March 2017 meeting of the Northeast Modern Language Association, I discuss my experience with teaching sermons at Marshall University, a public institution in Huntington, WV. I have done this in four classes over the past several years: “Good Essays” (a 200-level general-education course in the English Department); “God Talk” (another gen-ed course, team-taught with a faculty member in religious studies); “Sermon: Text and Performance” (a 400-level class in the Honors College); and “The Victorian Spoken Word” (a graduate seminar in English).

The audiences were very different, as were the texts we used (Newman, Spurgeon, …

What Binds Them Together, Rachael Peckham

English Faculty Research

When a MacArthur grant-winning poet and classicist writes about her ex-lover, she doesn’t commit a “thick stacked act of revenge” against him, a tempting “vocation of anger” enacted on the page. Yet Anne Carson, author of “The Glass Essay” (from the collection Glass, Irony, and God), knows it’s “easier to tell a story of how people wound one another than of what binds them together.” It makes sense. Where there’s an ex, there’s the story of a relationship a clear beginning, middle, and the dreaded end, with a natural protagonist in us versus them, the Exes.

That …

'Welcome To Hell': Writing Parents, Parenting Writers, Rachael Peckham

English Faculty Research

Literary history is populated with plenty of notable parent-and-child writers, across the years (Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley; Andre Dubus II and Andre Dubus III, to name a few)-which is not to place my own parent child relationship in such renowned company. Rather, I'm seeking to explore the unique patterns and themes that emerge where parenthood and the profession of writing intersect. What are the inherent privileges and problems that mark such relationships? How do they develop? To what extent does the parent-writer cast both a shadow and a light on the child's career-and vice versa? How do they negotiate …

Publishing Tools In Sermon Studies, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

“Green.” “Gold.” “DOAJ.” “APC.” These terms – and many more – are part of the vocabulary of open access publishing, a model that is becoming increasingly prevalent with both established presses and independent journals. In this talk, Robert Ellison surveys current patterns and trends in the open access world, and discusses some of the decisions that must be made when starting a new open access journal. As a case study, he outlines the process of launching Sermon Studies, an online-only, peer-reviewed publication that has recently “gone live” at Marshall University.

Some Reflections On The Field Of Sermon Studies, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

Multidisciplinary endeavours with the word ‘studies’ in their names have brought like-minded scholars together for over sixty years. Those specializing in certain parts of the world, for example, can join the North American Conference on British Studies (founded in 1950), the British Association for American Studies (1955), the African Studies Association (1957), or a host of other groups. Similarly, organisations for scholars interested in specific time periods include the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (1983), the Society for Renaissance Studies (1967) and the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies. Finally, students of politics, gender and other aspects …

Navigating With Harriet Quimby, Rachael Peckham

English Faculty Research

My maternal grandmother Ruth never missed an episode of the game show Jeopardy! One night in 2008, while I was working on my dissertation about a long-forgotten aviatrix with whom my family and I share connections, Grandma Ruth called to tell me about a Jeopardy! clue she had just heard: "The first woman to fly across the English Channel." My grandmother was reserved and soft-spoken, but I imagine her slapping the armrests of the recliner, disturbing the outstretched cat at her side, and beating all three contestants to the buzzer: "Who is Harriet Quimby?"--the subject of my dissertation.

Terror, Hospitality And The Gift Of Death In Morrison’S Beloved, Puspa Damai

English Faculty Research

The “us versus them” narrative still pre-dominates the analysis of terrorism in the West, which invariably associates “them” with terrorism. Toni Morrison’s hauntingly memorable novel – Beloved – provides a radically different and historically grounded view of terror and terrorism in the West. The novel not only releases us from the “us versus them” paradigm by demonstrating America’s intimacy with terror, it also enables us to examine terror and terrorism from the perspective of a gendered and ethnic subject who subverts the easy categorization of “us” and “them” or civilized and terrorist. Following Jacques Derrida’s contemplations on death and terror, …

What Did Anglican Preaching Look Like 200 Years Ago?, Robert H. Ellison

English Faculty Research

This was a talk given during the morning worship service at Trinity Episcopal Church in Huntington, West Virginia on June 9, 2013. It was meant to offer the congregation a window into Anglican preaching of another time and place. Topics include the typical length of sermons; whether they should be read or delivered extemporaneously; and the Bible verses and topics the Victorians turned to most often in their preaching.

How Do You Build A Discipline From The Ground Up?, Robert H. Ellison

English Faculty Research

This is the keynote address delivered to the 21^st Annual WV undergraduate literary symposium, hosted by Marshall University on March 2, 2013. It presents a kind of "wish list" for scholars in sermon studies: we still need "a clear sense of the canon," places to "interact and network" with colleagues, and a dedicated journal "where scholars can publish their work." People working in other fields are fortunate in that they can usually take these things for granted, but sermon scholars still have some work to do to bring them to fruition.

Pusey's Sermons At St. Saviour's, Leeds, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

"E . B. Pusey as a Preacher." It would not be surprising to find such a phrase as the title of a nineteenth-century work. Authors in both Britain and America used it in books and articles about numerous ministers, literary figures, the Apostle Paul, and even Jesus himself.¹ Edward Bouverie Pusey, in fact, was the subject of one such piece: a review of Sermons for the Church's Seasons from Advent to Trinity, published in the Spectator on 11 August 1883.

Such a scope would, however, be too broad for a scholarly study in the twenty-first century. Pusey's canon …

Patterns Of Computer-Mediated Interaction In Small Writing Groups Using Wikis, Mimi Li, Wei Zhu

English Faculty Research

Informed by sociocultural theory and guided especially by “collective scaffolding”, this study investigated the nature of computer-mediated interaction of three groups of English as a Foreign Language students when they performed collaborative writing tasks using wikis. Nine college students from a Chinese university participated in the wiki-mediated collaborative writing project. Analyses of data from the wiki “Discussion”, “Page”, and “History” modules on each group tab revealed that the three small groups displayed three distinct patterns of online interaction: collectively contributing/mutually supportive, authoritative/responsive, and dominant/withdrawn. These patterns were substantiated by the roles group members assumed and members’ task approaches in terms …

Individual Novices And Collective Experts: Collective Scaffolding In Wiki-Based Small Group Writing, Mimi Li

English Faculty Research

This article reports on a case study that explored the process of wiki-based collaborative writing in a small group of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at a Chinese university. The study examined the archived logs from the group wiki ‘Discussion’ and ‘History’ modules with a focus on the group members' scaffolded interaction when co-constructing texts in the wiki space. The analysis revealed that the participants were actively engaged in reciprocal communication in terms of content discussion, social talk, task management, technical communication and language negotiation. They were also found to have scaffolded each other's writing efforts during co-constructing …

Ecocriticism And Christian Literary Scholarship, Timothy J. Burbery

English Faculty Research

This essay presents a case for ecocriticism as a viable critical method for Christian scholars. It begins with an historical overview of the method, then examines common ground shared by ecocriticism and Christianity, including what amounts to a kind of critical realism, and the belief in the inherent goodness of creation. Two potential obstacles are then addressed by way of Lynn White, Jr.'s famous essay, "The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis." These include the relationship of the Bible and the environment, and the charge of anthropocentrism. I believe White is partly right, but contend that neither objection is fatal …

Use Of Wikis In Second/Foreign Language Classes: A Literature Review, Mimi Li

English Faculty Research

Wikis, as emerging Web 2.0 tools, have been increasingly implemented in language classrooms. To explore the current state of research and inform future studies, this article reviews the past research on the use of wikis in second/foreign language classes. Using Google Scholar and the ERIC database, the researcher examines twenty-one empirical studies published in fourteen peer-reviewed journals from 2008 to 2011. Specifically, the researcher takes a holistic review of this body of literature, including theoretical frameworks, research goals, contexts and participants, tasks and wiki applications, and research methods and instruments. The researcher identifies four main research themes investigated in the …

Mediated Processes In Writing For Publication: Perspectives Of Chinese Science Postdoctoral Researchers In America, Mimi Li

English Faculty Research

Sociocultural theory provides an explanatory framework for understanding human activity in the community of practice. This paper aims to address science researchers’ scholarly writing for publication processes from a sociocultural perspective. The author conducts a study via in-depth reflective interviews with three Chinese science postdoctoral researchers in America in an attempt to find their specific mediated actions and dynamic processes in writing for publication. In light of Engeström’s (1987, 1999) activity system, this paper, drawing on the interview data, explores the four mediating factors: objects/goals, artifacts, community, and roles, which afford and constrain the goings-on in the researchers’ writing for …

Subalternative Cognitive Mapping In Rohinton Mistry’S A Fine Balance, Puspa Damai

English Faculty Research

In this essay I read Mistry's A Fine Balance in the context of theories of Emergency, exception, cognitive mapping, and city studies. After briefly contrasting Benjamin's and Agamben's theorizing of life under the state of exception, I examine Mistry's depiction of life during the Emergency rule in India in the context of Jameson's concept of cognitive mapping, which, I argue, needs to be expanded not only by engaging with theories of the exception but also by expanding it to include a number of totalizing maps that constitute the camp-like landscape of Mistry' s novel.

Politeness Strategies In Wiki-Mediated Communication Of Efl Collaborative Writing Tasks, Mimi Li

English Faculty Research

Informed by the theory of social constructivism and computer-mediated communication (CMC), wiki-mediated collaborative writing has been increasingly implemented in second or foreign language classes. However, to date, no research has addressed students’ interaction and negotiation of their social relationship during wiki-mediated collaboration. Drawing on politeness theory, particularly Brown and Levinson (1987)’s taxonomy of politeness strategies, this study analyzed the wiki-mediated discourse of one collaborative writing group in a Chinese EFL context. This particular writing group consisted of three EFL college students at a southwestern university in China. This article examined specifically how this small group actively engaged in social interaction …

Apple, Daydream, Memory, Rachael Peckham

English Faculty Research

My older sister, Sarah, is the mother of an eighteen-month old girl, a precocious curly-haired toddler who shows less interest in carving a pumpkin than she does lying down in the grass beneath an apple tree. Claire was definitely showing signs of her Aunt Rachael this afternoon, Sarah debriefed in an email last week. She was in her own world. I remember my own worlds, my daydreams. They appeared on the way to school, to weekly piano lessons, church every Sunday. Always in the car, because we lived in southern Michigan, Amish country, landlocked by corn and …

Let There Be Rose Leaves’: Lesbian Subjectivity In Virginia Woolf’S The Waves., Margaret Sullivan

English Faculty Research

This essay analyzes the religious argument that Virginia Woolf, through the paired characters of Rhoda and the lady at Elvedon, develops in The Waves. Specifically, I make a three-tiered claim. First, although both Rhoda and the lady are responses to a Judeo-Christian orthodoxy that, in Three Guineas, Woolf says quieted generations of prophetesses (146), the two differ in their relationship to one fundamental story: Genesis and the Garden of Eden. The lady is trapped in Elvedon, a quasi-Edenic space. Rhoda, on the other hand, lesbianizes the Garden, centering it around her beloved Miss Lambert. Second, Rhoda’s final soliloquy radically transforms …

The Elephants Evaluate: Some Notes On The Problem Of Grades In Graduate Creative Writing Programs, Rachel Peckham

English Faculty Research

This article takes up the "special strangeness" of grading practices in the graduate creative writing workshop, based on the author's research, personal experience, and interviews with the faculty of her doctoral creative writing program. Using a structure of notes, the author attempts to make sense of the way grades are understood by both teacher and student at the post-secondary level. First, she considers why the formal evaluation of creative writing continues to be defined by a system of grades, despite the perceived failure of grades to represent the value of such work, and despite educators' historic and ongoing attempts at …

Introduction To A New History Of The Sermon : The Nineteenth Century, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This is the introduction to A New History of the Sermon:The Nineteenth Century, a collection of essays I edited for Brill Academic Publishers. It discusses the concept and history of "rhetorical criticism," and seeks to lay a foundation for the rhetorical study of the Anglo-American pulpit.