Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Review: Konden Smith Hansen. Frontier Religion: Mormons And Americans, 1857–1907. Salt Lake City: University Of Utah Press, 2019., Tammy Heise

Mormon Studies Review

Through a series of thought-provoking case studies, Konden Smith Hansen breathes new life into Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous (or, perhaps more accurately, now infamous) “Frontier Thesis” as a paradigm for examining Mormonism as a distinctly American religion. This historical survey revolves around a deft historiographical argument that the Frontier Thesis functioned and, in many respects, continues to function as a religion by defining American national identity and purpose not just for Mormons but for all Americans. Hansen’s attention to Turner’s theory serves to reopen an old frontier for historians of the American West, and by uncovering traditional and innovative forms …

Red Balloon, Paris Nilson

Inscape

I am born in a grocery store for the purpose of something important. The moment of my birth is not a large one, and it is not thought of afterward. I live and die in one breath. Today, as with all coming days, is meant to see how long that initial intake will last me. I am, at every edge, a beginning. I am so round and airy like a globe, it is ironic that I should never have been anywhere. This sudden virility is pregnant with a gaseous content; I am imbued with an upward pull, a magnetic longing. …

Angus Stowe Discusses Scotch, Joshua Gage

Inscape

No abstract provided.

An Anchorite’S Meditation On Water, Chanel Earl

Inscape

Here, water is delivered daily, though sometimes in a single day the sun sets and rises several times. I have learned to catch the rain as it drips through the ceiling, to begin rationing when my bowl is near empty, to clean myself with dust. To never complain.

The Buffet Menu, Caley Abliez

Inscape

No abstract provided.

Interview With Derek Otsuji, Ellie Smith

Inscape

Born on Oahu, Derek N. Otsuji is the author of The Kitchen of Small Hours (SIU Press, 2021), which won the Crab Orchard Poetry Series Open Competition. He is a 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholar (Sewanee Writers’ Conference) and has received awards from Bread Loaf and the Kenyon Review. His poems are widely published in local and national journals, including Bamboo Ridge, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Pleiades, Rattle, The Southern Review, and The Threepenny Review. A 2000 graduate of BYU’s Masters Program in English, he has studied with poets Leslie Norris, Susan Elizabeth Howe, and Lance Larsen.

“There’S Rosemary, That’S For Remembrance:” Suicide Ideation And Portraying Ophelia’S Madness, Ian M. Borden, Sarah Imes Borden

Quidditas

Ophelia’s madness in Hamlet is too often portrayed or understood in a generalized fashion. Historical analysis of the play, as well as historical and recent reviews of Ophelia’s performance show how Ophelia has been considered a character controlled by outside forces, and her madness lacking direction or purpose. Applying the concept of suicide ideation to the character’s actions illuminates both our historical understanding of the character, and provides modern day performers a cohesive and focused model from which to draw.

The Fable As A Global Genre: Marie De France, Ulrich Bonerius, Don Juan Manuel, And Kalila And Dimna, Albrecht Classen

Quidditas

As much as recent scholarship has tried to develop a new approach toward world or global literature, the essential problem continues that in those efforts simply writers and poets from the various countries and continents are placed side by side without any consideration of inter- and transdisciplinarity, if not shared meaning and critical exchange. Drawing from the tradition of medieval fable literature, however, we face a truly productive approach in recognizing what global literature could really entail since the various writers across the continents addressed, broadly speaking, the same issues and fundamentally agreed on the critical values in all of …

Coming Down And Bringing Down: Pejorative Onomastic Allusions To The Jaredites In Helaman 6:25, 6:38, And Ether 2:11, Matthew L. Bowen

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Mormon uses pejorative wordplay on the name Jaredites based on the meaning of the Hebrew verb yārad. The onomastic rhetoric involving the meaning of yārad first surfaces in Helaman 6 where Mormon also employs wordplay on the name Cain in terms of qānâ or “getting gain.” The first wordplay occurs in the negative purpose clause “lest they should be a means of bringing down [cf. lĕhôrîd] the people unto destruction” (Helaman 6:25) and the second in the prepositional phrase “until they had come down [cf. yārĕdû/yordû] to believe in their works” (Helaman 6:38). Mormon uses these pejorative wordplays as a …

Развитие Межкультурных Коммуникативных Компетенций В Условиях Виртуальной Учебной Программы: Трудности И Результаты, Лилия Ерушкина, Екатер Ина Смирнова, Анна Нгома

Russian Language Journal

К настоящему времени Национальный исследовательский Нижегородский государственный университет им. Н.И. Лобачевского (далее – Университет Лобачевского) имеет достаточно успешный опыт организации и реализации программы CLS (Critical Language Scholarship) Американских Советов по международному образованию (далее - программа), направленной на интенсивное изучение иностранных языков и погружение в культуру страны изучаемого языка.

Transliterated title: Razvitie mezhkul’turnikh kommunikativnikh navykov v usloviiakh virtual’noi uchebnoi programmy: trudnosti i resul’taty

Translated Title: The development of cross-cultural communication skills through a virtual study program: Challenges and lessons

Abstract: This article describes the experience of designing and implementing a Russian as a foreign language distance learning program for American students …

A Complicated Affair Of Twentieth Century Southeast Asia, Nhi Phan

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

January 7, 2021 marked the 42nd anniversary of the Vietnamese army and allied forces of Cambodian general Hun Sen overthrowing Pol Pot. Although this invasion took a mere two weeks, the consequences lasted for more than ten years with huge losses for both the Vietnamese and Cambodians. After 1975, Indochina has gone through many changes with different regimes; its geography, however, has remained the same. Even though both Vietnam and Cambodia became communist regimes after winning their independence from France in 1975, they experienced different changes in political ideology. The shift in regime also brought along border conflicts between the …

Full Issue

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

No abstract provided.

An Ingenious And Inspiring Literary Analysis Of Alma 30–42, Blake T. Ostler

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Mark A. Wrathall’s analytic treatment of Alma 30–42 is a sheer gift that inspires insight into the theological depth of Alma’s thought. His reading of Alma teases out insights not previously recognized and not easily discovered regarding belief and knowledge and their relation to faith and committed action. This extremely rewarding introduction provides a glimpse at the best any writer in the Latter-day Saint tradition has written on Alma’s thoughts and goals.

Front Matter

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Beautiful Dannebrog, Nebraska, Christie Jensen Gehringer

The Bridge

In June, a yearly festival is held in Dannebrog, Nebraska, in conjunction with Grundlovsdag (Danish Constitution Day). The festival, which observes Denmark’s independence and honors the town of Dannebrog, named for Denmark’s flag, began in 1987. Dannebrog celebrates its Danish Days, known as Grundlovsfest, every year during the first weekend in June; however, the festival was previously held from the late 1800s through the 1930s when it was called Gorbennad (Dannebrog spelled backwards). Driving down the main street in Dannebrog today one can find an antique store, an ice cream shop, and a bakery, which showcase the town’s Danish …

Diversity And Inclusion In The Study Abroad Context: Recruiting Data And On-Program Support Initiatives For The Cls Russian Institutes, Jeanette Owen, Nellie Manis

Russian Language Journal

The authors submit this paper in the interest of sharing the perspectives and experiences of practitioners in the field of study abroad and to contribute to the discussion of best practices related to the recruitment, preparation, and support of underrepresented students with examples related to the study of Russian. The authors recognize that further work on study abroad programming for underrepresented students is necessary, and this contribution is intended to foster further discussion across the field.

Review: Russian For All Occasions: A Russian-English Dictionary Of Collocations And Expressions, Jason Strudler

Russian Language Journal

Russian for All Occasions is an ambitious book that places itself somewhere between a bilingual thematic dictionary and a grammar textbook, while covering an impressively wide range of linguistic contexts. Its authors describe it as “a new type of dictionary” (xxvi) intended to aid learners of Russian in comprehending and constructing idiomatic speech. Theoretically, the project is rooted in the concept of the “communicative fragment” as defined by Boris Gasparov—the idea that indivisible combinations of words, rather than individual words, “provide speakers with the base units for the mnemonic ‘lexicon’ of their language” (xxvi). With this theory in mind, the …

Review: Unlocking Russian Pronunciation: A Supplementary Multimedia Mini-Course In Phonetics Based On Famous Russian Songs, Irina Kogel

Russian Language Journal

Kimberly DiMattia’s Unlocking Russian Pronunciation provides a much-needed supplement to the instruction of phonetics currently available in most Russian textbooks. Combining insights gained from academic studies of phonetics in the tradition of Elena Bryzgunova and Irina Odintsova, with a thoroughly modern approach to multimedia-driven instruction, Unlocking Russian Pronunciation presents the topic in a straightforward and approachable manner. The mini course consists of a textbook and instructional videos, which introduce learners to a hybrid Russian transcription system that aims to make explicit the rules of Russian phonetics. DiMattia’s system is designed to be used as a supplemental resource at any level …

Review: The Art Of Teaching Russian, Olga Mukhortova

Russian Language Journal

The Art of Teaching Russian, a recent volume on Russian language research, teaching practices, and first-hand experiences in constructing a Russian college course, could become the tabletop book for every Russian scholar teaching in North America. University professors, high school teachers, Russian department chairs, deans, and, especially, graduate students will find it not only professionally engaging but also beneficial in several other ways since the book provides brilliant observations on the last two decades of the Russian field.

Full Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Review: Quantitative Approaches To The Russian Language, Olesya Kisselev

Russian Language Journal

The volume edited by Mikhail Kopotev, Olga Lyashevskaya, and Arto Mustajoki is a testament to the reinvigorated interest in quantitative approaches to the study of the Russian language that has marked the past decade and a half. The trend, largely prompted and sustained by the widespread availability of large and well-annotated corpora, that is, digital collections of linguistic data (Kopotev and Mustajoki, 2008), is on full display in the edited volume. The methods and instruments featured in the collection are overwhelmingly corpus-based; however, many of the studies described in the papers showcase how various approaches to the analysis of language …

Introduction, Thomas Jesús Garza, Robert Reynolds

Russian Language Journal

On behalf of the editorial team of Russian Language Journal (RLJ), we are pleased to present this volume of RLJ dedicated to “Digital Humanities and Russian Language Teaching.” As digital humanities (DH) programs and materials enter their third decade in the academy, it is fitting to present here a snapshot of the many and varied applications of digital technologies in the teaching and research of Russian language and culture. The articles in this volume represent the breadth of DH endeavors in our field and serve as exemplars of the aspirations and potential that the future of digital technologies in …

Russian’S Most Frequent Words And Implications For Vocabulary Instruction, William J. Comer

Russian Language Journal

In the field of teaching English as a second language (ESL), vocabulary studies have grown in prominence since the development of the General Service List (West 1953). This list sought to define the most common and useful words in English to provide a focus for teachers in instruction and for learners in developing their language proficiency. Since then, the development of electronic language corpora and concordance software has greatly expanded the ESL field’s capacity for studying vocabulary frequency and usage (Dang 2020). For example, researchers have tried to determine vocabulary size (i.e., how many of the most frequent words) a …

Digital Humanities, Access, And The Teaching Of Russian Language And Culture, Irene Krasner, Thomas Jesús Garza

Russian Language Journal

In their introduction to the January 2020 issue of the PMLA dedicated to varieties of Digital Humanities (DH), Booth and Posner (2020) describe the “interdisciplinary collaboration,” “technical experimentation,” and the promotion of “public engagement and humanistic knowledge and understanding” that DH offers scholars and practitioners (10). They go on to reflect on the past two decades of research and practice in the expansion of DH through information studies, libraries, and departments of English. In a related manner, it is our intention to provide both an overview of the history of DH in academia generally, and also its applications to the …

Introduction To The Special Issue: Emergency Remote Teaching, Online Instruction, And The Community: Lessons From The Covid-19 Crisis In Language Education, Liudmila Klimanova, Jason Merrill, Shannon Donnally Spasova

Russian Language Journal

The COVID-19 crisis took all of us by surprise. Universities and schools, in unprecedented fashion, quickly began to move instruction online. In some universities, the switch to online instruction coincided with spring breaks, allowing instructors a brief period for hurried preparation, whereas other colleagues had only a few hours’ warning. In any case, few educators had previous experience with online instruction, so most were suddenly asked to teach in a completely new way. Despite these new challenges and the isolation necessitated by COVID-19, the language teaching community, in addition to adapting or creating courses for online delivery, was quick to …

To Opi Or Not To Opi: Proficiency-Oriented Instruction And Assessment In U.S. University-Level Russian Programs, Oleksandra Wallo, Molly Godwin-Jones

Russian Language Journal

Back in 1991, Thompson claimed that the impact of the proficiency movement on how Russian was taught in the United States had resulted in something more akin to Soviet glasnost rather than perestroika. She meant that while the introduction of ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and an emphasis on functional ability in a foreign language spurred much discussion in the Russian teaching profession in the 1980s, these developments did not lead to “the actual restructuring of curricula and assessment along functional lines” (375). Thompson mentioned several obstacles to the adoption of the proficiency-based approach for Russian teaching at that time, including …

From Error Annotation To Quantitative Analysis: Patterns In Russian Language Learning, Irina Kor Chahine, Ekaterina Uetova

Russian Language Journal

Although learner corpus research has been progressively growing into an independent branch of corpus linguistics, the learner corpus cannot yet fully benefit from corpus analysis methods. This is due to several technical obstacles involving data collection, error annotation, and finally, data processing. When it comes to data collection, compared to corpus linguistics, learner corpus is biased because some of the learner corpora are still collected manually: Optical character recognition (OCR) is not yet sophisticated enough to transform a student’s handwritten copy to a digitized text. This fact significantly slows the collection of learner corpora. Furthermore, typed students’ texts present another …

Standing In Front Of Van Gogh’S Irises At The Getty Museum, Cosenza Hendrickson

Inscape

No abstract provided.

Resurrection Month, Claudia L. Bushman

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

We tend to have big events and a full month celebrating Christmas, but here we are in a very Christian church that has come to almost ignore the events of the crucifixion and the resurrection. The Last Supper and the events that followed it are the important events of the season. With some planning and creativity, we can immerse ourselves in a Resurrection Month by thinking about the gift of life and promise for the future that we have been given, reading the old scriptures, and reliving the life and times of our elder brother and great teacher.

Front Matter

BYU Studies

No abstract provided.