Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Six Afterlives, Scott Hales

BYU Studies

These poems belong to a series called “Famous White Men in Mormon Afterlives.” They are thought experiments about eternal life and progression. I wrote them (and several others) in May 2018 after reading Mary V. Dearborn’s Ernest Hemingway: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 2017). Reading about Hemingway’s life reminded me of a presentation I attended several years ago on the many times proxy ordinances had been performed for Hemingway and his four wives in Latter-day Saint temples. Latter-day Saints perform these ordinances because we believe that life continues after death, and that the experience of life after death is virtually …

The Demands Of Poetry: A Review Of Collections Published In 2018 By Latter-Day Saint Authors, Susan Elizabeth Howe, Casualene Meyer

BYU Studies

During the nineteenth century, poets had the celebrity status of today’s most famous singers. Most of today’s educated readers (including educated Latter-day Saint readers), however, can’t name five poets who are highly regarded in our generation. But readers may not be completely to blame for this shift. Early in the twentieth century, poets such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, poets later grouped under the term Modernist, took poetry, which had been one of the most popular genres of literature, and made it so difficult—so full of allusions, voices, and fragments of thought not necessarily connected to each …

Sister Saints: Mormon Women Since The End Of Polygamy By Colleen Mcdannell, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

BYU Studies

Because of its freshness and clarity, I predict that Colleen McDannell’s Sister Saints, a history of modern Latter-day Saint women, will become a standard in religious studies courses and perhaps in book clubs among Latter-day Saints as well. It is unquestionably a “crossover” book. General readers will appreciate its lively stories and well-balanced arguments, and students at any level will profit from its detailed endnotes and chapter-by-chapter bibliographic essays. The book is fair-minded but never wimpy. It will provoke discussion in and out of the academy.

Contemporary Mormon Pageantry: Seeking After The Dead By Megan Sanborn Jones, Melissa Leilani Larson

BYU Studies

I believe strongly in the communal nature of the theater. Live performance allows for an exchange between performer and audience member that is immediate and electric on both sides of the conduit. Audience members, swept away by a powerful scene, shift in their seats and hold their breaths; on stage, the actors feel that pleasant anxiety and feed off of it, using it as fuel to go further and deeper with their characters. Theater can be an intense conversation between actor and audience, with the playscript providing a plan for that conversation.

Danish But Not Lutheran: The Impact Of Mormonism On Danish Cultural Identity, 1850–1920, Jason A. Kerr

BYU Studies

In keeping with the title Danish but Not Lutheran, I will begin by saying what Julie K. Allen’s book is not. It is not a history of the Latter-day Saint mission to Scandinavia; see Andrew Jenson’s 1927 History of the Scandinavian Mission for that. Nor is it a history of the mass emigration of Latter-day Saint Danes to Utah; see William Mulder’s 1957 Homeward to Zion for that. Rather, as the subtitle advertises, it is a history that studies “The Impact of Mormonism on Danish Cultural Identity”—that is, this book uses The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints …

“To Seek The Law Of The Lord”: Essays In Honor Of John W. Welch, Alec J. Harding

BYU Studies

To Seek the Law of the Lord is a collection of twenty essays, composing over five hundred pages of Latter-day Saint scholarship. The collection is a tribute to John W. Welch, who established the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies in 1989 and served as editor-in-chief of BYU Studies from 1991 to 2018. Welch has published extensively (521), making significant contributions with his studies on, for example, chiasmus in the Book of Mormon and law in the Bible. This collection was organized and edited by Paul Y. Hoskisson and Daniel C. Peterson, who are both associates of Welch. All …

Eve! Eve! Eve Serves Her Term As A Child A Two-Act Comedy, Kjeld Abell, Kristi Planck Johnson

The Bridge

Translator’s Note: I was asked to translate Kjeld Abell’s play EVE! EVE! by my Danish language professor Norman Bansen at Dana College years ago. Given Abell’s unique style and subject matter, the translating process has not been without challenges, but it has also been a delight. I particularly enjoy the comical text of the play and the subject matter that, to my knowledge, has never been explored. Who knows anything about Eve’s childhood? What about the romantic side of Adam and Eve’s relationship, their family life, or their presence on the wall of a museum? Comedy, especially, takes on not …

The Law Of Moses: An Overview, Dan Belnap

Faculty Publications

During the last week of his life, Christ was confronted by a group of Jewish authorities who asked him, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?” (Matthew 22:36). Christ’s answer, that one should love God with all one’s heart, soul, and might (Deuteronomy 6:5), as well as one’s neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 19:18), was then followed by the assertion “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:40). Clearly, in Christ’s day the law of Moses was regarded as providing crucial instruction regarding one’s behavior both with one’s fellow man and with God, and …

Building Bridges With Bach: Syntegration Of Music And Visual Art, Tara L. Carpenter, Brittany Nixon May

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Hunting For Insects And Metaphors In The Mojave, Mark Graham

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Dead Sea Scrolls And The New Testament, Dana M. Pike

Faculty Publications

Since their initial discovery in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have generated a great deal ofinterest, ranging from responsible scholarly inquiry to public sensationalism.1 During the years 1947–1956, local Bedouin and eventually archaeologists found scrolls and primarily scroll fragments (many thousands of them) in eleven caves proximate to the small archaeological site of Qumran, near the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. Stories of the initial discovery of major scrolls by Bedouin cousins in what is now called Qumran Cave 1 vary in certain details and have been often recounted, as have stories about the intrigue involved in the authentication …

Social Factors In Southern Us Speech: Acoustic Analysis Of A Large-Scale Legacy Corpus, Joseph A. Stanley, Margaret E. L. Renwick

Faculty Publications

Vowel shifts in Southern US speech

• Vowels in the Southern US speech vary within the region and across racial and social group.
• What are the effects and interaction of these factors, measured in a large acoutic corpus?

Are Beg And Bag-Raising Distinct? Regional Patterns In Prevelar Raising In North American English, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Hypotheses: 1. BEG- and BAG-raising are independent. 2. Prevelar raising is more widespread than reported thus far.

Real Time Vowel Shifts In Georgia English, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

How has Georgia English changed since the 1890s? All vowels have changed. What is the trajectory of that change? In the direction of the Elsewhere Shift.

In Advanced L2 Reading Proficiency Assessments, Should The Question Language Be In The L1 Or The L2?: Does It Make A Difference?, Troy L. Cox, Jennifer Brown, Teresa R. Bell

Faculty Publications

When investigating foreign language (FL) proficiency in reading in higher education, one must first determine what proficient reading entails and how to operationalize it. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency guidelines provide a starting point in this process, but they do not provide instructions for assessing reading. Clifford and Cox (Foreign Lang Ann 46(1):45–61, 2013) define proficient reading as “the active, automatic, far-transfer process of using one’s internalized language and culture expectancy system to efficiently comprehend an authentic text for the purpose for which it was written (p. 50).” According to this definition, reading is …

Contemporary Artist/Teacher Meets A Mid-Century Classroom: Practice, Theory And Becoming An Art Teacher, Tara L. Carpenter, Mark Allen Graham

Faculty Publications

Student teaching is one of the most important and demanding parts of teacher preparation. Student teachers balance many concerns, including classroom management, apathetic students, the demands and expectations of a full-time teacher, how to dress, how to get along with their mentor teacher, and how to meet the expectations of the licensure process that typically includes complex assessments of their teaching practices. These case studies illustrate how student teachers may also need to navigate philosophical differences with their mentoring teacher about art, education and classroom management. These differences also create distinct portraits of conflicts in art education between emerging and …

Assessment In The Visual Arts: Challenges And Possibilities, Mark Graham

Faculty Publications

Assessment in art is notoriously difficult and is probably best approached with skepticism. Artistry is notoriously difficult to assess. Yet measures of student learning in art are needed for both advocacy and art education policy. Assessments, particularly large-scale assessments, influence funding and educational policy at all levels. This article explores some of the challenges of assessment in the visual arts and critically examines the Advanced Placement Studio Art Portfolio to illustrate how a product-oriented assessment might influ-ence teaching and policy.

Introduction To The Special Issue

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Russian Heritage Language Speakers In The U.S.: A Profile, Olga Kagan

Russian Language Journal

Brecht and Ingold (2002) advocate systematic efforts to develop heritage language (HL) pedagogy to remedy U.S. language deficits: “…because of [heritage language learners’(HLLs’)] existing language and cultural knowledge, they may require substantially less instructional time than other learners to develop these skills. This is especially true for speakers of the less commonly taught languages” (p. 1).

Russian is one of those less commonly taught languages in the U.S. that is critically important for national security and the global economy. Since the early 1970s, when a large wave of Russian-speaking immigrants began to settle in the U.S., American universities have had …

Heritage Language Learners Of Russian And L2 Learners In The Flagship Program: A Comparison, Olga Kagan, Anna Kudyma

Russian Language Journal

In 2005, a consortium of schools consisting of Bryn Mawr College, University of Maryland, University of California Los Angeles, and Middlebury Summer School was formed in order to launch a Russian Flagship Program. Both participants and NSEP 1 felt that these universities would bring different strengths to the program: Maryland and Bryn Mawr, for example, would attract students returning from a year-long study abroad experience in Russia as administered by American Councils, and UCLA would attract heritage language learners from large Russian communities in both Northern and Southern California. As expected, the first cohort of UCLA Flagship students consisted of …

Teaching Compassion In The Russian Language And Literature Curriculum: An Essential Learning Outcome, Benjamin Rifkin

Russian Language Journal

One of Dr. Olga E. Kagan’s most important contributions to the language education field was a reconceptualization of the perspective of the language performance of heritage speakers of Russian. In the past, heritage speakers’ language was considered deficient in all the ways in which it diverged from Contemporary Standard Russian. Their lack of formal instruction in Russian or the interruption of their formal instruction due to their immigration from a Russophone country to North America was considered the source of numerous errors and anglicisms, which the Russian language curriculum was designed to eliminate. Teachers of Russian as a foreign language …

Fields Of The Mind: An Integral Learning Styles Component Of The E&L Cognitive Styles Construct, Betty Lou Leaver, Andrew R. Corin

Russian Language Journal

The E&L Cognitive Styles Construct was developed in 1997 and copyrighted in 2002 by Ehrman, director of the Research, Evaluation, and Development Division at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), and Leaver, then an associate at the National Foreign Language Center. It was developed in order to organize the proliferation of validated cognitive styles into a single instrument with ten easy-to-understand subscales specifically for the field of foreign or second language (L2) learning and teaching (Leaver 1997, 2000; Ehrman and Leaver 2002). The first two subscales, which relate to fields of the mind, however, have often created confusion or misunderstanding among …

Designing And Integrating A Community-Based Learning Dimension Into A Traditional Proficiency-Based High School Curriculum, Elizabeth Lee Roby

Russian Language Journal

When considering the goals of language instruction, few would debate the importance of promoting a lifelong interest in learning language and culture in authentic contexts through engagement in multilingual communities. The World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages (2015) state that, to meet the Communities goal, students should be able to “communicate and interact with cultural competence in order to participate in multilingual communities at home and around the world” (9). Nonetheless, instructors often struggle to integrate authentic community engagement into the traditional classroom-based curriculum. The first years of language learning frequently include simulations and role-playing scenarios that duplicate situations in which …

Word Order Patterns In The Writing Of Heritage And Second Language Learners Of Russian, Olesya Kisselev

Russian Language Journal

Word Order (WO) variability is an important feature of the Russian language. Appropriate use of WO patterns makes a Russian text meaningful and coherent and has larger implications for the grammaticality of sentences and the ability of the language user to interpret and convey the meaning of the utterance. In the words of the late Olga Kagan, “every learner and teacher of Russian would agree that acquisition of native-like WO is one of the most challenging hurdles on the path to the higher levels of language performance” (Kagan and Dillion 2004, 89). Despite this widely shared opinion, little is known …

Businessmen And Ballerinas Take Different Forms: A Strategic Resource For Acquiring Russian Vocabulary And Morphology, Laura A. Janda

Russian Language Journal

Included in the tasks facing a language learner is the acquisition of a lexicon and a grammar. However, when the target language has inflectional morphology, these two parts of the language-learning task intersect in the paradigms of grammatical word forms because each open-class lexeme has a number of forms that allow it to express various combinations of grammatical categories. Among major world languages, Russian is relatively highly inflected, meaning that the challenges of acquiring vocabulary are compounded by the need to master the inflectional morphology. Even a modest basic vocabulary of a few thousand inflected lexemes has over a hundred …

Lexical Profile Of L2 Russian Textbooks, Ekaterina Talalakina, Tony Brown, Mikhail Kamrotov

Russian Language Journal

Traditionally, the link between vocabulary mastery and reading comprehension has been examined through the prism of lexical thresholds and vocabulary coverage (Milton 2009). Lexical thresholds represent the most frequent words in a language (i.e., lemmas, or dictionary forms of a word) and usually come in increments of 1,000. In relation to the Russian National Corpus, knowledge of the 1,000 most frequent lemmas allows for comprehension of 60% of a text’s vocabulary, 2,000 lemmas – 69%, and 10,000 – 85% (Lyashevskaya and Sharoff 2009, v). These figures support an earlier estimation by Brown (1996, 2), who claimed (without elaborating on what …

«В Каком Контексте?»: A Context-Based Approach To Teaching Verbs Of Motion, Irina Six

Russian Language Journal

Anyone who has studied or taught Russian using the textbook В пути, authored by Olga Kagan, Frank Miller, and Ganna Kudyma, is probably familiar with the following thought-provoking prompt: В каком контексте? ‘Think of a situation when you could say’: Ты звонила домой сегодня? – Ты позвонила домой сегодня? ‘Did you call [imperfective] home today? – Did you call [perfective] home today?’ or Они не приходили. – Они не пришли. ‘They did not come [imperfective]. – They did not come [perfective]’(Kagan, Miller and Kudyma 2006, 79). This is one of the rare examples of assignments where Russian as a Second …

Review: Paper Victory;The Old Woman, James S. Levine, Anna S. Kudyma, Irina Walsh

Russian Language Journal

These two Readers are a welcome addition to the available authentic texts for learners of Russian at the intermediate level of proficiency (CEFR, 2011). Both of these James S. Levine-edited Readers have much to offer, not only in terms of their linguistic accessibility, but also through the way they might improve students’ cultural literacy and analytical skills when it comes to Russian literature. One’s reading skills, review of Russian grammar and vocabulary also stand to benefit from these two valuable volumes.

Review: Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment; Posobiie Dlia Inostrannykh Uchashchikhsia; The Russian Language Journal 68: 3-32, Larysa Stepanova

Russian Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Review: Standards For Foreign Language Learning: Preparing For The 21st Century, Larysa Stepanova, Elizabeth F. Geballe

Russian Language Journal

Although this textbook does not include many explanations of syntactic constructions practiced in exercises, students at this level likely already have other reference materials. Instructors may want to supplement a course with some review, depending on the overall level of the students. The book is of great interest to a targeted audience of readers – those who want to develop their Russian language skills beyond the Intermediate level and to enhance their understanding of Russian culture, particularly the arts. Being strongly communicative in nature, this textbook will be of great help to any instructor of the Russian language.

This final …