English Language and Literature Commons^™

The End Of Art Is Peace: Memory, Witness, And Restorative Imagination In Anna Burns’S Milkman And The Poetry Of Seamus Heaney, Sarah Davis

English Senior Capstone

Northern Irish writers Seamus Heaney and Anna Burns both explore the suffocation and trauma of living in civil conflict as informed by their time spent living in Belfast during the Troubles. In her 2018 novel Milkman, Burns depicts a beleaguered community that has succumbed to hypervigilance and learned helplessness. Burns’s characters try desperately to establish normality by twisting memory and refusing to witness the present, resulting in an inability to imagine a future unmarred by violence. In his poetry collections North and Field Work, Heaney wrestles with the responsibility of an artist to such a community, to his art, and …

Broadening The Feminist Ideal: Female Expression In Kate Chopin’S The Awakening And Kathryn Stockett’S The Help, Hannah Funk

English Senior Capstone

Feminist criticism can be difficult to navigate, especially given the sociopolitical contexts connected to feminism all throughout history. In literature, idealized feminist characterizations can often leave less dramatically feminist characters behind, relegating them to a category of characters who are “not feminist enough.” But it is important to understand that these characters are still just as validly feminist as their dramatically feminist counterparts. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, readers see wonderful examples of women who operate in feminist ways, some within the roles that traditional feminist criticism would see as roles which trap them and …

Learning Or Not Learning To Overcome Trauma: Jane Eyre And A Farewell To Arms, Jessica Cutter

English Senior Capstone

In the novels Jane Eyre and A Farewell to Arms, Charlotte Brontë and Ernest Hemingway both display characters that have experienced devastating trauma. In both novels, female characters demonstrate strength and mental support that their male counterparts are unable to reciprocate because they cannot move on from their past. Jane learns that letting go of past trauma will lead to her growth and success in life, which ultimately influences Mr. Rochester to be like Jane, and the novel ends with them happy and mentally healthier. On the other hand, Henry can’t let go of his past traumas and leans heavily …

Seeking The Tomato: Encounters With Beauty In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God And Zadie Smith's On Beauty, Jessica Dundas

English Senior Capstone

When Zadie Smith was first given a copy of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, she was reluctant to read it. But once she did, she found herself captivated by the beauty protagonist Janie Crawford is seeking and encountering throughout the novel. Later in Smith’s own novel On Beauty the protagonist Howard Belsey becomes the inverse of Janie as he intellectually rejects the idea of beauty and ignores the encounters he has with it. Thus while Janie finds that beauty decenters her from thinking herself the center of her world, Howard stubbornly refuses to allow himself to be …

Authenticity In Glimpses: Framing Art And Identity In Virginia Woolf’S To The Lighthouse And Zadie Smith’S Swing Time, Taylor Budzikowski

English Senior Capstone

In their novels To the Lighthouse and Swing Time, Virginia Woolf and Zadie Smith communicate that art frames reality for those who choose to pay attention. Art provides a glimpse of permanence and stability for Lily Briscoe, a young woman who paints her reality while visiting Isle of Skye, and Zadie Smith’s unnamed narrator, a young woman who contemplates her mixed-race background through the lens of dance in London and Africa. These observations encourage Lily and the narrator to consider the perspectives of others amid their own visions. Gradually, Lily and the narrator find and foster their identities by sorting …

Global Language Variation In Online Writing Instructional Spaces: English As A Lingua Franca Among Global Participants In A Massive Open Online Course, Angela May Dadak

English Theses & Dissertations

Two vectors of the internationalization of US higher education—online courses and student diversity—intersect at a point where a broad mix of culturally and linguistically diverse students enroll in online courses, including writing courses. This study applies an English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) lens to examine language in an online writing environment in order to understand how the participants use their linguistic resources to communicate in English across varieties and around the world. This study employs discourse analysis to two discussion forums from a US-based composition MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). More than three quarters of the MOOC participants came …

Creating And Using Open Educational Resources (Oer) In Reading And Writing Classes, Christine E. Hutchins

Publications and Research

Creating her own assignments using openly licensed course materials allows this professor and her students to be more creative and to take greater advantage of digital resources.

Beauty For Ashes: Reflections On Aesthetic Experience And Suffering, Douglas Gilmour

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

In this essay, I examine the relationship between aesthetic experience and suffering, and I specifically explore how and why the former can potentially serve to meliorate the severity of the latter. Of course, that art and beauty can provide a certain measure of comfort and healing to the afflicted is a universally acknowledged truth; however, the reasons why this should be so could be considered an equally universal mystery. “I feel we understand too little about the psychology of loss,” writes Arthur Danto, “to understand why the creation of beauty is so fitting a way of marking it.” By exploring …

Music Therapy As A Treatment For Female Adolescents With Childhood Abuse, Janice M. Dvorkin Psy.D, Acmt, Sierra Belmares

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

This article describes the preference to using receptive music therapy as a modality for helping an adolescent who has PTSD from childhood abuses. Adolescence is a difficult period during the life span. The second stage of separation/individuation provides challenges to almost all adolescents. This article contains a description of the adolescent behaviors of someone who is experiencing the consequences of PTSD. Along with an explanation of why receptive music therapy is an effective therapy with this population is a case study.

Free Battered Texas Women: Survivor-Advocates Organizing At The Crossroads Of Gendered Violence, Disability, And Incarceration, Cathy Marston Phd

Verbum Incarnatum: An Academic Journal of Social Justice

This article recaps my symposium presentation, where I argue that feminist organizing strategies are central to healing our society and creating restorative justice from my perspective as a survivor of occupational injury, battering, and criminalization for self-defense. This includes the creation of Free Battered Texas Women. We prefer to think of ourselves as survivor-advocates who use a variety of tactics to empower ourselves, incarcerated battered women, and citizens. These strategies include pedagogy; poetry and other written forms; art; and legislative advocacy. I blend this grassroots activism with feminist disability theory, radical feminist theory, feminist ethnography, and feminist criminology.

Draft: First-Year Composition Eportfolio Project As High Impact Practice, Jenni Keys

Workshops & Institutes

Abstract: The ePortfolio project will be the culminating formal writing assignment in a two-term course that completes students' first-year composition university requirement. This project fulfills three areas of ePortfolios as a high impact practice:

• Inquiry: Students seek and perceive connections between the course learning outcomes and the experiences in their first-year composition course in relation to their development as writers
• Reflection: Students identify and repeatedly reflect on their personal journeys as writers, answering the questions “what have I learned?” and “how have I grown?”; students consider those answers within the context of their continued experiences as university and life-long learners. …

Teaching Tolerance Through English Language Arts, Samantha Casarella

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio examines the ways in which tolerance can be taught and reinforced through English Language Arts. Substantive research is presented justifying the urgency of teaching tolerance at the high school level and the role that English Language Arts teachers play in the process. Methods of practical application are presented through three separate unit plans, each focused on elevating students’ social consciousness.

Attending To Conditions That Facilitate Intercultural Competence: A Reciprocal Service-Learning Approach, Rachel M. B. Collopy, Sharon Tjaden-Glass, Novea A. Mcintosh

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

Although service-learning can support the development of intercultural competence, it has also maintained power differentials, reinforced privileged perspectives, and strengthened deficit thinking. Recent research has investigated the conditions within service-learning associated with positive change in diversity-related attitudes. We extend that work, conceptualizing a reciprocal service-learning (RSL) approach that integrates conditions posited by contact theory and the process model of intercultural competence into service-learning’s core features of reflection and reciprocity. In an RSL approach, transformational reciprocity at the participant level supports cultural awareness, interdependence, and parity between participant groups. We created an RSL experience and measured change in three attitudes fundamental …

Fun With Grammar, Beena Anil

Teacher India

Activity-based learning can help students to learn grammar. Dr Beena Anil shares practical tips.

Ua37/44 Faculty Personal Papers Gordon Wilson, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Personal papers of Gordon Wilson.

Using Children's Literature To Support Social And Emotional Learning In Third Through Sixth Grade Classrooms, Hayley L. Paljug

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research examined the use of award-winning children’s literature for social and emotional learning, focusing on its use for children in third through sixth grades. The world is ever-changing, and, as a result, the need for children to learn necessary social and emotional skills continues to increase. These skills include, but are not limited to, perseverance, friendship, grit, caring, and the like. It has been found that teaching social and emotional skills through bibliotherapy is an engaging and successful method that can be used by schools and teachers. Teachers or other educational stakeholders can use this document to begin to …

After The Golem: Teaching Golems, Kabbalah, Exile, Imagination, And Technological Takeover., Temma F. Berg

English Faculty Publications

The golem is an elusive creature. From a religious perspective it enacts spirit entering matter, a creation story of potential salvation crossed with reprehensible arrogance. As a historical narrative, the golem story becomes a tale of Jewish powerlessness and oppression, of pogroms and ghettoization, of assimilation and exile, and sometimes, of renewal. As the subject of a course in women, gender and sexuality studies, the golem narrative can be seen as a relentless questioning of otherness and identity and as a revelation of the complex intersectionalities of gender, class, sexuality, race, disability, and ethnicity. As a philosophical motif, the ambiguous …

Drawing Power: Analyzing Writing Center As Homeplace Through Gesture Drawings, Hannah Telling

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

Facing The Horror Of Uncertainty: Using Female Slashers As A Model For Thinking About And Practicing English Literature And Composition, Rose Hall

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

[Introduction To] Writing Centers At The Center Of Change, Joe Essid, Brian Mctague

Bookshelf

Writing Centers at the Center of Change looks at how eleven centers, internationally, adapted to change at their institutions, during a decade when their very success has become a valued commodity in a larger struggle for resources on many campuses.

Bringing together both US and international perspectives, this volume offers solutions for adapting to change in the world of writing centers, ranging from the logistical to the pedagogical, and even to the existential. Each author discusses the origins, appropriate responses, and partners to seek when change comes from within a school or outside it. Chapters document new programs being formed …

Full Disclosure / Now What?, Daniel P. Richards

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

New Possibilities For Field Experiences: Learning In Practice In A University Writing Center, Michelle Fowler-Amato

English Faculty Publications

In this article, I discuss an initiative to support preservice and practicing English language arts teachers in their growth as teachers of writers through a field experience in a university writing center. In addition, I highlight how I modified these plans when our campus transitioned to online teaching and learning in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Demonstrating how teachers grew, despite the challenges we faced, I argue the importance of teacher educators considering new possibilities for field-based teaching learning, particularly during a time in which preservice teachers may have limited access to learning in practice in K-12 schools.

Introduction: The Politics, Praxis, And Performativity Of Teacher Neutrality, Daniel P. Richards

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Digital Literacy Practices Of Transfronterizx Esol College Students: Los De Esol, Laura E. Mendoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation aims to contribute knowledge to the literature about ESOL students' digital literacy practices related to educational purposes. I studied the varied digital literacy practices the students used as mediating tools to perform their university activities (e.g., crossing to come to school, communicate with classmates/instructors about assignments, completing assignments). This study takes place on the U.S. side of the borderland area of El Paso, Texas-Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The participants were 43 transfronterizx ESOL college students, who were young adults between 18-25 years of age enrolled in the ESOL program at Sun University. I draw on ethnographic and netnographic …

A Unit In Victorian Literature, Nina Barnes

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project will be the creation of a unit plan based on the analysis of Victorian Literature for a future high school language arts classroom. It will use Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights as the main trade book that the unit will focus on. The unit will include the reading of the novel in its entirety, with the inclusion of outside sources that act as supplemental information such as videos and articles about the novel or the style of writing used in the Victorian era. The unit plan will consist of lessons for each day of the unit, with specific information …

The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Grease: Ap Students Ask For More Critical Reading And Writing And Less Test Preparation, Heidi S. Lateulere

Masters Essays

No abstract provided.

From Small Beginnings To Large-Scale Harm: On Demagoguery And Misogyny In The Classroom And Writing Center, Shannon Roberson

Theses and Dissertations

My project is grounded in the rhetorical concept of aretê—excellence or virtue—as it relates to education and educational spaces within demagogic and misogynist cultural forces. The problems of demagoguery and misogyny stem from small-scale perpetuation of agonistic norms that go unaddressed in U.S. culture, a culture that is deeply identity-driven. These forces persist on social media platforms and within patriarchal systems of education.

For my project, I suggest rhetorical media literacy education of small-scale demagoguery moments on social media as a way to bring awareness to larger-scale events. On a micro-scale, social media influencers cultivate behaviors that mimic demagogic …

The Effects Of Differentiated Reading Instruction On Reading Comprehension And Self-Efficacy Of Undergraduate Students, Prodpran Cholsakorn

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

This study examined the effects of differentiated reading instruction (DRI) on the reading comprehension and self-efficacy of undergraduate students. The study indicated their improvement in both areas after the intervention. Thirty-three students attending the course of English for Scientists were chosen for the study. The pre-test in reading comprehension and the self-efficacy questionnaire were administered before the intervention. The scores of the pre-test of reading comprehension were used to divide the students into two groups according to their level of reading proficiency: lower-proficiency level students and higher-proficiency level students. The post-test of reading comprehension and that of self-efficacy was administered …

Development Of Out-Of-Class Extensive Reading To Enhance Perceived English Reading Self-Efficacy Of Underserved Students, Chanisara Tangkijmongkol

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Perceived English reading self-efficacy is one of the essential factors that facilitate development of English language ability as it motivates learners to read and learn. The present study aimed to investigate the outcomes of out-of-class extensive reading to enhance perceived reading self-efficacy of underserved student and to explore underserved students' attitudes towards out-of-class extensive reading. In this study, a mixed-method research design, with a particular focus on the use of narrative inquiry, was employed, and the study participants consisted of five lower secondary students in a slum community in Bangkok, Thailand. The purposively selected participants were between 14 and 15 …

The Challenge Of Monoculturalism: What Books Are Educators Sharing With Children And What Messages Do They Send?, Helen Adam, Caroline Barratt-Pugh

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The importance of recognising, valuing and respecting a child’s family, culture, language and values is increasingly articulated in educational policy. Diversity and inclusion are central themes of the guiding principles of early childhood education and care in Australia. Children’s literature can be a powerful tool for extending children’s knowledge and understandings of themselves and others who may be different culturally, socially or historically. However, evidence suggests many settings provide monocultural book collections which are counterproductive to principles of diversity. This paper reports on a larger study investigating factors and relationships influencing the use of children’s literature to support principles of …