English Language and Literature Commons^™

Writing On Demand In College, Career, And Community Writing: Preparing Students To Participate In The Pop-Up Parlor, Kelly J. Sassi, Hannah Stevens

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

The Writing on Demand Unit is an important part of the College, Career, and Community Writers Program. In this article, we review the literature on C3WP; contextualize the writing on demand unit in relation to the other instructional resources in C3WP; explore five big ideas about writing on demand; and describe an approach to teaching this unit that includes some preliminary results of teaching this unit in a rural, Native American high school. The five big ideas that inform its use are the following: 1) emotions matter, 2) everyone does it, so provide reasons for writing on demand, 3) time …

“Thanks To ‘X’ For Beta-Ing!”: Fan Fiction Beta Readers In The Writing Center, Regan Levitte

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this thesis, I pose the question: what can we learn from fan fiction beta reading practices that can be applied to the writing center? Through interviews of writing center consultants who have had beta reading experiences, I consider what collaborative practices they have transferred into their writing center consultant skill sets. This project records how their affinity groups supported their literacy habits, and which dynamics of power and embodiment meant the most to them in these two discourse communities.

Combining historic texts on what ideal writing center pedagogy looks like, I explore how writers could interact with acknowledgement of …

Pronouns In Asl-English Simultaneous Interpretation, David Quinto-Pozos, Kierstin Muroski, Emily Saunders

Journal of Interpretation

Pronominal systems across languages mark grammatical categories in different ways, and this can pose challenges for simultaneous interpretation. Pronouns can also be ambiguous, for example, by collapsing distinctions in some forms or by resembling demonstratives. We examine pronouns produced by a Deaf signer of American Sign Language (ASL) within a TEDx talk and how they are interpreted (simultaneously) by an ASL-English interpreter. Pronouns from both languages were coded and scrutinized for semantic correspondence across the two languages. Robust correspondences were found with some personal pronouns, especially first-person forms. However, mismatches across languages, in particular third-person forms and demonstratives, provide evidence …

On The Wind, Wyatt Georgeson

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

N/A

Ode To Memphis Blues, Lauren S. Cottle

The Crambo

This work describes living in Nashville, Tennessee in 2018 as an angry optimist with an entirely too-open heart.

Colvin, Dianne (Fa 1257), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1257. Student paper titled “A Dialect Study of the Palestine Community [Taylor County, Kentucky]” in which Dianne Colvin attempts to locate a discernible language pattern among residents living and working in the area. Addressing vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, Colvin analyzes a set of surveys, which focused on both diction and syntax. Included in the paper are informant biographies, a map of the region, and individual survey responses.

Data Diving Into “Noticing Poetry”: An Analysis Of Student Engagement With The “I Notice” Method, Scot Slaby, Jordan Benedict

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

This paper explores students’ engagement in reading poems, examining data on their self perceptions of their confidence and competence in reading poems before, during, and after using the “I Notice” methodology as adapted from The Academy of American Poets’ unit plan, “Noticing Poetry” (Slaby, 2017). The data was collected over the course of a month from January 9 through January 30, 2018 and involved five classes of one hundred general English tenth grade students across three teachers’ classrooms at Shanghai American School’s Puxi High School Campus. Data indicates that the “I Notice” method and the “Noticing Poetry” unit and its …

You Are Here: Mapping The World System Of Mohsin Hamid’S Fiction, Terrie Akers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mohsin Hamid’s novels—Exit West, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and Moth Smoke—offer fecund ground for thinking through globalization and the changing world system. Bruce Robbins articulates a working definition of the “worldly” or global novel as one that “encourage[s] us to look at superstructures, or infrastructures, or the structuring force of the world capitalist system." Following on Robbins’s argument, Leerom Medovoi has written that Hamid’s work belongs to a body of literature that “is not so much of or by, but for Americans”—which he terms “world-system literature,” a literary application …

An Incurable Malady? Representations Of Female Madness In Nineteenth Century-Twenty-First Century Literature, Kimberly Sooklall

Theses and Dissertations

From the mad heroines of classic Victorian literature to the depictions of female insanity in modern Western writing, women suffering from mental instability have been a common recurrence at the center of plotlines. This thesis will explore the historical context of madness as a gendered concept by examining several literary works published in different centuries.

The Marriage Of Mimesis And Diegesis In "White Teeth", Brittany R. Raymond

2019 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Frontierwhorlroamer: Eugene Jolas’S Cosmopoetics, Ania Spyra

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The article analyzes Eugene Jolas’ two multilingual poems “Frontier-Poem” (1935) and “America Mystica” (1937) in the transnational context of European Union and hemispheric conceptualizations of the Americas to show how Jolas worked towards a new paradigm and terminology to name the transnational identities created through mass migrations and unstable boundaries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. With poetic sensibility forged at the confluence of the utilitarian jargon of journalism and the irrepressible plurality of the collective unconscious, Jolas’s cosmopoetics offered the universal language of Atlantica, which, paradoxically, was to be both all-inclusive (consisting of essences of all idioms …

Toward A Working Theory Of Queer Hypermedia: An Analysis Of Queer Textual Structures In Gone Home And What Remains Of Edith Finch, Cat Boers

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In this project, I analyze two video games, Gone Home (Fullbright Company 2013) and What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Sparrow 2017), through a queer theoretical framework, focusing on three specific features of the games: 1) their status as open world games, 2) the agency given to players in interactions with objects, and 3) how ambiguous player-character identity is used to create a sense of estrangement in the player. I use these features to argue for a specifically queer theoretical approach to hypermedia, which is attentive to the process of how players create an identity for themselves within the game …

Out Of The Margins: Evolving Narrative Representation Of Women In Video Games, Rowan Lucas

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines narrative representation of female characters in video games and how game narratives and representations contribute to socio-cultural discourse. First, this thesis explores and defines the cultural background for female representation in video games. It then defines video games as a type of text and describes the features that are unique to games, such as the use of avatars, and what impacts these features have on game narratives. The thesis attempts to establish evidence of an evolutionary arc of comprehensive female representation in video games by first exploring historical female narrative tropes, and then comparing them to narrative …

Midwestern Writers Need Midwestern Historians, Bonnie Jo Campbell

Studies in Midwestern History

These remarks were given on a plenary panel titled "Writing on the Midwest," held at the Fourth Annual Midwestern History Conference in Grand Rapids on June 6, 2018. Bonnie Jo Campbell received her MFA in creative writing from Western Michigan University. Her 2009 book, American Salvage, published by Wayne State University Press, was a finalist in fiction for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Freshman Inquiry Writing Seminar: Literature And Psychoanalysis, Sonja J. Killebrew

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

At The Edge Of Monstrosity: Melville, Shelley, And Crane’S Monsters In 19th-Century Literature, Jenna M. Seyer

Student Publications

What is a monster? For contemporary readers, monsters conjure images of things from horror films. My capstone addresses the question of whether monsters, the monstrous, and monstrosity are inside the human or elsewhere. I argue that monsters, when compared side-by-side in literature, are fundamentally the same with some exceptions: evil behind a human body. Through close-reading and theoretical analyses of 19th-century texts, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Stephen Crane’s The Monster, I examine how their authors create monsters as a response to societal anxieties and fears. My capstone expands on passages where human characters surrender to their …

Course Syllabus (Fa18) Coli 110--World Literature I: "Worlds Of Absurdity And Nothingness", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

An approach to the question of absurdity through world literature and a few philosophical and critical texts with a view towards possible modes of resolution

Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari

Theses and Dissertations

In The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness novels, the author Arundhati Roy is not only attempting to give feminist weight to the multiplicity of locations in which gender is articulated by recasting her female characters in their quest for selfhood, she is also focusing on women and women-identified characters as agents of history, thereby contributing to an ongoing project of feminist historiography.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Lib 3065 (Research Methods And Resources For Writers), Christopher Tuthill

Open Educational Resources

This course explores the theoretical and practical impact of information research on writing. Students develop proficiency in evaluating, identifying, and using relevant print and web sources to locate business, government, biographic, political, social and statistical information necessary for in-depth journalistic reportage and other forms of research and writing.

Final Ma Portfolio, James Lamb

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This is the portfolio submission for my Master's in English with a specialization in English Teaching.

On The Fringes: The Monsters, The Voiceless, The Abominations, And The Exiled, Virginia Davis Wyeth

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Peripheral characters/characteristics frequently serve to highlight the problematic societal situation of marginalized groups, even though these characters on the fringes of the text or main characters with unusual attributes are seemingly irrelevant to the primary plot. This portfolio examines, through a teaching unit, the monster archetype and its representation as a means to suppress Other or other within ourselves. The literary analysis pieces also examine the repression of historically marginalized groups, such as women, homosexuals, and children. And the last piece even takes a look at what happens when powerful groups are usurped by socio-economic and cultural shifts.

An Investigation Of Performance In National English Language Examinations In Tanzania: A Curriculum Processes Perspective, Gastor Mapunda

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper is a result of observations of teachers, employers and language researchers that many Tanzanian students who are at the ordinary level of secondary education have not been doing well in their national English language examinations. The results became worse in the 2012 examinations. The current study focused on curricula processes, namely syllabus preparation, teacher preparedness for handling syllabus demands, examination processes, and how all these are coordinated. Using semi-structured interview, questionnaire, and documentary review methods, the findings reveal that there are inefficiencies when it comes to engaging some important stakeholders such as teachers, parents, and learners. Additionally, the …

Fiqws Fall 2018: Phase 2 Assignment Prompt The Exploratory Essay, Sabina Pringle, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

This phase two writing assignment prompt for FIQWS 10003 - HA1 WCGI History & Culture and FIQWS 10103 - HA1 Composition for WCGI History & Culture (fall 2018) provides guidelines for writing an Exploratory Essay in which students will consider the ideas of course readings and compose an essay that demonstrates their engagement with those ideas. The rhetorical purpose of this assignment is for students to demonstrate the ways in which their thinking about language and literacy has developed so far in the course, using evidence based on interpretations, ideas, and examples as well as passages from four or five …

Misassembled Monsters, Jenn Brown

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is a narrative of personal and material history. Through my work in painting, sculpture, and installation, I seek to share my story of emotional armoring in an attempt to connect to an audience. In my work, I look to my personal memories of growing up in a small, midwestern town and armoring myself with emotional barriers against its social construct of “normalcy.” Inspired by Medieval suits of armor and the characteristics of Goth culture throughout history, I employ my work to present the stage of a theatrical battleground. Creating each of my pieces is a fight for the …

Player-Response: On The Nature Of Interactive Narratives As Literature, Lee Feldman

English (MA) Theses

In recent years, having evolved beyond solely play-based interactions, it is now possible to analyze video games alongside other narrative forms, such as novels and films. Video games now involve rich stories that require input and interaction on behalf of the player. This level of agency likens video games to a kind of modern hypertext, networking and weaving various narrative threads together, something which traditional modes of media lack. When examined from the lens of reader-response criticism, this interaction deepens even further, acknowledging the player’s experience as a valid interpretation of a video game’s plot. The wide freedom of choice …

The Mythological Perspective Of Modern Media: Cross-Cultural Consciousness And Modern Myths, Rebecca E. Evans

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This piece assesses the cultural implications of modern narratives that incorporate classical mythology, specifically focusing on the hero’s journey. When the similarities of different myths across different cultures are analyzed, it becomes clear that there are modern analogs that incorporate mythic qualities and cultural values. These mythic foundations are analyzed here in popular works like Harry Potter, Star Trek, and Legend of Zelda, where the hero’s journey becomes an almost universal experience that inspires cross-cultural consciousness. The hero’s journey has evolved from a simple literary tool into a cross-cultural touchstone that shapes narratives into familiar works of cultural significance across …

“The Idea Of Self In The Land Of Self-Help”: Globalization And A Structure Of Feeling In Mohsin Hamid’S How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, Sharmeen Mehri

Theses and Dissertations

Focusing on the novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, this paper examines Mohsin Hamid’s experimentation with narrative structure and the idea of the split self through the context of Frederic Jameson’s dialectic of the cultural and economic dimensions of globalization and David Harvey’s take on Postmodernism.

Final Ma Portfolio, Danielle Mehlman-Brightwell

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio contains the following: training manual, editing portfolio, teaching pedagogy, and grammar research.

They Say It Where I’M From: Using The Language Of Idioms To Compare The Characteristics Of Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Marissa Wiese

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Idioms, proverbs and other metaphorical language are a base component to how people communicate that has to be mutually understood. Slang and common sayings are a fundamental part of language. With language being such a large factor of culture, it’s natural to assume that it would mimic cultural ideals and norms. This study focuses on the cultural dimension Individualism/Collectivism and if the orientation correlates to language usage. The goal of this research is to conduct an analysis of the use of idiomatic expressions in comparison to Individualistic or Collectivistic orientation and setting.

Research of expressions and phrases has been done …

Application Of Narrative Principles To Effectively Communicate Through Graphic Design, Joseph Wright

Masters Theses

From folk tradition to film, story has played a critical role in connecting one person to another. The principles that undergird the construction of exceptional stories may apply to other forms of communication, including visual mediums. Although studies show that storytelling communicates more effectively than simply stating information, the field visual arts has neglected to apply this tactic in its craft. What makes a great story, and why does it have the capability of emotionally moving a person? Why not use the same principles that connect a person to a narrative within the field of graphic design? Because of this …