English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Communal "I": Exclusion And Belonging In American Autobiography, Melissa Coss Aquino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Communal “I” in American autobiography emerges as an aesthetic response to the pressure of using “the master’s tools” to write from a community on the margins to disclose identity in the conflicts of exclusion and belonging. In this case “the master’s tools” to refer to several distinct elements the communal “I” is tasked with navigating: the use of what we have come to identify as standard English, the form and function of European autobiography as a celebration of individual exceptionalism, and the contradictory pressures on these autobiographies to both elevate and protect the communities in question from further marginalization. …

Looking At The Onlookers: The Attitudes Of Women's Wwi Poetry, Kaitlyn M. Hodges

Honors College Theses

The poems concerning WWI written by women reflect different attitudes about the concept of war and can be grouped into categories based on their stances toward the Great War. The most familiar feminine voice in the poetry of WWI illuminated a nationalistic and glorified view of war, where fighting (and dying) for a just cause outweighs any possible loss of life or limb. Running counter to this sentiment is a strain of poetry that calls into question the jingoistic and ill-informed opinions of the former group. Alongside these antipathetic groups there was a third, more meliorated, set of voices. These …

17th Edition Of The Laureate, Jessie Fales

Honors Theses

The Laureate is an undergraduate literary journal sponsored by the Lee Honors College at Western Michigan University. As Editor in Chief of the 17^th Edition, I coordinated the journal’s publication over the course of an academic year. The editorial process follows methodical stages, which have become standard over The Laureate’s lifetime—recruiting submissions, selecting submissions, coordinating with the design center, and hosting a launch party, etc... Of course, every editor has a unique experience, but we must honor the journal’s entity as something larger than ourselves—this journal has existed long before my time, and I hope it keeps on …

"What A Strange And Wonderful Story!": Literary Research And College Writing, Chloe Beam, Payton Charmichael, Amara Dike, Abigail Stewart

Collin College Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Student Research Conference

Panel Chair: Scott Cheney, Collin College

From Heo To Zir: A History Of Gender Expression In The English Language, Brodie Robinson

Senior Honors Theses

With the growing presence of the LGBTQ+ community on the global stage, the matter of gender has been rushed to the forefront of the public consciousness. News outlets have hotly debated the topic of gender expression, a topic which has motivated mass demonstrations and acts of violence, and this has promoted a linguistic conversation at the international level.

This thesis is intended to provide the historical context for the contemporary debate on gender expression in the English language, and explores both the grammatical background (the Indo-European origins of linguistic gender, the development of the modern pronoun system, etc.) and the …

Visitor Parking Only, Jeremy Caldwell

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

VISITOR PARKING ONLY is a thesis comprised of 40 poems and a fifteen-page introduction that travels simultaneously through the climatic seasons and familial generations, creating a cyclical effect of inevitable loss and regrowth. The poems start in late spring, early summer and dive into adolescent wonder, vulnerable, and loss of innocence. Gradually as the seasons change so does the speaker, diving into young adulthood and parenting and the sense of responsibility, guilt, and confusion that has played such a large role in developing me as a person. The poems transition into the winter months where older generations, such as my …

Re-Embodying Our Discipline, Chelsea Dryer

Theses

This Master's Thesis uses personal narrative and scholarly works to examine the benefits of embodiment in literary studies. Special attention is given to how lived experience can provide legitimate sources of academic evidence when examining texts and that texts can be used to integrate, examine, and reframe lived experiences.

Michalski Ma Portfolio: Finding My Path, Victoria L. Michalski

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio is the culmination of my work in the English Teaching specialty Master's program at Bowling Green State University. In addition to the works I produced for my classes and subsequently re-wrote for my portfolio, I've added an analytical reflection about my growth and evolution during my studies in the English MA program, and about overcoming my difficulties until I finally found the connection between English and historical interests that I sorely needed in order to heighten my enthusiasm and motivation. This reflection brings together the reasons I chose the works in my portfolio to represent my initial discomfort …

The Women Of Brave New World: Aldous Huxley And The Gendered Agenda Of Eugenics, Jessica Eylem

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

Eugenics is the belief that the human race can rid of unwanted characteristics by using science. As this belief became more widely known through the Nazi’s raise to power and their use of ideologies maintained by fear, scholars began to take note of its rise in academic circles and the followers behind it. Authors began incorporating these ideas into their novels as a way of commenting on the future of our world if eugenic practices continued. In this article, I discuss how the concept of eugenics is used in dystopian novels, especially during the interwar period. It explores Aldous Huxley’s …

A New Way Of Speaking: Jonathan Safran Foer’S Everything Is Illuminated And Effective Forms Of Holocaust Literature, Elizabeth A. Bentley

Honors College Research

This paper examines the use of broken English, magic realism, and nonlinearity in the novel Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, arguing that such nontraditional narrative techniques are appropriate for depicting the Holocaust, which cannot be represented by conventional narrative form. This paper also examines the ethicality of creating a fictional work about the Holocaust: I argue that Foer distinguishes well between that which is meant to be taken literally and that which is meant to be understood symbolically, and that he in no way compromises the essential core of truth of what occurred during the Nazi genocide.

Existence, Emotion, And Expression: Tragic Elements Within Shakespearean Sonnets, Luisa Pennington

2018 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

Fiqws: Writing And Social Justice, Thomas Peele, Caitlin Geoghan

Open Educational Resources

The syllabus describes a FIQWS course in which students explored social justice themes.

Notes From Underground: Fugitive Ecology And The Ethics Of Place, Sarah L. Lincoln

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this essay, I argue for “fugitive gardening” as a form of “poaching” or “resignifying,” a radical appropriation of hegemonic spaces and practices that both deconstructs the logics of mastery and hygienic possessiveness that underpin colonial culture, and articulates what we might call a fugitive ecology: a dispossession of self in relation to the environment, a refusal to conceive of land, soil or planet in terms of property. Fugitive gardening sets itself in opposition to the prisons, camps and forts that index South African political history, restorying place, environment, and the self as grounds for community formation, dialogue and cooperation. …

Listening To Earth Stories: An Interview With Swarnalatha Rangarajan, Sufina K, Bhuvaneswari R

The Goose

In this interview with Dr. Swarnalatha Rangarajan, a well known Indian ecocritic and a pioneer of Indian ecocriticism, discusses ecocriticism, her novel The Final Instructions, and a wide range of Indian environmental writing.

Problem-Based Teacher-Mentor Education: Fostering Literacy Acquisition In Multicultural Classrooms, Pamela Hartman, Corinne Renguette, Mary Theresa Seig

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

We designed a professional development (PD) teacher-mentor program that used problem-based learning (PBL) to accomplish two goals. First, teachers explored how PBL could be used effectively in their classrooms to change the way they think about teaching to include literacy development in content areas. Second, PBL was the basis for PD training to help them improve their own knowledge of PBL, become mentors to other teachers, and implement PBL in their schools across content areas.

Educators in the United States are challenged to teach linguistically and culturally diverse (LCD) students with differing literacy levels. The demographics of U.S. classrooms require …

The Sting In The Green City, Nicole Tsakoumagos

ETD Archive

In an irradiated, alternate earth, where a mysterious supernatural phenomenon caused a near-apocalypse, the human race is back on it’s feet. Four major cities dominate the landscape: New Sparta, The Mel, The Nocturn and Oz. In the first installment of “The Sting” series, explore the emerald, Greene Mob run metropolis, Oz. Gun-slinging, Ex-mercenary Kyra `The Sting’ Lee is living quietly in the outer part of the city with her dog, Doogie. The only family she has are the Castellanoses, a Greek four-part ensemble that own Kyra’s favorite greasy spoon diner. Maria Castellanos is Kyra’s best friend and her seemingly unobtainable …

First Person Plural: Short Stories, Justin R. Lazor

ETD Archive

I decided to title this collection First Person Plural after observing that one of the most prominent motifs common among these stories concerns the instability and multiplicity of identity. Horror is one of the traditions that most influences my writing, particularly the claustrophobic psychological horror of writers like Edgar Allen Poe. I mainly deploy the tropes of horror in an effort to destabilize my characters’ inner and outer realities. Another important influence on my writing has been that brand of fiction which exists within the liminal space between horror and realism, such as Dan Chaon’s collection Stay Awake, Bringing Out …

Mauritian Literature Versus The Cambridge International Education System, Iman Gareeboo

Honors Program Theses

The motivating issue that drove me to compare Mauritian literature and the public literary education system is my fascination at the fact that the school system is British while the majority of popular Mauritian literature is written in French, with a burgeoning subgroup of works written in Mauritian Kreol. I cannot explain the divide, and many Mauritian students do study French language and (limited) literature, but I seek to show that Mauritians should be interested in their own literature and that they should actively question their British education.

The Dmz Responds, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Seo-Young Chu’s “The DMZ Responds” appeared in Telos 184 (Fall 2018), a special issue on Korea edited by Haerin Shin.

Bibliography For Interstices 2018: Beyond Human: Emotion And Ai, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker

Library Displays and Bibliographies

An annotated list of materials in the Leatherby Libraries to accompany the Interstices 2018: Beyond Human: Emotion and AI event held at Chapman University in February 2018. The event featured Lisa Joy, co-creator and executive producer of HBO’s Emmy winning hit series Westworld, Jon Gratch, Director for Virtual Human Research at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Institute for Creative Technologies and Caroline Bainbridge, a Professor of Psychoanalysis and Culture in the Department of Media, Culture and Language at the University of Roehampton London. The Leatherby Libraries also hosted two book club discussions of The Positronic …

Review Of John James Audubon: The Nature Of The American Woodsman, By Gregory Nobles, Matthew Guzman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

When we think about American ornithology, John James Audubon is often the first name that comes to mind. As evidence to Audubon’s lasting ability to enrapture readers, it bears repeating that an original Double Elephant Folio of Birds of America sold for an astounding $11.5 million in 2010 (2). Yet, for a man who produced such stunning and memorable visual and literary work on the avifauna of North America, some of the important details of his life and origins have remained highly contested. Even though Gregory Nobles’s new biography is not explicitly tied to the study of the Great Plains, …

Disarming “Nature” As A Weapon: A Queer Ecosemiotic Reimagining Of Futurity And Environmental Ethics Through Memoir, Sam Lauer

Master’s Theses

In this thesis, I posit that the need for an active, conscious, and radical queering of ecocriticism as a literary and cultural theory has arisen in light of the postmodern problematization of “nature” and the “natural,” along with the queerness of society, culture, and science. The way we understand “nature” (in life and in texts), whether of physical environments, inherent selfhood, or normalcy, begs to be appropriately informed by discourses and realities of queerness in order for both social and environmental healing to take place. I have analyzed three works of queer creative nonfiction—memoirs—to illuminate the ways in which the …

Rhetoric, Salience And The Reader In The Saddle: A Response To James Phelan, David Richter

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Player’S Journey: Ludology And Narratology In Modern Gaming, Angelica Fuchs

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the evolution of gaming criticism (specifically ludology and narratology) and games as a medium of expression through the use of case studies. These case studies look at some of the core aspects of four major titles (The Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, various BioWare games and Journey) and survey how these games work to effectively employ a narrative while maintaining an immersive, intuitive system for the player to interact with. Through these titles, the thesis suggests that in order to gain a full scope of a game’s intentions, studies should analyze more than …

Final Ma Portfolio, Jessica Goodman

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

A Final Portfolio submitted to the English Department of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of English with a specialization in English teaching. The first project is a syllabus for a course on American protest literature. The second project is a five-week major assignment plan focusing on identity and rhetorical writing choices. The third paper is a theory and practice synthesis of empowering literacy alongside a checklist for teachers who wish to include empowering literacy in their classrooms. Finally, the fourth item is a revision (re-vision) …

Cross-Curricular Writing In Mathematics For Comprehension, Kirsten Stowell

Honors Theses

Even though the idea of implementing writing in a mathematics classroom is far from new and the benefits from doing so are hardly nonexistent, this concept is often not found in modern secondary mathematics classrooms. Writing about mathematics allows students to organize and communicate their thinking, gain a better conceptual understanding of mathematical topics, develop a stronger sense of mathematical procedure, move beyond surface-level thinking, and place abstract ideas into context. Writing can also be used by teachers as a formative assessment to explicitly determine if students are struggling conceptually or procedurally in a mathematics classroom to then adjust instruction …

Promoting Student Success: Bilingual Education Best Practices And Research Flaws, Lillian Fassero

Senior Honors Theses

This paper first determines the benefits which bilingual education offers and then compares transitional, dual-language, and heritage language maintenance programs. After exploring the outcomes, contexts, and practical implications of the various bilingual programs, this paper explores the oversight in most bilingual studies, which assess students’ syntax and semantics while neglecting their understanding of pragmatics and discourse structures (Maxwell-Reid, 2011). Incorporating information from recent studies which question traditional understandings of bilingualism and argue that biliteracy requires more than grammatical and vocabulary instruction, this paper proposes modifications in current research strategies and suggests best practices for transitional, dual-language, and heritage maintenance programs.

Uncollected Essays, D. W. Robertson Jr., Paul A. Olson

Zea E-Books Collection

Foreword by Paul A. Olson • Buzones, an Alternative Etymology • The Manuel des Péchés and an English Episcopal Decree • Correspondence – The Manuel des Péchés • A Note on the Classical Origin of ‘Circumstances’ in the Medieval Confessional • A Study of Certain Aspects of the Cultural Tradition of ‘Handlyng Synne’ • The Cultural Tradition of Handlyng Synne • Marie de France, Lais, Prologue, 13-16 • Cumhthach Labhras an Lonsa • Chaucerian Tragedy • St. Foy among the Thorns • Amors de terra lonhdana • The Subject of the De Amore of Andreas Capellanus • …

Identifying Problems And Solutions In Changing State Legislation Regarding Licensed Clinical Social Workers Providing Private Independent Mental Health Services, Dianna Cooper-Bolinskey

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

State regulated social work practice began in the 1960s; by the mid-1990s, all of the states within the United States regulated the profession through licensure. The purpose of licensure was ostensibly to protect the public and the profession; however, legislation defining social work practice varied vastly from state to state. The variation existed not only between states, but also within licensure categories with regard to the scope of practice of the social work profession. Licensed clinical social workers in some states could practice relatively independently, as they had the ability to diagnose, provide psychotherapy, and bill Medicaid, Medicare, and third …

Designing For Human-Machine Collaboration: Smart Hearing Aids As Wearable Technologies, Krista Kennedy

Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition - All Scholarship

This study examines design aspects that shape human/machine collaboration between wearers of smart hearing aids and their networked aids. The Starkey Halo hearing aid and the TruLink iPhone app that facilitates real-time adjustments by the wearer offer a case study in designing for this sort of collaboration and for the wearer’s rhetorical management of disability disclosure in social contexts. Through close textual analysis of the company’s promotional materials for patient and professional audiences as well as interface analysis and autoethnography, I examine the ways that close integration between the wearer, onboard algorithms and hardware, and geolocative telemetry shape everyday interactions …