English Language and Literature Commons^™

Searching For A Nonexistent Childhood, Josh Segalewitz

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

When I started this writing process, I knew that I wanted it to be as personal as possible. I remember a wave of relief coming over me when the topic of Anti-semetism was revealed because, being Jewish with a grandfather who survived the holocaust, it is something that I am very familiar with and comfortable discussing. This was the first major research project I had been assigned, but I found that I had a knack for researching (and even found it enjoyable). While much of the research was particularly painstaking because of the tragic nature of it and its closeness …

My Struggle For Literacy, Kristen Sanson

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

One of my favorite parts of English 100 with Dr. Krummel was the amount of freedom I had writing every essay. There were almost no limitations about what to write, and there were no set boundaries as to what I could do. This allowed me to grow as a writer in ways I didn’t think possible. The very first essay, the literacy narrative, was very terrifying at first. I had no idea what I was supposed to write about so I just tried to write from the heart. I was unsure if I had done it correctly, so one day …

“Classbook Sense”: Genre And Girls’ School Yearbooks In The Early-Twentieth-Century American High School, Amy J. Lueck

English

In the spring of 1908, the students of Louisville Girls High School (LGHS) in Louisville, Kentucky, inaugurated their first school annual, a special edition of the school’s quarterly literary journal dedicated to the senior class. The object of this volume, as delineated in the preface, was “to collect into a narrow compass, and to arrange in a form convenient for reference, and consultation, a choice selection of the remarkable utterances, and pictured thoughts of the great among all classes, but chiefly of the great Seniors among the class of nineteen hundred and eight” (LGHS, Record 2). That is, a primary …

Expanding Transnational Frames Into Composition Studies: Revising The Rhetoric And Writing Minor At The American University In Cairo, James P. Austin

English Faculty Publications

This chapter examines U.S.-based approaches to curricular revision of the Rhetoric and Writing Minor at the American University in Cairo (AUC) through analysis of faculty interviews and relevant artifacts. Through this analysis, and consideration of AUC’s development in the context of changes in Egypt, the chapter argues that U.S.-based curricular approaches satisfied various local needs among AUC’s writing faculty and students. These findings complicate claims within international composition studies, which are concerned with non-reflective export of U.S. linguistic, pedagogical and program models into international sites. This chapter calls for expanding the perspective of U.S.-based approaches to composition studies to include …

Mary Tyler Moore & Her Role In The Feminist Movement, Haley Steward

Outstanding Gateway Papers

First airing in 1970, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was viewed as “TV’s first truly female dominated sitcom” (Reese). As society was being challenged to accept new values that promoted equality for women on both a personal and political level, The Mary Tyler Moore Show had begun to positively portray the realities of the feminist movement. The women characters of the show, Mary, Rhoda, and Phyllis, brought forth many controversial issues that were occurring throughout America during the decade. As early as the pilot episode, Mary Richards, played by Mary Tyler Moore, was everything that a woman of the early …

Satirical Perspectives: A Cross-Cultural Comparison, Mariah Johnson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This paper proposes a cross-cultural examination of the societal satire of the countries of America and Soviet Russia by way of comparison of two satiric novels. Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt satirizes the business values of capitalist America and the materialism perceived in an economic system based on the mass production and mass consumption of goods. Yurii Olesha’s Envy uses Babbitt in intertextual conversation to perform a similar critique of the Soviet Russian society and values of the same time period. Satiric theory provides a framework for understanding and relaying how each novel performs its parody of the respective society, while historical …

Goldman’S Paradox: Imperfect Perfection, Aaron Manuel

Outstanding Gateway Papers

In The Paradox of Punishment, Alan Goldman argues that the mixed theory of punishment is inherently contradictory. Goldman explains that the mixed theory is a combination of two older theories of punishment: retributivism and utilitarianism. The combination of these two theories into a single mixed theory was intended to mitigate these theories’ flaws. However, Goldman asserts that the two theories are incompatible, as justification of one requires dismissal of the other, creating a paradox. While I agree that Goldman’s paradox exists, and that it is logically inescapable, I believe he has neglected several points of analysis which weaken the …

The New Face Of Civil Revolution, Kalen Gray

Outstanding Gateway Papers

"The New Face of Civil Revolution" explains how with changing times comes changing platforms of expressing disdain for modern oppression against Black people of the United States of America. By juxtaposing the Black Power Movement and the Black Lives Matter Movement, this article provides a history of the oppression Black people face in America, as well as the many ways that these separate movements operate. Based on diversity of populations served, leadership, and the ways in which these movements gain supporters, this paper ultimately shows that there is currently a call for a new method of achieving equality in the …

Shaping The Body Of Grief: Converging The Personal, Academic, And Visual In Memoir To Create A Broader Way Of Mourning, Hilarie Ashton

Publications and Research

I have been writing a memoir of my mother’s death since before she died. It began with a piece I started after she moved to hospice care, on the cusp of 2013. I began at my grief’s beginning: writing about the spring of her diagnosis the previous year. I currently have over 100,000 words that trace her life, her illness, her death, my grief, and my (ongoing) healing; the first chapter begins with that first piece, which I will excerpt later on. As I edit, I’m shaping the body of the text, as though it’s a person, as though it’s …

'Welcome To Hell': Writing Parents, Parenting Writers, Rachael Peckham

English Faculty Research

Literary history is populated with plenty of notable parent-and-child writers, across the years (Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley; Andre Dubus II and Andre Dubus III, to name a few)-which is not to place my own parent child relationship in such renowned company. Rather, I'm seeking to explore the unique patterns and themes that emerge where parenthood and the profession of writing intersect. What are the inherent privileges and problems that mark such relationships? How do they develop? To what extent does the parent-writer cast both a shadow and a light on the child's career-and vice versa? How do they negotiate …

Pick Me! Pick Me!: Using Aristotelian Rhetorical Persuasion And Advertising Appeals For Self-Promotion, Alexander M. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

This project combines contemporary and classical rhetorical persuasion and applies them to self-promotion. Aristotle’s triad of modes of persuasion, ethos, pathos, and logos, represents classical persuasion. Appeals from advertising, such as humor, fear, music, and argumentum ad populum, represent the contemporary, but also are modern extensions of Aristotle’s triad. These concepts are then applied in such a way that the reader can see how they could use them to their benefit in influencing others.

Each concept is defined and shown how it can be used in a spoken communicative way rather than a visual representation. Advertising appeals are typically put …

Speak, Little Mute Girl: Representations Of Mute Women In Film, Honor Schwartz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I focus my examination of mute women on three mainstream motion pictures spanning from the Hollywood studio to contemporary era times to explore the ways in which film undermines mute women’s attempts to use alternative languages. Johnny Belinda, Children of a Lesser God, and The Piano are films that display mute women and garner popular attention. I argue that the women in these films use alternative languages (such as sign language and touch) to gain representation and resist the masculine order; however, these women cannot obtain autonomy and agency because of their decisions to participate in romantic …

Rotten Bananas, Hip Hop Heads, And The American Individual: Teaching Eddie Huang’S Memoir Fresh Off The Boat And Its Tropes Of Literacy, Wilson C. Chen

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay focuses on Fresh Off the Boat as an eminently teachable coming-of-age story, provides critical contexts and directions for teaching this ideologically suggestive text, and sets forth the interpretive argument that the structures and themes of the memoir are fundamentally shaped by the literacy narrative at its core. As such, the text enters into conversation with other literacy narratives that have become so foundational in the teaching of multiethnic literature in the U.S. Moreover, Huang’s tropes of literacy draw from enduring, mythified Americanist discourses that are suggestive of a masculine individualism that, while not unique, is recognizable, instructive, and …

Bowles's Up Above The World As Beatnik Murder Mystery, Greg Bevan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Bowles's Up Above the World as Beatnik Murder Mystery" Greg Bevan discusses Paul Bowles's fourth and final novel, which at the time of its publication was met with mixed reactions from reviewers and its creator alike, and has seen relatively scanty critical attention in the years since. Gena Dagel Caponi perceives in the novel a reflection of Bowles's struggle for control, during the time of its writing, in the face of his wife Jane's terminal illness. Building on this insight, the current essay notes the same tension in the writings of the Beats—a movement with which Bowles …

Theories Of Opiate Addiction In The Early Works Of Burroughs And Trocchi, Richard English

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Theories of Opiate Addiction in the Early Works of Burroughs and Trocchi" Richard English discusses William S. Burroughs's and Alexander Trocchi's representations of opiate addiction with special reference to their early writings. English examines the concept of homo heroin that can be attributed to Burroughs and lists and expounds its qualities. Among these are: immorality, criminality, mono-objectuality, self- and other-indifference, and, most importantly, the radical physical transformation into a new species, which Burroughs extends in Naked Lunch. English shows how homo heroin relates to Trocchi's conception of a heroin addict, which serves to illustrate that homo …

Play This Paper: Forms Of Time In The Open World, Branching Narrative, Roleplaying Game, Jimmy Evans

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper is an analysis of chronotopes in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that reveals how the procedurality of video games might suggest a refined heteroglossic form. Synthesizing contemporary american philosopher Ian Bogost’s concept of procedural rhetoric with the materialist linguistic theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, this ultimately hypertextual and interactive article reflects on language as Bakhtin once did: as "agent and agency” (MPL 146). After detailing how the three major processes of the game coordinate spacetime, it is necessary to conclude that its kaleidoscopic nature provides new opportunities for the rendering of the geometry of thought in what is a …

Staging Famine Irish Memories Of Migration And National Performance In Ireland And Québec, Jason King

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "Staging Famine Irish Memories of Migration and National Performance in Ireland and Québec" Jason King examines recent community theater productions about the Irish Famine migration to Québec in 1847. King explores community-based and national ideas of performance and the role of remembrance in shaping and transmitting the diasporic identities of Québec's Irish cultural minority. While most of the plays re-enact French-Canadian adoptions of Famine orphans as spectacles of Irish integration in Québec, David Fennario's Joe Beef: (A History of Pointe Saint Charles) (1984, published 1991) rehearses the history of the Canadian/Québec nation in terms of recurrent labor exploitation epitomized …

Immigrant And Irish Identities In Hand In The Fire And Hamilton's Writing Between 2003 And 2014, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Immigrant and Irish Identities in Hand in the Fire and Hamilton's Writing between 2003 and 2014" Dervila Cooke discusses the intertwining of Irish and immigrant identities. Cooke examines the connection between openness to memory and embracing migrant identities in Hamilton's writing both in the 2010 novel and as a whole. The empathetic and inclusive character of Helen in Hand in the Fire is analyzed in contrast to characters who have repressed memory including the Serbian Vid. Helen's ties to elsewhere, her openness to new influence, and her willingness to engage with traumatic elements of the past (Irish …

Introduction To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided for the introduction.

Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Infusing The Arts Into Science And The Sciences Into The Arts: An Argument For Interdisciplinary Steam In Higher Education Pathways, Christopher W. Thurley

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This article presents an argument for the integration of science into English courses in order to emphasize the usefulness of a Science, Technology, Education, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) education. The idea for this approach arose after the implementation of a divisional initiative to create learning communities with a STEM cohort of students called Student Persistence and Retention via Curricula, Cohorts, and Centralization (SPARC³). The author’s involvement in teaching a science-infused English course for this program inspired the argument that follows, which outlines why/how the sciences should learn from the humanities and why/how the humanities should learn from the sciences. The …

A Historiographical Look Into The Origins Of Jazz, Rachel G. Zinck

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

Historiography handles the way that historians' writings on a given topic has changed over time. My paper, on the origins of jazz music in the United States, takes a particular look at 8 historians, works ranging from 1946 to 2001, and evaluates their arguments. I ultimately make the case for one particular historian as having the best and most comprehensive discussion on the topic.

American Negro Minstrelsy: Good, Bad, Or Somewhere In-Between?, Emily R. Wellmann

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

I chose my topic for this project early in the semester and began researching it soon after that. I used eight sources for my research and wrote an annotated bibliography. This bibliography was a huge benefit to the first draft of my paper, which just included a description of the sources. That draft was peer reviewed and given notes by my professor. The final paper was turned in shortly after, including an additional introduction and conclusion. After receiving my grade from my professor I edited it before turning it in here.

The Weight Of Love, Garrett P. Steele

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This project examines the graphic novel Romeo and Juliet: The War and how it relates and connects to "The University of Dayton's Mission Statement on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition" (CIT). In order to get started on the project, I looked over my notes for the CIT as well as for Romeo and Juliet and made a list of themes that I thought were interesting and that connected nicely with both works. From there, I created an outline, preparing what I wanted to say in the essay and then wrote a first draft of the essay. The first draft was incomplete …

Frank Zhang: Hipster Extraordinaire, Myra C. Tumlos, Garrett P. Steele

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

After the delicate deliberation of the characters of the series Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan, it was decided by both writers that Frank Zhang, son of Mars, is the ultimate hipster demigod. The structure of this essay was based on a simple argument, and carefully dissects the full series in order to really convey who Frank Zhang really is. It was additionally concluded by both writers that as complicated and intricate a character as Frank Zhang is, we wanted the audience to be able to not only imagine the illustrations of the character, but to further empathize with the …

A Simple Syllable, Zach A. Snyder

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This assignment was a simple literacy narrative about some point in my life that helped develop my love for reading. I choose a point early in my life where I had a speech impediment and had trouble speaking words clearly. I got over this difficult time by reading. The only research I had to do for this paper was figure or some smaller details from my parents that I could not remember since I was so young. Other than that all the information came from the deep depths on my mind. There were 3 drafts to this paper, a rough …

The Struggle For Meaningful Education, Maura Cullen

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This assignment was to create an informational synthesis essay that compared two different sources that were discussed in class, and give an example on how the topic has affected my own life. I read Walker Percy's text, "The Loss of the Creature," and carefully analyzed the meanings behind the "preformed complexes" that society pushes on people. Then I looked into Paulo Freire and Donald Macedo's excerpt, Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. This reading emphasizes the implications of literacy, and I spent most of my time trying to figure out the complex ideas that these authors are portraying. …

And The Oscar Goes To, Jennifer M. Rondinelli

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

For my English 100 class, my professor required us to write a comparative rhetoric paper. We were given complete control over what kind of media we wanted to be the focus of our paper and what we topic we wanted to write about. I chose to write about the movie Spotlight, the recent Academy Award winning film that followed the investigative team that uncovered the priest pedophilia scandal in Boston in 2002. I had recently viewed the film and it had an enormous impact on me as a young Catholic attending a Catholic Marianist university. I chose for media …

Superiority In Humor Theory, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article, I consider the standard interpretation of the superiority theory of humor attributed to Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes, according to which the theory allegedly places feelings of superiority at the center of humor and comic amusement. The view that feelings of superiority are at the heart of all comic amusement is wildly implausible. Therefore textual evidence for the interpretation of Plato, Aristotle, or Hobbes as offering the superiority theory as an essentialist theory of humor is worth careful consideration. Through textual analysis I argue that not one of these three philosophers defends an essentialist theory of comic amusement. …

Rhetoric And Performing Anger : Proserpina's Gift And Chaucer's Merchant's Tale., Joseph Turner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Although scholars have historically minimized the relationship between medieval grammatical and rhetorical traditions and Chaucer's poetics, Proserpina's angry speech in the Merchant's Tale represents the intersection of medieval classroom grammar exercises, Geoffrey of Vinsauf's theory of delivery, and poetics. Proserpina's angry speech reveals that her rhetoric is calculated to subvert the masculine power structures that surround her. Such a focus on Chaucer's depiction of women's persuasive tactics helps to highlight Chaucer's deep engagement with rhetoric beginning in the 1380's. Moreover, this investigation asks for increased attention to the overlap between classroom grammatical traditions, rhetorical theory, and medieval poetics.