English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Robert Burns Portraits Revisited, Patrick Scott

Faculty Publications

Illustrated lecture for the 2025 annual meeting of the Robert Burns Association of North America, in Atlanta, Georgia, on the major portraits of the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796), and on the dissemination of the well-known Nasmyth portrait through engravings, copies, and adaptations, charting the delayed emergence of the other portraits now generally recognized, surveying recurrent efforts to get other 'discoveries' accepted as depicting Burns, and suggesting possible dramatic further news likely to come later in the year.

What Happens In The Shadows: Racial Hierarchy And The Policing Of People Of Color, Nanditha Vinod

English and Creative Writing Presentations

In this presentation, I examine the relationship between methods used in graphic memoirs by illustrators to depict and critique political and social inequalities. I specifically analyze the graphic memoir Guantanamo Kid by Alexandre Franc and Jérôme Tubiana, which depicts the brutal experience of Mohammed El-Gharani, who was falsely imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay as a child. I argue that the illustrators manipulate the composition of lights and shadows to emphasize racial hierarchy and the inherent power imbalance between people of color and white bodies that severely restrict agency. The usage of lights and shadows, often overlooked in visual arts, heightens the …

An Illusion Of Choice: An Analysis Of Geoffrey Chaucer's Gender Politic, Katelyn Dunn

JSU Student Symposium 2025

Please note: no video is available for this video.

Male anxieties are the culmination of reactions that men project upon women when the patriarchy is subverted by female means. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer illustrates how patriarchal rule determines the interactions between both men and women by developing complex figures who submit or rebel to the overwhelming societal expectations that dictate the performance of gender. Whereas characters such as Emilye of “The Knight’s Tale” are rewarded for their virtuousness and willingness to obey the demands of masculine society, characters such as the Wife of Bath in “The Wife of …

Engaging Students With Interdisciplinary Learning Community Project For Freshman Composition And Digital Media Students, Hsi-Ling Huang, Xin Xu

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Studies have shown that Learning Communities have many benefits, including “[f]ostering workforce skills, encouraging problem-solving skills, and increasing retention and success” for both faculty and students (Dodge and Kendall, College Teaching, 2004). In this project, we created an interdisciplinary Learning Community Project that allowed a Freshman Composition (FC) course to pair with a Digital Media (DM) course (Sophomore students) for students to work on a mini magazine. Students in FC were writers whose tasks focusing on writing and researching, whereas students in DM were copy editors whose tasks focusing on graphic design and layout. The goal was for students …

Threading The Needle: Teaching Critical Reading And Writing In The Age Of Ai, Emily A. Durham, Andrea A. Berta

Humanities

All instructors--but particularly instructors who must teach students specific disciplinary ways of reading and writing--face a difficult position with AI. Students will need to use AI in collegiate and professional writing, but using AI for assignments can hinder critical thinking skills crucial to analyzing and correcting AI output. This presentation demonstrates three practices from our developmental English classrooms: a critical reading and writing summary assignment, AI-resistant rubrics, and an exercise to help students evaluate AI-generated suggestions on how to review their work. These activities are designed to help students develop crucial AI-literacy skills to help them succeed in an increasingly …

Recognizing Traps And Frightening Wolves: Foxes And Lions As A Representative Of Machiavellian Political Ideology In Shakespeare’S Comedies, Grace A. Powell

Student Scholar Showcase

While William Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets have been discussed time and time again over the past few centuries, one topic that has been less traversed is the connection between his Comedies and Niccolò Machiavelli’s political ideologies. This project will explore references of lions and foxes in Shakespeare’s Comedies and the leaders and monarchs within them to determine how beliefs about Machiavelli’s political ideology influenced Shakespeare’s literature and became symbols for leadership and power. This project will be important for gaining historical context on Machiavellian political discourse and how it was represented in the contemporary dramatic literature of William Shakespeare. I …

James Baldwin's Classroom And What He Can Teach Us About Queer Representation, Matthew Callahan

Scholars Week

James Baldwin writes about the importance of the representation of race in school classrooms in his essay A Talk to Teachers. Baldwin's discourse surrounding the representation of race in schools can be extended to the queer community and the importance of representation in the classroom of these marginalized communities. Combining Baldwin's essays and fiction with educational research, I plan on highlighting the importance of representation of marginalized communities in the classroom and the role that educators play in ensuring that all students feel seen in the classroom.

Oer Presentation To Kcc English Department, Rachel Ihara

Publications and Research

This was for a short presentation to the KCC English Department intended as an overview of the various open access resources in use currently.

Meeting The Next Generation: ​ A Cross-Campus Collaboration Via A Scholarship Workshop, Lora Winters, Ruth Monnier

Faculty Submissions

Reaching high school students before they set foot on campus would allow writing centers to increase awareness of services while also making personal connections to students, which has been proven to increase student retention. Targeting these students can be difficult and expensive, but our writing center collaborated with library services and our admissions office to create a program about finding scholarship opportunities/writing scholarship essays that was inexpensive, targeted local high schools, and initial results indicate that this program is beneficial to our university’s recruitment efforts. We will discuss our findings and how this program could be replicated by other institutions.

Refreshing The Research Process, John Venecek, Rachel Edford

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This presentation was given at the Faculty Center for Teaching & Learning Summer 2022 Conference. It was a discovery session designed to share fresh, innovative ideas for teaching research in an informal, personal setting. The hosts presented on their recent collaborations with instructors before inviting attendees to share their “fresh” approaches to teaching research, ideas for collaborations, best practices, and more.

The Moon Is Down And American Theater During World War Ii, Sally E. Parry, Robert L. Mclaughlin

Faculty Publications – English

This webinar was delivered in connection with the New York's Metropolitan Playhouse reading of John Steinbecky's 1940 play, The Moon is Down, which also served as a fundraiser for Direct Relief, provding aid in Ukraine and the region.

A recording of the webinar is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz17iKCK7BA

Red Bricks And Yellow Doors – Sinclair Lewis’S Portrayal Of The Church In Main Street, Sarah Matherly

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Three Minute Thesis

Good Grief: Emotional Symbolism In Kate Dicamillo's The Tiger Rising, Sadie Barham

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Textual or Investigative

“A Fascination, Strange And Compelling”: Marriage As The Prevention Of Queerness In Nella Larsen’S Passing, Lillianna Wright

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Textual or Investigative

A New Expression: Owen Barfield And The Progression Of Language And Consciousness, Savannah Splechter

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Textual or Investigative

Helga Crane’S Attempt At Obtaining Societal Power, Natalie Abernathy

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Textual or Investigative

The Benefits Of Reading For Pleasure, And How To Instill A Lifelong Love Of Reading In Students, Anna-Catherine Kueng

Student Scholar Showcase

Reading for pleasure has countless benefits for people of all ages, including social, emotional, and intellectual growth. However, one’s love for reading does not appear spontaneously; it is something that is cultivated inside and outside of school. From being read to by parents, to including literature-based social media activities in the classroom, there are many factors that make students enjoy reading. This research explores specific factors that make people want to read and how K-12 teachers can use this knowledge to become better teachers. As the title suggests, the essence of this research is to answer the question: how can …

Finding Eternal Life At The Intersection Of Bergson And Proust, Kelly Capers

Graduate Research Showcase

Finding Eternal Life at the Intersection of Bergson and Proust is a research project that explores the relationship of spirit and matter attempting to answer the question: Does the Proust Effect prove humans have an eternal soul? The Proust Effect is defined as “the vivid reliving of events from the past through sensory stimuli” based on a passage in the novel Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust. Applying quantum mechanics to Proust’s themes of time and memory and philosopher Henri Bergson’s studies of matter and spirit, one can examine how the body and soul connect. Proust’s labyrinth of language offers a …

Best Books Of The Past 20 Years For Ages 3-6, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

Ages 3-6

Selecting books for preschoolers and beginning readers that engage their attention while teaching values, can be an elusive task. We have chosen some titles that that will cause giggles of amusement, some that may bring wrinkles of concentration to little brows, and others that may raise questions for them to ask adults. All are well-written.

Title reviews are taken from See Me Shine: Developing Character Through Books: Ages 3-6

Broadway Goes To War: American Theater During World War Ii, Robert L. Mclaughlin, Sally E. Parry

Faculty Publications – English

No abstract provided.

The Hero's Journey Beyond The Physical, Jasmine Jones

Symposium of Student Scholars

How would one go about integrating a theme of acceptance of self and others into an adventure, comedy, fantasy, and family friendly film? In the film Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the invisible hand of the screenwriters does just that. The importance of this story is in the story structure. The four main characters are used to exemplify how there is an important relationship between plot and structure. Through this, character transformation takes place both physically and emotionally. The characters are presented as four normal people who were sucked into a game and sent on a quest to solve mysteries …

The Matter And (Mostly) Manner Of Mere Christianity, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Presented to a meeting of the Inkling Folk Fellowship (IFF), July 23rd, 2021.

Zoom Session Link: https://youtu.be/F2ZKEPD0YFg

Research Question•Why does Lewis’s work of popular apologetics continue to find a wide readership while other excellent books in the same genre—e.g., Sayers’s Creed or Chaos—do not?

Christianity Today Survey (2000): Most influential Christian books

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1942-44; 1952) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (1937) Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (1932-67) J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (1968) G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908) Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) Richard Foster, …

Desire And Beauty: Ancient Philosophy Molding Modern Cinema In Vertigo, Garrett Johnson, Nicholas Scott Olson

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Textual or Investigative

More Than Misogyny: The Role Of Women In The Ramayana, Sadie Barham, Stephen Bell

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Textual or Investigative

“The Greatest Poet In Ireland”: Yeats’S Changing Perspective On The Sacred Role Of Poet, Lillianna Wright, Nathaniel Ross Valle

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Textual or Investigative

Enriching The American Literary Canon Through Chaim Potok’S Work, Sara Williams, Andrew Walker

Liberty University Research Week

Graduate

Textual or Investigative

The Gilded Finch: An Exploration Of Class Conflict, Mattea Harrison, James Nutter

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Creative and Artistic

The Potential Positive Effects Of Early Childhood Literacy, Mary Ray, Carolyn Towles

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Textual or Investigative

Writing A Fantasy Novel, Sarah Webb

Honors Projects

The goal of this Honors Project was to write and outline a manuscript for a fantasy novel. Worked into that goal was to create a unique magic system, a world, and a pantheon, which was accomplished through research of other fantasy worlds and other mythologies both fictional and historical. The story revolves around the central questions of identity (including the fluidity of gender and sexuality), concerns of future aspirations, and how education applies to those topics through facilitating conversation; these themes are not commonly discussed in mainstream fantasy. The current manuscript, which houses over 42,000 words, also includes a visual …

Best Books Of The Past 20 Years For Children Ages 10-12, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

Ages 10-12

With the thousands of books published for children each year, it is impossible to include every worthy title. In this list we have tried to meet the interests of both genders and a variety of racial groups, putting first compelling plots in which young people demonstrate strong character. In addition, stories must be well-written, attention grabbing, and age appropriate.

Titles are taken from See Me Shine: Developing Character Through Books: Ages 10-12