English Language and Literature Commons^™

When Mentor Texts Fail, Build More Bridges, Deborah Dean

The Utah English Journal

I was teaching a writing class and students were writing research-based papers, an expectation of the course and one that met several learning standards. I understood the course expectations, but I wanted to move away from the traditional, school-based "research paper," a genre I disliked reading and students disliked writing, to a genre I was willing to read and one that exists in the real world: TED talks. I thought that if we focused on informational TED talks, we would meet the expectations for the course but also create a more interesting and transferable learning experience for them and-I hoped-one …

Lighting Fires: Inspiring Lifelong Reading, Jessica Ashurst

The Utah English Journal

It's a real problem: to this day, I've loved every single book my English teachers have placed in my hands, falling in love with Ponyboy, cheering on Jonas when he snuck out of The Community, and crying through the pages where Billy lost both Old Dan and Little Ann.

But when I became an English teacher, I mentally braced myself that not all of my students would love reading as I do. The majority of my students consider themselves "non-readers" and they claim that the main culprit of this problem is that they are "required" to read books. I mustered …

The Genre Reading Challenge, Georgina Dibble

The Utah English Journal

When I walked into my own classroom for the first time five years ago, I was met with the stark reality of students with low reading levels, low comprehension, kids who didn't read, didn't like reading, and adamantly believed that they couldn't read. But, fresh out of college, I was also coming armed with the words of Donalyn Miller, Kylene Beers, Kelly Gallagher, and more, ready to transform my students into life-long, independent readers who read just for the pure joy of it. If you're rolling your eyes at my optimism, I don't blame you. But the research surrounding reading …

Discoveries And Decisions Regarding Classroom Library, Amanda Thomas

The Utah English Journal

One of the great benefits of being a classroom teacher-a perk that drew me to the profession-is that my classroom becomes a rare combination of office and second bedroom. Naturally, a teacher wants to keep the decor somewhat relevant to the subject area and avoid anything that might cross boundaries of propriety, but there's a lot of wiggle room to show personal touches, passions, hobbies, and flair.

Fanboys, Pow, & Mount Plot: Mnemonic Devices Used In Teaching Writing, Sarah Anderson, Alexa Bills, Kaitlyn Conlin, Eve Crawford, Natalie Eggli, Jenae Grant, Lilly Hammer, Andrew Isaacson, Kassandra Jimenez, Ryan Mansfield, Brindley Rowley, Samantha Stringham, Meghan Waldenberg, Brady Wallis, Joyce Kinkead

The Utah English Journal

Cicero ( 106-43 BCE) was renowned during his lifetime and influential long after as an extraordinary orator and writer, able to recall long speeches from memory. A technique termed the memory palace, which associates memory with locations-also called method of loci-enabled ancient rhetoricians to deliver stimulating speeches. Retention of information was essential for delivering speeches not just because it was impressive but also due to the paucity of writing materials. Writers and orators relied on wax tablets that could be inscribed with a stylus but could not archive the text; as a result, the information had to be memorized, part …

Musical Notes For Literature, Jake Rees

The Utah English Journal

I try not to say the f-word very often in class, but I can't do anything about my students using it. True, they usually put a qualifier in front of it: "sort of fun," "kind of fun," and (cringe) "lowkey fun."

Here's the activity they're talking about: We start most classes listening to a song (usually just a portion of it--my students and I quickly learned that a repetitive chorus is intolerable for everyone in this context). I project the lyrics on the board, and we talk about what we notice. That's it.

Traveling Through Text: Deepening Student Analysis By Creating Literary Explorers, Jennie Lafortune

The Utah English Journal

As teachers, we all experience the moment of the pause. We do as we're taught and wait for students to collect their insightful answers to our brilliant question and the seconds .. . tick. .. by. Instead of eager hands shooting up, a student dance ensues in unison and undirected: heads slant, hoodies up, eyes down.

How do we as teachers help bridge the gap and provide a map to help students find their ideas and confidence in literary and text analysis? How do we assist students to help themselves take their analysis paralysis to a meaningful understanding or interpretation? …

Book Review: Furia, Katie Romrell

The Utah English Journal

This beautiful story of an Argentinian young woman who desperately wants to play futbol (soccer) pulls no punches in its complex exploration of latent and explicit sexism, abuse, and of breaking the cycle with a tenacity dutifully shown on-and off-the field.

Book Review: Punching The Air, Jennifer Stewart

The Utah English Journal

Through art and music, 16-year-old Amal Shahid tries to break the boxes that he is constantly confined to by his peers, family, and his art teacher, but mostly by a racist system that is always pressing down on him. Eventually, these boxes get progressively smaller and darker as Amal is blamed for his friends' poor behavior and is wrongly convicted. While incarcerated, Amal feels suffocated until he realizes that he can find peace and healing both in his art and his words.

Teach 'Em To Write, Craig Jeppson

The Utah English Journal

One day I observed a teacher ask students to answer a question in writing and hand it in as an exit ticket, something we have all done, right? Here's the thing: the teacher had taught an engaging lesson, but the responses didn't give evidence of that. Instead, they were one or two sentences long, containing information vaguely related to the lesson. That experience prompted me to work up the following model for expository writing. The model isn't revolutionary, mostly what teachers in any content area will recognize.

Book Review: Somewhere Between Bitter And Sweet, Emily Brown

The Utah English Journal

Laekan Zea Lemp's debut novel, Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet, is a story about dreams and fears in a vibrant Latinx community. Penelope Prado dreams of opening her own pasteleria next door to her father's restaurant, Nacho's Tacos, where she currently works. However, her parents have different plans for her life--plans that involve college and leaving their struggling family business behind to find greater opportunities. Now, she not only fears disappointing them but also fears her own weaknesses will keep her from ever realizing her dream. When she reveals a disappointing secret to her parents, Pen is immediately forced to …

Partnering With Your Local Public Library, Amy Banks

The Utah English Journal

School libraries are an excellent resource for English classes, often serving as a central hub for research and literacy. But it is not the only library schools can access: public libraries can also support English classrooms. After teaching English in junior high and high school, as well as teaching adjunct writing classes at Brigham Young University, I shifted into librarian work, where I now design after-school reading, writing, and social programs for teens and adults.

Book Review: Race Against Time, Amanda Burrows

The Utah English Journal

US Supreme Court, 1923. More than 50 years after the ratification of the 14th amendment and the end of the Civil War, the promise of" equal protection of the laws" was under attack. Moore vs Dempsey was the first case where the federal court overturned the ruling of a state court; more significantly, it was the first case to rule in favor of a black defendant. Four years earlier, in Elaine, Arkansas, a meeting of sharecroppers at a local church had been bombarded with gunfire. After a few days of rioting, -five white men and an uncounted number of black …

The Utah English Journal, Volume 50, 2022: Full Issue

The Utah English Journal

No abstract provided.

Racial Spatial Relationships In Claudia Rankine’S Citizen, Thomas Jenson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine addresses topics from segregation to police brutality to indicate the extreme spatial relationships between racial groups. Her work reveals the geographic mechanisms that confine African Americans to certain locations as well as the coerce them to violently share space with their white counterparts. Drawing upon spatial theory, which exposes the structures of unjust geography, my analysis also considers language as an additional spatial force that harms the black community as much as more physical phenomena.

“Boys Will Be Boys”: Antithetical Boyhood In Claudia Rankine’S Citizen, Madilyn Abbe

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This paper explores Claudia Rankine’s work Citizen: An American Lyric and how the text applies boyhood and manhood differently to white and black males. The text subverts these terms’ straightforward relationship with actual age, instead recognizing them as reverse age categorizations. While these contradictory applications minimize black men through infantilization and expedite the maturation of black children, these same converse categorizations excuse the violence of white men. Through this distinction, Citizen exposes childhood as a subjective categorization to benefit white power. To address the resulting self-fragmentation for African American males, I maintain that the text proffers storytelling as symbolic mothering …

Sacramental Aesthetics: A Herbertian Reading Of John Dewey, Hayley E. Langton

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

I argue that a Herbertian reading of John Dewey’s aesthetic theory reveals his aesthetics as sacramental and offers a new lens through which to understand the functioning of Herbert’s rhetoric as well as Dewey’s philosophy. In turn, the sacramental qualities of Dewey’s aesthetic theory make a compelling argument for a postsecular interpretation of his work. First, I posit Herbert’s poetry within The Temple as sacramental; second, I discuss Dewey’s theory and the way Herbert follows it in structure; lastly, I highlight the ways in which this reading renders Dewey’s aesthetics as sacramental and outline the implications of this reading for …

Another Paris: Gabriel And Greek Mythology In “The Dead”, Rebekah Olsen

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

The works of James Joyce, including his short story collection Dubliners, have been studied to distraction by academics throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this paper, I expound on ideas of Edwardian masculinity in Joyce's "The Dead," as well as the links between the myth of the Judgement of Paris and Gabriel's experience with the three key women in the story: Lily, the maid, Molly Ivors, the modern woman, and Gretta, Gabriel's wife. These women are first perceived as graces, merely ornamental figures, but they force their personhood onto Gabriel, and he is shocked by their deviation from his …

Existential Orwell: Capitalism, Religion, And Philosophy, Eliza A. Morgan

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Orwell wrote in the same 1930s Europe as existentialist philosophers: most notably, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. We know, through his critique of Sartre’s “Portrait of an Antisemite” (Coombes 12), that Orwell was active in these circles, well enough to critically evaluate absurdist theories. As such, it’s long overdue to discuss how the concept of existentialism may have shaped Orwell’s beliefs, specifically in two of his contemporary novels, The Clergyman’s Daughter and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. The purpose of this paper is to argue that existentialism, specifically the ideas of bad faith and absurdism, played a pivotal role for Orwell …

The Library Of Fiction: A Critical Edition Of Volume One (1836), Payton Marie Andreadakis, Joslyn Cristine Bishop, Catherine Ava Eliason, Marissa Nicole Fuller, Ariel Renae Hochstrasser, Jeanie Hope Jones, Elyse Christine Kunzler, Anna Sophia Lamb, Rebekah Olsen, Addison Paige Schenk

Student Works

In Summer of 2021, the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at the Harold B. Lee Library acquired volumes one and two of a collection of short stories called The Library of Fiction, or Family Story-teller. The first volume of this collection, originally released in monthly installments published by Chapman and Hall beginning in April of 1836, contains 42 pieces of literature written by a number of Victorian authors. Some of these authors (like Mary Russell Mitford, Edward Mayhew, G. P. R. James, and W. H. Wills) were popular in their time but have been largely forgotten. This is not …

Book Review: The Sound Of Stars, Megan Russell Harbin

The Utah English Journal

One glance at Alechia Dow's stunning cover for The Sound of Stars drew me in, but I wasn't prepared for the beautifully told, relevant story that followed.

The Sound of Stars is written from two, distinct perspectives: Janelle (Ellie) Baker, a human teenage girl, and M0RrlS, a labmade Ilori alien. M0Rrls is part of the alien invasion that has taken over Earth, where Ellie resides. Over the past two years since the takeover, M0Rrls has been in charge of creating a "vaccine" for the humans, per orders from the superior "true Ilori." This "vaccine" will provide the true Ilori with …

Book Review: Powerful Partnerships: A Teacher's Guide To Engaging Families For Student Success, Leah Day

The Utah English Journal

A devastating pandemic has now shaped nearly all aspects of our lives, including education. Students are more disengaged than ever, and we need to take a reflective look at how to drive student success-through engagement with their families.

Powerful Partnerships: A Teacher's Guide to Engaging Families for Student Success is a plentiful resource for all types of educators looking to up their game in connecting with families in their learning community.

Experimenting Upon The Feelings: Maria Edgeworth’S Empirical Approach To Love In Belinda, Emily Hopwood Durney

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In her 1801 novel/moral tale Belinda, Maria Edgeworth presents a story of love, family, reconciliation, and education in a time when the popularity of companionate marriages was rising in British society along with the acceleration of scientific innovations and advancements. Belinda mixes these two interests of love and science as Edgeworth, empirically minded like her inventor father, frequently has her characters debunk illusion and deceit through induction and logic. Critics, such as Nicole Wright, have argued that Belinda is a far more significant character than is often recognized because of her logic and reason—especially as she helps other characters …

"All The Litter As It Lay": Swift, Montagu, And Their Practice Of Thing Theory, Eli M. Phillips

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In this article, I argue that, although "Thing Theory" was not so named until the 21st century, and has been mostly applied to prose of the 18th century and not its poetry, Jonathan Swift and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu engaged in a poetic thing theory of their own. For Swift, this meant examining the "thingness" of physical objects, leading to an uncertain conclusion about the poem as an object. For Montagu, the "thingness" of objects was instead downplayed, while the "thingness" of the genre of 18th-century satire, including its often ugly attitude toward women, was foregrounded, asking important questions about …

“What We Ought To Say”: Debating The Morality Of Dishonesty And Equivocation In King Lear, Markelle Jensen

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

King Lear does not reveal the nature of honesty but provides a stage on which the morality of honesty can be debated. The play questions whether honesty is inherently moral at all, or if there are ways in which honesty can be considered harmful and even immoral. Other scholars have noted this as well in characters such as Edgar and Kent, but missing from the critical conversation are the ways in which Cordelia is the pillar of moral goodness in the play, and how her own paradoxical honesty and dishonesty were what enabled Lear to “see better” and ultimately, to …

To Forsake, To Forswear: The Freedom Of Abandoning The Oath Within King Richard Ii, Abby Thatcher

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Cover And Front Matter

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

What Is Literary? Teaching Diverse, Literary Young Adult Novels In The Secondary Classroom, Kathryn Taylor

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis defines what makes a novel literary and examines the benefits of introducing Young Adult literature into the English curriculum. The current classical canon that is taught in secondary classrooms consists almost entirely of books written by white, Eurocentric men with a few token novels from women, authors of color, or queer authors. While the books in the classical canon have earned their place there, the rapidly changing demographics in our secondary schools mean that the majority of our students no longer share the same characteristics as these authors. They have largely different life experiences and struggle to connect …

'Across The Sea': The Narrative Function Of Medieval Bridal Sea Voyages In Marie De France’S “Guigemar” And “Eliduc", Rebekah Olsen

Student Works

This paper analyzes the common medieval trope of the sea voyage in Marie de France's medieval romances, "Guigemar" and "Eliduc." Through framing both texts through an ecocritical lens tied to the associated symbolism of water and feminity, the paper highlights the importance of the sea due to it's association with female passivity in the medieval era. However, this paper focuses primarily on the narrative tropes found in the two stories and shows that throughout the lais, Marie both implements and subverts the assumptions of the Medieval sea voyage trope, which is clearly defined in Albrecht Classen’s article “Sea Voyages in …

Editorial Introduction, Katherine Daily O'Meara, Betsy Gilliland

Journal of Response to Writing

No abstract provided.