English Language and Literature Commons^™

Embracing New Experiences: Young Adult Literature About The Immigrant Experience, Ashley Hoppenjan

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this study was to identify themes in quality young adult realistic fiction about the immigrant experience in the United States. The researcher questioned which themes are evident in young adult immigrant literature. To pursue this information, the researcher analyzed highly recommended young adult realistic fiction published from 2000 to 2017. Twelve novels were selected, read, and coded. After the first reading, two novels were eliminated; therefore, ten novels are reported. Analysis revealed six themes including: causes of immigration, assimilation, perseverance, identity, socioeconomic status, and stereotypes.

Waiting For The Mail: A Collection Of Short Stories, James Matthew Keane

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This collection of six pieces of original short fiction is, in general, a reflection upon my on-going questions concerning identity. In particular, these stories delve into the nature of masculinity through an exploration of male relationships—fathers, sons, husbands, and brothers.

They That Go Down To The Sea In Ships: Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'S Two Years Before The Mast And The Sublime, Laurie Anne Lee

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In this thesis I incorporated the use of a two-fold lens to investigate the character development of the author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., who I met in his autobiography and his book Two Years Before the Mast, the written record of his 1834-1836 voyage aboard the Pilgrim and the Alert. In an effort to understand Dana the sailor and Dana the lawyer, I viewed his life and work, in part, through the lens of Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, paying special attention to Burke’s definition of the sublime as encompassing pain and suffering. Through Burke’s Enquiry …

Depression And Anxiety In Current Middle Grade Fiction: Finding Quality, Authentic Portrayals For Use In Bibliotherapy, Tonia Sandersfeld-Miller

Graduate Research Papers

Young adults need a safe environment to learn about mental illness, and librarians must ensure that books being recommended authentically and realistically portray mental illness. The purpose of this study is to analyze the authenticity of fiction titles for middle school students that include content related to depression and anxiety to support recommendations to school counselors for bibliotherapy. The research questions this study sought to address included the following: Do the plots and characters of young adult novels written for middle school students realistically and authentically portray mental illness, and what criteria can be used to determine a novel's quality …

It Starts With "F": A Collection Of Short Stories, Arielle Irvine

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

It Starts with “F”: A Collection of Short Fiction consists of five short stories that share a family-centered theme while tackling tough topics such as death, separation, adoption, and personal fulfillment.

Beauty Outside Our Doors: Conservation Stories Of Black Hawk County, University Of Northern Iowa. Environmental Literature (Spring 2017).

Environmental Literature Project

Beauty Outside Our Doors collects stories, poems, essays, and interviews with people of Black Hawk County, Iowa, giving voice to their relationship to the land, in their own words. From beekeeping to family farms to kayaking down the Cedar River and nature therapy, this work serves as a witness to the beauty to be found here—and the challenges we still face as citizens and lovers of the natural world.

Published as a collaboration between the Soil and Water Conservation District and students in the Spring 2017 Environmental Literature class at the University of Northern Iowa, this unique anthology invites you …

A Review By Wagoner Of Virginia Woolf’S Modernist Path: Her Middle Diaries & The Diaries She Read, By Barbara Lounsberry, Elizabeth A. Wagoner

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

The scope and influence of literary Modernism continues to expand, and current scholarship includes not only studies of Modernism within its time period in literary history, but increasingly the force Modernism exerts on innovations in contemporary literature. Barbara Lounsberry’s new book, Virginia Woolf’s Modernist Path: Her Middle Diaries & the Diaries She Read, the second volume in her ongoing study of the diaries of Virginia Woolf, breaks open at the molecular level the complex and thrilling confluence of currents that fed Woolf’s writing, as well as an examination of how she used formal experimentation in her diaries to create …

Ecocritical Post-Colonial Studies On Humans, Land, And Animals, Alia Afzal

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Ecocritical post-colonial study is a newly emerged field in literary criticism. The theory combines the study of post-colonial environment in literary work and reveals a relationship between literature and the environment. Before the word ‘Ecocriticism’ was coined in the world of literature, from the beginning, writers were exclusively engaged presenting nature as source of inspiration and a privilege to evolve their ideas and pen them down. With the introduction of the term Ecocriticism in literary criticism by the Association of the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) in 1993, scholars approached the analysis of texts to highlight environmental concerns and …

Huckleberry Finn And The Picaresque As Lens Against Debt Peonage, Cory Dahlstrom

Annual Graduate Student Symposium

The literary genre of picaresque originated in Sixteenth Century Spain, but has become a prominent staple in American culture–especially post-Civil War. This project specifically discusses the role Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn played in analyzing the failures of reconstruction’s provision toward African American freedom and equality.

The Make Cook Do Book, University Of Northern Iowa. Department Of Languages And Literatures., Jennifer Cooley, Caitlin Agrosinger

Make Cook Do Book Project

During the spring and fall semesters of 2016, UNI students collaborated with adult Learners in English classes at the YWCA in Waterloo, Iowa as language partners. The stories below are just a sample of all the different backgrounds and talents that the adult English Learners brought to the collaboration. At the end of the fall 2016 semester, the YWCA students were invited to write about their past, present and/or future and, if they wanted to, about their family as well. (The document that prompted them to share their ideas is on the first page!) UNI students offered assistance, as needed, …

Gender Stereotypes In Children's Literature, Christine C. Nebbia

Graduate Research Papers

This research paper focused on the creation of nine professional development sessions using critical literacy practices in order to analyze and examine gender stereotypes in children's literature addressed in the classroom. This professional development grew out of an in-depth examination of the research over the past 40 years addressing gender stereotypes and gender representation in children's literature, as well as, the literature on critical literacy practices and issues of social justice. The professional development sessions were designed around three major goals: to enable teachers to independently analyze children's literature for gender stereotypes; to help teachers understand the four components of …

A Twist On Happily Ever After : Fractured Fairy Tales For Young Adults, Kathryn Hale

Graduate Research Papers

Fractured fairy tales are growing in popularity for young adults. Teacher librarians may need a more complete understanding of themes and characters found in fractured fairy tales in order to provide readers’ advisory in this genre. The purpose of this research paper is to describe the themes and moral lessons of positively reviewed fractured fairy tales for young adults. Novels from 2006 - 2015 were analyzed using constant comparison for the themes and lessons described in them. Nine positively reviewed core collection novels were chosen, read and analyzed by the researcher. Themes explored through the research include: danger of ignorance, …

The Cultural And Rhetorical Elements Of American Picaresque, Cory James Dahlstrom

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The picaresque is a literary genre with a long and rich history. Although protean in nature, it is essentially the fictional autobiography of a likeable delinquent or rogue, who survives a series of adventures and a life of hardships by his or her wits and affinity for trickery. Stemming from a long line of tropes dating back to Greek mythology, the picaresque comes into its own fruition towards the end of the Spanish Golden Age with the anonymous publication of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). Since then, the antihero of the picaresque, the picaro, has become a literary figure across a …

Shakespeare And School Counseling, Nick Abel

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

In the ongoing search for therapeutic tools and techniques to use with students from kindergarten through the 12^th grade (K-12), it is unlikely that many school counselors have considered the work of William Shakespeare. Generally confined to upper-level high school English classrooms, the work of “The Bard” is more likely to be considered an obstacle for students to overcome than a resource to enhance their academic, career, or personal/social development (Anderson & Anderson, 2003). While Shakespeare may not have a place in every school counseling program, below are some possibilities for using his work in contemporary K-12 settings.

Shakespeare And Teaching Rhetorical Technique In The Speech Classroom, Amanda Arp

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Shakespeare’s artistic communication within the speeches of his plays has the potential to augment student learning in college speech communication courses. Studying Shakespeare is appropriate in college speech communication courses because students could achieve improved rhetorical skills. Studying Shakespeare could even fulfill learning objectives of speech communication classes. For example, at Iowa State University, one of the learning objectives of the speech communication foundation course, SP CM 212, is to “select appropriate language to communicate ideas vividly, accurately, and respectfully” (LeFebvre 3). William Shakespeare’s plays have thrived because of his vivid, rhetorical language. Therefore, by studying the language of several …

A Contemporary Ophelia Reads The Sonnets, Vicki J. Simpson

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Shakespeare’s Ophelia is a complex character—she’s multilayered, conflicted, and evocative. Exactly how a woman from such a golden age of exploration and expansion in England’s history could have lived such a circumscribed existence is certainly understandable, given the time period, but it’s also an incalculable tragedy. In this piece, I invite you to suspend your disbelief and join me in an imaginative quest to see how this star-crossed noblewoman from Denmark might approach Shakespeare’s Sonnets 29, 30, and 122, from a decadent, epicurean, self-indulgent, and entirely postmodern perspective.

Reality In Shakespeare And The Digital World [A Review By John Sievers Of Shakespeare And The Digital World: Redefining Scholarship And Practice, Edited By Christie Carson And Peter Kirwan], John Sievers

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

The collection of essays edited by Christie Carson and Peter Kirwan, Shakespeare and the Digital World: Redefining Scholarship and Practice, came to me at a pertinent moment. I started reading it after I had pushed a squeaky-wheeled cart full of twenty-eight iPads to class, then used a document camera displaying my iPad and fingers to show the class how to search a database. Later that day, I also observed a student use a smartphone-based online dictionary app to hear how to pronounce Ceres. The student then used his new knowledge to further a group discussion about scansion in lines …

A Review By Regina Marler For Becoming Virginia Woolf: Her Early Diaries And The Diaries She Read, By Barbara Lounsberry, Regina Marler

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Very rarely, when bending the head over some worthy academic volume, perhaps with a title something like, Post-postmodernisms of Cross-colonial Language Theories or (Mal)contents: Forematter Errata in Eighteenth Century Rural Sermons, a revelation strikes the reader around page fifteen: “My God, I am actually going to enjoy this.” Some of us have experienced this jolt of pleasure and intellectual communion but few realize that it can occur even when the author has, unaccountably, snatched one of the best titles from a handwritten shortlist the reader has kept taped near her desk for her own current work-in-progress. Such, I can …

Poverty And Homelessness : A Content Analysis Of Children's Nonfiction Literature, Christine Newell

Graduate Research Papers

Units taught in social studies and language arts that address family issues, neighborhoods, communities, economic diversity, and social issues need to address the struggles, challenges, and fears of children living in poverty or who are homeless. Depictions of poverty and homelessness should be handled with accuracy and sensitivity. Connections made through the use of literature can help all students develop an understanding about the world around them and help them begin to realize the struggles of those who live in poverty.

This study of K-6 nonfiction books about poverty and homelessness investigated how these social problems were depicted in the …

The Public Library Experience: Choosing Books To Read From Predetermined Levels And Its Implications, Amy L. Seufert

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this study was to explore the implications resulting from experiences in libraries that parents and children face when they come to the public library with externally identified reading levels that restrict their reading to materials with a particular numerical measure. The volunteer participants included 27 parents and their children who frequent the public library searching for books, particularly leveled books. Participants completed a simple, paper survey which was located at the library desk over a two week period. Based on their in depth answers to survey questions, three parents of first and second grade students were asked …

Raymond Carver's Decentered Narratives, George Hovis

Short Story

No abstract provided.

G-Man, Tom Gorzycki

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Front Matter - Table Of Contents

Short Story

No abstract provided.

A Callaloo Affair, Opal Palmer Adisa

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Short Story, Volume 22, Number 1, Spring 2014 [Download Entire Issue]

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Trick Or Treat, Alice Clark

Short Story

No abstract provided.

The Who Concert, April Ford

Short Story

No abstract provided.

The Knocking At The Door, Chester Sullivan

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Notes On Contributors

Short Story

No abstract provided.

Back Cover

Short Story

No abstract provided.