English Language and Literature Commons^™

“The Passeggiata And Popular Culture In An Italian Town: Folklore And The Performance Of Modernity” By Giovanna P. Del Negro, Lisa Gabbert

English Faculty Publications

The Passeggiata and Popular Culture in an Italian Town by Giovanna P. Del Negro examines the relationship between the practices of everyday life and the negotiation of modernity in a town (to which Del Negro assigns the pseudonym "Sasso") in the Abruzzo province of central Italy. In her study, Del Negro examines a range of expressive culture from face-to-face events like the evening passeggiata (or promenade) and festive games to mass-mediated forms such as a popular soap opera, televised court proceedings, postcards, and reactions to local and national news stories. The result is a clear, accessible, and well-written work that …

Openings, Jennifer Sinor

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rapid Identification: River Guides, Storytelling, And Sharing Identity, Alisha Paxton

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

I moved to Moab from another Utah town in the spring of 2005 to train and guide on the Colorado River. Over the course of two summers I rowed or paddled on three Colorado River sections-Fisher Towers, Westwater and Cataract Canyon-as well as Desolation/Gray Canyons on the Green River and the Main Fork of the Salmon River. The next fall, during my first semester of graduate study in folklore, I became interested in studying river guides as a folk group. I wanted to study the formation of "community" based upon both guide and passenger interactions on river trips. However, because …

A Theatre Student's Guide To Writing, Heather S. Hurd

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

A very common delusion under which most Theatre students suffer is the idea that because their craft is primarily oral and/or visual that they will not need to worry about developing their writing skills. This is a fallacy. Writing is fundamental in articulating play reviews, analysis and opinons concerning written or visual works, journal articles, theatre history, resumes, grants and proposals. In fact, writing is probably the most important form of communication in the theatre because, without it, there is generally no play to perform. In that plays begin life as written compositions, writing is arguably a very important, in …

Vivisection And Pastries: Examining The Social And Sexual Politics Of The Victorian Era Through The Confession Albums Of Jm Barrie And Willa Cather, Amanda Ashley Marinello

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

"Who is your favorite author?" "Do you believe in love at first sight?" "What is the mark of a true friend?" These questions are not mere conversation starters, but are representative of a literary genre - namely the confession album. While the original date of appearance for the confession album, also called autograph album or survey, is uncertain, they became extremely popular both in the United Kingdom and America during the mid-nineteenth century. The questions and form of the confession book evolved over the next century, but their popularity never died out. Even today, they exist in the form of …

Distanciation And The Recontextualization Of Space: Finding One’S Way In A Small Western Community, Lisa Gabbert

English Faculty Publications

In the 1990s, the city of McCall, Idaho, and the surrounding region implemented the Rural Addressing System. The system assigned a name to every street and a number to every house and erected visible signage for both. Although a seemingly minor bureaucratic operation, the Rural Addressing System is a concrete example of Anthony Giddens's concept of space distanciation, and as such, it is a significant component of modernity and globalization. By investigating the impact of the Rural Addressing System on this region—particularly on the ways in which people give directions and think about space there—this article sheds light on how …

The Labour Of Her Own Hands: Nineteenth Century Gardening Discourses And The Work Of Jane Webb Loudon, Kelli Lee Towers

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Jane Webb Loudon, wife of eminent horticulturist and landscape architect John Claudius Loudon, has been largely ignored by historians and literary critics. Yet in her brief career she produced some of the most practical and influential gardening works of the early nineteenth-century. Beginning with Gardening for Ladies in 1840, Loudon published seventeen books and edited two magazines on gardening, botany, and natural history, most of them specifically directed to a female audience. These books would educate an entirely new class of gardeners, and allow women in particular to engage not only with gardening, but also with aesthetics, social reform, morality, …

Genres, Media, And Usability In The Evaluation Of Writing Quality In Digital Environments, Lisa Ferrara

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The Society for Technical Communication (STC) has recognized that there may be a problem with depending too much on usability studies for identifying some weaknesses in digital media. In their effort to find a substitute, they have funded more than $250,000 in research in the past two years.

The Fellowship Of The (Devil) Ring: Ethnographic Translation In The 2002 聯經 Edition Of Tolkien's The Fellowship Of The Ring, Matthew G. Wright

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

A recent book written by Tom Standage pays homage to six drinks that helped shape the history of the world. Following his discussion of the first five drinks (beer, wine, spirits, coffee and tea), Standage concludes with what he calls, the drink of the twentieth century. "Coca-Cola encapsulates what happened in the 20th century: the rise of consumer capitalism and the emergence of America as a superpower. It's globalization in a bottle," Standage said in an interview with National Geographic News (Handwerk). Today Coca-cola is everywhere from Cuba to the Czech Republic (Standage even claims the drink is in more …

Moral Ambiguity And Drunkenness In The Canterbury Tales, Daniel A. Nyikos

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

In the scholarship surrounding The Canterbury Tales, the subject of drunkenness has generally been neglected. For instance, Charles Shain's "Pulpit Rhetoric in Three Canterbury Tales," although discussing at length the reprentations of sin in Chaucer's work, does not address drunkenness as any more than a form of the sin of gluttony. This is a mistake, because the frequency with which drunkenness appears in The Canterbury Tales alone should demonstrate that it is worth closer comparative study. By examining the treatment of drunkenness in several of the tales, a more complete picture can be drawn.

Cultural Analysis Of The Indian Women's Festival Of Karvachauth, Puja Sahney

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The festival of Karvachauth is celebrated by upper class married women of North India and occurs in the month of October or early November. On this day married women fast to ensure the long lives of their husbands. They wake up before dawn and eat a meal. After sunrise they do not drink water or eat any food until they see the moon at night. The moon is watched through a sieve and prayed to before breaking the fast. An important part of Karvachauth is a ritual that is performed by women in the afternoon. This ritual is hosted by …

Fritz Oelshlaeger. Love And Good Reasons: Postliberal Approaches To Christian Ethics And Literature, Alan Blackstock

English Faculty Publications

In the interest of full disclosure, Professor Oehlschlaeger identifies his purpose and intended audience at the outset of the book: "This study seeks to articulate a particular moral vision, a Christian one, and discover what it entails for reading texts." This Christian moral vision is one "marked by the specific convictions of a body of people formed by the history of Israel, Jesus, and the Church" (3), (Oehlschlaeger never specifies which church he means by this, but his appeals to the authority of Pope John Paul II and neo-Thomist philosophers and theologians Alisdair MacIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas are suggestive, as …

Robert Scholes. Paradoxy Of Modernism, Alan Blackstock

English Faculty Publications

Readers familiar with Scholes' The Rise and Fall o/English should find his latest book equally engaging. Cyril Connolly's characterization of the work of Dornford Yates, quoted with admiration by Scholes in Chapter Six of this book, might apply equally well to Scholes' own work, as it exhibits "a wit that is ageless united to a courtesy that is extinct." What Scholes finds so admirable in the phrase is "not merely its elegant syntax, but the way that the syntax balances against each other and thus emphasizes the words 'ageless' and 'extinct'-suggesting that the admirable quality of Yates' work derives from …

Placing The Academy: An Essay In Three Voices, Jeffrey M. Buchanan, Rona Kaufman, Jennifer Sinor

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Foundation Stones Of Prydain: A Web-Based Bridge Between Welsh Mythology And Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, Benjamin Tyler Minson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

My career at Utah State University and particularly in the Professional and Technical Writing emphasis in the English Department has shown me a vast spectrum of areas within the field of technical communication. Several of the various types of work within technical communication came together for my final Honors Thesis and Project, including Web design, information architecture, and usability testing. The planning, creation, testing, and analysis of the website Foundation Stones of Prydain (http://cc.usu.edu/~bminson/foundation) constitute the culmination of my work at Utah State University.

"The Darkness Is The Whole Thing": Environment, Belief, And Community In The Wampus Legend Of The Retsof Salt Mine, Ashley Gorrell Purser

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

"The Darkness is the Whole Thing" is an examination of a legendary animal known as the wampus that makes its home in the Retsof salt mine. Various forms of wampus creatures found in other settings are introduced, followed by discussion of the ways in which environment influences the adaptation of occupational legend. The article considers how belief in the wampus facilitates the expression of fear, an increased sense of awareness, and the development of community in a unique and dangerous work environment. The telling of the wampus legend is considered a narrative tool for solidifying and preserving occupational identity.

"Drive-By English": Teaching College English To High School Students Via Interactive Tv, Alan Blackstock, Virginia Norris Exton

English Faculty Publications

This paper outlines challenges in and essential criteria for the success of dual-credit or concurrent-enrollment writing and literature courses delivered via interactive video technology and suggests specific strategies for administrators, instructors, and classroom facilitators regarding student selection, appropriate technology, and classroom management.

Beyond The Pale: Women, Cultural Contagion, And Narrative Hysteria In Kipling, Orwell, And Forster, Alan Blackstock

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Marlin, Jennifer Sinor

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

David Finkelstein. The House Of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations In The Victorian Era, Alan Blackstock

English Faculty Publications

This book combines and expands on three articles previously published independently in journals of textual criticism. Though the added material on the rise and decline of the House of Blackwood from 1804 to 1912 will interest primarily readers concerned with the history of Blackwood's, the three core chapters presenting case studies of the relations of the firm with particular authors-John Hanning Speke, Charles Reade, and Margaret Oliphant-provide valuable insights into the ways in which Victorian editors and authors manipulated one another for both commercial and ideological ends.

The Role Of Ethnography In The Post-Process Writing Classroom, Jennifer Sinor, Michael Huston

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Real World Of Language Instruction: Cache Valley Teachers Speak Out On The Challenges They Face While Teaching Grammar, Shauna Wight

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

"Discussing grammar in the teachers' lounge is a little like stepping in between two opposing 350-pound NFL linemen just after the ball is snapped," says Harry Noden, veteran English teacher and author of Image Grammar (Noden vii). With this statement, Noden captures the intensity and hostility that has characterized departmental meetings, university classrooms, and scholarly articles in which the issue of grammar has been disputed. Relying upon this football metaphor, Noden aptly describes the precarious situation language arts teachers face when they enter the profession and one of its greatest debates-grammar instruction-an issue in which all English teachers inevitably become …

Amazonian Women: A Multi-Voiced Narrative On Surviving Breast Cancer, Melissa Bowles

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

When my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in May of 2003, I immediately turned to journal writing and to reading to try and make sense of what was happening in my family. I searched websites for causes of breast cancer and ways to prevent it, I read literary women's memoirs, and I wrote a great deal about the way that I was feeling: scared, guilty, angry, broken. As a reader and a writer I needed to somehow intellectualize all of the things I was feeling. This writing project is a product of that initial response and of my subsequent …

Review Of Jack Santino’S Signs Of War And Peace, Jeannie Thomas

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Inscribing Ordinary Trauma In The Diary Of A Military Child, Jennifer Sinor

English Faculty Publications

Using her own diary as a case study, the author examines how the life writing of a military child inscribes ordinary trauma, defining ordinary trauma as a response to extraordinary events masked as ordinary. For the military child, the possibility of war is made ordinary and rendered such in her writing.

Electronic Editing: A Case Study At The Mountain Plains Regional Resource Center, Leonora Tanner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Editors have always played an essential role in the document production process. That process has drastically changed with the introduction of technology like desktop computers and word processing programs such as Microsoft Word. However, the editing segment of the process has remained very much the same as it was 20 years ago because of a lack of knowledge about and reluctance to use the editing technologies that has been developed recently.

Restoring The Past: The Knitting Mills Of Logan, Utah Circa 1904, Marchet Clark

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Logan, Utah. 1904. I was not there. Nor could I have been.

A trim, clean-shaven businessman crosses dirt-packet Main Street in the cold sunlight of early morning. It's Monday, a new day, a new week for his knitting mill. He is tall and angular, wearing a brown suit and a round bowler hat. There's a look of determination in his eyes, a fixed state at unseen hurdles ahead. He must be to work early. The girls will be arriving soon. He must check the knitting machines, run over the inventory, count out cash for the register, and prepare for another …

Nature Writing And Healing: Recovering The Wild Soul, Denice H. Turner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In this study, I explored how nature writing could be seen as healing text. I described some common problems associated with the construction of trauma and grief narratives and examined how nature writers dealt with them. The study began with my frustration at being unable to write a healing narrative for myself and progressed as I integrated research that informed my own writing.

The literature I read included a variety of perspectives, from Jungian and traditional psychotherapy to current writing theory. I used the theory to comment on the nature writing texts as I discovered them. Using the words and …

Creating Community: Macnas’S Galway Arts Festival Parade, 2000, Christie L. Fox

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Galway Arts Festival, 2003: Focusing On Home, Still Delighting, Christie L. Fox

English Faculty Publications

For twenty-six years the Galway Arts Festival has “morphed” the city of Galway into its natural logical conclusion: the city already boasts a young, artistic community, but for two weeks each summer, the festival brings the spotlight and the crowds to Galway for a celebration of the arts. Of late, however, the festival has suffered from decreased government expenditures on the arts—as have all the arts in Ireland. Recent festivals have been far more subdued than the extravagant Millennial Festival in 1999, during which the city teemed with outdoor events and more than one hundred thousand people gathered to watch …