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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Supporting First-Generation Students’ Adjustment To College With High-Impact Practices, Theresa Conefrey Oct 2018

Supporting First-Generation Students’ Adjustment To College With High-Impact Practices, Theresa Conefrey

English

This qualitative case study describes some of the issues faced by incoming first-generation college students at a private, 4-year institution in the northwest. Using constructs drawn from social cognitive theory and social cognitive career theory, it explores how high-impact practices such as learning communities, writing-intensive courses, and ePortfolios might impact first-generation students’ adjustment during their first year of college. The findings of the research on students’ writing in their first-year composition course suggest that the cumulative impact of engaging in multiple high-impact practices improves students’ literacy and study skills. In addition, these educational practices appear to increase students’ self-appraisal of …


“Higher” School: Nineteenth-Century High Schools And The Secondary-College Divide, Amy J. Lueck Oct 2018

“Higher” School: Nineteenth-Century High Schools And The Secondary-College Divide, Amy J. Lueck

English

This article traces the emergence of nineteenth-century U.S. high schools in the landscape of higher education, attending to the gendered, raced, and classed distinctions at play in this development. Exploring differences in the conceptualization and status of high schools in Louisville, Kentucky, for white male, white female, and mixed-gender African American students, this article reminds us of how these institutional types have been situated, socially inflected, and structured in relation to broader political and power structures that transcend explicit pedagogical considerations. As a result, I argue for the recognition of high schools as historically significant sites in the history of …


A Response To Kim Hensley Owens’S “In Lak’Ech, The Chica No Clap, And Fear : A Partial Rhetorical Autopsy Of Tucson’S Now-Illegal Ethnic Studies Classes”, Aja Y. Martinez, Cruz Medina, Gloria J. Howerton Jul 2018

A Response To Kim Hensley Owens’S “In Lak’Ech, The Chica No Clap, And Fear : A Partial Rhetorical Autopsy Of Tucson’S Now-Illegal Ethnic Studies Classes”, Aja Y. Martinez, Cruz Medina, Gloria J. Howerton

English

A Necessary Caveat: What follows is a response in the form of ideological critique. As a collective, our intent is to provide a view from those the author is writing “for” or about. This response is less a correction of “facts” than an ideological perspective, a view from those of us who feel it necessary to respond to Owens’s rhetorical choices.


“We'll Make A Man Out Of You”: Steven Universe, The Bildungsroman, And The Redefinition Of The Male Hero., Ryan Badalamenti May 2018

“We'll Make A Man Out Of You”: Steven Universe, The Bildungsroman, And The Redefinition Of The Male Hero., Ryan Badalamenti

English

This paper explores how the various gendered characteristics of the Bildungsroman, the novel of formation, interact with the formation of the titular character in the cartoon Steven Universe, the coming of age tale of a boy’s work to defend the Earth from magical threats. Traditional cartoon studies identify distinct gender identities between male and female characters. Similarly, Bildungsroman studies tend to analyze male heroes, with contemporary studies coining the term “female Bildungsroman” to talk about the formation of female protagonists. This paper argues that Steven, the protagonist of Steven Universe, incorporates aspects of both the Bildungsroman and the female Bildungsroman …


A House Divided, Christian Burgos May 2018

A House Divided, Christian Burgos

English

Abraham Lincoln coined the phrase, "A house divided cannot stand." So how he would feel about the current administration's stances against individuals in minority groups, whose identities are already heavily politicized? This collection of short stories I’ve written delves into the lives of those individuals as they have been targeted and continue to be affected by the rhetoric and policy threats of this administration. Each story follows an individual who deals with the effects of this rhetoric, both directly and indirectly. The experiences of the individuals in these stories are not universal; these experiences illustrate the potential circumstances and consequences …


Finding Nemo, Findng Dory, Finding Ourselves: How And Why We Teach Our Children To Think About Disability, Stacie Klinowski May 2018

Finding Nemo, Findng Dory, Finding Ourselves: How And Why We Teach Our Children To Think About Disability, Stacie Klinowski

English

My project, a critical thesis titled “Finding Nemo, Finding Dory, Finding Ourselves: How and Why We Teach Our Children to Think About Disability,” investigates how representations of disability within children’s media transcend these texts and contribute to our society’s construction of disabled subjects. By first looking at historical traits of children’s literature in Grimm's Fairy Tales and The Trumpet of the Swan, I establish that the didactic function of this genre reproduces the values of the cultures in which they are written while it also attempts to instill social ideals that will guarantee 'progress.' Representations of disability in these texts …


"Several Sigourneys": Circulation, Reprint Culture, And Sigourney’S Educational Prose, Amy J. Lueck May 2018

"Several Sigourneys": Circulation, Reprint Culture, And Sigourney’S Educational Prose, Amy J. Lueck

English

In her now-famous essay "Reinventing Lydia Sigourney," Nina Baym argued that Sigourney's literary range "inevitably allows for the construction of several Sigourneys who are unknown to modern criticism."1 Since 1990, when Baym revealed Sigourney as a student of history and a writer of historical prose, scholars have filled the gap she identified with a variety of Sigourneys, identifying her "generic plurality'' as a means to "achieve multi-positionality as a woman poet," as Paula Bernat Bennett writes, and noting that Sigourney's wide-ranging oeuvre does not readily lend itself to a reading of the author as a sentimental poetess. 2 Subsequently, …


Maiden Voyage (A Novel), Kyra Bauske Apr 2018

Maiden Voyage (A Novel), Kyra Bauske

English

Maiden Voyage is an adventure story. It didn’t start out that way, but that’s what it has become. The story follows a young woman who stumbles onto her father’s secrets. Alexandra feels trapped in an 18th century English settlement on Nassau. Under her father’s protection, Alexandra is expected to marry and remain on the island. When she discovers a letter in her father’s office naming her as an “asset” she finds herself asking who her father really is. Who is the business associate who comes every month? Why does he really want her married to Lord Dewhurst? When her best …


Who Learns From Collaborative Digital Projects? Cultivating Critical Consciousness And Metacognition To Democratize Digital Literacy Learning, Julia Voss Apr 2018

Who Learns From Collaborative Digital Projects? Cultivating Critical Consciousness And Metacognition To Democratize Digital Literacy Learning, Julia Voss

English

Collaborative group work is common in writing classrooms, especially ones assigning digital projects. While a wealth of scholarship theorizes collaboration and advocates for specific collaborative pedagogies, writing studies has yet to address the ways in which privilege tied to race, gender, class, and other identity characteristics replicates itself within student groups by shaping the responsibilities individual group members assume, thereby affecting students' opportunities for learning. Such concerns about equity are especially pressing where civically and professionally valuable twenty-first century digital literacies are concerned. This article uses theories of cultural capital and the participation gap to (1) analyze role uptake in …


Validating The Consequences Of Social Justice Pedagogy: Explicit Values In Course-Based Grading Contracts, Cruz Medina Jan 2018

Validating The Consequences Of Social Justice Pedagogy: Explicit Values In Course-Based Grading Contracts, Cruz Medina

English

In 2012, in Tucson, Arizona, conservative Superintendent of Education Tom Horne used House Bill (HB) 2281 to outlaw Tucson High School’s Mexican American Studies (TUSD/MAS) program. Despite demonstrated increases in graduation rates and state test scores (Cabrera, Milem, and Marx 2012), the social justice program was dismantled and books from the curriculum were banned, including Paulo Freire’s (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As teacher-scholars concerned with critical consciousness1 and the application of social justice theories to the classroom, we found these events highly disturbing and demonstrative of what Angela Haas and Michelle Eble refer to in the Introduction of this …


Community And Conscience Formation, Phyllis R. Brown Jan 2018

Community And Conscience Formation, Phyllis R. Brown

English

The three Cs, competence, conscience, and compassion, are fundamental to Santa Clara University's distinctive identity as a Jesuit and Catholic university. However, a fourth C, community-and communities within communities-provides a context for conscience formation through dialogue and critical engagement not only with the academic subject matter of course work but also outside the classroom with the wicked problems facing humanity. This chapter will explore ways individuals and programs at Santa Clara University (SCU) invite students to experience communities in classroom and co-curricular settings that encourage dialogue, critical engagement, and social consciousness aimed at fostering the greater good. This engagement is …