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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Revisiting Missions: Decolonizing Public Memories In California, Brenda M. Helmbrecht Nov 2019

Revisiting Missions: Decolonizing Public Memories In California, Brenda M. Helmbrecht

English

Living in California seems to require interaction with the state’s twenty-one historic Spanish missions, either by visiting them as a tourist, driving by a mission in one’s neighborhood, or learning about them as a schoolchild. While the missions ostensibly celebrate California’s history, many promote an anachronistic and dishonest re-telling of history that elides the devastating impact of the missions on Native communities (both historically and today). The missions operate as largely uncontested tourist attractions that promote self-serving collective memories about California’s founding narrative. Rhetorical analysis, I argue, can lead to a more honest engagement with the “hard truths” of their …


Decentering The Dictator: ‘In The Time Of The Butterflies’ And The Mirabal Sisters’ Outspoken Challenge, Elise Coombs May 2019

Decentering The Dictator: ‘In The Time Of The Butterflies’ And The Mirabal Sisters’ Outspoken Challenge, Elise Coombs

English

Julia Alvarez’s portrayal of the Mirabal sisters from In the Time of the Butterflies centers the novel around the sisters’ speech and humanity. This decenters the dictator, a figure who was often central to Latin American dictator novels. The first chapter will provide background on the dictator’s characteristics to demonstrate how the Mirabal sisters’ speech draws attention away from his power. The four times the sisters encounter the dictator Rafael Trujillo in the novel, their speech decenters him because Alvarez emphasizes their experience. In the second chapter, I examine the gaps between each encounter, focusing on Minerva’s speech development towards …


Beginning At The End: Reimagining The Dissertation Committee, Reimagining Careers, Amy J. Lueck, Beth Boehm Apr 2019

Beginning At The End: Reimagining The Dissertation Committee, Reimagining Careers, Amy J. Lueck, Beth Boehm

English

In this article, we forward a perspective on interdisciplinarity and diversity that reconsiders the notion of expertise in order to unstick discussions of graduate education reform that have been at an impasse for some fortyfive years. As research problems have become increasingly complex so has demand for scholars who specialize narrowly within a discipline and who understand the importance of contributions from other disciplines. In light of this, we reimagine the dissertation committee as a group of diverse participants from within and beyond the academy who contribute their knowledge and skills to train the next generation of scholars and researchers …


Decolonial Potential In A Multilingual Fyc, Cruz Medina Apr 2019

Decolonial Potential In A Multilingual Fyc, Cruz Medina

English

Scholars in rhetoric and composition have questioned to what extent the field can be decolonial because of the gatekeeping role that writing plays in the university. This article examines the decolonial potential of implementing multilingual practices in first-year composition (fyc), enacting what Walter Mignolo calls “epistemic disobedience” by complicating the primacy of English as the language of knowledge-building. I describe a Spanish-English “bilingual” fyc course offered at a private university with a Jesuit Catholic heritage. The course is characterized by a translanguaging approach in which Spanish is presented as a valid language for academic writing. The students’ writing highlights the …


Researching Writing Program Administration Expertise In Action: A Case Study Of Collaborative Problem Solving As Transdisciplinary Practice, Tricia Serviss, Julia Voss Feb 2019

Researching Writing Program Administration Expertise In Action: A Case Study Of Collaborative Problem Solving As Transdisciplinary Practice, Tricia Serviss, Julia Voss

English

Theorizing WPA expertise as problem-oriented, stakeholder-inclusive practice, we apply the twenty-first-century paradigm of transdisciplinarity to a campus WID Initiative to read and argue that data-driven research capturing transdisciplinary WPA methods in action will allow us to better understand, represent, and leverage rhetoric-composition/writing studies’ disciplinary expertise in twenty-first-century higher education.


The Spectrum Of Service: Refocusing Academic Work Through A Military Lens, Brenda M. Helmbrecht, Dan Reno Jan 2019

The Spectrum Of Service: Refocusing Academic Work Through A Military Lens, Brenda M. Helmbrecht, Dan Reno

English

In higher education, faculty, administrators, and students often use the term “work” casually: we go to work, we do our work, and we always have work left to finish. Thus, we appreciate the journal’s editors asking us to slow down and fully consider our work as instructors and scholars in the field of composition studies. Here we explore what it means to approach work through the lens of service. While service is an essential component of academic work, we seldom explore how the two concepts inform one another. As a WPA and an Army veteran, we decided to join our …


Han Shan’S Transparent Eyeball: The Asian Roots Of American Eco-Poetry, Tony Barnstone Jan 2019

Han Shan’S Transparent Eyeball: The Asian Roots Of American Eco-Poetry, Tony Barnstone

English

No abstract provided.


Inclusivity In The Archives: Expanding Undergraduate Pedagogies For Diversity And Inclusion, Amy J. Lueck, Beverlyn Law, Isabella Zhang Jan 2019

Inclusivity In The Archives: Expanding Undergraduate Pedagogies For Diversity And Inclusion, Amy J. Lueck, Beverlyn Law, Isabella Zhang

English

This chapter uses the experience of two undergraduate students conducting research in their university archives to consider the “hidden curriculum” entailed in archival research at some institutions. When diverse identities and experiences are not represented in our archives, we run the risk of communicating a lack of value for those identities, producing a feeling of marginalization and exclusion for some students and foreclosing an opportunity to build solidarity across difference for others. In light of the limited holdings at many university archives and the increased prevalence of archival research in the undergraduate classroom, the authors draw on research from writing …


Rewriting The Human-Animal Divide: Humanism And Octavia Butler's "Amborg", Aparajita Nanda Jan 2019

Rewriting The Human-Animal Divide: Humanism And Octavia Butler's "Amborg", Aparajita Nanda

English

The relationship of philosophy and the human-animal divide is a long one. One could begin with the anthropocentric assumptions of liberal humanism that go back to the Great Chain of Being, a concept of the nature of the universe that traces its lineage to antiquity. The term designates three defining features of the universe: maximal diversity of life, a serial communication within each group, and a hierarchical division of all living beings from God to the simplest forms of existence (Encyclopedia Britannica 2015). This essay challenges the liberal humanist emphasis on humans as being the central focus of the universe …