English Language and Literature Commons^™

Review Of Social Class In Applied Linguistics By David Block, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

As Block writes in the prologue and the epilogue, the book is primarily about erasure; his motivation for writing the book is to highlight “the substantial and sometimes complete erasure of social class in applied linguistics research due to the ways in which applied linguists frame their discussions of issues such as identity, inequality, disadvantage and exclusion” (pp. ix–x). Overall, Block achieves his goal of illustrating the widespread absence of social class in applied linguistics; however, the book itself makes some missteps in exploring the very construct it claims as its focus.

The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter …

The Role Of Culture In Comics Of The Quotidian, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Studies of the quotidian often start from a social sciences perspective that daily life is made up of routine practices and ingrained assumptions. This is also found in studies of literature, art and economics. The premise of the quotidian, however, must be examined through a lens of culture. This essay explores how the notion of the quotidian in comics rests on culture, which in turn comprises various nexus of practice. Drawing evidence from Exit Wounds (by Rutu Modan) and Questionable Content (by Jeph Jacques), the essay extends the notion of the quotidian from a specific reference to ‘slice of life …

[Review Of The Book "Other People's Diasporas": Negotiating Race In Contemporary Irish And Irish American Culture By Sinead Moynihan], Kathleen Vejvoda

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Slipping From Secret History To Novel, Rachel K. Carnell

English Faculty Publications

The secret history, a genre of writing made popular as opposition political propaganda during the reign of Charles ii, has been the subject of renewed critical interest in recent years. By the mid-1740s, novelists were using markers of secret histories on the title pages of their works, thus blurring the genres. This forgotten history of the secret history can help us understand why Ian Watt and other twentieth-century critics tended to end their narratives of the rise of the “realist” Whig novel with the works of the Tory novelist Jane Austen. In particular, the blended narrative perspective that Watt praises …

"Hills Like White Elephants": Epistemic, Nonepistemic And Nonseeing, Gene Washington

English Faculty Publications

This essay, a though-experiment, explores the value of reading literary texts (with the example of Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants") from the point of view of epistemic, nonepistemic and nonseeing. Epistemic seeing is defined as seeing with "belief-content" nonepistemic seeing without it. The technique is to examine each example of the word "seeing" (or one of the members of its family, "look, watch," "blink") and let it "lead" you to the object, its contest, and implications in the story as a whole..

Introduction To Innovative Approaches To Teaching Chaucer, Alison (Ganze) Langdon, David Sprunger

English Faculty Publications

Many a medievalist has been seduced by Chaucer. Perhaps it’s the totality of Chaucer’s enduring characters, memorable tales, elusive narrator, and fragmented whole that keeps us coming back. We are fascinated and delighted, too, by his linguistic play and the lyrical cadence of Middle English. Chaucer may have led us to graduate study in the first place and remains a treat that organizes our pedagogical lives. For some who teach in smaller programs or two-year colleges, Chaucer’s canonical status may provide the only guaranteed place for medieval texts in the curriculum and thus represents one small chance to share our …

Which Side Are You On? The Worlds Of Grant Morrison, Francesco-Alessio Ursini, Adnan Mahmutovic, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Grant Morrison is a key figure among the first wave of authors of the so-called "British Generation" (Sandifer and Eklund). The works of the other two creators, Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore, have been the basis for a wealth of scholarly research within the field of comics studies and whole constellations of literary scholarship (Sandifer and Eklund; Sanders; Krueger and Shaeffer; Millidge). Morrison's fictional worlds, however, remain understudied, despite the fact that, as Marc Singer observes, Morrison's work and career seem to be evenly distributed along a continuum ranging from the alternative Vertigo material to the mainstream superhero comics (Singer …

Making And Breaking The Superhero Quotidian: How All-Star Superman Embodies And Revises The Everyday, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

This essay explores the idea of the everyday in All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Scholars identify the everyday, or the quotidian, as including routine behaviors and ingrained assumptions (e.g., Borland and Sutton), and the construct of the quotidian as culture has been explored in comics (Bramlett). Depending on circumstances, characters may navigate the Metropolis cityscape or the Kent farm, take trips to the moon, explore the Daily Planet office building, and meet otherworldly heroes and villains. Even though much of the world of the superhero is extraordinary and wondrous to readers, the characters themselves nevertheless have a …

Robert Southey On Portugal: Travel Narrative And The Writing Of History, Manuela MourãO

English Faculty Publications

First paragraph:

Robert Southey was once referred to by Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch as “one of the best known of the unread poets” (9) in a study that deliberately focused on what he considered Southey’s largely failed poetic quest: “Southey’s grand failures,” he explained, “are more interesting than his modest successes and far more illuminative of Romanticism and Romantic myth-making generally” (9). In an oblique way, my focus in this essay is likewise another of Southey’s grand failures-- his planned, but never finished, History of Portugal. This ambitious project, despite remaining mostly unwritten, occupied much of Southey’s time in the early years …

The (Re)Naturalization Of Margaret Cavendish: Making Active The Relationship Between Nature And Female Subjectivity In Blazing World, Daniel P. Richards, Julie Chappell (Ed.), Kamille Stone Stanton (Ed.)

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Will You Go Out With Me? Why First Loves Are Painfully Important To Ya Lit, Emilee Hussack, Pauline Skowron Schmidt

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

“The More Things Change . . .”: A New Generation Of Historical Fiction, Pauline Skowron Schmidt

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Luminous Haze; Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Plagiarism, Todd Richardson

English Faculty Publications

"I really was never any more than what I was," Bob Dylan writes in his autobiography Chronicles, "a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze."1 I'd call his proclamation inefficient if that didn't imply that it gets a job done, albeit poorly. The sentence, rather, strikes me as grand­sounding balderdash. It begins with a promise of humility, after which it gradually evaporates into bleary images that never realize anything resembling actual meaning. On the whole, Dylan is exceedingly specific throughout Chronicles, recounting in detail the music …

Opinion: Too Many Veterans With Children Are Still Homeless, Christopher R. Fee, Joshua L. Stewart

English Faculty Publications

Don’t ignore homeless veterans.

As we pause this Veterans Day to reflect on those who have sacrificed in the service of our country, let us not neglect to address the plight of those who have returned to a civilian life with far less promise than they have every right to expect. [excerpt]

Burbage's Father's Ghost, James J. Marino

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Student-Centered, Interactive Teaching Of The Anglo-Saxon Cult Of The Cross, Christopher R. Fee

English Faculty Publications

Although most Anglo-Saxonists deal with Old English texts and contexts as a matter of course in our research agendas, many of us teach relatively few specialized courses focused on our areas of expertise to highly-trained students; thus, many Old English texts and objects which are commonplace in our research lives can seem arcane and esoteric to a great many of our students. This article proposes to confront this gap, to suggest some ways of teaching a few potentially obscure texts and artifacts to undergrads, to offer some guidance about uses of technology in this endeavor, and to help fellow teachers …

Unwrapping The Comfort Of Sameness With Spanish Immersion Elementary School, Christin N. Taylor

English Faculty Publications

I watched my 6-year-old hover around the periphery of the table, unable to find somewhere to sit. The cafeteria was a cacophony of little voices, Spanish and English, tumbling over each other, her classmates sitting close and waiting to be dismissed to homeroom.

I couldn’t help but notice how different Noelle looked from most of the children, with her liquid blond hair and saucerlike blue eyes. [excerpt]

Where Is The Girl Power? The Search For Authentic Portrayals Of Female Athletes In Ya Lit, Emilee Hussack, Pauline Skowron Schmidt

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

We’Re Not Kidding: Nonfiction Texts To Use Across The Curriculum, Emilee Hussack, Pauline Skowron Schmidt

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

To Be A Man: A Re-Assessment Of Black Masculinity In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun And Les Blancs, Julie M. Burrell

English Faculty Publications

The first Black woman to pen a Broadway play, Lorraine Hansberry scripted a majority of male protagonists. Critics tend to see Hansberry’s depiction of Black men as either an unfortunate departure from her feminist concerns, or as damaging representations of Black masculinity. In contrast to such views, this essay maps the trajectory of Hansberry’s career-long project of scripting positive visions of Black masculinity, from the politically progressive, while still patriarchal, structures of masculinity in A Raisin in the Sun, to the heterogeneous performances of revolutionary masculinity in Les Blancs. Further, in her role as public intellectual, Hansberry questioned prevailing assumptions …

Editorial Cartoons: Is Michael Sam Gay? Or Is He Black?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

A lot of media attention has been paid lately to the case of American football generally and the National Football League in particular. Recently, the NFL drafted its first openly gay man into its ranks, causing a great deal of celebration in some quarters and a high degree of consternation in others. As a fan of (American) football, I am interested in this story because of what it says about the social implications for individual players, team camaraderie, and the fans, too. I am thinking about this because I try to be mindful about and supportive of efforts to eliminate …

Tough Talk: Books About Bullying, Pauline Skowron Schmidt, Jennifer Stuntz, Emilee Hussack

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Jesus Lives, But Should He Live In My Front Yard?, Christin N. Taylor

English Faculty Publications

As I drove home from church, I eyed the bright foam sign my 6-year-old daughter held. “Jesus is Alive” it read in kid scrawl. “We’re supposed to put them in our yards!” Noelle beamed, eyeing her creation proudly through pink-rimmed glasses.

I imagined our wide, open yard in Pennsylvania, the green grass stretching without fences from one neighbor to the next. Our best friends in the neighborhood, secular humanists, would easily see it. I cringed. What would they think? [excerpt]

Seeing The Rebel: Or, How To Do Things With Dictionaries In Nineteenth-Century America, Tim Cassedy

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Putting A Human Face On The Minimum Wage, Christopher R. Fee

English Faculty Publications

What is a “livable wage,” and should we strive to raise wages for American workers?

There are lots of conflicting studies and reports. The Congressional Budget Office projects that an increase in the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour would eliminate 500,000 jobs while raising the incomes of nearly 17 million Americans.

Even prominent economists like David Card and David Neumark diametrically disagree on the likely consequences of raising the minimum wage, and their studies of results in New Jersey have consistently yielded conflicting results for decades. [excerpt]

How Do Song And Speech Go Together In Comics Panels?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In my last post, I wrote about simultaneous talk in comics, exploring the way that speech balloons can be positioned in a panel to convey a sense of overlapping talk. This post continues the series on the possibilities of simultaneous discourse. However, this one asks how visual and verbal cues might tell us something about the way readers are supposed to imagine hearing the production of both speech and song in the same panel.

The first example is drawn from Full Color, a graphic novel by Mark Haven Britt. I have taught this book a couple of times, …

What's So Feminist About Garters And Bustiers? Neo-Burlesque As Post-Feminist Sexual Liberation, Kay Siebler

English Faculty Publications

The performance art of burlesque is gaining popularity in North American culture, but with many ‘neo-burlesque’ performers, critical reflection or commentary on the politics of female sexuality is glaringly absent or summarily dismissed. Neo-burlesque could be a feminist rewriting and reclaiming of a Western dance form, which showcased women simpering sexily for her audience. However, in order for neo-burlesque to have a feminist tone, it needs to do more than incorporate women of various ethnicities and body types to transcend patriarchal scripts of female sexuality. Some neo-burlesque includes disruptions of traditional scripts regarding female sexuality that demand the audience think …

How Do Comics Artists Use Speech Balloons?, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

This post is the first in a series on how comics artists represent talk in comics. I’ll be writing about speech balloons and how the discipline of conversation analysis (CA) helps us understand how creative these artists can be when they try to show the intricacies of everyday talk.

Consider the following two panels. These are from the webcomic Scenes from a Multiverse by Jon Rosenberg. (Click on each of the titles to see the full comic.)

[Review Of The Book: Migrant Modernism: Postwar London And The West Indian Novel, By J. Dillon Brown], Allyson Salinger Ferrante

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Man I Killed, Brian Duchaney

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.