English Language and Literature Commons^™

Growing Pains: The Transformative Journey From A Nascent To A Formal Not-For-Profit Venture, Avery C. Edenfield, Fredrik O. Andersson

English Faculty Publications

This article examines how a social venture transitions from nascent to formal status and argues that the transformation of the organization set in motion by establishing formal boundaries is a deeply profound one. Drawing from the nonprofit and social entrepreneurship literature on what prompts and energizes individuals to initiate new not-for-profit ventures, and linking it to a notion of revolutionary crisis as organizations emerge and develop, we seek to illuminate and explore the tension, and its consequences, between nonprofit entrepreneurs and the organization they create as the new venture transitions from nascent to formal. We do this by presenting the …

Resisting Marriage: Defying Expectations In Three Lesbian Novels, Jennifer Jordan

Honors Program Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

The Relevance And Resiliency Of The Humanities, Stephen C. Behrendt

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Discussion has grown increasingly urgent among those involved in the humanities; threats to funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts are only the most highly visible indicators of what many call a “war on the humanities.” The issue is a familiar one. With everyone’s finances under increasing stress, there is mounting pressure to “cut back on nonessentials,” and among both educational institutions and the broader public community, the humanities seem easy targets for the cutters and the pruners. There’s a general sense that the humanities are not very useful when it comes …

Tutors: “Theses” The Problem: Students And Thesis Statements, Jackson Bylund

Tutor's Column

Although it is a common element of academic writing, the thesis statement is woefully misunderstood and misused by many new college students. The Writing Center staff spends too much time reexplaining this principle and helping visiting students construct a solid thesis; time that could be better spent on other key aspects of their essays, like content and organization. This essay strives to explain what a thesis statement is, how it is crafted, how and why students have such a poor understanding of the concept, and what can be done to fix this obnoxious issue.

Praiseworthy And Developable—How Psychology Takes Shape In Tutoring, Chloe Harvell

Tutor's Column

In a standard tutoring session, positive reinforcement in commonly used to bolster a student’s confidence, as well as point out good aspects of the writing. This paper explores the use of Behavioral Skills Training (BST) in tutoring, an Applied Behavioral Analysis procedure in which instruction, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback are used to teach proficiency in a skill. This paper examines the benefits of using BST in difficult sessions where standard protocol would be of little value to the student’s writing ability. Behavioral skills training is an intuitive and simple procedure, but proves to be an effective way to structure a …

Grammatically Speaking: A Look Into Writer Development, Bayli Luebke

Tutor's Column

This Tutors’ Column explores the ways in which focusing on grammar and mechanics in tutoring sessions at the writing center both helps and hinders students. This paper begins with a first-person explication of a new peer tutor’s past writing and editing experiences from high school to the time that she began working at the writing center. The author describes her previous view of the importance of grammar and acknowledges how this view has changed and developed during her time as a peer tutor. Using research from four different writing center and education journals ranging in years from 1984 to 2016, …

Turning Apathy To Ambition: Strategies For Countering Student Disinterest, Jared Bryan

Tutor's Column

Apathetic students – those who do not care enough about writing to engage in a session - are some of the hardest to tutor. Their reluctance to engage with the tutor is often the result of a perceived lack of connection between their personal interests and the topic they are writing about, or even writing in general. The connection between writing and STEM fields, for example, is not often readily apparent; the necessity of written communication in one form or another is often lost in the theory and technical skills that dominate the major. This reduces the problem of inspiring …

Wearing The Collaborator Hat, Jessica Hahn

Tutor's Column

Writing tutors take on several roles when working with students, which range from coaches to counselors. However, one of the most important roles of writing tutors is the collaborator. Collaboration encourages both the tutor and the student to draw on each of their strengths, rather than only relying on the knowledge of the tutor alone. Some roles that restrict tutors as collaborators are roles such as editors and experts. Tutors avoid being editors of papers because they are only able to address surface level issues in writing rather than global issues. Being an expert is too much of a burden …

Let’S Talk: Training Anxiety Out Of New Tutors, Nichelle Pomeroy

Tutor's Column

This paper focuses on the author’s experience becoming a new tutor at Utah State University’s Writing Center. The author gives suggestions on what can be done to ease anxiety in new tutors during their first few sessions. Additional training is suggested with collaborative efforts between new and experienced tutors along with familiarization with logistical aspects.

Black And White And Gray All Over, Harper Forsgren

Tutor's Column

This essay examines the division between keeping professional regulations as a Writing Tutor while working with a paper that goes against the tutor’s personal moral code. It suggests two approaches to handling these situations, from leaving the paper exactly as it is to respect personal authorship to following the tutor’s own moral obligation to inform the student of the incendiary ideals written in the essay. It then concludes that the true answer may lie somewhere in between these two proposed solutions. The narrative follows the author’s experience as a peer tutor, explaining the first time she encountered an essay that …

Stop, Think, And Question, Andrea Carlquist

Tutor's Column

The purpose of this paper is to encourage peer tutors to attempt utilizing different questioning methods during tutoring sessions. Instead of asking closed off questions with definite answers, tutors should ask open-ended questions that challenge the student. This method of questioning will also help the tutor as it will alleviate pressure from them and make the student and tutor equally accountable for the session. The Socratic method of questioning is also suggested as it allows sessions to develop more organically based on topics that are useful and interesting to both the student and the tutor.

Tutors—Writing Myth Busters, Stephanie Pointer

Tutor's Column

The purpose of this essay is to help tutors understand that myths about the writing process are hurting students and their writing. Peer tutors are in a unique position to teach students the truth about the writing process. Many students feel incapable of writing well because they struggle with the writing process. Helping students recognize false beliefs about writing and understand the truth will do more to improve student writing and confidence than teaching writing mechanics. When students have a deeper understanding of the importance of having a focused audience, writing bad drafts, and allowing for their limited time frame, …

Don’T Talk -Listen: The Power Of Silence In A Tutoring Session, Megan Ririe

Tutor's Column

Why is silence so scary? This paper explores the reasons behind why silence is so hard for us as tutors to utilize in our tutoring sessions, as well as the benefits of using silence and wait time. These benefits include an effective learning environment, a stronger understanding of the student and their assignment, and a respect for the student's ideas and authorship of their paper.

Warm Smiles, Soft Chairs: A Testament To The Power Of Ambience, Cari Phillips

Tutor's Column

In this paper I discuss the effects of positive ambience within a writing center environment. Effective writing centers encourage student relaxation through positive tutor affect, soothing nature-based decor, and organization that promotes low power-distance. The use of open, friendly attitudes, warm colors, and breathing room allow writing center attendees to relax. As a result, attendees of this kind of writing center are more effective, engaged, and motivated to dig deep while pursuing the writing process. Combining research with personal experience, I relate an effective writing center to a positive classroom learning environment, comparing the effects of various methods of classroom/center …

The Business Of Writing, Mikayla Doyle

Tutor's Column

One of the greatest aspects of university study is the ability to learn from a wide variety of sources. Often, we assume that most of our knowledge about writing comes from our English classes. However, as a business student, I have learned many things that have helped me to become a better writer. In this essay I will address the importance of writing a purposeful thesis, creating a logical argument, using concision in writing, and making writing understandable.

A Minute Too Late, Camille Rasband

Tutor's Column

Time management is a tool that everyone should learn to use. Tutors must manage time in the tutoring center for a successful session as well as in their everyday life. When tutoring sessions are rushed because time isn’t watched, there are many consequences. Relationships built between students and tutors are damaged, anxiety begins to build up, and an overall feeling of complete exhaustion begins to rule our bodies. It begins affecting individual lifestyles in and out of the workplace. It creates extreme stress levels which can impair abilities to control our emotions. There are several tactics we can turn to …

Promoting Student Success: Bilingual Education Best Practices And Research Flaws, Lillian Fassero

Senior Honors Theses

This paper first determines the benefits which bilingual education offers and then compares transitional, dual-language, and heritage language maintenance programs. After exploring the outcomes, contexts, and practical implications of the various bilingual programs, this paper explores the oversight in most bilingual studies, which assess students’ syntax and semantics while neglecting their understanding of pragmatics and discourse structures (Maxwell-Reid, 2011). Incorporating information from recent studies which question traditional understandings of bilingualism and argue that biliteracy requires more than grammatical and vocabulary instruction, this paper proposes modifications in current research strategies and suggests best practices for transitional, dual-language, and heritage maintenance programs.

So What?: Writing And Tutoring Intentionally, Cassidy Gummersall

Tutor's Column

In my first semester of tutoring, I have seen papers about forestry services, Rihanna as an emblem of dominance, the nutritional chemistry of an English muffin, NASA funding, and the endangered Peruvian vicugna. I have worked with students writing genres like persuasive research essays, personal narratives, lab reports, and even philosophy short-answer midterm responses. When confronted with papers that have requirements or subjects where I am far from an expert, I have learned to ask, “Why did you select this topic?” and “How would you want your audience to be changed by reading your paper?” These questions function to alleviate …

The Broadsheet- Issue 22, Merrimack College

The Broadsheet

Merrimack College's English Department newsletter.

This issue features:

• English Career Night: Recalibrating Dream Job Expectations
• Remaining Open to All Possibilities: English Alumni Offer Their Wisdom
• The Impact of Button Poetry: Olivia Gatwood Inspires Generations of Women
• An Interview with Dr. Christy Pottroff

When In Spain: Intercultural Competence In Hemingway’S The Sun Also Rises, Alexa Barta

Honors Capstone Projects

An analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises through the lenses of modern-day intercultural competence studies.

The Talking Texts: What Pop Culture Really Has To Say, Adrianne Clark, Madilynn Dewell, Thomas Harrison, Artasia Jackson, Tyler Jones, Matthew Murphy, Whittany Myers, Erica Pinkham, Heath Pyle, Kameron Rymer, Sara Salazar, Amanda Thornton, Lynessia Torunski, Nickolas Watkins, Karina Weathers, Logan Willhoite, Courtney Wooten

Student Publications

This newsletter is built upon work done in a Fall 2017 honors writing course based around the rhetorical analysis of pop culture. Students wrote several initial analyses before choosing one to research and write about further. They then chose a short excerpt from their researched projects to include in the newsletter.

A Country Writer Exiled In The City: The Case Of John Mcgahern, Eamon Maher

Articles

No abstract provided.

Designing For Human-Machine Collaboration: Smart Hearing Aids As Wearable Technologies, Krista Kennedy

Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition - All Scholarship

This study examines design aspects that shape human/machine collaboration between wearers of smart hearing aids and their networked aids. The Starkey Halo hearing aid and the TruLink iPhone app that facilitates real-time adjustments by the wearer offer a case study in designing for this sort of collaboration and for the wearer’s rhetorical management of disability disclosure in social contexts. Through close textual analysis of the company’s promotional materials for patient and professional audiences as well as interface analysis and autoethnography, I examine the ways that close integration between the wearer, onboard algorithms and hardware, and geolocative telemetry shape everyday interactions …

Expanding Efficiency: Women's Communication In Engineering, Jennifer C. Mallette

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

As engineering fields strive to be more inclusive of women, focusing on perceptions of women's work is vital to understanding how women can succeed and the limitations they may face. One area in need of more attention is the connection between communication and women's experiences in engineering. This article examines the gendered nature of writing labor in engineering, focusing on case studies of three women who were able to use writing effectively, yet how communication emerged as a gendered form of labor subject to gendered perceptions. While these women's communication skills led to professional success, their association with writing echoes …

Perceived Preceptor: Narrator's Role In Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Jason Godfrey

Faculty Publications

In this article, I posit that Austen uses her self-aware, colloquial narrator to satirize Catherine’s grandiose fantasies and quiz (or mock) the reader who would prefer a story where fantasies are indulged and also to instruct the reader about the importance of discernment both in-text and in larger social discourse.

An Imagined Community Of Practice: Online Discourse Among Wheelchair Users, Leslie Cochrane

Arts & Sciences Articles

People with disabilities often live in local communities primarily made up of people without disabilities: in the absence of a geographic community of people with disabilities, the internet becomes a valuable tool for connecting individuals across both local and global contexts.
The power of computer-mediated communication (CMC) to allow individuals to interact both locally and globally has been well-studied in linguistics (e. g. Baron 2008; Page 2012), and this work has included the discourse of e-health (e. g. Hamilton 1998; Locher 2006, 2013) and the online discourse of people with disabilities (Al Zidjaly 2011, 2015). Less research has been done, …

Medieval Literature And Young Adult Fiction: A Comparison Of Chaucer And Sarah J. Maas, Dana Cuadrado

Honors College Theses

The medieval works of Geoffrey Chaucer and the contemporary works of Sarah J. Maas employ three of the same themes: forbidden love, insta-love, and love triangles. These themes are based in the medieval literary tradition of courtly love as first written by Andreas Cappellanus in the twelfth century. Sarah J. Maas is a contemporary author of the young adult fantasy series A Court of Thorns and Roses that follows a young girl who by magical circumstances becomes romantically involved with two male faeries. This modern series portrays the same themes that Chaucer’s works of Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury …

Bibliography For Victorian England Holiday Display, Kristin Laughtin-Dunker

Library Displays and Bibliographies

A bibliography of materials in the Leatherby Libraries related to the celebration of winter holidays in Victorian England, with a particular focus on the works of Charles Dickens.

Practical Christianity: Religion In Jane Austen's Novels, Erin R. Toal

Senior Honors Theses

A beloved English novelist of the late eighteenth century, Jane Austen captures the attention and emotion of readers through timeless insights into the inner workings of the human heart as characters navigate society, family life, and love. Her novels’ attention to practical morality but reticence toward explicitly religious subject matter raises conjecture concerning the religion behind her values; however, Austen’s Christian upbringing, Anglican practice, and Christian values suggest a foundation of faith from which the morality in her novels emanates. In Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park, Austen demonstrates her eighteenth-century Anglican worldview in …

Social Justice Across The Curriculum: Research-Based Course Design, Rebecca Walton, Jared Sterling Colton, Rikki Kae Wheatley-Boxx, Krista Gurko

English Faculty Publications

This Programmatic Showcase describes why and how Utah State University redesigned our Technical Communication and Rhetoric program to incorporate considerations of social justice across the curriculum. After describing our programmatic vision, we describe in detail the design of a pedagogical study informing our curricular redesign and then share strategies for course design and university-community partnerships. The course-design strategies include 1) explicitly framing courses around broad issues of social justice, 2) incorporating hands-on practice to connect conceptions of social justice to professional practices, and 3) facilitating opportunities for both students and clients to reflect upon these connections. The strategies for facilitating …