English Language and Literature Commons^™

Of Blockheads And Elitists, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

No abstract provided.

Mason's Shiloh, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

No abstract provided.

Death Imagery In Bobbie Ann Mason's 'Shiloh', Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

No abstract provided.

Pop Goes The Culture, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

No abstract provided.

Mason's 'Shiloh', Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

No abstract provided.

The Ties That Bind, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

Discusses the bond between the readers and characters of a story. Information on how to create a character for a story; Background on some characters of a story, including Lady Macbeth in the book 'Heart of Darkness,' by Joseph Conrad; Details of some specific character traits that create a bond with readers.

More Than A Place, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

Many stories fail to capture the reader's interest even though they have a clear point of view, well-rounded characters and an interesting plot. What's missing? One key element that writers frequently overlook is setting. They treat it merely as backdrop.

"Shiloh": A Mini-Casebook Approach To Upper-Division Literature Courses, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

Shows how the mini-casebook approach, with a few modifications, works well with upper-division writing assignments. Notes that a mini-casebook approach is nothing more than a self-published document including a primary work of literature, selected secondary sources on that work, and a selection of several specified topics on the primary source. Presents eight suggestions for implementing the mini-casebook approach

Five More Ways Sports Coaches Model Good Instruction, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

An article in the May 2003 issue of The Teaching Professor that highlights six ways teachers can learn from coaches got us thinking. The two of us have now been teaching a combined 64 years in college, and we've spent half that time serving as coaches in soccer, swimming, basketball, and baseball on the youth and high school levels. From our experience we've identified five more ways coaches provide a model for good college instruction.

Hawthorne's Dating Problem In "The Scarlet Letter", Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

This article explores the dating problem in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter. In The Custom House, Hawthorne relates how he discovers several foolscap sheets written by a predecessor, Mr. Surveyor Pue, about Hester Prynne. These six sheets supposedly offer two types of accounts about Hester: aged persons, alive in the time of Pue and from whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, remembered her, in their youth and those who had heard the tale from contemporary witnesses. A dating problem arises with the first group. Critics concur that historical documents place the events in The Scarlet Letter …

Hemingway's "The Killers", Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Hal Blythe

In his seminal study Hemingway and the Dead Gods, John Killinger relates Papa's fictional world to existententialism, concluding that Hemingway sees that individuality is not a quality which can be superimposed externally on a man, but that it must be internally achieved by a decision to be at all times an authentic person and to accept the full responsibility of action proper to a primary agent. In his philosophy, as in that of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre, the opportunity for such a decision is presented as a moment of crisis, which, for him, is produced by confronting death or violence.

Only A Rite, David Lee Miller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Re-Examining Vonnegut: Existential And Naturalistic Influences On The Author's Work, Marybeth Davis

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis looks at several Vonnegut novels through both the lenses of existentialism and naturalism, claiming that each is just as important and present in his work as the other. It examines his life, as well, and how his experiences and observations on life tie into his writing.

Domesticity And The Modernist Aesthetic: F.T. Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, And Gertrude Stein, Allison Elise Carey

Doctoral Dissertations

Literary modernism has been presented, in scholarship and critical histories, as a masculinized movement: a literature largely by men and concerned with issues of literary form rather than with everyday life. This critical tunnel vision has inevitably prevented a full accounting of many key aspects of modernist literature. One issue of modernism that has been persistently overlooked by scholars is the central role of domesticity in many modernist texts and the importance to modernists of reclaiming the domestic as a subject of high art. As this study demonstrates, modernist texts often focused on everyday life, and these modernist treatments of …

Socio-Cultural Interactions And Esl Graduate Student Enculturation: A Cross Sectional Analysis, Ethan W. Krase

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation reports findings from a five-month qualitative study of a group of five ESL students pursuing graduate degrees in disciplines in the humanities. Focusing on disciplinary enculturation processes, the study sets out to answer two primary research questions: 1) What roles do literacy activities play in disciplinary enculturation? 2) What sorts of subject positions do ESL learners occupy as they enculturate into academic discourse communities? Answers to these questions are important because they can lend definition to the obstacles that confront ESL learners as they attempt to move towards professional participation in target discourse communities.

Anchored in the language-related …

Breaking The Bonds Of Silence: The Immigrant Experience In Magical Realist Novels Of Katherine Vaz And Chitra Divakaruni., Hillary Dawn Hester

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The genre of Magical Realism is normally explored on the sole basis of its identification with and fantastic expression of Latin-American cultural identity. However, the genre, when employed by non-American immigrant women, takes on new characteristics. It not only highlights the mystical underpinnings of everyday life but instructs in a subliminally didactic manner by opening the reader to new possibilities through delightful imagery and a plot woven around transposed myth and folklore.

In examining how two female Magical Realists translate their narratives of immigrant life in twentieth-century United States, the instructive nature of the genre is laid bare. Both use …

Alteration In Exile: Byron’S Mazeppa, Mark Phillipson

Mark Phillipson

A big shift in Lord Byron’s style is usually noted: the potently gloomy Eastern Tales, showcasing the magnetically alienated Byronic Hero, give way to a sharply contrasting style, that of the conversational Don Juan. Accounts of Byron’s career tend to treat this alteration as sudden or whimsical. In fact, it is intrinsically tied to exile, a connection illustrated by the verse romance Mazeppa (in many ways the forerunner of the contemporaneously begun Don Juan). Mazeppa is Byron’s most elaborate--even systematic--depiction of exile; its hero, tied onto a wild horse and sent off into the wilderness, learns to endure amid dramatically …

So What's Your Point? Relevancy In Conversation, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

Every rare once in a while, I find myself caught in a conversation where the person I'm talking to goes off on a tangent. And I don't mean a little aside. I mean a "What the hell are you talking about!?" tangent.

Luckily, for the other 99% of conversations, there are some general guidelines for engagement that help us avoid making mistakes like this one. H. Paul Grice, a language philosopher, is the scholar credited with first writing about these rules in a widespread way. Grice theorized that participants in conversation operate by an overarching approach that we now call …

Midwife And Mother: Maternal Metaphors In The Composition Classroom, Cynthia Britt

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study examines the maternal metaphors of midwife and mother used to describe instructors and teaching practices in the composition classroom. In the introduction the author describes her interest in the topic based on her own experiences as a mother and as a beginning composition instructor. The paper explains the initiation of the metaphors, what the metaphors and maternal pedagogy mean in terms of classroom practices and philosophies, criticisms of maternal practices, and the relevancy and legitimacy of the metaphors and maternal pedagogy in classrooms today. Section one explores the development of the metaphors to describe composition teachers related to …

John Fox Jr.'S Commentary On The Roles Of Women In The Progressive Era., Heather Mac Sykes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

John Fox, Jr. provides commentary on the changing roles of Progressive Era women in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, “A Cumberland Vendetta,” and “The Pardon of Becky Day.” Fox’s portrayals provide evidence that although he recognized the changes in his society with women spearheading reform, he did not entirely approve of these changes or of women taking an aggressive role in advocating change.

This thesis provides textual examples and analysis demonstrating Fox’s beliefs. Chapter two focuses on the stories of “The Pardon of Becky Day” and “A Cumberland Vendetta.” Chapter three analyzes The …

James Russell Lowell, William A. Pannapacker

Faculty Publications

A-Z entries detail the lives, works, and critical reception of more than 70 American writers of the 19th century.

The American literary canon has undergone revision and expansion in recent years, and our notions of the 19th-century renaissance have been reevaluated. Mainstream anthologies have been revised to reflect the expanding literary canon, yet resources for readers have remained widely scattered. This book expands earlier definitions of the 19th-century American Renaissance as represented by canonical writers such as Emerson and Poe, covering writers who published popular fiction and dominated the literary marketplace of the day. Included is generous coverage of women …

To Glory Or To Ruin : Guinevere And Vivien In Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, Alfred Tennyson's Idylls Of The King, And Edwin Arlington Robinson's Merlin And Lancelot, Eunice W. Carwile

English & Modern Languages: Theses, Dissertations & Student Publications

From Malory's Morte Darthur, through Tennyson's Idylls of the King, and through Robinson's Merlin and Lancelot, Guinevere and Vivien evolve from mere servants of a masculine plot and theme to well-rounded characters who struggle with the same problems that confront their male counterparts. Malory's world is about knights, warfare, and a holy quest, with women acting or reacting in certain ways only to move the plot along. While Tennyson develops female characters more fully than Malory, the great Victorian pays no homage to Arthurian womankind, bringing to his work a philosophy of sin-weakness-destruction that makes Vivien an evil seductress and …

"We Were There": Anatomy Of A Successful Series Of Historical Novels For Young People, Deanna Lee Gasteiger Schwartz

Theses & Honors Papers

The study of history has always been an important part of learning. Young people might ask, "Why do I need to learn about something I cannot change?" When asked "Why Study History?" William H. McNeill states in Historical Literacy : The Case For History in American Education that the "value of historical knowledge obviously justifies teaching and learning about what happened in recent times, for the way things are descends from the way they were yesterday and the day before that" (104). Between the years 1955 to 1963 Grossett and Dunlap Publishers introduce a concept that brings personal involvement into …

On The Treatment Of Group Words In C-E Dictionaries, Gang Zhao

Gang Zhao

No abstract provided.

John Milton, Blackfriars Spectator?: "Elegia Prima" And Ben Jonson's The Staple Of News, Timothy J. Burbery

English Faculty Research

In the spring of 1626 John Milton was temporarily expelled from Cambridge University, perhaps over a quarrel with his tutor William Chappell, and sent home to London, where he remained for at least several weeks. There, the seventeen-year-old poet composed his first elegy, a Latin verse-letter to his closest friend, Charles Diodati. In it, Milton claims to be enjoying his unexpected holiday by reading, girl watching, and attending the theater. Milton scholars have never reached consensus about his alleged playgoing, for while the young man speaks as a spectator, the plots and characters he mentions-these include comic types such as …

Merton's New Novices: The Seven Storey Mountain And Monasticism In A Freshman Seminar, David A. King

Faculty and Research Publications

Offers observation on Thomas Merton's book "The Seven Storey Mountain." Experience in teaching an introductory literature course to sophomore students at Kennesaw State University in Georgia; Reflections on monastic life; Description of Merton on Trappist monasteries.

Distributed Authorship: A Feminist Case-Study Framework For Studying Intellectual Property, Sarah Robbins

Faculty and Research Publications

To probe one case of free-ranging textual circulation, and to address issues associated with producers' rights to textual ownership and authorial credit, Robbins examines the Americanized versions of British writer Anna Barbauld's Lessons for children. Robin states that examining multiple specific cases of distributed authorship, and linking them to contemporary textual ownership issues, may well lead to nuanced extensions of the basic framework for understanding intellectual property that pioneers in the field have already formulated.

Several Letters By Tennyson And His Family, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"In the years since Cecil Y. Lang and Edgar F. Shannon edited Tennyson's letters (1981-1990), I have been able to acquire for my collection several letters by Tennyson and by other members of his family. I print those here, along with some other material relating to Tennyson..."

A Different Kind Of Bilingüismo, Frank Bramlett

English Faculty Publications

In last month's column, I wrote about the presence of Spanish in Omaha, attested by its occasional appearances in the broader English-speaking market. I also mentioned the phenomenon of people speaking two or more languages, called bilingualism. When a person has command of two languages, then that person is considered bilingual.

Considering that one language (like Swahili) might be called a code, and another language (Arabic) is another code, and a third language (like English) is another code, then conceivably a person who lives in Tanzania might carry on a conversation with another speaker from Tanzania in three different languages …

Five More Ways Sports Coaches Model Good Instruction, Charlie Sweet, Hal Blythe

Charlie Sweet

An article in the May 2003 issue of The Teaching Professor that highlights six ways teachers can learn from coaches got us thinking. The two of us have now been teaching a combined 64 years in college, and we've spent half that time serving as coaches in soccer, swimming, basketball, and baseball on the youth and high school levels. From our experience we've identified five more ways coaches provide a model for good college instruction.