English Language and Literature Commons^™

Strengths And Strategies: Creating An Engaging Ela Classroom, Rachel Bellamy

The Utah English Journal

I found the first classroom I could call my own in a virtual high school. From my experiences floating around every level of education, the one constant I found is that engagement is key in any classroom. I quickly learned that engaging students can be particularly challenging in a virtual classroom, especially in a world where most teaching degrees provide tools for brick and mortar teaching. Over the last five years I have learned many techniques for adapting to a virtual setting. I am also surprised, looking back, that many virtual engagement strategies are equally useful in a traditional classroom …

Book Review: Dare To Disappoint, Jessica L. Reschke

The Utah English Journal

From living amongst government unrest to dreaming of becoming an actress, in Dare to Disappoint Özge Smanci illustrates what it was like to grow up in Turkey. Özge tells her autobiography through the form of a graphic novel, using text and drawings to express how she saw the world at different stages of her life in this coming-of-age story.

Book Review: They Both Die At The End, Courtney Jones

The Utah English Journal

Mateo Torrerez only knows one thing for certain. He is going to die today. Mateo has spent the last eighteen years in fear of this very day, hiding out in his apartment, hoping to avoid the day that Death-Cast, a company able to accurately predict the day you will die, would call. People have tried for years to run, hide, or fight death after the call, but by the end of the twentyfour hours, Death-Cast has always been right. Now that Mateo has received his call he realizes, to his horror, that he has never truly lived.

Book Review: A Novel Approach: Whole-Class Novels, Student-Centered Teaching, And Choice, Tara Piña

The Utah English Journal

Are you team whole-class novel? Or team workshop method? In the seemingly inconclusive battle between the two camps, Kate Roberts’s A Novel Approach: Whole-Class Novels, Student-Centered Teaching, and Choice finally brings the answer: you can be both. Roberts’s book offers a practical guide to implementing a blended learning environment where teachers can harness the community building and guided structure of whole class novels with the choice and engaging freedom of independent reading.

How Public College Students Experience Biblically-Informed Literature Taught As Cultural Documents: A Transcendental Phenomenology, De'lara Khalili Stephens

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This transcendental phenomenology describes the experience of public college students who study biblical or biblically-informed literary texts that are taught merely as cultural documents in literature and humanities courses. Two primary theories informed this study: transformation theory in adult learning and the theory of literary apologetics. Furthermore, qualitative methodologies of data collection included journaling, individual interviews with 13 public college students, and focus groups. Data analysis included epoche, member checks, and horizonalization. Three research questions guided the study: (1) How do public college students describe their experiences with biblical or biblically-informed literary texts when they are taught simply as cultural …

Poem No. 120, November 2018, Huntsville Literary Association (Huntsvile, Ala.)

POEM

The Huntsville Literary Association was founded in 1967 to provide a community for writers, readers, and artists through workshops, readings, and educational programs. One of their key contributions is the literary magazine titled POEM which showcases original writings from both established and emerging writers. This issue features poems from various writers.

Patriarchal Ecocide: An Ecofeminist Reading Of Rahul Varma's Bhopal And Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy Of The People, Rania M Rafik Khalil

English Language and Literature

Ecofeminism is a movement that sees a connection between the exploitation of the natural world and the subordination of women. This concept of ecology and feminism conceptualized by Simone de Beauvoir (1952) and later refined by Francoise d’Eaubonne in 1974 has greened artistic values across disciplines, it is however perceived to be found only sparsely in drama. Una Chaudhuri (1994) and Theresa J. May (2005) argue that theatre is both “immediate and communal” (May 85) with a wealth of productions that “awaken ecological sensibilities” (85) and contest “industrialisation’s animus against nature” (24). Within this context, Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of …

Literary Analysis Assignment [Composition], Tuli Chatterji

Open Educational Resources

This assignment was used in English 102 Writing through Literature course and was designed to meet LaGuardia’s Inquiry and Problem Solving Core Competency and Written Communication Ability. Students were expected to critically reflect on issues-- such as water crisis, migration--addressed in Linda Sue Park’s novel A Long Walk to Water (2010) and then explore those issues in a global context, for instance, water crisis in Rajasthan, India, or migration from Central America to USA. Discussions prior to the assignment prepared students to study the literary text, both as an end in itself and as a bridge to other academic disciplines. …

Ecofeminism And Cultural Ecology: A Framework Of Connections And Intersections For Reading Margret Atwood’S “Habitation”, “The City Planners”, “Morning In The Burned House”, “February”, And “ Night Poem”, Maha M. Munib Abdelmotaleb

English Language and Literature

Cultural ecology and Ecofeminism are two concepts that intersect with each other. Both concepts define and reinforce each other. It could be claimed that, Ecofeminism is one manifestation of cultural ecology since the former tackles issues about feminism’s relationship with nature including nature domination and the duality of nature which find their echoes in cultural ecology as well. The whole idea of the earth’s subjugation and male domination as well as the male/ female duality of nature in general find resonance in feminist resistance to patriarchal domination which develop under the umbrella of Ecofeminism to be part of the struggle …

“The New Geography,” Material Science, And Narratology’S Space-Time Dichotomy: Notes Toward A Geographical Narratology, Nancy Easterlin

English Faculty Publications

This essay places narratology’s emphasis on space-time within the emergence of the discipline of geography and the rise of a materialist, hard science orientation in US institutions after WWII, ultimately arguing that a nascent geographical narratology should aspire to the broad intellectual scope of geography’s origins. “The new geography,” which emerged in 1887 and focused comprehensively on the relation of humans to the earth’s surface, subsequently contracted and fragmented with the post-war emphasis on material science. Likewise expanding in the rationalist post-war climate, classical narratology emphasized logical categories, especially the space-time dichotomy, divorced from human meanings. Today, cognitive research suggests …

Representations Of Women In The Literature Of The U.S.-Mexico War, Janel M. Simons

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation examines figures of women as represented in the literature of the U.S.-Mexico war in order to think through the ways in which the border conflict was preserved in nineteenth-century U.S. American collective memory. Central to my dissertation is a consideration of the intersections of history, myth, legend, and fiction in the memorialization of this war. This dissertation demonstrates that a close look at fictionalized accounts of women’s experiences of and roles in the U.S.-Mexico war highlights the ways in which historical fictions influence how we remember this moment of our collective past.

Focusing on popular accounts of the …

Symposium On Science Fiction And The Climate Crisis, Gerry Canavan, Chan Kit-Sze Amy, Moritz Ingerwersen, Meolody Jue, Hua Li, Patrick D. Murphy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Steven Shaviro, Vandana Singh, Imre Szeman, Wong Kin Yuen

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

A Case Study: Incorporating Young Adult Literature Into General Education To Improve Intellectual And Emotional Intelligence, Katherine Ann Irion

Theses and Dissertations

Institutions of higher learning have required students to take general education courses since such they were conceived and implemented in the 1940s. Requirements vary widely across institutions, but there is a broad consensus that a literature course be required in order to graduate. While these courses feature many types of literature, one literary field is overwhelmingly overlooked: young adult literature. Brigham Young University has recently implemented a young adult literature course that will fulfill a general education requirement. This case study examines the question, "What might be the rationale for including a course in young adult literature as part of …

Book Review: You’Re Welcome, Universe, Al Ricci

The Utah English Journal

Gr 9 Up—For Julia, the very complex protagonist of Whitney Gardner’s novel, You’re Welcome, Universe, nothing has ever been straightforward. When Julia finds a slur about her best friend scrawled across the back of the Kingston School for the Deaf, she covers it up with a beautiful graffiti mural. Her supposed best friend snitches, the principal expels her, and her two mothers set Julia up with a oneway ticket to a “mainstream” school in the suburbs, where she’s treated like an outcast as the only deaf student. The last thing she has left is her art. Out in the …

Book Review: Posted, Ethan Dunn

The Utah English Journal

It isn’t a stretch for someone in our modern society to ask: “What kind of power do words have?” With modern technology allowing the mass spread of a variety of opinions, this is a question more important than ever. Posted, written by John David Anderson, is a wonderfully clever book recommended for 8-12 year olds. It dives into the question of how words affect our relationships with one another as well as define our future. Posted depicts the story of Eric, nicknamed “Frost.” After winning a poetry competition, he and his friends wrestle the difficult social sphere of middle …

Book Review: The Poet X, Erika Larsen

The Utah English Journal

For Xiomara Batista, a young Harlem teenager and the protagonist of Elizabeth Acevedo’s debut novel, poetry has a way of vivifying ideas and awakening new possibilities. Words tend to burrow deep into her heart, and while she may seem silent to those around her, Xiomara’s mind is constantly wrestling with new poems.