English Language and Literature Commons^™

The Uprising Of The Anecdotes: Women’S Letters And Mass-Produced News In Jacob’S Room And Three Guineas, Ria Banerjee

Publications and Research

This short article explores the similarities between Walter Benjamin's theory about the disruptive potential of an anecdote vis-a-vis the conventional narrative and Virginia Woolf's use of anecdotes in her novel, Jacob's Room and her anti-war treatise, Three Guineas.

The Howl - Fall 2016, Yang Chen, Haruho Yamada, Yume Ozaki, Hisoka Matsumura, Kaho Soga, Tomoya Hiroe, Eunjin Jang, Haruna Ogasawara, Anna Kato, Salah Athamnah, Malek Aldumman, Na Kyung Kim, Yu-Ling Tsao, Young Joo Kwon, Eunjin Jung, Nana Kim, Jihye Park, Gwendolyn Derosa

The Howl

The Howl is a magazine that is planned, researched, written, photographed and designed by Otterbein University's ESL and international students. The magazine serves to give them a safe space in which to use their voice to share their cultures, experiences and lives. If you are interested in submitting to The Howl, please email your writing or photography to [email protected].

Willa Cather Editing Sarah Orne Jewett, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

“In reading over a package of letters from Sarah Orne Jewett,” Willa Cather wrote in her preface to the Mayflower Edition of The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925), “I find this observation: ‘The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself down rightly on paper—whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.” Cather’s private letters and her public statements in the form of essays, interviews, and speeches testify abundantly that Jewett had teased Cather’s mind over and over in the years following her friend and mentor’s death in 1909. Furthermore, as …

Health Conditions Of Post-Resettlement African Refugees In Boise, Idaho, Mikal Smith, Pamela Springer, Terri Soelberg, Pat Lazare, Michal Temkin-Martinez

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study describes the health conditions of African refugees in Boise, Idaho obtained through self-report interviews and medical chart review. Comparisons between self-report data and data obtained through the medical chart review are described. This paper also describes the challenges and successes of collecting health data from African refugees in a health fair setting, the use of interpreters and DVDs with participants who speak seven different languages, and collaborative research with different African refugee groups utilizing community based participatory research. Findings include descriptive statistics related to the health conditions of the population. Comparison of the self-report and medical chart review …

Training African Refugee Interpreters For Health Related Research, Terri Soelberg, Michal Temkin-Martínez, Mikal Smith, Pamela Springer

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper describes an approach to training African refugee interpreters for their role in health-related research. A study was proposed to evaluate the self-reported health of African Refugees in Boise, Idaho. Collaboration with a community advisory board revealed that targeted communities had members who spoke at least one of five main languages, many of whom had limited access to formal education. Interpreters were recruited from the refugee communities, and had either worked for and/or received training through one of two local hospitals. Few of the interpreters had experience serving in that role in the context of a research study. A …

From One Human To The Next: How Stories Might Save Our Lives, Stacie Lewton Rice

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

On the morning of October 1, 2015, a young man walked into a college writing classroom with a gun and killed nine people, injured many others, then shot himself.

Virginia Woolf And Illness, Cheryl Hindrichs

English Literature Faculty Publications and Presentations

On Being Ill. “Is that a user’s guide?” This question, or a clever variation on it, became a familiar refrain when the elegant Paris Press edition’s cover, conspicuously abandoned on my bed table, caught the eye of one of the many nurses or phlebotomists who rotated through my ward over four weeks—weeks coinciding with what should have been my rereading of Woolf’s 1926 On Being Ill (OBI) as well as the impressive range of essays which you may now also read at your leisure in the second section of this double issue of the Miscellany, whether “in the army …

Contributor Biographies, "Journeys", Natalie Garza

Journal of South Texas English Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Gilded Age And Progressive Era: A Historical Exploration Of Literature, Jennifer A. Bartlett

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

One of the latest volumes in ABC-CLIO/Greenwood’s “Historical Explorations of Literature” series, The Gilded Age and Progressive Era is a useful and interesting introduction to framing key literary works of this time period in their historical context. Each volume in the series presents a discussion of four or five representative works of a historical era, such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Chicano Movement, the Jazz Age, and the Civil War Era.

Real Or Not Real: Fragmentation, Fabrication, And Composite Identity In The Hunger Games And The Mass Effect Trilogy, Tessanna Curtis

Masters Theses

As one glance at box office ratings from the past decade can attest to, twenty-first century Western society seems particularly fixated on coming-of-age stories. These stories reflect the quintessential search for identity, as explained by developmental psychologist Erik Erikson. As Erikson argues throughout his works, the fundamental task of the individual on his journey to becoming a healthy, mature adult is the formation of a personal identity and sense of self that is both unified and whole. What seems particularly ironic, however, is that these coming-of-age stories are released into a culture that is largely dismissive of Erikson’s theory of …

Temperance, Interpretation, And “The Bodie Of This Death”: Pauline Allegory In The Faerie Queene, Book Ii, David Lee Miller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Die Hards, Casey S. O'Higgins

Student Publications

A prequel to the Up-All-Nighters, a glimpse into the tragic tale of Rick Rearman: Vampire Hunter. The average man living a supernatural life, Rick Rearman hunts for creatures of the night to avenge his fallen mother. Rearman only wants three things in life, a girl, justice, and a new wardrobe. The spectacularly unspectacular Rick Rearman doesn't deserve a poetry; however, his story was too compelling to pass up.

The Ones Who Walk Away From The Ocean, Katia D. Rubinstein

Student Publications

When a mermaid mysteriously appears on the shore of a Northern island, the town's children become enthralled with the newfound mythic creature, while the adults become wary and untrusting.

The Topography Of Borders: Hybridity, Queerness, And Mexican-American Identity In Rigoberto González’S Butterfly Boy, Gabriela Almendarez

Journal of South Texas English Studies

No abstract provided.

“Making The Land Shiver:” Ana Castillo’S Ecological Politics In "The Guardians", James M. Cochran

Journal of South Texas English Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Notes: "Language Policy" David Cassels Johnson,New York; Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 291 Pp.; $36 (Soft Cover); Isbn: 9780230251700 (Soft Cover), Alexandre Couture Gagnon

Journal of South Texas English Studies

No abstract provided.

Book Notes: "Worlding America: A Transnational Anthology Of Short Narratives Before 1800" Scheiding, Oliver, And Martin Seidl, Eds., Stanford, California; Stanford University Press, 2015; Isbn: 9780804792592, R. Mac Jones

Journal of South Texas English Studies

No abstract provided.

Why Inquiry Matters: An Argument And Model For Inquiry-Based Writing Courses, Beth Godbee

English Faculty Research and Publications

This article considers the value and implications of inquiry-driven learning for secondary and postsecondary education. In response to ongoing interest in and the need to foster inquiry in English education, we share the course model of “Ethnography of the University.” This writing-intensive course asks students to become authors of their own educations; to identify problems facing the campus community; to conduct semester-long, original research projects; and to make proposals for change. Through conducting inquiry projects, students come to see themselves as writers with real audiences, to personalize an often-impersonal education, and to connect academic with everyday concerns. Two undergraduate researchers …

Making Commitments To Racial Justice Actionable (Book Chapter), Rasha Diab, Thomas Ferrel, Beth Godbee, Neil Simpkins

English Faculty Research and Publications

In this article, we articulate a framework for making our commitments to racial justice actionable, a framework that moves from narrating confessional accounts to articulating our commitments and then acting on them through both self-work and work-with-others, a dialectic possibility we identify and explore. We model a method for moving beyond originary confessional narratives and engage in dialogue with “the willingness to be disturbed” (Wheatley, 2002), believing that disturbances are productive places from which we can more clearly articulate and act from our commitments. Drawing on our own experiences, we engage the political, systemic, and enduring nature of racism as …

Reframing The Archive: Vietnamese Refugee Narratives In The Post-9/11 Period, Mai-Linh Hong

Faculty Journal Articles

This article considers how recent narratives about Vietnamese refugees engage with the Vietnam War’s visual archive, particularly iconic photographs from the war and ensuing “boat people” crisis, and contribute to present-day discourses on American militarism and immigration. The article focuses on two texts, a National Public Radio special series about a US naval ship (2010) and Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again (2011), which recounts a Vietnamese child’s refugee passage. By refiguring famous photojournalistic images from the war, the radio series advances a familiar rescue-and-gratitude narrative in which the US military operates as a care apparatus, exemplifying a cultural …

Review Of "Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, And Periodical Culture" By E. Gardner, Lara Langer Cohen

English Literature Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Jane Eyre And Education, Emma E. Gruner

Student Publications

As the first female Bildungsroman in the English language, Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre focuses heavily on the theme of education. Throughout the course of the story, the character of Jane Eyre acquires a vast array of classical knowledge and ladylike accomplishments, facilitating her transition from a lowly student to a highly-respected teacher in true Bildungsroman fashion. Jane’s impressive scholarly abilities, however, contrast sharply with the deep struggles she undergoes as she pursues a much more difficult “education” in her personal beliefs. In the end, though, Jane masters both her mind and heart. Emboldened and liberated by her formal education, …

Landed In America, Vera I. Ekhator

Student Publications

Poem about immigrant parents written by first-generation American.

In Search Of Health, Freedom & Identity: An Analysis Of Isabella Bird's And Margaret Fountaine's Renovation Of Self Through Travel & Travel Writing, Mikki L. Stacey

Student Publications

“An Analysis of Isabella Bird’s and Margaret Fountaine’s Renovation of Self through Travel & Travel Writing” tracks three interdependent facets of identity that become apparent in the travel literature of Victorian ladies Isabella Lucy Bird and Margaret Fountaine. These facets are:

• the socialized self (the identity developed as a result of the society in which one grows up)
• the renovated self (the identity developed through interacting with and adapting to other cultures )
• and the edited self (the identity one creates when she writes about her experiences—for my thesis specifically, the identity the author creates to reconcile her socialized and …

The Broadsheet- Issue 17, Merrimack College

The Broadsheet

Merrimack College's English Department newsletter.

This issue features:

• The Latest Edition of an Old Tradition: Bullet Journals
• Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Joins English Faculty
• Review of Fullmetal Alchemist
• Reading Merrimack’s English Majors
• Comics in the Obsidian Age
• Review of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Review Of La Chronique Anonyme Universelle: Reading And Writing History In Fifteenth-Century France, Elizaveta Strakhov

English Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Tolkien Among The Moderns, Edited By Ralph C. Wood. Reviewed By Ryder W. Miller., Ryder W. Miller

Mythprint Book Reviews

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.

Superiority In Humor Theory, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article, I consider the standard interpretation of the superiority theory of humor attributed to Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes, according to which the theory allegedly places feelings of superiority at the center of humor and comic amusement. The view that feelings of superiority are at the heart of all comic amusement is wildly implausible. Therefore textual evidence for the interpretation of Plato, Aristotle, or Hobbes as offering the superiority theory as an essentialist theory of humor is worth careful consideration. Through textual analysis I argue that not one of these three philosophers defends an essentialist theory of comic amusement. …

Rhetoric And Performing Anger : Proserpina's Gift And Chaucer's Merchant's Tale., Joseph Turner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Although scholars have historically minimized the relationship between medieval grammatical and rhetorical traditions and Chaucer's poetics, Proserpina's angry speech in the Merchant's Tale represents the intersection of medieval classroom grammar exercises, Geoffrey of Vinsauf's theory of delivery, and poetics. Proserpina's angry speech reveals that her rhetoric is calculated to subvert the masculine power structures that surround her. Such a focus on Chaucer's depiction of women's persuasive tactics helps to highlight Chaucer's deep engagement with rhetoric beginning in the 1380's. Moreover, this investigation asks for increased attention to the overlap between classroom grammatical traditions, rhetorical theory, and medieval poetics.

The Chapel Of The Thorn: A Dramatic Poem, Edited By Charles Williams And Sørina Higgins. Reviewed By Tiffany Brooke Martin., Tiffany Brooke Martin

Mythprint Book Reviews

Mythprint is the quarterly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to the study, discussion, and enjoyment of myth and fantasy literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. To promote these interests, the Society publishes three magazines, maintains a World Wide Web site, and sponsors the annual Mythopoeic Conference and awards for fiction and scholarship, as well as local discussion groups.