English Language and Literature Commons^™

Teaching Assistant Experience With English As A Second Language: Beginning Grammar, Listening, And Speaking In Spring 2016, Jessey Reed

Celebration of Student Scholarship Poster Sessions Archive

No abstract provided.

Immigration And Identity Translation: Characters In Bharati Mukherjee’S Jasmine And Jhumpa Lahiri’S The Namesake As Translators And Translated Beings, Laura Traister

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Bharati Mukherjee’s 1989 novel Jasmine and Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2003 novel The Namesake both feature immigrant protagonists, who experience name changes and identity transformations in the meeting space of Indian and American cultures. Using the theory of cultural translation to view translation as a metaphor for identity transformation, I argue that as these characters alter their identities to conform to cultural expectations, they act as both translators and translated texts. Although they struggle with the resistance of untranslatability via their inability to completely assimilate into American culture, Jasmine and Gogol ultimately gain the ability to bypass the limitations of a foreigner/native …

Strange And Unstable Bodies: Shifting Materialities In Early American Natural History Correspondence Networks, Julie Marie Mccown

English Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation fills a gap in the study of early American natural history literature by investigating the representation of animal bodies within early American natural history writing and attending to the role animal bodies play in shaping natural history knowledge and how natural history in turn shapes animal bodies. It also examines the effect the shifting materiality of animal bodies has on constructions of race and ethnicity in early America, as well as the ways non-white, non-male, and non-human persons exercise agency via natural history correspondence networks. Employing animal studies, posthumanism, and new materialism, I contend that, within natural history’s …

Rethinking Resistance: Race, Gender, And Place In The Fictive And Real Geographies Of The American West, Tracey Daniels Lerberg

English Dissertations - Archive

This project traces the history of the American West and its inhabitants through its literary, cinematic and cultural landscape, exploring the importance of public and private narratives of resistance, in their many iterations, to the perceived singular trajectory of white masculine progress in the American west. The project takes up the calls by feminist and minority scholars to broaden the literary history of the American West and to unsettle the narrative of conquest that has been taken up to enact a particular kind of imaginary perversely sustained across time and place. That the western heroic vision resonates today is perhaps …

Queering The Aftermath: Rethinking The Queer In Postcolonial And The (Post)Colonial In Queer, Robert Larue

English Dissertations - Archive

“Queering the Aftermath: Rethinking the Queer in Postcolonial and the (Post)colonial in Queer,” argues the necessity for a sustained dialogue between the fields of postcolonial studies and queer studies. The paucity of analysis of queerness within postcolonial discourse, along with dearth of analysis of systems of colonialism which undergird much of queer studies impedes both discourses’ aims for challenging the systems of normativity upon which Western hegemony is built. With a focus on sub-Saharan African queer narratives, this work finds that, contrary to common perception, queerness in Africa operates in a myriad of forms that are unrecognized in U.S. notions …

Satori 2016, Winona State University

Satori Literary Magazine

The Satori is a student literary publication that expresses the artistic spirit of the students of Winona State University. Student poetry, prose, and graphic art are published in the Satori every spring since 1970.

Master Buddha & The Jolly Golly Fun Time Gang., Todd Edward Evans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is the first two chapters of a novel. The novel parodies the capitalist and consumerist United States of the 21st Century in the tradition of Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, and Donald Barthelme.

Stories Of Single Mothers : Narrating The Sociomaterial Mechanisms Of Community Literacy., Kathryn Elizabeth Perry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In light of the increasing significance of community activist scholarship in Rhetoric and Composition and given the overwhelming nature of institutional educational inequity, this dissertation takes a close look at specific literacy practices and the corresponding networks that shape these literacy practices at a community literacy organization. Based on interviews with participants and staff at a local nonprofit called Family Scholar House (FSH), this project paints a complex picture of each stakeholder’s perspective on successful literacy. First, I employ Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to analyze three specific literacy moments at FSH: an application for government assistance, a financial aid appeal letter, …

Identifying Facebook-, Twitter-, And Instagram-Specific Rhetoric And Interaction: A Case Study, Sharon Kathleen Jones

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

A great deal of research has examined social media best practices; however, there has been a gap in looking at nonprofits to examine the efficacy of Facebook-, Twitter-, and Instagram-specific rhetoric to engage stakeholders. This study examined a small, local nonprofit's posts on each of the above platforms, and used surveys and interviews to find which types of rhetoric create the best dialogue between the nonprofit and stakeholders. This study found that for Facebook, the best rhetoric to use are pictures and videos; for Twitter, the best rhetoric to use are retweets; and Instagram, the best types of rhetoric are …

Education Policy And Practices Of English As A Foreign Language (Efl) In Iraq, Ihab Razzaq Altufaili

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

English is the language of trade, finance, science, education, and politics, and several countries have an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) policy to improve their ability to compete. Accordingly, many countries have placed emphasis on EFL and have established an effective teaching methodology as part of that policy. Currently, the Ministry of Education in Iraq has changed their educational policy to start EFL in the first grade and has adopted new textbooks using the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach. The purpose of this research is to study the Iraqi EFL education policy and practices after 2014 by assessing instructor …

Modern Myth And Ideology In David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, Matthew Ryan Stewart

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to analyze David Foster Wallace's novel The Pale King through the critical lenses of Lubomir Dolezel's Heterocosmica and Louis Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" to arrive at a theory of the heroic in the novel. The Pale King features multiple characters experiencing various crises in the face of an invisible, adversarial force that can be understood through Dolezel's modern myth formulation, in which an invisible domain oppresses characters. This study analyzes three themes of the novel in which this interaction is most observable: the religious, the supernatural, and the civic themes. Althusser's work …

“First-Rate Eddication”: The Educational Roles Of Merlyn And Dumbledore, Carissa Johnson

Masters Theses

The Once and Future King (1957) and the Harry Potter series (1997-2007) are Bildungsroman stories of young, orphaned boys, Wart and Harry, who endure extraordinary circumstances and become wise, mature, and heroic. The transformation that they undergo is the effect of strong education from their teachers, the wizards Merlyn and Dumbledore. This thesis uses progressive educational theory to demonstrate the model these wizards employ. This study also utilizes a study of discourse grammar and Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development to discuss the nature of Wart’s and Harry’s education. Because of the moral education demonstrated in the stories, reading them …

Flannery O'Connor And The Poetics Of Prayer: The Analysis Of A Prayer Journal, Emily Wilson

Masters Theses

Prior to the recent discovery of her college prayer journal, kept between 1946 and 1947, knowledge of Flannery O’Connor’s religious influence and activity had been restricted to her letters and published works, such as Mystery and Manners and The Habit of Being. Works such as these shed light onto O’Connor’s background and religious views, making her Catholic faith obvious and explicit. This prayer journal exposes a new aspect of her faith – that is the personal relationship between herself and God shown through narrative. Her prayer journal makes it clear that her external expression of faith, showcased in most of …

What Was The Mockingbird’S Song? Reassesing To Kill A Mockingbird Through The Lens Of Go Set A Watchman, Leslie Erin Cook

English Theses - Archive

The publication of Go Set a Watchman, a companion piece to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, problematizes many of the accepted readings of the canonical text. This ‘new’ novel is actually the initial manuscript of the ‘old’ classic Harper Lee submitted to her publisher in 1957. In this iteration, readers find 26-year-old Jean Louise and 72-year-old Atticus at odds over the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The father does not believe that the Supreme Court has the right to legislate integration for the individual states, and works to keep NAACP lawyers out of Maycomb. His daughter is shocked …

“The God Of The Age”: Religion And Servitude In The Works Of Augusta Jane Evans, Jeffrey Warren King

English Dissertations - Archive

Despite her widespread popularity in the mid-nineteenth century, Augusta Jane Evans and her novels went largely unnoticed for most of the twentieth century. It was not until Nina Baym included a chapter on Evans in her 1978 book Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870 that scholars began to turn their attention to the once-popular novelist. Evans’s presentation of intellectual, ambitious women who forsook their careers for marriage became controversial among scholars who argued whether Evans could, in the words of Diane Roberts, “be recovered for feminism” (xvi). Scholars Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Sara S. Frear, …

Behind The Stakes, Between The Lines, Beyond The Pun: A Critical Deconstruction Of Humor In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, And Other Popular Comedies, Jaime Libby

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Humor is a powerful rhetorical device employed at all levels of human discourse—from casual banter to political debate. Still, despite humor’s global prevalence, its historical transgressiveness, and its distinct potential both to neutralize and critically engage highly fraught issues, humans do not often pause to ask how humor works. And what does its working tell us about our humanness? This thesis explores the operation of humor in literature and performance, using tools provided by structuralist, deconstructive, and postmodern critical arenas, to reveal how humor’s fundamental structures invite humans to entertain new perspectives and practice empathy. The study considers irony, the …

The Adventure Of The Immortal Detective: Adaptation And Audience Investment In The Cases Of Sherlock Holmes, Corey Hayes

Masters Theses

In the last ten years, popular culture has seen a number of visual interpretations of the character and cases of Sherlock Holmes. From the films starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law to the BBC show Sherlock and the CBS show Elementary, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s consulting detective is currently at the forefront of the public mind. However, these new on-screen interpretations of the character represent merely the tip of the Holmes iceberg, and the dedication of their fans is just a continuation of the intense popularity that Doyle’s detective has enjoyed since his earliest appearances in print. All of …

Poem No. 115, May 2016, 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.

Deconstructing Zombies Of Capitalism : The Walking Dead And New Views Of American Zombies, Jennifer Daly

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This study of The Walking Dead comic book series intends to argue that the zombie of The Walking Dead resists classification within a Marxist schema through their blurring of social binary systems of class, race, and gender. Current scholarly criticism of zombie literature, film, and television has a tendency to utilize a Marxist lens to depict zombies as drones of capitalism, and mindless consumers.

The modern American zombie comes from Haitian myths in which zombies are raised to assist the slaves in the field during the day, but many critics have ignored the other half of Haitian stories in which …

Coding The Common Core : What's Missing From The English Language Arts Standards For Writing, Joseph Anthony De Guzman

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Since its release in June 2010, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been adopted by more than 40 states. Created by a team led by curriculum specialist Susan Pimentel and College Board president David Coleman, the standards establish benchmarks for what students should learn at specific grade levels. In this project, I examine closely the Core’s writing standards, analyzing the writing values it emphasizes at Grades K, 5, 8, and 11/12. Generally, the CCSS has been lauded for its “Anchor Standards for Writing,” which focus on the production of narrative, informational, and argumentative texts as a broad requirement. Yet …

Canon Fodder In The Institutional Vessel : The Missing Voice Of The Student In Literary Canon And Curriculum Discourse, Meagan J. Dejong

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Are graduate students' part of the “canon wars,” which have been waged among scholars and institutions for more than twenty years to determine what should remain part of the literary canon and therefore part of the curriculum; or are graduate students merely “canon fodder”? My research attempts to define the canon, then examines whether scholar-critics or academic institutions have listened to the voice of the students regarding the creation and continued teaching of the canon, and finally explores the chasm between the “accessible” and “selective” canon. I ask whether any pedagogical approach values the student when implementing the canon through …

Talk To Text, George Gallagher

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis seeks to both examine and embrace the lack of concrete language available regarding what actually happens with students during face-to-face conversations about their wr iting. The context of “conversations” covers a broad spectrum of participants - teacher and student, student and student, student and tutor, as well as student with self - and domains - cognitive, affective, psychological and creative - that are particularly vexing to capture in words. Attempts by authors to weave together such disparate, dynamic forces breed tension. Such tension is good, and, quite often, purposeful. My research seeks to explore how such constructive tension …

The Victorian Influence On Virginia Woolf's Domestic Feminist Aesthetic In Mrs. Dalloway And To The Lighthouse, Heather Mary Greenberg

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis focuses on the function of the Victorian domestic woman in the Modernist novels and essays of Virginia Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse are the two primary texts covered in this study. Woolfs Modernist aesthetic develops out of the Victorian literary tradition and represents a conscious shift away from the literary and social conventions associated with pre-WWI society. Woolf draws upon established Victorian models of femininity, like Patmore’s “Angel in the House,” and traditional Victorian domestic middle-class ideology to center her Modernist novels. Her female protagonists, Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs. Ramsay, represent quintessential Victorian ideals of femininity: …

"Gutless Bitch" Camouflage : Post-Postmodern Barbarism And Shifting Gender Performativity In Amc's The Walking Dead, Lynette Marie Surie

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

AMC’s The Walking Dead is part of Robert Kirkman’s franchised juggernaut, The Walking Dead. Within this world, humans struggle to survive as they band together in groups to fight against the zombie hoard and monstrous elements of humanity. As survival is their main priority, established roles from pre-fall society no longer function as all genders, races, ages, and classes of people actively fight to live. Using Judith Butler’s gender performance theory and Julia Kristeva’s description of the abject, this thesis questions how and if gender functions when culture is destroyed and civilization breaks down. Gender markers of femininity are lost …

Domesticity, Literacy, And Self In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Abigail Walker

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This research paper focuses on the influence of domesticity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The motivation for this project comes from the theories of Gaston Bachelard in his book, The Poetics of Space. I study the domestic situation of the three narrators from Frankenstein: Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the creature. Additionally, I analyze each character’s household, as well as their isolation, in order to highlight the difference between belonging to a home and being homeless. Belonging to a household, and maintaining an attachment to home appears to be particular characters’ saving grace. On the other hand, and paradoxically, it seems …

Lost Generations And The Problem Of American Identity : The Emergence Of Racial Nativism In American Culture (1890s-1920s), Gloria Lugo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis problematizes traditional generic groupings (such as realism, naturalism, and modernism) since such categories segregate texts into literary periods defined largely by artificial formalist criteria. These ahistorical distinctions tend to deemphasize social and cultural import and also occlude analyses of texts as cultural products that express the dominant ideology of a particular epoch. A historical analysis focusing on cultural ideology can offer new insights to how various canonical texts perpetuate American mythologies and stereotypes. When interrogating texts of the Progressive and Modernist Eras, a pattern emerges that conflates racism and nativism in an effort to define Americans as elite …

Bridging The Gap Between Manner And Matter : The Friction Of Reticence And Resistance In Sylvia Townsend Warner's Intimate Poems, Giana Milazzo

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This thesis works to question the peculiar relationship between form and subject in the intimate poems of the undeservedly forgotten voice of Sylvia Townsend Warner. We will engage with feminist, lesbian, and modernist criticism to help explain why a writer placed so richly in the prime of modernism and with a revolutionary Communist spirit sometimes depicts in her verse a conservative, domestically repressed female speaker who is often silenced, subdued, and controlled by her female lover—and why Warner choses to construct these subjects using more formal poetic strategies.

Sylvia Townsend Warner is an important figure to examine, as there is …

Bridges, Not Towers: Connecting Universities And Local Communities For Community Writing Projects, Alicia Remolde

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

It has been argued that by bridging the educational resources of institutions of higher education with local, community literacy initiatives, adult literacy can be promoted outside of the university while imparting teaching and learning experiences to the on-campus community. The purpose is not to impart the values of the Ivory Tower but to create bridges through collaborative work and dialogue to achieve social or political action for the community members. This thesis will show how writing centers can foster transformative community and public writing spaces using the Montclair State University’s Center for Writing Excellence Seminar for Lifelong Learners as a …

The Ritualization Of Violence In The Magic Toyshop, Victor Chalfant

English (MA) Theses

This dissertation will explore the way Philip treats puppets and masks as pseudo-sacred objects in order to maintain control in Angela Carter’s work The Magic Toyshop. To show the implications of the pseudo-sacred, I will use Violence and the Sacred by Rene Girard that examines the way primitive cultures are able to maintain order through particular religious beliefs and collective violence against a scapegoat. My critical reading of the text will look closely at how Philip uses the pseudo-sacred to build up the community. When the pseudo-sacred is finally called into question the community is threatened. Although Philip attempts …

Readers In Pursuit Of Popular Justice: Unraveling Conflicting Frameworks In Lolita, Innesa Ranchpar

English (MA) Theses

This thesis examines the competing frameworks in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita—the fictional Foreword written by John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. and the manuscript written by Humbert Humbert—in order to understand to what extent the construction manipulates the rhetorical appeal. While previous scholarship isolates the two narrators or focuses on their unreliability, my examination concentrates on the interplay of the frameworks and how their conflicting objectives can be problematic for readers. By drawing upon various theories by Michel Foucault from Power/Knowledge and Louis Althusser’s “On Ideology,” I look into how John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. and Humbert Humbert use authoritative voices to directly …