Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons^™

Nomadismos Lingüisticos Y Culturales En Yo-Yo Boing De Giannina Braschi (Linguistic And Cultural Monadisms In 'Yo-Yo Boing' By Giannina Braschi), Laura R. Loustau

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

"En la novela Yo-Yo Boing Giannina Braschi plantea un bilingüismo e identidad nomádica. Huye del concepto de permanencia y arraigo, definiéndose en sus personajes como un ser errante y proponiendo una yuxtaposición lingüística propia. Braschi utiliza un code-switching para subrayar la complejidad de vivir simultáneamente en más de una cultura y una lengua. El concepto teórico que da impulso a este artículo es la definición sobre la conciencia nómada que plantea Rosi Braidotti. Para Braidotti lo que define el estado nomádico es la subversión de convenciones fijas y estáticas. Braschi, en Yo-Yo Boing subvierte las convenciones lingüísticas al incorporar un …

Pecan Grove Review Volume 9, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

Creative writings by students, faculty, and staff of the St. Mary's University community.

Age Dependence; Of Spiral Grain In Widte Oaks (Quercus Alba) In Southcentral Illinois, Julia Rauchfuss

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Spiral grain, the alignment of wood fibers (trachejds) to the longitudinal axis of h·ees, is thought to be an indicator of old age and is a phenomenon that has been only stndied with destrnctive sampling methods (cutting down trees). In this study, the usefulness of non-fatal sampling methods and existing methods to quantify spiral grain patterns in Jiving and dead deciduous trees are examined, particularly in white oaks (Qi1ercus alba). 111e overall goal is to detem1ine if spiral grain growth is a reasonable indicator of h·ee age. Methods that were tested included the use of a 12 mm increment borer …

Cultural-Competency Training For School-Based Mental Health Service Providers, Natasha Lian Smith

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Literature on cultural competence has primarily developed in the fields of counseling psychology and counselor education. The field of school psychology has responded to the increased focus of cultural competency by providing recommended skills needed to provide psychological services in schools to diverse individuals and groups. Currently, research in effective cultural competency training has primarily focused on graduate training programs. This study extends the literature on cultural competency training by developing a training model that is appropriate for professionals who are already working in the field. This study first evaluated the impact of a needs assessment on the preparation of …

A Charismatic Iranian American Engineer, Jane Meehan

English Faculty Publications

This is the story of Iranian engineer Mostafa Jamshidi and his twenty-five years in Nebraska: his student days, his experiences with the immigration department and his eventual citizenship, his work history, and his personal life as told by his English teacher and surrogate mother. His language skills, soccer playing, and personality enabled him to combat his homesickness and the harassment of the immigration officials. The University of Nebraska at Omaha and the Nebraska Department of Roads gave him a place to learn and grow despite the time and geography in which he was born. The Great Plains, with its friendliness, …

Teaching Texts Materially: The Ends Of Nella Larsen’S Passing, John K. Young

English Faculty Research

The author suggests that attending to the publishing history of Larsen’s novel and the resulting indeterminacy of its ending(s) offers a concrete example of a materially oriented pedagogy that can illuminate the racial politics behind textual production and its relation to particular historical and cultural moments. He suggests that such a pedagogy offers both another way of understanding the textual contingency emphasized in contemporary theory and a way of further opening up questions of textuality and meaning for students.

Book Reviews: Place, Language, And Identity In Afro-Costa Rican Literature, By Dorothy E. Mosby, And The Fugitive Race: Minority Writers Resisting Whiteness, By Stephen P. Knadler, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews: Place, Language, And Identity In Afro-Costa Rican Literature, By Dorothy E. Mosby, And The Fugitive Race: Minority Writers Resisting Whiteness, By Stephen P. Knadler, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Review Of Place, Language, And Identity In Afro-Costa Rican Literature, By Dorothy E. Mosby, And The Fugitive Race: Minority Writers Resisting Whiteness, By Stephen P. Knadler, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

A Conversation With Velma Pollard, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Noted poet, novelist, linguist, and educator, Velma Pollard was Visiting Professor of English at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, during the fall semester of 2001 when I conducted the following interview. John Martin, my graduate assistant at the time, assisted me in videotaping and transcribing our conversation, which took place in her cottage at the University on December 3, 2001.

Review Of Moving Out: A Nebraska Woman's Life, Susan Naramore Maher

English Faculty Publications

At the end of her memoir, Moving Out, Polly Spence assesses all the little ironies of her life and concludes, "[each] time everything seemed just right, each time I thought I'd found it all—the work, the love, and the ideal way to live—something brought change to me." Change is a central motif in her narrative, reflected in a title that underscores movement and mobility, not settlement. Spence's Nebraska life provides a toehold on the slippery surface of twentieth-century culture in America.

Lambs Of A Foreign God: Christianity In African-American Literature, Maryam F. Mujahid

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis examines the way that Christianity was used as a method to integrate African slaves into American culture. “For many slaves, it was their conversion to Christianity that was the ultimate and final separation from their African heritage.” Postbellum African American poets had to decide if they wanted to assimilate into American culture through Christianity or embrace their African roots.

African American Mothers & Daughters: Socialization, Distance, & Conflict, Kaavonia Hinton

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

The black women's literary tradition began in a conscious effort to create a space for black women's writing and to illustrate a distinction between black women's reality and the realities of others (Christian 348–359). The literature within the tradition is influenced by how black women perceive themselves and the world around them. As a result, identity is an important part of African-American women's literature (Hooper 74–81). Race, class, gender, and sexuality are all components of one's identity and are critical in the formation of one's lived experiences (Crenshaw 357–383). Family, from its structure to the function of specific members within …

Manuscript Draft With Edits., Tony Hillerman

Skeleton Man Manuscripts

This is a copy of the manuscript of The Skeleton Man with edits.

Telling God’S Sanction : Storytelling In The Narrative Journalism, Memoirs, And Creative Nonfiction Of Rick Bragg, Jennifer Nicole Sias

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Self-described paid-storyteller and Pulitzer-Prize-winning-narrative-journalist, Rick Bragg has used the storytelling techniques he learned from his people to write two best-selling memoirs that redefine the boundaries of the genres of memoir and creative nonfiction. His speakerly texts combine the voices of the working class of the Alabama foothills of Appalachia, his own voice as a member of this culture, and his narrative journalistic voice. In his works, Bragg has managed not only to carve a place for the voice of the working class, but also to celebrate and preserve the oral culture, history, and beautiful language of his people, the working …

Manuscript Draft., Tony Hillerman

The Sinister Pig Manuscripts

This is a copy of the manuscript of The Sinister Pig with no author's edits.

Pecan Grove Review Volume 8, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

Creative writings by students, faculty, and staff of the St. Mary's University community.

Anxieties Of Impotence: Cuban Americas In New York City, Christina M. Tourino

English Faculty Publications

In her paper, "Anxieties of Impotence: Cuban Americas in New York City, " Christina Marie Tourino seeks a basis for comparison between Latin American literatures and Latino literatures of the United States. Such groups have rarely been compared in the past because they are considered part of the same literary "family." However, Tourino argues that owing to the flows of capital driven by global pressures, literatures between and among Latin Americans and Latinos hail from such culturally heterogeneous sites and are made over by so many relocations that they do call for comparative projects. Instead of comparing texts across national …

Hemingway's Modern Woman: An Analysis Of Selected Novels, Bonnie Gay Robertson

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis looks at the female characters of several of Ernest Hemingway’s novels and how they relate to a world changed by war. It analyzes their capacity to find identities for themselves and take on male characteristics and independence for themselves.

Pecan Grove Review Volume 7, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

Creative writings by students, faculty, and staff of the St. Mary's University community.

[Introduction To] From Within The Frame: Storytelling In African-American Studies, Bertram D. Ashe

Bookshelf

The book explores the written representation of African-American oral storytelling from Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison to James Alan McPherson, Toni Cade Bambara and John Edgar Wideman. At its core, the book compares the relationship of the "frame tale" - an inside-the-text storyteller telling a tale to an inside-the-text listener - with the relationship between the outside-the-text writer and reader. The progression is from Chesnutt's 1899 frame texts, in which the black spoken voice is contained by a white narrator/listener, to Bambara's sixties-era example of a "frameless" spoken voice text, to Wideman's neo-frame text of the late …

The Influence Of Retention Intervals And Warning Signals On Prospective Memory, Michael Andrew Sarapata

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prospective memory, memory for future events, is used for remembering duties and obligations that all people must complete. Past research has contributed to our understanding of the bases of prospective memory tasks (time versus event) and the kinds of situations requiring prospective memory (appointments, chores, deadlines, and medications). However, research has yet to examine how prospective remembering unfolds over time. For example, very little is known about how such remembering is affected by the time from when the task is encoded to the time that a task must be conducted (the retention interval), the length of the time in which …

Unsettling Identities In Two Novels By Leslie Marmon Silko, Olivia Smith

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Throughout Native American Literature the state of identity in connection to one’s tribal culture, nature, and spirituality is vital to understanding both the struggles that Native Americans have endured during contact with Europeans and then Americans and the current ongoing cultural negotiations of contemporary tribal peoples. Native American writers use literature as a venue to reclaim and reconstruct identity, particularly in relation to a rapidly changing and commercial world.

Grounded in identity theory and Native American literary criticism, this thesis explores how Native American author Leslie Marmon Silko “unsettles” identities in her two novels Almanac of the Dead and Gardens …

Mammy: From Pancakes To Grenades, Nichol Michelina Pagano

Theses & Honors Papers

From an image draped in calico and flipping pancakes to a figure wearing pearls and throwing hand grenades, Mammy exists as part of America's cultural heritage since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Mammy character evolved in American iconography from the subservient kitchen Aunt Jemima to a modem aggressive woman ready for military combat. Early depictions of Mammy show her as being very humble, plain in dress and appearance, and subservient to her white masters . In From Mammy to Miss America and Beyond, Sue Jewell states, "[Mammy] is portrayed as an obese African-American woman, of dark complexion, with …

Foregrounding Motherhood In Toni Morrison's Sula And Beloved, Lindsay Green

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Pecan Grove Review Volume 6, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

Creative writings by students, faculty, and staff of the St. Mary's University community.

"I Was Born Too Late To Believe In Your God": The Struggle Against Religion In Ernest J. Gaines's Of Love And Dust And A Lesson Before Dying, Matthew D. Towles

Theses & Honors Papers

The strange mixtures of opposites in the south often provide a fast-moving culture not easily recognized or categorized. The opposition to Christianity does not often deal specifically with Jesus Christ, the New Testament, or other Christian philosophies. Rather, the Christianity in conflict is usually symbolized by the church, a preacher, or other Christian rituals and traditions. Thus, it is the system of Christianity that is in conflict with many of the characters’ freedom, not necessarily the philosophy of Christianity. The struggles against religion in Ernest J. Gaines’s writings Love and Dust and A Lesson Before Dying are displayed through character …

Cross Racial Preferences In Viewing Sexually Explicit Material: A Comparison Between African-American And Caucasian Males, Boyd Randal Horton

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study investigated that extent to which the race of actors in an erotic video affected sexual arousal in African-American and Caucasian heterosexual males. It was hypothesized that the two racial groups would be significantly more sexually aroused while watching their respective homoethnic erotic video. The hypothesis was grounded in the modeling effects of Bandura's Social Leaning Theory (1977), the Matching Hypothesis (1982) and worldview differences between African-Americans and Caucasians (Baldwin and Bell, 1985). Thirty-four African-American and Caucasian males were shown homoethnic and non-homoethnic erotic videos while penile circumference, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, and self-report ratings of sexual …

The Pitchman In Print: Oral Performance Art In Text And Context, Joseph Ugoretz

Publications and Research

Oral performance art, patterned performative speech for an audience, is perhaps the oldest and most ubiquitous human art form. Specific instances of this art include the performances of griots and guslars, troubadors and shamans, as well as rappers and riddlers, preachers and politicians. While this art form is by definition oral, it is also the case that, frequently, literary art has represented oral performance art. There is written art which depicts oral art, which describes it, appropriates it, criticizes and co‑opts it.

In this dissertation, I define oral performance art as constituting a separate and unique artistic genre, one which …

The Power Of Hoodoo: African Relic Symbolism In Amistad And The Narrative Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Alicia M. Simmons

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.