Other English Language and Literature Commons^™

Glimpses Of Myself In The Underground, Madelynn H. Morgan

Persimmon Creek

Through poetry, a older teenager reflects on a place that has made her who she is. She sees ghosts of her past self in every wall of this place, and it makes her feel oddly sentimental. She realizes how far she has come and how much has changed, and begins to understand how ever fleeting any given moment in time is.

Dodo, Lyxia C. Vue

Persimmon Creek

A short poem about the extinct animal known as the Dodo Bird.

The Stereo Skips, Maryssa H. Mckinney

Persimmon Creek

"The Stereo Skips" is a reflective poem that captures the chaotic and emotional experiences of a child navigating family struggles and religious expectations on a typical Sunday morning growing up in their household. Through the recurring image of a skipping stereo, the poem emphasizes the dissonance between external appearances and internal turmoil, as the child reflects on their relationship with God, the absence of their father, and the contradictions in their family life. The stereo's skips serve as a metaphor for the interruptions and unresolved emotions in the speaker's world.

Tsenacommacah, Wylan Blair

Persimmon Creek

This poem is about the area that was once called Tsenacommacah, the Powhatan people, and the horrors of the centuries that followed 1607.

Ode To A Carolina Cotton Mill, Joshua S. Lanier

Persimmon Creek

Ode to a Carolina Cotton Mill is a poem about the lives of generations of textile workers who left the farm in search of a better life for their families. THe poem is somewhat autobiographical, as my family had worked in the cotton mill for many generations.

Whiplash, Jillian M. Canady

Persimmon Creek

Whiplash is an abstract poem that emphasizes emotion and imagery over narrative clarity. Through the juxtaposition of a moth and a neon sign, it delves into themes of struggle and transience, blending surreal elements—sickly slouching figures, flickering candles, and woven snakes—to create a landscape of sorrow and light. With fragmented language and rhythmic shifts, the poem invites deep engagement and personal interpretation, culminating in a sensation of rapid motion and transformation, challenging readers to find meaning within its evocative chaos.

The Man In The Frame, Joshua Holt

Persimmon Creek

The Man in the Frame - Poetry by Joshua Holt

Clicky Pen, Allison E. Potter

Persimmon Creek

This is a poem about a clicky pen, an inanimate object that I gave life to. It is an original work that I submitted as homework for my Poetry Class.

Kabul, A Memory Bittersweet, Medina Z. Mayar

Persimmon Creek

A free verse poem.

Girls Are Coming Out Of The Woods (Title Taken From Tishani Doshi), Jillian Canady

Persimmon Creek

This evocative haiku, inspired by Tishani Doshi’s poem, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, beautifully captures the essence of resilience and emergence. It portrays women as powerful forces, symbolized by roaring fires and vibrant sunsets, evoking warmth and intensity. The detail of "pink painted toes" adds a playful yet bold touch, blending femininity with strength. This concise piece invites readers to reflect on the dynamic spirit of women stepping into their own, embodying both elegance and fierce determination.

Theodore B. Taverner, Joshua Holt

Persimmon Creek

A war veteran with PTSD wakes on abandoned train tracks, a gun in hand, blood on his clothes, and a body by his feet. Disoriented and haunted by fragmented memories, he struggles to piece together the truth as sirens close in.

Warmth, Brandi E. Shuler

Persimmon Creek

The short story Warmth is about an unnamed character who encounters a violent fire elemental. It is an experimental piece about what it feels like to experience a traumatic burn and what the character went through afterward.

Father's Circle, Samuel Bass

Persimmon Creek

An abusive Father and musically-inclined son go on a roadtrip through time and discover their universal connection.

The Work Of Persimmons, Aaliyah D. Wilkes

Persimmon Creek

I wanted to create a persimmon cover that was very light and abstract. I used illustrator to create a wallpaper of persimmons.

Final Master's Portfolio, Sophia Michalski

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio explores research in technical writing revolving around digital products and literary practices such as Post-Structuralism as literary theory and the methodology Docile Bodies within literary texts. While half the portfolio includes analytical essays which examine how these themes intersect and arise in literary landscape, the other half aims to investigate how the current digital marketplace prioritizes cloud-based products and what limitations are placed through extensive research.

Storytelling Or Telling Stories: An Analysis Of Disnarration In Music Videos, Victoria Garrett

Honors Theses

Music videos have grown in popularity in recent years and have begun to augment the stories being told by the lyrics of their songs. This is done by using narrative techniques, such as disnarration, to develop complex narratives that can conflict with the lyrical content. Through analysis of the videos "Willow" (2020 dir. Taylor Swift) by Taylor Swift, "The One That Got Away" (2012 dir. Floria Sigismoni) by Katy Perry, and "One Beer" (2020 dir. Justin Clough) by HARDY, the distinction between the plots of the videos and the lyrics can be brought into focus. This distinction in the stories …

Negotiation, Expression, And Microlanguage: The Processes Of Student Welfare And Identity In High School English Language Arts Classrooms, Jencarlos Feliciano-Ponce

Master's Projects

In this study, I will explore negotiation and expression as processes that educators can utilize (or continue to intentionally engage with) to empower the student body of the current high school English classrooms to counteract current pressures and negative trends in ELA. Negotiation and expression are not topics that should be explored in only a single ELA unit, either. The small moments that students experience with language, culture, and power all culminate to the processes explored in this research study; they guide English educators in their lesson instruction, curriculum design, and student engagement. By managing negotiation and expression as undercurrents …

Understanding Writing Center’S Motivations For Creating And Providing Online Writing Resources: A Qualitative Study, Mackenzie K. Croley

All Theses

This research-based thesis documents the process of creating online writing resources. The data was collected from an IRB-approved study where I interviewed writing center directors about how their centers have created and maintained online writing resources to support students. After conducting interviews, I share the results of the study about each center’s creation and maintenance practices. I discuss the labor that this type of project takes and how those centers have supported this process by using staff from all roles within the center. I explore how the online resources build ethos for the center. Finally, I explain how these online …

Her Hideous Progeny: Frankenstein'S Legacy, Adaptability, And Contemporary Prominence To Critical Story Telling, Ryan Penske

English (MA) Theses

This thesis situates the narrative of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley with two contemporary adaptations Get Out (2017) by Jordan Peele and Poor Things (2023) by Yorgos Lanthimos. The original 1818 Frankenstein text is composed of different discourses about race, gender, monstrosity, and what it means to be an abject other. As a text full of critical discourse, it has reached great popular culture legacy and has become adapted numerous times over the past two centuries. This thesis explores and acknowledges instances where the text has been adapted and applied to harmful discourses, such as British Prime Minister George Canning’s use …

The Castle Is Still Here, And Yes, It's Still Scary: Reconstructing The Gothic Through Contemporary Short Story, Alyssa Kilroy

Undergraduate Theses

Since Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto published in 1764, the literary Gothic has grown and spread to include a multitude of subgenres in a variety of formats. Gothic literature has served as both a product and a showcase of its contextual influences, providing a deeper look at humanity's deepest flaws, fears, and passions that shape our societies. While the Gothic's historically fluid identity allows Frankenstein to exist in a literary realm alongside Wuthering Heights, something consistent in its core continues to appeal to modern audiences and remains relevant in contemporary literature and other media. This project offers a …

The Golem, Sayanti Ganguly Puckett Dr.

Sabbatical Projects

My research explores the Jewish mythical figure of the golem and the symbolism behind it from contradictory angles that juxtapose the figure as a subservient defender of the oppressed Jews and as a monster over whom his creator has lost control and who then runs amok slaughtering those it is created to protect. My research attempts to make sense of these clashing propensities to understand how this figure can become such a bewildering yet ominous figure to Christians and Jews alike. Additionally, in the ultimate destruction of the golem, I would like to explore societal anxieties, fears, and securities about …

Myth Rewrites: Do We Need A Reboot?, Livia M. Nocito

Interdivisional Studies Honors Papers

As myth rewrites have permeated popular culture in recent years, the alterations made to their narratives have shifted the original meanings of the ancient texts. They have sought to provide a modernized retelling for readers of a new age to enjoy while simultaneously attempting to hold a mirror to a society that has remained patriarchal and redeems the narrative. By analyzing the three iterations of Medusa’s origins, as well as The Odyssey and it’s newest musical adaptation, “EPIC: The Musical,” myth rewrites are proven to not only be beneficial to introducing new audiences to ancient mythology, but also finds its …

The Influence Of Field Experiences On English Language Teachers' Preparedness: An Analysis Of Teacher Education In Nigeria, Bushroh O. Animashaun

INSPIRE Student Research and Engagement Conference

Brief Context:

• Definition of key terms: teacher education, field experiences.
• Importance of teacher education in language education
• Challenges in the Nigerian education system
• Why focus on teacher education?

He Said, She Said: Deconstructing Gender In Our Own World Through Our Own Languages, William K. Coulthard

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Both language and gender are social constructs which we humans have created to produce an order to the world, and this essay illustrates the ways in which language influences both our perceptions of gender and the world of people who subvert so-called natural gender norms. Because gender, unlike sex, is a social construct to which we ascribe particular images and words, language can affect not only the identity of the person in question but also their relationships, careers, and societal attitudes toward gender. Ursula Le Guin, in her 1969 science fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness, deconstructs our earthly …

Climate Change Fairy Tales (Complete Collection And Epub), St. Mary's University

Climate Change

This is the complete collection of fairy tales in one download

The Monday Manure, Zachary David Berston

Journalism

For my senior project, I wanted to create a new section of Mustang News that includes satire and cartoons. The section is called the Monday Manure to fit with the horse themed titles of other sections. This idea began as a project in the Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship class. While I initially had the idea to have a section that included games, I realized that it was a bit too ambitious after discussing that with the team at Mustang news. Over the course of this project, I have created several satire articles and cartoons, as well as organizing a team …

Navigating Trauma: A Linguistic Exploration Of Bilingual Trauma Expressions, Amira Mahmoud Othman

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between language, trauma, and emotional expression among bilingual Arabic-English speakers, focusing on code-switching patterns and euphemisms, and more broadly the emotional roles of native and non-native languages in trauma narratives. Through qualitative interviews with 20 Egyptian participants, the research reveals that code-switching serves as both a linguistic and emotional tool, allowing speakers to navigate trauma by creating distance or engaging more intimately. Such codeswitching patterns include the integration of English content words within Arabic structures, morphosyntactic innovations, and gender agreement applications, reflecting the creative adaptability of bilingual speakers in emotionally charged contexts, in line with …

Engaging Students With Interdisciplinary Learning Community Project For Freshman Composition And Digital Media Students, Hsi-Ling Huang, Xin Xu

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Studies have shown that Learning Communities have many benefits, including “[f]ostering workforce skills, encouraging problem-solving skills, and increasing retention and success” for both faculty and students (Dodge and Kendall, College Teaching, 2004). In this project, we created an interdisciplinary Learning Community Project that allowed a Freshman Composition (FC) course to pair with a Digital Media (DM) course (Sophomore students) for students to work on a mini magazine. Students in FC were writers whose tasks focusing on writing and researching, whereas students in DM were copy editors whose tasks focusing on graphic design and layout. The goal was for students …

White Horses In The Sky: Or The Magical Place Where Topology Meets Poetry, Sanziana Caraman, Lorelei Caraman

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

What do Shakespearean words, doughnuts, cups of tea, and horses in the sky all have in common with a famous theorem? To discover the answer, we take you on a journey in a strange, enchanted land: the land where mathematics meets poetry. Here we explore how a fundamental literary trope, metaphor, and a fundamental result in topology, Brouver's Fixed Point Theorem, touch and illuminate one another. Delving into the symmetry of this transdisciplinary embrace, we find that it reveals, not only the beauty of poetry and mathematics, but that of life itself: the beauty hidden in ordinary things like a …

Threading The Needle: Teaching Critical Reading And Writing In The Age Of Ai, Emily A. Durham, Andrea A. Berta

Humanities

All instructors--but particularly instructors who must teach students specific disciplinary ways of reading and writing--face a difficult position with AI. Students will need to use AI in collegiate and professional writing, but using AI for assignments can hinder critical thinking skills crucial to analyzing and correcting AI output. This presentation demonstrates three practices from our developmental English classrooms: a critical reading and writing summary assignment, AI-resistant rubrics, and an exercise to help students evaluate AI-generated suggestions on how to review their work. These activities are designed to help students develop crucial AI-literacy skills to help them succeed in an increasingly …