Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons^™

Musical Language And Communication: Students Connect Music Streams To Literacy, Mathematics, Science, And Movement, Kelly Collier

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation discusses how music and literacy claim many of the same skills, ways music may be used as a motivational tool to help promote strategies for skill development, and how teachers working in teams have the innovation to generate strategic learning. By combining music symbolism with the literacy curriculum, one can create a set of elementary school lessons that integrate musical melody with the facets of literacy, mathematics, science, and movement to formulate beneficial opportunities for student engagement and learning. Students cultivate learning by using the elements of rhythmic literacy, such as identifying beat values in conjunction with their …

“Everyone’S Favorite Dead Girl”: Historical Crime Fiction And Postwar Policing In James Ellroy’S The Black Dahlia, Mauricio Ortiz Zaragoza

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis argues for the importance of crime fiction as a major literary genre with global reach. Taken as a whole, crime fiction acts as a vehicle for exploring macro-level questions of social structures, political-economic processes and power relations. Within that genre, I claim that James Ellroy is a key figure who writes at the intersection of the historical novel and literary noir. As the first work in his L.A. Quartet (1987-1992), The Black Dahlia fictionalizes the investigation of the city’s most famous unsolved homicide—the gruesome murder and mutilation of Elizabeth Short. The novel, however, uses the investigation as a …

Healthcare Practices In The United States Aimed At Improving Care And Language Access Services For Limited English Proficiency Refugees: A Systematic Review, Bemnet Kebede

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Objective: The United States has accepted over 3 million refugees from all around the world since 1975. However, many Limited English Proficiency (LEP) refugees face significant barriers when seeking healthcare due to limited access, lack of knowledge, mistrust in physicians, language differences, cultural concerns, and overall complexity of the U.S. healthcare system. The purpose of this systematic review was to identify practices in the last 10 years that have improved healthcare and language access services for LEP refugees living in the U.S.

Methods: A search was conducted in four electronic databases PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and Scopus from January 2013 to …

Evolving Expressions Of Trauma In James Joyce, Jean Rhys, And Caryl Phillips, Sean M. Mccray

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Evolving Expressions of Trauma articulates ways that dynamic, changing theories of trauma can provide a language and conceptual space to examine innovative modes and means of expression in Modernist novels and in later, post-colonial and experimental novels. This dissertation asserts that as trauma theory has expanded to encompass and describe different types of traumata, including the mundane, the insidious, and empathetic, it has provided a scaffolding for studying difficult, even impenetrable works from the Modernist period and beyond. The works examined here are strategically selected to demonstrate scope and particularity in the growth of trauma theories and their potential applications …

Systemic Theoretical Instruction: Tense And Aspect In Italian A Sociocultural Study Of American Learners Of Italian, Charles Joseph Panarella, Jr.

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

University-level language and second-language classrooms typically use general rules of thumb to teach grammar without considering its conceptual aspects and cultural origins. These general rules of thumb are normally taught using a communicative approach to language teaching which typically places little emphasis on immediate corrective feedback and learner development. Most assessments are static in nature and focus on right and wrong answers rather than their origins (i.e., learner development and microgenesis). The lack of corrective feedback and lack of considering affective factors have the potential to negatively influence language acquisition in terms of motivation and self-efficacy. In addition, foreign language …

The Transformation Of Edgar Huntly: An American Awakening, Willie C. Sosa

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Since Charles Brockden Brown published his first novels in the late eighteenth century, he has subsequently shifted back and forth, in importance, from the center to the periphery of the American literary canon. In recent years however, a dramatic increase in scholarship on Brown shows his significance is once again trending back toward the center of importance in this field. Scholarship has tended to coalesce around four topics which can be categorized as postcolonial expansion, the wild city, the distinction between the city and wildness, and identity. Looking closely at identity, although the discourse has done a thorough job of …

Beyond Maidens And Mothers: A Study Of Till We Have Faces, Tamar Peterson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examines how C.S. Lewis’ final novel, Till We Have Faces, demonstrates a significant diversion from the author's typical writing habits, especially regarding his depictions of women. Progressing through the novel chronologically, this thesis studies sixteen notable scenes that demonstrate this diversion. It tracks the development and depiction of women characters who exemplify a more realistic, complex, egalitarian writing style—one that allows women to wield legitimate power, excel in military combat, operate as conduits to the Divine, and enjoy their sexuality in affirming ways.

This thesis begins with an introduction to Lewis' position as a lay theologian and popular …

The Search For Home: An Analysis Of American-Socialized Filipino American Identity In Literature, Julianna Marie Crame

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Many studies on Filipino American literature focus on the first-generation’s struggle with assimilation; however, American-socialized generation 1.5 and second-generation Filipino Americans also face immense pressure. How do generation 1.5 and second-generation Filipino Americans develop their identities in compliance with and resistance to stereotypes created by the dominant American and Filipino communities? To answer this question, I use a postcolonial and Asian American Studies theoretical framework to do close readings of three novels written by American-socialized Filipino Americans from the 2000s-2010s and set in the 1990s. These novels are American Son (2001) by Brian Ascalon Roley for racial stereotypes, One Tribe …

Student Expectations And Motivation In Spanish For Heritage Speakers Programs, Sergio A. Guzman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The changing demographics in the United States and the growing need for multilingual individuals originated by globalization, among other reasons, have contributed to the emergence of a new field within the area of Applied Linguistics: The Teaching and Learning of Heritage Languages. Due to historical and geographic causes, Spanish for Heritage Speakers (SHS) is currently the largest and most established of these programs. However, the curricula, like those of most college courses, has been developed from professors’ perspectives, largely ignoring what students want to learn and/or their motives for enrolling in these classes. The lack of student input is especially …

Studies In Words: Laborious Ben Jonson's Lexicon, Steven Hrdlicka

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation examines significant words in Ben Jonson’s poetic lexicon that the poet inherited, borrowed, and shaped from antiquity and through the Middle Ages. Jonson used etymology as a means to rhetorical inventio, a common practice in the Renaissance. Etymology comprehended more than mere word derivation in the Renaissance but also notably included philological study. Ben Jonson’s extensive knowledge of language, history, architecture, the plastic arts, and philosophy is well known, but the extent to which Jonson’s knowledge of these subjects contributed to his understanding and use of poetic language is not. Thus this dissertation seeks to explore the intellectual …

Table Of The Sun, Christine Bettis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My creative thesis is a 48-page collection of poems titled Table of the Sun. Each poem is an intimate interrogation of varied ecological, romantic, and/or political disasters ranging from the Dakota Access Pipeline, cruel love, and Donald Trump. Some poems are reckonings, and others work to heal trauma, heartache, clinical illness, and supernatural afflictions like those experienced by the Tarantati of Puglia. Some are combative, it's true. Water is everywhere and it is multitudinous as an agent of destruction, cleansing, and transformation, and as a life-giver. The collection was influenced by readings, lectures, and courses I've experienced at UNLV, including …

De-Colonizing Language Needs: A Critical Ethnographic Study Of Former And Current Teachers’ Language Dispositions And How Taking A Multicultural Education Course Mediates Those Dispositions, Ravijot Singh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this critical ethnographic research was to examine how taking a Multicultural Education course mediated teachers’ language dispositions. Particularly, this study examined how language and culture have a profound connection that is largely unrecognized in the American education system, and how lack of respect for the home language of students by their teachers leads to negative attitudes towards the children and impedes students’ academic progress.

This study used a theoretical and conceptual framework that incorporate intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) as its research paradigm to understand the interaction and overlapping roles of language and culture in society, and how neoliberal …

Yiddish Diction In Singing, Carrie Suzanne Schuster-Wachsberger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The standard for classical singers in the United States to be trained in the singing diction of the German, Italian, and English languages. This sung diction varies from the spoken diction for those languages and is therefore important for singers to study in classes dedicated to singing language pronunciation. Literature is also available for the instruction in the singing diction of numerous other languages including Latin, Spanish, Czech, Russian, and Hebrew. While there is a vast scope of languages represented by vocal diction guides, there is no available singing diction guide for Yiddish songs, despite the spectrum of classical vocal …

Gestures As Mimetic Forms Of Identity In Post-Secondary Italian As A Foreign Language Classrooms: A Sociocultural Perspective, Ilaria Nardotto Peltier

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study investigates the use of mimetic gestures of identity by foreign language teachers of Italian and their students in college classes as a form of meaning-making. All four of the teachers were found to use a variety of Italian gestures as a regular aspect of their teaching and presentation of self. Students and teachers also were found to mirror each other’s gestures. None of the teachers had been video-recorded before the study and all were surprised to see the degree to which they appeared to be Italian, although at the same time all believed this to be an important …

Morning's Porch, Colby Gillette

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Morning's Porch continues and follows the walking, waiting, watching that begins and ends off the page. It begins "underway," with two already on the road, and ends in an eye wanting light. In between, childhood, Easter, Winter, Spring, Venice, asphalt, Summer, Fall, sunsets, moorhens, grackles, billboards, dogwoods and cottonwoods walk along the poems. They walk through the poems as they continue to walk in the world. In a similar way, the poems of René Char, George Herbert, Paul Celan, Emily Dickinson, William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, William Carlos Williams and Pierre Reverdy walk through the pages of …

James Joyce And Post-Imperial Bildung: Influences On Salman Rushdie, Tayeb Salih, And Tsitsi Dangarembga, Robert Michael Kirschen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" functions as an axis around which writers from former British colonies--Salman Rushdie (India), Tayeb Salih (Sudan), and Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe)--construct their own Bildungsromans. This nodal point is possible because Joyce's Bildungsroman represents a unique rendering of the genre which has proven useful for narratives of growth and development in newly independent nations. This dissertation focuses on a single narrative paradigm which acts as a common thread among the four authors. In each text (Rushdie's "Midnight's Children", Salih's "Season of Migration to the North", and Dangarembga's "Nervous Conditions"), the use of …

Taiwanese Willingness To Communicate In English: Can Watching American Television Programs Help?, Yu-Ting Chien

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study explored the relationship between Taiwanese audiences' use of American television programs and their willingness to communicate in English. Taiwanese participants filled out an online survey consisted of questions from uses and gratifications constructs and willingness to communicate constructs. In addition, different subtitle settings were also examined.

Results indicated that participants with high integrative motivation consuming information from American television programs, in addition, the setting of subtitles were associated with perceived communication competence, integrative motivation, language anxiety and social interaction motivation.