Reading and Language Commons^™

Processes: Writing Across Academic Careers, Christoper Iverson, Dan Ehrenfeld

Milne Open Textbooks

Processes: Writing Across Academic Careers is an edited collection showcasing the diversity of writing processes, styles, and formats in academia. Students, faculty, and staff share both published and unpublished work and reflect on their writing process as well as writing in their fields and disciplines. This book shows that, while writing looks and functions differently in different disciplines, college communities center on writing.

The text’s sections feature compositions from nursing, STEM and health sciences, education, and history and culture. The examples include reflections on the role of writing in one’s academic career, examples of professional writing in the sciences, research …

The Texas Reading Academies And The Experiences Of Teachers Who Instruct Students With Disabilities: A Phenomenological Study, Suzanne S. Jones

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

To build today's students' reading skills, teachers must know effective instructional reading practices. Therefore, the purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to understand the experiences with learning and incorporating the elements of the Texas Reading Academies with a focus on language comprehension by teachers who instruct students with disabilities in Texas. The Texas Reading Academies' goal is to provide teachers with reading instructional practices grounded in the science of reading. The theory guiding this study was Malcolm Knowles' adult learning theory, with the central research question asking what the experiences of teachers who instruct students with disabilities were with …

Remembering Complicity And Resistance: A Review Of Mihaela Mihai’S Political Memory And The Aesthetics Of Care: The Art Of Complicity And Resistance (2022), Sofía Forchieri

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article offers a review of Mihaela Mihai’s book Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care: The Art of Complicity and Resistance (2022). In it, Mihai courageously brings together insights from critical theory, political and legal science, philosophy, literary studies, and feminist theory to argue for the need of rearticulating how we remember complicity and resistance in the aftermath of political violence. Mihai develops her argument in three steps. First, she provides an account of how complicity and resistance are misremembered after systemic violence. Second, she tracks the political, epistemic and ethical consequences that this faulty work of memory-making holds …

Terada Torahiko, A Physicist And A Haikai Poet, Akira Komiya

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Terada Torahiko is known as a scientific essayist in Japan, but hardly anyone knows he was a haikai poet as well as a physicist. According to him, haikai poetry and physics are two different ways of conceiving Nature, both valid and perhaps complementary to each other. Seeing his research in physics looking for regularities in apparently irregular phenomena in everyday life, we may say his haiku haikai spirit is manifest there and that he was pioneering a new science such as the one developed later by Ilya Prigogine. His association of haiku haikai poetry and Freudian interpretations of dreams leads …

Bergson On Poetics: Philosophy, Literature And Science, Michel Dalissier

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In this paper, I analyze Henri Bergson’s insightful and contrasted vision of poetry. First, I show in what sense Bergson sympathizes with the idea that the poet must be credited to surpass the novelist in offering to us an unparalleled emotional apprehension of the world. Second, I nonetheless underline how Bergson grants the product of the poet, i.e., the poem itself, a problematic linguistic status, inasmuch as the focus of his analysis shifts from an intersubjective poetical apprehension of feelings to their individual poetic appreciation, or from the spiritual dimension of poetry to its material dimension. Third, I further suggest …

Orature: The Political Interpretation Of Performance Framework In Anthills Of The Savannah And Half Of A Yellow Sun, Jing Duan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The focus of discussion in this paper lies in a perception that orature of African written literature is not innocent but a form of control. Operated through its performance framework, the concept of orature provides an angle to observe how African oral tradition penetrates written literature and cultivates an awareness of the political nature both of the material to be written and of the writing process itself. This paper explores the performance framework in two African novels — Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. Through such key concepts as event, narrative and self-reflexivity …

Science Of Reading Advocates Are Teaching Children To Guess At Words, Andrew P. Johnson

Elementary and Literacy Education Department Publications

Tim Shanahan, Louisa Moats, Linnea Ehri, Wilson Reading Systems, Orton-Gillingham profiteers, SOR advocates, the International Dyslexia Association, and other plucky little phonics-first penguins are advocating that meaning-based reading teachers teach children to read by guessing guess at words. This of course is nonsense.

The Perceived Benefits Of Coaching In An Online Pilot Program, Barbara Vokatis

Literacy Practice and Research

As online literacy teacher programs are becoming more widespread, the various approaches to designing clinics online require more investigation. In this research study, the researchers investigate the perceived interactions between tutors and external coaches in a pilot online literacy program. Grounded theory analysis of tutor and coach interviews, tutor course reflections, and tutor anonymous surveys highlights 5 features of perceived benefits of coaching: (a) The perception of learning about coaching practice; (b) The perception of coaching as improving instruction; (c) The perception of transferring coaching experience, (d) The perception of coaches as being present, and (e) Envisioning pathways for improvement.

Amazon Web Services, The Lacanian Unconscious, And Digital Life, Marshall N. Armintor

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In late 2011, ex-Amazon developer Steve Yegge’s rant about his former company described Amazon’s rapid transformation from an online bookstore to a web-services entity with a ruthlessly unified platform, all guided by the idea that the company’s effort to streamline its internal efficiency could be monetized, and the resultant software products sold through Amazon Web Services. The media consumerism that fed Amazon’s early years funded a surveilling behemoth, one that everyone feared Microsoft would become. As such, AWS has become a manifestation of the internet’s Lacanian unconscious (even providing the services and hosting for Reddit), structured around the optimization of …

Community Despite Connection: Resisting The Digital Logics Of Optimization And Failure, Irina Kalinka

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

If a certain brand of aspirational tech-utopian discourse is to be believed, those privileged enough to be plugged into digital information technology are living through a golden age of connection. Platforms claim to facilitate sharing and partaking, bring people together, and bestow upon them new and improved spaces to gather and build communities. While reality differs decidedly from such idealized conceptions, it is nonetheless crucial to ask what kind of guiding vision is being instituted through such representational efforts: namely, the figure of community made operational and optimizable. This project will reject such idealized visions of coherent communities drawn together …

The Social Sinthome, Ryan Engley

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Much of the critical discourse on social media misidentifies its problematic features as bugs, or problems to solve. Supposed solutions to these problems tend to focus on individual actions. We should delete the apps, own our own data, never click on recommended videos, and realize that we are the product. But if predatory algorithms succeed by individuating people—selling people “choice” and “options” as it harvests user data—then an entire online ecosystem arranged through the logic of that design can neither be meaningfully challenged nor effectively understood at the level of the individual alone. Transformative action addressing social media can only …

Lacan And The Algorithm, Clint Burnham

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Exploring the development of algorithms in Lacanian theory, specifically the "R schema" in the 1950s, I argue that psychoanalysis, read through contemporary debates about the "algorithmic cult" of Netflix and other avatars of popular culture, can be said to reveal the inhuman, machinic essence of subjectivity. The etiology of algorithms, mathemes, and other formulae and diagrams in Lacan’s oeuvre has been under-studied, in part because for some readers they are not as attractive as his more bravura flourishes of word play as exegetical excess, and in part because they derive largely from the ‘hard’ structuralist moment of his work in …

Platform Psychoanalysis: What Does The Algorithm Want?, Matthew Flisfeder

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Syllabus For Writing For The Social Sciences, Brenna E. Crowe

Open Educational Resources

A writing class designed for students pursuing degrees in the social sciences—the major assignments are a "career builder" where student practice rhetoric with professional writing on job searches, a literature review, a public awareness campaign, an informational interview, and a portfolio.

The Impact Of The Canva Program On The Learning Of The Ninth Grade Students In Jordanian Schools Of Html, Maha Abu Maizer

Al-Balqa Journal for Research and Studies البلقاء للبحوث والدراسات

This is a semi-experimental study that aims at measuring the impact of CANVA on the learning of ninth graders in a Jordanian school of HTML. 50 female ninth graders were randomly selected from 72 students in Aisha Bint Abi Baker school, and were distributed to two groups; control, which was taught traditionally, and experimental, which was taught with CANVA to learn HTML as a part of their computer curriculum. The researcher used a set of 20 multiple choice questions to test their knowledge achievement and skills. After checking the validity and reliability of the test. The results showed that there …

Twitter As Limited Digital Rhetorical Forum – The Reproductive Rights Discourse Online, Jacob L. Longini

Comparative Woman

Rhetorical discourse has long been characterized by patriarchal systems, and this reality has persisted in online spaces. How might today’s scholar dissect and better understand the nature of online communities, specifically those that engage in women’s rights discourses? I argue that using Thomas Farrell’s notion of “rhetorical forum”, James P. Zappen’s outline for digital rhetorical theory, and Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin’s feminist understanding of rhetorical practice, one can account for the current state of such discourses on Twitter. The patriarchal flaws that Foss and Griffin identify in traditional rhetoric can shed light on the negative aspects of …

Doing The Work -- Collectively Pursuing Anti-Racist And Equitable Teaching: One High School English Department’S Journey, Sharon Murchie, Anthony Andrus, Pat Brennan, Gina Farnelli, Shelby Fletcher, Dawn Reed, Emily Solomon, Benjamin K. Woodcock

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Our district has long been heralded as a beacon school, one that delivers exceptional education in an exceptional community. Peeling back the layers, however, revealed a district that lurched towards the traditional, even with the hiring of DEI faculty and the step away from an historical indigenous mascot. In a time where teachers are exhausted and afraid of community backlash, our

English department dared to tear off the scabs of old wounds and united to push toward what is best for our changing community and students. Hard conversations, difficult topics, and months of legwork at last successfully provided the impetus …

Joining A Conversation Research Project, Nicole Green, Deborah Minter

Faculty Publications -- Department of English

Description: This unit is a culminating (end-of-semester) project designed to have students bring together the knowledge they have developed throughout the semester in the service of purposefully joining a real-world conversation, addressing a specific audience (or related set of audiences) who are part of that conversation. This unit has a small number of texts that the whole class reads and/or analyzes together. Instead, a lot of the work happening in this unit is project-driven and process-oriented.

Time Frame: This unit was designed/paced as the last unit of the course (and it followed an earlier unit focused on rhetorical analysis of …

Bibliotherapy In The Helping Professions: A Heuristic Model For Intervention Design, Natalie Marie Haney

Masters Theses

I propose a new approach to examining bibliotherapy’s usefulness in the community-based care of individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), focused on producing a heuristic that benefits helping professionals who offer non-clinical and non-psychiatric services. Meant for writers designing bibliotherapy interventions in the helping professions, I conceptualize bibliotherapy in a model against the backdrop of community-based care’s history. A model has the potential to allow each writer to conduct situation-specific inquiry, invent bibliotherapy intervention designs suited to the unique needs of the profession’s help-seekers, and reflect on knowledge generated for intervention reiteration. Referring to Dewey, Rosenblatt and Barnlund to create …

Character First: Defining And Methodizing Character Depth, Jeff Mason

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This paper explores the definition of "depth" in characters and provides a radical new definition, supplemented by an applicable model. By looking into significant literary theory, contemporary works of story, and even elements of mathematics, this paper advances our understanding of characters and how they create meaning in stories.

Multilingualism And Memory: Investigating Possible Differences In The Abilities Of Monolingual And Multilingual College Students, Clara E. Barned

Honors Projects

This study investigated whether there is a difference in the memories of monolingual and multilingual undergraduate students using simple memorization tasks. There were 46 participants, 30 of which were monolingual (only knew one language) and 16 of which were multilingual (knew two or more languages). There was found to be no significant difference between the performance of the two groups, with the data generating a p-value of 0.557. This study further suggests related avenues of research and ways in which the study could be improved in the future.

Young Adult And Canonical Literature Instruction In The High School Classroom: Assessing Students’ Reading Interest, Alexis Yang

Alpenglow: Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal of Research and Creative Activity

In the high school English classroom, classic novels are taught as cornerstones of the curriculum. Although these canonical works such as To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) are revered for their literary merit, students often find them boring and skim through the readings or decline to read altogether. Young adult literature (YAL), a genre written for teens, may be an effective genre to teach in high school to boost students’ reading interest. This study aims to determine how teaching young adult literature in the high school classroom, as opposed to canonical works, might affect …

Homosexuality In Leviticus: A Historical-Literary-Critical Analysis, Ian Jarosz

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

The book of Leviticus from the Hebrew Bible is often referenced when discussing the LGBTQ+ community and related topics. This project offers historical, literary, and etymological analyses of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, exploring cultural and thematic similarities between Leviticus, the Avestan Vendidad of ancient Persia, and the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch. The influential views of other ancient Near Eastern cultures and the growing Persian culture during the time of the Exile establish a tolerant cultural background for the Levitical authors and for the Hebrew Bible. Moreover, the exilic priests who finalized the laws within Leviticus did not …

William Shakespeare’S All Is True, Lord Chamberlain’S “Truth,” And Civil Religion, Paul Olson

Faculty Publications -- Department of English

The first title for Shakespeare’s Henry VIII—All Is True—may reflect standard early modern usage signifying that all is an aspect of ‘troth’ or loyalty, all is common understanding, or all is received from a divine source. In the play, the Lord Chamberlain, Shakespeare’s only character so named, serves the Henrician monarchy’s “truth” by serving Henry’s religious and monarchic goals as the Jacobean Lord Chamberlain similarly served James I’s goals, assuring audiences of the integrity, truth, and legitimacy of the monarchy and its faith. The play shows the Lord Chamberlain working to strengthen the loyalty of Henry’s realm …

The International Academy Of Language And Culture: The Global (Pre)K-12 Charter School Network, Dree-El Simmons

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The International Academy of Language and Culture (IALC) is a charter school based on the original concept of charter schools by Ray Budde and Albert Shanker, as an academic environment dedicated and designed to improving the educational outcomes for its students through innovative pedagogy. Committed to American (and global) education reform, the IALC incorporates elements from higher education into the early childhood and adolescent settings. We accomplish this by utilizing an interdisciplinary approach in our language and culture-based program.

The IALC is a multilingual, full-immersion program. Food Studies (including culinary arts), the Arts, the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Martial Arts …

Call For Culturally Inclusive Texts In The English Classroom: Books As Mirrors And Windows, Annie Yon

New Jersey English Journal

The literary canon has long been revered in public education as representing the “‘depth and breadth of our national common experience,’ but the problem is that what was once defined as ‘common’—middle class, white, cisgender people—is no longer the reality in our country” (Anderson 1). The United States has a very diverse population, but there is a lack of diverse representation in books taught in the English classroom. In other words, American classics embedded in the curriculum hold merit, but they do not fully represent the stories of all ethnic and culturally diverse students with their own “American” experiences. Poor …

Pallavi Rastogi, Postcolonial Disasters: Narrating Catastrophe In The Twenty-First Century (2020): Review Essay, Sourit Bhattacharya

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This review essay reads literary-critical works of what is broadly understood as ‘postcolonial disasters’. It outlines how literary critics in the last decades have drawn upon cultural-geographical and anthropological readings of disasters to develop critical frameworks around how literary writers have used style, form, and aesthetics to represent postcolonial catastrophes. It then offers a detailed review of Pallavi Rastogi’s 2020 monograph, Postcolonial Disasters: Narrating Catastrophe in the Twenty-First Century. Through an engaged and critical reading, the essay attends to Rastogi’s insightful theorizing of the topic of ‘Disaster Unconscious’ and her wide-ranging interrogation of fiction from South Asia and Southern …

Incendiary Devices: Imagining E-Waste Frontiers And Africa’S Digital Futures, Treasa De Loughry

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “Incendiary Devices: Imagining E-Waste Frontiers and Africa’s Digital Futures,” Treasa De Loughry focuses on different visual responses to e-waste in West Africa, from eco-documentary film and photography responses to the infamous Agbogbloshie e-waste yard in Ghana; to techno-utopian visions of e-waste bricoleurs, and e-waste as a signifier and artefact of the neocolonial nature of the capitalist world-ecology. The first half of this article focuses on Florian Weigensamer and Christian Krönes’ documentary film, Welcome to Sodom (2018), grounding it in critiques of the transmedial influence of the documentary form, while attending to the film’s pyrotechnical “optical regime” (Schoonover). …

Signs Of The Inhuman: Hauntings And Lost Futures In Verónica Gerber Bicecci’S La Compañía, Marcela Romero Rivera

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Current criticism of works of eco fiction maintains that one of the central contributions of this literary genre is a consciousness-raising effect that these works have on their readers by virtue of alluding, with varying degrees of specificity, to real-world environmental problems, implying that this is a central step towards remedying our current planetary climate crisis. This article suggests, conversely, that literary criticism of eco fiction necessitates a more rigorous material analysis—specifically one attentive to class and class antagonism—of these works and their conditions of production to understand their relation to power, as well as their affordances and limitations as …

Returning To The Past To Rethink Socio-Political Antagonisms: Mapping Today’S Situation In Regards To Popular Insurrections, Nicol A. Barria-Asenjo, Slavoj Žižek, Hernán Scholten, David Pavón-Cuellar, Gonzalo Salas, Oscar Ariel Cabeza, Jesús William Huanca Arohuanca, Sergio J. Aguilar Alcalá

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article seeks to elaborate a map or cartogram based on a number of protests and social mobilizations that took place in different parts of the world -mainly in Latin America, but also in Europe and Asia. Beyond the data and figures available from various sources, which never speak for themselves, an interpretation is proposed here to reveal the meaning of these events. In other words, by displaying a map of these social movements, the authors propose not only the visualization of a collection of data, but also an illumination of these events in the light of history. From there, …