Reading and Language Commons^™

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Does Ai Ask Good Questions? A Discussion Activity, Katherine Tilghman

Generative AI Teaching Activities

Students will prompt ChatGPT to generate discussion questions about a course text or artistic work, then evaluate the questions and modify them to make them more engaging and thought-provoking.

English 890: Advanced Research Methods, A First Benchmark Portfolio, Janel Simons

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

In this benchmark portfolio, I reflect on course design and student learning in a course I teach for incoming Master's students in the English department, ENGL 890: Advanced Research Methods. ENGL 890 is a mini-session course intended to introduce students to various aspects of managing graduate-level research within the discipline of English studies. In this portfolio, I discuss the learning outcomes and goals for the course, highlight some of the assessments I use, reflect on student learning throughout the course, and articulate changes that might improve student learning in future iterations of the course. Given the overarching goals of this …

Hailey's Hearing Aids, Hailey Marie Garcia

Whittier Scholars Program

Individuals from the deaf and hard-of-hearing community are likely to experience more anxiety and depression due to defective cognitive, social, communicational, and emotional skills (Azizi et al., 2019). The word “disability” is embedded with historical negative connotations with phrases such as “deaf and dumb” because if they were deaf or mute then they were automatically labeled as inferior (Horovitz, 2007). Since the 18th century, the DHH community has been seen as incapable, even inhuman, hence the development of emotional deficiencies that bleed into one’s perception of society and their self esteem (Gallaudet, 1886).

How do you navigate a hearing world …

Pedagogical Alliances Among Writing Instructors And Teaching Librarians Through A Writing Information Literacy Community Of Practice, Zoe Mcdonald, Deborah Minter

Department of English: Faculty Publications

In this praxis piece, a WPA and a writing instructor describe a writing information literacy community of practice among writing instructors and teaching librarians. Through paying attention to one resulting assignment, a full class annotated bibliography, the co-authors argue this professional development program extended collaborations among the writing program and the library to center contextual notions of authority and metacognition that connect to composition’s democratic political commitments.

Reflections On The Victorian(Ist) Impulse To Totalize Africa, Adrian S. Wisnicki

Department of English: Faculty Publications

IN this essay, I offer some reflections on how Victorianists might understand nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discursive practices for mapping Africa. In doing this, I respond to what Sukanya Banerjee, our panel organizer, asked us to do in determining the focus for our essays—namely, that we direct “attention to topics in Victorian studies that [we] feel might otherwise be overlooked or viewed differently.” In what follows I introduce and problematize a series of Victorian-era maps or, more specifically, problematize what such maps represent conceptually, then offer some alternate means by which Victorianists might critically engage with cultural and social reality …

The Politics Of Tools, Stephen Ramsay

Department of English: Faculty Publications

A consideration of the political meaning of software that tries to add greater philosophical precision to statements about the politics of tools and tool building in the humanities. Using Michael Oakeshott's formulations of the “politics of faith” and the “politics of skepticism,” [Oakeshott 1996] it suggests that while declaring our tools be morally or political neutral may be obvious fallacious, it is equally problematic to suppose that we can predict in advance the political formations that will arise from our tool building. For indeed (as Oakeshott suggests), the tools themselves give rise to what is politically possible.

Joining A Conversation Research Project, Nicole Green, Deborah Minter

Department of English: Faculty Publications

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 …

Interpretation And Ovidian Myth In Alexander’S Bridge And O Pioneers!, Paul Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This essay describes interpretive strategies widely applied to Ovidian mythic materials during the period of Cather’s early career, especially those operative in Alexander’s Bridge and O Pioneers! The article assumes that widely held conventional interpretations of myths, in this case Ovidian myths, in a specific time and area are part of their semantic content, or iconology, and are tools Cather used in communicating with her audience. The essay then looks at a passage in the 1912 Alexander’s Bridge and two disputed passages in the 1913 O Pioneers! along with extended Bacchic themes in the latter novel that employ conventional Ovidian …

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

Department of English: Faculty Publications

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 …

Engl 110: College Writing (Comedy, Satire, & Persuasion), Scott R. Kapuscinski

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus provides a themed approach to Freshman composition. Students are tasked with composing three essays in three distinct styles. Student engagement is high through the use of student-sourced primary sources (funny videos from YouTube, etc.) and the emphasis on thesis building and critical thinking.

Section 1: Comedy & the thesis-based essay

Section 2: Satire & writing to persuade

Section 3: Satire in Art & independent research

Wave By Wave: A Fantasy Author's Guide For Refining A Creative Writing Style, Michael Bose

Senior Honors Theses

Writing a novel is a great undertaking. Many would-be writers have set out to create a novel and give up halfway through, uncertain where or how they failed. This project aims to help prospective authors get past that barrier. By analyzing one’s own writing style, a writer can ascertain greater insight into the strengths and weaknesses of one’s own work and therefore help rectify mistakes one might make otherwise, or learn to see a chapter from a new angle. The author will demonstrate this method on himself first by way of focused revisions. A sample chapter of a fantasy novel, …

“...Reveling In That Freedom”: Roxane Gay’S Hunger As 21st-Century Freedom Narrative, Kendra R. Parker

Department of Literature Faculty Publications

Work published in South Atlantic Review.

Castles And Curses: An Analysis Of Speech Acts And Stereotype Threat In Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle, Jennifer Peña

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes significant moments and selected excerpts from Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle, focusing on the protagonist Sophie’s character development and uses of magic through speech in relation to stereotype threat and speech act theory. This thesis connects recent scholarly conversations about stereotype threat to the metaphor of Sophie’s spoken magic as the means by which she establishes her own identity and reclaims power over her life. This thesis considers Jones’s reflections about connections between fantasy writing and reality, as well as the potential significance of those connections for children whose experiences are reflected in fantasy works …

Online Midwinter Seminar (Oms) #1 Report, Ben Dressler

Student Research

A report on the Mythopoeic Society's first annual Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS) by Ben Dressler.

Idiomatic Surrogacy And (Dis)Ability In Dombey And Son, Peter J. Capuano

Department of English: Faculty Publications

To assert that Charles Dickens possessed a mastery of language unique among nineteenth-century novelists for its vernacular inventiveness is hardly controversial. The Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms lists Dickens among its most cited sources (others include the Bible and Shakespeare). Dickens’s use of ordinary, unembellished, and what Anthony Trollope termed vulgarly “ungrammatical” lower-class language sets his novels apart in style and tone from those of his famous peers (249). William Thackeray, the Brontës, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant, Thomas Hardy and others – despite their many differences – generally composed their fiction in higher, more formal linguistic registers than …

Countering Online Misinformation In The First-Year Composition Classroom, Samantha Sparrow Williams

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This thesis encourages the intentional and explicit integration of the best practices in media literacy education within the first-year composition classroom. The nature of FYC, which incorporates such content as research skills and source evaluation, provides an ideal opportunity to address the online misinformation and disinformation that have resulted in growing political polarization and cynicism. Recent findings suggest that these trends can be countered with the teaching of practices like lateral reading to verify a source’s veracity. After first demonstrating the challenges that university freshmen may bring with them to campus, this project makes suggestions for simple, consistent practices that …

Shakespeare's Henriadic Monarchy And Chaucerian/Elizabethan Religion, Paul Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Shakespeare, interpreting late medieval English history from the ages of Geoffrey and Thomas Chaucer, gives us a second tetralogy (1595-99) that less defends the "Tudor myth" than creates a lens for viewing the formation of a unitary religious/political culture. Writing near the end of Elizabeth's reign, after serious Catholic insurrection had quieted, he examines how Act of Supremacy sacerdotal monarchy eschews rebellion and decadence, creating eidola paralleling Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales ones. In the latter, Chaucer presented, to the court, narratives of Catholic clerical failure, Jovinian decadence and the possibility of reformed penance. However Shakespeare turns, for his salvific, from honest …

Educating For Global Competence: Co-Constructing Outcomes In The Field: An Action Research Project, Kristina A. Van Winkle

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Capacity building for globally competent educators is a 21st Century imperative to address contemporary complex and constantly changing challenges. This action research project is grounded in positive psychology, positive organizational scholarship, relational cultural theory, and relational leadership practices. It sought to identify adaptive challenges educators face as they try to integrate globally competent teaching practices into their curricula, demonstrate learning and growth experienced by the educators in this project, and provide guidance and solutions to the challenges globally competent educators face. Six educators participated in this three-phase project, which included focus groups, reflective journal entries, and an exit interview. Data …

Teaching Persuasion In Multiple Contexts, Peter J. Capuano

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Teaching Persuasion in Multiple Contexts by Peter J. Capuano, a chapter in Approaches to Teaching Austen's Persuasion, edited by Marcia McClintock Folsom and John Wiltshire, published by the Modern Language Association of America, New York, 2021.

Introduction

Jane Austen's more well-known fiction has inspired strong attachments from many people (instructors and students alike), but Persuasion might be Austen's most dynamic and teachable novel. In fact, one of the many advantages of teaching Persuasion is that so many students-even the ones who come into my courses already professing their love for Austen's works-have never read the text before. They are …

The Culturally Capitalised Graduate: Toward A Wider Reading Experience For Undergraduate Students, Sue Norton

Books/Book Chapters

This essay considers higher education policy in Ireland that, in limited optional ways, is diversifying the undergraduate curriculum to incorporate wider reading across disciplines. Such policies, now gaining traction, aim to foster greater graduate employability, understood as the resilience and resourcefulness to secure positions in the workplace over time, and in fluctuating periods of supply and demand; they also support graduates to live more meaningfully in society. This essay’s three sections draw upon several sources including a business consultancy website, journal articles, and academic papers and reports. It extrapolates in particular from the research of Julia Preece and Anne-Marie Houghton …

Synthesizing The Sublime And Beautiful: Aesthetics In Shelley's "Hymn To Intellectual Beauty", Christopher T. Lough

Student Publications

As a Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley bristled at rationalistic attempts to definitively categorize the human condition. Taking Edmund Burke’s treatise “On the Sublime and Beautiful” as his chief foil, Shelley explored aesthetic categories that certain strains of Enlightenment thought had held apart from one another. In my brief exegesis of his “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” from 1816, I build on Rudolf Otto’s concept of the numinous and the work of intellectual historian Frank Ankersmit to argue that Shelley presents a holistic account of experience with the ineffable.

The Need For Christian Authors In Mainstream Fiction, Ashley Renea Starnes

Masters Theses

Fiction is an effective and underutilized tool in Christian circles to implicitly illustrate Christian ideas and values to readers of other worldviews. By adopting the writing approach of authors like J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, Christian writers can enter into the broad discussion of philosophy, morality, and theology going on in popular fiction.

Curating Digital Pedagogy In The Humanities, Katherine Harris, Matthew Gold, Rebecca Frost Davis

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This is the published introduction to the born-digital, open-access, peer-reviewed *Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities*. More a rationale and scholarly study of both Digital Pedagogy and DPiH in general, this introduces articulates the uses, theory, rationale about digital pedagogy as it has been shaped in U.S. institutions since the explosion of Digital Humanities in 2009. As a separate field now, Digital Pedagogy is built on the generosity of its practitioners, but saving the *stuff* of teaching and pedagogy is difficult. The introduction historicizes this now-published project, its open peer review process, and its development in the early years (starting in …

Time And The Bibliographer: A Meditation On The Spirit Of Book Studies, Matt Cohen

Department of English: Faculty Publications

In light of the global return of tribalism, racism, nationalism, and religious hypocrisy to power’s center stage, it is worth returning to the question of the relevance of bibliography. It is a time when, at least at the seats of power in the United States and some other places, books seem to have become almost meaningless. Bibliographic pioneer D.F. McKenzie’s strategy was not to constrain bibliography in self-defense, but to expand it, to go on the offense. What is our course? This essay explores bibliography’s past in order to suggest ways in which it can gain from an engagement with …

Creating And Using Open Educational Resources (Oer) In Reading And Writing Classes, Christine E. Hutchins

Publications and Research

Creating her own assignments using openly licensed course materials allows this professor and her students to be more creative and to take greater advantage of digital resources.

Book Reviews- Joanna Wharton, Material Enlightenment: Women Writers And The Science Of Mind, 1770–1830, Stephen C. Behrendt

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Joanna Wharton’s Material Enlightenment: Women Writers and the Science of Mind, 1770–1830 is a recent addition to the interdisciplinary series Studies in the Eighteenth Century that Boydell Press (Boydell & Brewer Publishers) is publishing in association with the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. It is a welcome addition to the growing body of work that addresses the contributions of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British women writers to areas of scientific, philosophical, and otherwise “learned” discourse that have historically been associated primarily—and in many cases exclusively—with male thinkers and writers. Wharton’s study therefore helps to flesh out the picture …

Translator Of Soliloquies: Fugues In The Key Of Dissociation, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Chu, Seo-Young. “Translator of Soliloquies: Fugues in the Key of Dissociation” (chapbook). Black Warrior Review 46.2, Spring 2020.

“What Do I Think Of Glory?”: On Middlemarch By George Eliot, Beverley Park Rilett

Department of English: Faculty Publications

What do I think of Middlemarch? What do I think of glory?”1 This is the famous reply Emily Dickinson wrote to her bookish cousins in 1873 after her first reading of George Eliot’s novel. Dickinson’s sentiments were also my own when I completed my first reading of Middlemarch (1871–1872), about thirty-five years ago. Middlemarch is the book that made me realize literature could be more than a source of entertainment, that it could be Art with a capital A. Here was a text with fascinating and seemingly limitless possibilities for interpretation that would continue to reward scrutiny. Of course, …

Feeling It:Toward Style As Culturally Structured Intuition, Keith Rhodes

Department of English: Faculty Publications

I have been moved to write a serious article about teaching style not because I have great and earth-shaking method to impart, but in some sense because I do not, even after years of study—including the small bit of empirical research at the core of this article. Style, as it turns out, remains as difficult, complex, and ultimately intuitive as most of the rest of writing. I hope, ultimately, to encourage writing teachers to focus more attention on style, basing approaches on what we already know rather than waiting and hoping for some flawless system to materialize. Indeed, by the …