Reading and Language Commons^™

Remixing Dialogue: A Case Study On Perceptions Of Hip Hop Pedagogy In A Professional Learning Course, Kelly J. Thelen

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This qualitative case study examines how teachers’ decision-making and professional autonomy shift while participating in a Hip Hop Pedagogy Professional Learning course supported by structured FIXIT (Lo & Wachter, 2023a, 2023b, 2023c, 2023d; Wachter & Lo, 2024) game-facilitated dialogue in a rural, culturally and linguistically diverse Midwest community. Grounded in Freire’s (1970) Critical Pedagogy, Ladson-Billings’ (1995) Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Paris and Alim, 2017), and Adult Learning Theory (Knowles et al., 2005), the study explores the reclamation of agency by teachers in a time of constrained creativity and educator autonomy shaped by strict policy environments, an emphasis on …

The Role Of Rhyme In Children’S Word Learning, Tengwen Fan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Rhyme increases the phonological similarity of phrases individuals hear and enhances recall from working memory. The present study explores whether rhyme aids word learning in children and examines the underlying neural mechanisms through which rhyme facilitates word learning. Thirty-four children between 6 and 8 years old completed a word learning task where they were exposed to 15 nonwords (NWs), four times each, in the sentence-final position as their EEG was recorded. Participants were randomly assigned to either a Rhyme or No-Rhyme group, where the NWs rhymed or did not rhyme with a prime real word in the sentence, respectively, during …

An Absolute Manner Of Seeing: Flaubert, 1848, And The Development Of Modernist Style, Nicholas Olson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education as a key work in the emergence of literary Modernism from the tradition of Realism. I begin by exploring the intellectual background of Realism in the works of Honoré de Balzac and the ties between this aesthetic theory and the theory of representative government: here I discuss the work of François Guizot, Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Schlegel, J.W. Goethe, and Walter Scott as well as later thinkers like György Lukács, Pierre Bourdieu, Jürgen Habermas, and Jacques Rancière. From this, I demonstrate a commonly held theory of the social as a discreet totality, which makes …

Chronos | Kairos: Exploring Time Through Experimental Comics And Artist’S Books, Rhea Pradeep

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how the reading experience of comics changes when they are presented in various artist’s book formats, particularly through the lens of time and space. This project encourages the practice of close reading, arguing that the physical form of a book is not only a container for the content, but also plays a part in its meaning-making. It shifts the narrative pace, perception of time and reader engagement. Research in this paper is heavily influenced by scholars like Johanna Drucker, Scott McCloud and Will Eisner. This interdisciplinary, practice-led research combines narrative analysis of experimental comics, close reading of …

Somatic Prosthetics For Planetary Resonance, Disha Dharesh Kumar R

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates how industrial design can transcend extractive technological paradigms in favor of relational interfaces that foster planetary attunement. Framing the climate crisis as a 'crisis of imagination', the research challenges the Western bifurcation of nature and culture by drawing on Indic cosmologies- which recognize stones, plants, and ecosystems as conscious at different levels and participants in a shared cosmic field. By synthesizing research in Biosemiotics, Quantum Information Pansycishm, and Neuroscience, the project redefines intelligence as a distributed, more-than-human phenomenon.

The research materializes as a speculative design artifact: a device that functions as a somatic prosthetic for planetary resonance. …

Temporal Ubiquity, Brittni Mosby

MFA in Visual Art

My thesis examines looking as a sacred and relational practice rooted in familial memory, storytelling, and the photographic archive. Drawing from early experiences of engaging family photographs alongside my mother and great-grandmother, I conceptualize these encounters as the formation of “temporal altars”: living vessels that activate space, memory, and multiplicity. These intimate acts of looking and listening position the home as a critical site where Black subjectivity is held with care and complexity.

By casting these modes of perception into domestic spaces, my thesis not only resists reductive external gazes but interrogates the archive as a colonial apparatus structured by …

Why Read In The Age Of Post-Literacy?, Corrine H. Martello

Educational Studies Honors Papers

This research paper aims to answer the question, “Why read?” by exploring the significance and purpose of reading, during what many have begun to call the post-literacy era, in order to convey the message that we as human beings have a fundamental need for reading and a failure to fulfill this need may result in an inability to reach one’s full potential as both an individual and as a society at large.

Visual Word Recognition And The Role Of Diacritics: Evidence From Arabic Vowelization., Maram Alharbi

Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the role of vowelization diacritics in Arabic visual word recognition and their contribution to early stages of lexical processing. Across writing systems, diacritical marks differ in their functional role and in whether they are part of letter identity, raising fundamental questions about how such features are encoded during word recognition. Arabic provides a particularly informative testing ground for these questions: vowelization diacritics in this language carry rich phonological information yet are systematically absent from the texts that skilled readers encounter daily. This interaction between the linguistic value of vowelization and its near-total omission in naturalistic reading positions …

Models Of Emulation: Representations Of Foreign, Indigenous, And Accented Speech In Early American Literature, Elaina A. Frulla

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

“Models of Emulation: Representations of Foreign, Indigenous, and Accented Speech in Early American Literature” explores how American writers used depictions of “nonstandard” English and accented English language speech, traditionally described as “literary dialect,” as a way to negotiate identity, power, and political belonging in the formative years of nation building after the American Revolution. Beginning with Noah Webster’s mission to establish a standardized pronunciation of the English language that would simplify and purify spoken American-English and definitively differentiate it from what he saw as the corrupted, cosmopolitan British-English model, each of the three chapters examines literary representations of nonstandard emulated …

The Making Of Jewish-American Progress In Gertrude Stein’S, The Making Of Americans: Being A History Of A Family’S Progress, Rochel L. Gasson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation provides a comprehensive reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (TMOA), situating the novel at the intersection of literary modernism, Jewish American identity, and feminist thought. It argues that Stein reconceives American progress not as linear advancement but as a recursive, relational, and culturally grounded process. Through experimental form, repetitive syntax, and a sustained present tense, TMOA dramatizes the psychological and social complexities of immigrant families navigating assimilation while maintaining heritage. Characters such as the Old Man, his son, and the Dehning and Herland families reveal generational tensions, moral labor, and the ambivalences of upward …

From Transparency To Complexity: Enhancing English Reading Skills In Turkmen-Speaking Adults, Mahrijemal Taganova

Education Dissertations

The recent increase in Turkmen immigration to the United States has highlighted

significant challenges these immigrants face due to language barriers, despite their high

educational qualifications and professional backgrounds. This study investigates whether a linguistics-based approach to reading instruction can improve English literacy among Turkmen-speaking adults.

Drawing on a comprehensive review of empirical studies, this paper evaluates the impact

of phonological awareness on reading and listening skills, the role of orthographic knowledge in

decoding and spelling, and the importance of morphological awareness for vocabulary

development and reading comprehension among EFL (English as a foreign language) learners. The analysis reveals that …

Book Bans And Border Texans: Testimonios From The Middle, Laura Calvillo Neill

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative study explores how Chicana and Mexican American teachers and librarians along the Texas-Mexico border describe their experiences navigating books bans and curriculum restrictions. Through a Chicana feminist epistemological lens, the research centers the testimonios of four educators who reflect on their lived experiences navigating censorship, representation, and professional identity in politically charged educational spaces.

Using a testimonio-based methodology, participants shared personal narratives that illuminated how state politics and local interpretations of "appropriate" texts shape classroom and library decisions. Thematic analysis of these testimonios revealed four interconnected findings: 1. Teacher identity under pressure, 2. Censorship and control in the …

If We Must, We Must: A Better Way To Utilize Placement Exams, Samantha Bravo

Masters Theses (Archived)

College placement exams have been part of a student’s continuing education journey for many years. In a state like Texas, who has had a very extensive and dynamic history in regard to education assessment, students wishing to enter into college must take a state specific college placement exam. Is this state specific placement instrument helping its students? Texas pioneered a shift to a college and career ready focused state curriculum, so does this focused curriculum prepare students for the state college placement exam? How can this potentially be used in a way that can better serve its students? By analyzing …

Indigenous Language Revitalization: The Klamath And Cherokee Tribes, Josephine Stapleton

University Honors Theses

In recent decades, there have been initiatives to revitalize Indigenous languages all across the globe. This paper explores the efforts of two Native American tribes to revitalize their Indigenous languages in the face of historical and ongoing colonial pressures. Models for language revitalization necessarily differ based on an Indigenous group’s specific historical, cultural, and even geographical contexts, which makes the development of standardized models for Indigenous Language Revitalization challenging. This literature review will examine how the Cherokee Nation and the Klamath Tribes are implementing language revitalization on a tribal level in ways that address each tribe’s unique historical successes and …

Thomas Sutpen, Stephen Dedalus, And The Intersection Of Creation And Mortality, Layla A. Mcgovern

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This paper examines William Faulkner’s Thomas Sutpen and James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus as parallel creator figures who attempt to transcend their origins and combat mortality by establishing enduring legacies. After suffering humiliation regarding social hierarchy, Sutpen endeavors to create a material dynasty through land acquisition, property development, and the enslavement of non-white people, obsessively seeking to produce a white male heir in the process. Despite his efforts, Sutpen’s physical creation deteriorates, with his most enduring legacy being a distorted oral history beyond his control. Conversely, Dedalus rejects his Irish Catholic upbringing to escape the “nets” of “nationality, language, [and] religion” …

Code-Switching: A Study On College Students’ Languaging Practices, Neyda Perez

Honors Theses

My linguistic background is composed of many contrasting elements. I grew up speaking Spanish and English in rural Texas, and I have an accent. Words would have a southern drawl, and when saying words that were similar in English and Spanish, I would pronounce them with a Spanish accent. In contrast, many of my language arts teachers prior to high school put great value on Standard English. My accent was often corrected and dismissed, and while it wouldn’t affect my ability to navigate a classroom, I would hold it back in class nonetheless. Due to all these components, I had …

Reading The Fine Print: Poetry And Community On Campus, Logan Edwards

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This capstone presentation is the culmination of a creative project that aimed to promote poetry through Fine Print, UMW’s poetry club on campus. The goal was to make poetry accessible for all on campus and build a specific community that celebrates it. Beyond spreading love of poetry, the purpose of this capstone was to leave Fine Print in a good place by building the club’s long-term engagement and participation, which grew exponentially throughout the semester. Although still a tight-knit community of poets, Fine Print encourages casual attendance to both events and meetings by anybody who finds it intriguing. Through regular …

Temperament And Screen Time Into Adulthood, Kareem Barbis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The possible correlation between language skills, temperament, and screen time in adulthood is understudied. It was hypothesized that high effortful control scores and low childhood screentime would corelate with higher cognitive reflection scores and higher language skills. Using a correlational design, 162 participants were studied (M age = 19.17 years old, 80% female, 86% White, 6% Hispanic). Participants completed an adapted version of the Adult Temperament Questionnaire (Evans & Rothbart, 2007), Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Fredrick, 2005), the Cognitive Reflection Test 2 (CRT-2; Thompson & Oppenheimer, 2016), Thompson & Oppenheimer, 2016), a childhood screen time questionnaire, a bilingualism questionnaire, and …

Cultural Of Authenticity And Commodification: Analyzing The Aesthetic Waves And Collective Culture In The 2010s And 2020s, Stefanny Leung Yu

Student Theses

The “authentic self” is curated, aestheticized, and most notably, commodified. Digital algorithms, likes, views, and engagement are more than just digital metrics, they are the management of performance. For millions of other users — including the author herself — social media is the locus of personal expression. Most notably, sites like Tumblr, where users in the 2010s posted hazy images or overly filtered graphics along with melancholic song lyrics that match the vibe of the moment, expression was earnest and idealized. Today, social media in the 2020s, new creators like Hannah Neelaman, better known as Ballerina Farm, dress in pastoral …

“The Atmosphere That Supports Life On Earth”: An Ecocritical Approach To Tolkien’S Arda, Elizabeth Anne Turello

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Ecocriticism speaks to the relationship between the environment and literature, a progressively vital topic of discussion. What is often overlooked, however, is the necessity of the theory’s applicability to stories of speculative fiction; that is, ones existing outside the realm of the real world or, as is the case with the father of modern-day fantasy J.R.R. Tolkien, a mythology set in the ancient days of our world (“Arda”). At first, it may seem contradictory to learn about our surroundings through fictionalized ones seemingly irrelevant to Earth’s own; this apparent contradiction is not valid, though, as the relationship between humans and …

Revealing Students’ And Teachers’ Perceptions Of Challenges And Strategies In Arabic Reading Comprehension, Osama Othman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the perceptions of Arabic as a Foreign Language (AFL) students and teachers regarding the influence of eight textual features on reading comprehension. These features are: vowelization, word patterns, roots, vocabulary, case endings, word order, punctuation marks, and text organization. It also investigates reading comprehension strategies employed by both groups to overcome comprehension challenges associated with these features. Data were collected from 102 AFL students and 26 AFL teachers through questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 students and 11 teachers. Results revealed that students generally rated the influence of these features more highly than teachers. The …

Eros And The Sublime: Tools For Reaching Toward An Altered Ecological Consciousness, Aineka Carlson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis explores connections between the Kantian sublime and Anne Carson’s ideas regarding “eros.” Since Kant’s Critique of Judgement was published in 1790, the Kantian sublime has grown in popularity and been utilized by theorists and creative writers alike. While the Kantian sublime is often associated with nature in popular culture, there are certain egocentric and phallocentric elements of this mode of thinking that might inhibit a biocentric mindset. Through a character study of Oryx from Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake, this thesis draws relations between the subjugation of women, nature, and the ways in which the popularized …

Feeling Foreign / Foreign Feeling: Affect In Southeast Asian Diasporic Short Story Collections, Francys Aerin Fortes

Theses and Dissertations

Affect studies have long been saturated with scholarship investigating the fluidity of emotions, though a larger turn in the field now prioritizes the felt experiences of marginalized peoples. Sianne Ngai’s work is one part of this turn that seeks to unpack the effects of oppressive systemic forces on Black, Brown, and queer bodies. Sianne Ngai reexamined the nature of emotions in her seminal text Ugly Feelings (2005), particularly concerned with how negative feelings are disproportionately felt by marginalized bodies as a result of conditions of obstructed agency, systems of power, and wage labor capitalism. Drawing from Ngai’s writing, this thesis …

Self-Preservation: Autobiography As A Form Of Archivization As Seen Through The Life And Poetic Works Of John Clare, Meghan J. Slaff

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This paper will look at how the processing efforts of an archivist mirror that of an autobiographer through the shared motivation of adding to the cultural memory or textual canon of a society. For archival purposes, the typical steps of ingesting, preparing, and presenting a collection are creation, capture, arrangement/description, and pluralization. To create an autobiography, writers take the memories that have been created and experienced due to events in their lives and capture those memories via recording in the literary form known as autobiography. These autobiographers then arrange and describe their memories in a way that shows vast similarities …

Feminine Felons: Violent Offenders' Intersectional Experiences In Twentieth-Century Montana, Cassidy Ann Vander Voort

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper explores the treatment of violent female offenders in Montana in both the media and prison system from 1900-1960. Women of all races faced gender discrimination from both the carceral system and popular media. Local newspapers sensationalized crimes committed by female offenders, portraying them as women who lived outside of the expectations of womanhood in the twentieth century. Newspapers and courts placed women into two categories: “mad/sad” female offenders, who received forgiveness for their crimes; or unforgivable, “bad” offenders. Crime did not determine these categorizations; instead, gender expectations of the white middle class shaped female criminals’ treatment. If these …

The Private Libraries Of Charleston, 1780-1860, Winter Hein

All Theses

The scope of this thesis examines the private libraries inventoried in Charleston, South Carolina. The thesis answers the question about the prevalence of private book collections and rooms called the “Library” between 1780 and 1860, as seen in probate inventories. Additionally, this thesis explores the character of the private collections during this study period in a case study manner. This includes the size of the collections, location (urban vs. rural), where collections are stored, and in which rooms they are found. Of the 4,476 Charleston County probate inventories between 1780 and 1860 available through FamilySearch online, a total of 903 …

A Mute Pleasure: Novelistic Poetics In The Nineteenth-Century, Ryan Everitt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through special attention to the non-narrative, descriptive, lyrical, or even boring passages that interrupt the story, this dissertation explores what happens when the nineteenth-century British novel envelops experiences that were traditionally (or since Romanticism) in the domain of poetry: longings for escape, exhilarating affects of freedom, opaque moments of revelation. In most cases, I characterize the novel discourse as representing a prosaic consciousness that wrestles with its more visceral yet vital “other,” poetic consciousness. To articulate how poetry survives within novelistic discourse, this dissertation is organized around sets of opposing terms, whose unresolved tension becomes the basis of my analysis …

Colorado's Multilingual Learners And The Read Act: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Brooke K. Sassi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation critically examines the Colorado Reading to Ensure Academic Development Act (READ Act) through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis, focusing on the discursive construction of the Act and its impact on educational opportunities for multilingual learners. The study explores the role of power and knowledge in shaping the READ Act and addresses the ideological tensions and power imbalances that arise from a policy primarily designed for monolingual, English-speaking students. Drawing on personal experiences and extensive research, this analysis highlights the shortcomings of a phonics-heavy approach mandated by the READ Act, particularly for multilingual learners who require a more …

Supporting At-Risk Kindergartners’ Subtraction Knowledge And Language Use Through Shared Book Reading., Jaime Lynn Bellini

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of this study was to explore how shared book reading may promote meaningful, multimodal language interactions to support subtraction learning and language use and understanding for kindergarten students who have been previously identified as at-risk for mathematical difficulties. This study is underpinned by theoretical notions that language is developed in social contexts and is a multimodal phenomenon. In addition, this study is also shaped by sociocultural views of mathematics learning that position discourse at the core of mathematics learning. This study took a micro-ethnographic approach to qualitative research and utilized multimodal discourse analysis to analyze the data. The …

The Beginning Of The End: The Cultivation Of Transchronological Perceptuality In Arcadia And “Story Of Your Life”, Sawyer Kelly

English (MA) Theses

This thesis explores the spatio-temporal landscapes of Ted Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life” and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. Both authors engage with intersections between past, present, and future, challenging readers to reframe the conventions of linear chronology in favor of a fluid, palimpsestic approach to time and space that reflects the past and future’s ongoing influence in constructing our impression of the “now.” To illustrate this temporal blending, Chiang and Stoppard implement alternative language modes predicated upon visual and sensory rhetorics, centralizing the politics of human perception as dually illuminating and obfuscating reality. This project employs an interdisciplinary approach, adopting …