Higher Education 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 …

Lincoln's Carnegie Library: A History Of Community And Philanthropy, Emily Blomstedt

Honors Theses

Nebraska received 69 Carnegie libraries from the Carnegie foundation between 1899 and 1922. The first and most expensive Nebraska Carnegie library was granted to Lincoln in December 1899, after a fire destroyed Lincoln’s previous library. Lincoln’s main Carnegie library served the community between 1902 and 1960 before it was torn down in 1961 to build the present-day Bennett Martin library. This thesis explores the 60-year history of Lincoln’s Carnegie library, how it connects to national trends surrounding Carnegie libraries, and the role community and philanthropy played in the development of Lincoln’s public library system. These themes are examined through a …

Artificial Intelligence: The Road More Traveled. Writing And Conducting Research With Ai, Laura Zucca-Scott, Samuel Stinson

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

This project illustrates and discusses actionable examples of how collaborative, supportive virtual or in-person environments can foster democratic learning models in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

The workshop models, whether in person or virtual, provide dialogical opportunities for growth. Critically examining information and developing writing skills become crucial in supporting scholarly growth and intellectual exploration while providing access to academic pursuits to otherwise marginalized individuals and groups.

The experiences we share are situated in a specific context and are interconnected with the perspectives, backgrounds, and expectations of the scholars involved. However, as the writing workshops continue to evolve due to …

“A New Era Of Black Thought”: Revisiting Gil Scott-Heron And The Hbcu Protest Novel, Magana J. Kabugi

The Vermont Connection

In 1972, spoken-word artist and poet Gil Scott-Heron published his second novel, controversially titled The Nigger Factory. As the student arm of the Civil Rights Movement started to shift its intellectual concerns from integration to questions of Black Power and self-determination, Scott-Heron’s novel burst onto the literary scene like a stick of dynamite. Literary critics and newspapers didn’t quite know what to make of the novel, which focused on a student government president and a fringe opposition group both vying for control over a student protest at a fictional historically Black college. Raw, direct, and full of rage, the book …

You’Re Invited! Collaborating With Faculty And Students To Create A Successful Library Event, Laura Semrau

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

To celebrate the 400^th anniversary of the printing of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the Baylor University Libraries hosted a three-day celebration; “Shakespeare 400” drew faculty members from six academic departments and leveraged the talents of both graduate and undergraduate students. The four main events drew a cumulative crowd of over 200 people. Graduate students contributed to the events through music performance, a dramatic reading, enthusiastic promotion, and engaged participation. This presentation will explore key take-aways for including graduate students in library events.

The success of Shakespeare 400 was largely due to collaborations between the library, faculty members, and graduate …

An Exploratory Study Of Mindsets, Sense Of Belonging, And Help-Seeking In The Writing Center, Traci Freeman, Steve Getty

Writing Center Journal

In this exploratory study, we took as our point of departure Lori Salem’s (2016) call to investigate the factors that affect students’ decisions to visit the writing center. Rather than exploring student decision-making through a sociological lens, as Salem does, we drew on insights from social psychology to understand students’ motivations. We explored two self-theories drawn from social psychology that are associated with students’ academic achievement and with students’ help-seeking: (1) implicit beliefs about intelligence or “mindsets”; and (2) sense of belonging. Using questions from previously validated scales, we measured first-year students’ mindsets and sense of belonging and tested the …

How Genre-Trained Tutors Affect Student Writing And Perceptions Of The Writing Center, Lucy Bryan Malenke, Laura K. Miller, Paul E. Mabrey Iii, Jared Featherstone

Writing Center Journal

Writing center scholars have long debated whether writers are best served by “generalist” tutors trained in writing center pedagogy or “specialist” tutors with insider knowledge about a course’s content or discipline-specific discourse conventions. A potential compromise that has emerged is training tutors in the purposes and features of specific genres. The writing center literature showcases many different approaches to genre training. However, little empirical research, if any, has explored how tutors’ genre knowledge affects session outcomes. The present study used a mixed-methods approach to compare session outcomes for students who worked with generalist and genre-trained tutors. We analyzed pre-consultation and …

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 …

Ua94/6/18 Stephen Flora Student / Alumni Papers, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Stephen Flora during his years as a student at Western Kentucky University.

Challenging Dominant Ideologies In Order To Center Marginalized Voices And Enrich Learning: Theorizing Social Justice In English Studies Teaching, Heather Holliger

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio explores the reproduction of and challenges to dominant ideologies in popular culture and scholarly contexts and examines pedagogies for advancing social justice in the field of English studies through three distinct but interconnected projects. The first project considers pedagogy in the public sphere, examining the power of the meme genre to serve as “critical public pedagogy” within movements for social change. The second project focuses on the role of dominant norms in reproducing social injustices through classroom writing assessment, offering insights from antiracist, queer, feminist, decolonial, translingual, and disability justice scholars. The paper also reviews composition scholars’ strategies …

Breaking Bridges: A Latina's Role In Familismo And Higher Education, Desiree Trejo

Theses and Dissertations

This research and collective experiences have been recorded to bring together an autoethnography that demonstrates my personal experiences of being the eldest daughter in a Latino family and how these experiences situate within a social context. The primary purpose of this autoethnography is to provide insight on Latino culture expectations placed upon first born daughters. My own experiences connect to my research covering Latino culture and gender expectations to further understand social meanings and understandings of this culture. This autoethnography presents qualitive research that allows me to self-reflect and apply these findings to my personal experiences within my family to …

Du Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, Caitlyn Aldersea, Justin Bravo, Sam Allen, Anna Block, Connor Block, Emma Buechler, Maria De Los Angeles Bustillos, Arianna Carlson, William Christensen, Olivia Kachulis, Noah Craver, Kate Dillon, Muskan Fatima, Angel Fernandes, Emma Finch, Colleen Cassidy, Amy Fishman, Andrea Francis, Stacia Fritz, Simran Gill, Emma Gries, Rylie Hansen, Shannon Powers, Jacqueline Martinez, Zachary Harker, Ashley Hasty, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Kathleen Hopps, Adelaide Kerenick, Colin Kleckner, Ci Koehring, Elijah Kruger, Braden Krumholz, Maddie Leake, Lyneé Alves, Seraphina Loukas, Yatzari Lozano Vazquez, Haley Maki, Emily Martinez, Sierra Mckinney, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Audrey Mitchell, Kipling Newman, Audrey Ng, Megan Lucyshyn, Andrew Nguyen, Stevie Ostman, Casandra Pearson, Alexandra Penney, Julia Gielczynski, Tyler Ball, Anna Rini, Christina Rorres, Simon Ruland, Helayna Schafer, Emma Sellers, Sarah Schuller, Claire Shaver, Kevin Summers, Isabella Shaw, Madison Sinar, Claudia Pena, Apshara Siwakoti, Carter Sorensen, Madi Sousa, Anna Sparling, Alexandra Revier, Brandon Thierry, Dylan Tyree, Maggie Williams, Lauren Wols

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

DU Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Works

Amplifying Tutor Voices: A Qualitative Analysis For Improving Writing Center Tutoring Practices And Pedagogy, Leah Washko

English Department Masters Theses

Within the walls of university writing centers, tutors and tutees collaborate. They discuss writing, but even more than that, they communicate about ideas and theories bigger than themselves, all while discovering their identities. Exploration of how tutors define their authority and agency, while also highlighting the importance of tutors’ voices, is necessary for the continuation of writing center studies. Writing center tutors’ roles may be understood by some, but the mental hurdles, the questioning natures, and the care-giver roles they are emersed into need to be further investigated. Through a study conducted at Kutztown University’s Writing Center, tutors were surveyed …

Educating The Whole Person: Materials From Our Mini Course, Michelle Hayford, Megan Donelson

Pilot Course: Educating the Whole Person

In this document, the instructors provide their own reflections on the course as well as teaching activities and student reflections.

Faculty’S Experiences Teaching English Language Learners In Higher Education, Chedia A. Ayari

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Conducted in a large size four-year state university, the purpose of this qualitative study was to learn how faculty of multiple disciplines examined and made meaning of their instructional practices and decisions when teaching ELL students, how they modified their instruction to meet the needs of ELLs, and what they saw as areas of struggle when working with this student population. Critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970) was used as a theoretical framework to further investigate the complex nature of how higher education faculty make meaning of their instructional experiences when teaching ELLs within the hierarchical structures inherent in higher education and …

Chart Study, Abigail Franklin

English Senior Capstone

Chart Study is a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that recounts moments of my life and explores my interpretation of the world. It spans decades and continents, from the Midwest to the Middle East, while following the thread of uncertainty that has always wrapped around me. Themes of self-discovery, independence, and insecurity are prominent as I play with formal poetry and sectioned essays. The title refers to my father’s time as an aviator and is an homage to all of the characteristics and quirks he instilled in me that are explored more fully in the project itself.

Drawing Empathy: The Benefits Of Utilizing Graphic Memoirs In Secondary Classrooms, Hailey Simmons

English Senior Capstone

The use of graphic novels and graphic memoirs in the classroom is an active discussion in many schools. Some individuals who oppose using the genre with students argue that it does not provide enough depth to have an effect on the reader. By analyzing Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Nora Krug’s Belonging, this paper explains how graphic memoirs can provide depth for readers. As Spiegelman and Krug learn of their family history with the Holocaust and World War II, they utilize the techniques of representational art, the repetition of structural elements, and the use of color and shading to portray …

Wakara's Waterscapes: Storytelling, Cartography, And Rhetorical Sovereignty On The Shores Of The Green River, Abbey O'Brien

Honors Theses

In the mid nineteenth-century, Wakara, a prominent Ute leader, witnessed the invasion of his homeland by Mormon settlers and mountain-men. He met the scouts and explorers who were sent out to examine the land and waterscapes, and who drew maps along their way. It was those same maps which were eventually used as tools to justify colonial expansion all across the Utah territories, Wakara’s home. But Wakara resisted. Employing his understandings of the roles that cartography and the written word played in Mormon and settler discourse, Wakara created his own maps in order to assert his Indigenous authority over the …

Adverse Childhood Experiences And Identity Achievement In The Lives Of Pip And Heathcliff, Brianna Leigh Blosenski

English Senior Capstone

Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations and Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights both focus on characters orphaned at a young age. Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, are clearly present throughout these characters’ adolescent lives, as they face various types of neglect, abuse, and household dysfunction. The presence of these ACEs thus influences their identity achievement: the settling of their moral codes and ethical standards. Through the exploration of their identities from childhood to adulthood, the reader observes Pip attaining identity achievement—due to the influence of a positive parental figure—and Heathcliff failing to do so.

The Stories Already Written: An Intertextual Analysis Of The Book Thief And Belonging, Jenna Kortenhoeven

English Senior Capstone

Intertextuality is a theoretical notion which enables a critic to analyze the way a writer’s story is the sum of the stories the writer has read and which can examine how human identity is also constructed from reading. Within Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief and Nora Krug’s Belonging, the writers find their story and identity through reading, their relationship with words mirroring their relationship with themselves, others, and the world. The Book Thief details the story of Liesel Meminger, showcasing how her entire life is shaped by words and emphasizing how her growth as a reader leads her to …

The Pieces That Make The Self: Finding Balance Between Social And Individual Identity In Frances Burney’S Evelina And Virginia Woolf’S Mrs. Dalloway, Jenna King

English Senior Capstone

In their novels Evelina and Mrs. Dalloway, Frances Burney and Virginia Woolf pursue an understanding of the pieces of one’s “self.” Through the journeys of Evelina Anville and Clarissa Dalloway, Burney and Woolf explore how a woman’s identity is formed by both her social role and her individuality. Although the social settings examined in the two novels vary greatly due to differences in both time period and the main characters’ stages of life, Evelina’s and Clarissa’s stories are united by their shared goal of gaining understanding of and ownership over themselves. Ultimately, both Evelina and Mrs. Dalloway argue for …

Insomniac - A Collection Of Poetry, Fiction, And Creative Non-Fiction, Jason Abishekaraj John

English Senior Capstone

As the title would suggest, Insomniac is a multi-genre collection which represents a handful of my written works that were born during bouts of insomnia and depression. The poems I have placed in this collection revolve around my friendships with specific (and at times multiple) individuals. The creative non-fiction pieces focus on my experiences with depression, dissociation, suicide, anxiety, hypersensitivity, epilepsy, and self-harm in hopes that they might promote conversation. Lastly, the short stories are my own spin on Bhoot (Ghost) and ¬Shikari (Hunter) stories I hungrily devoured in my childhood. My hope is that each of these pieces can …

A Choice To Make: The Portrayal Of Female Characters’ Agency And Emotion In Madeline Miller’S Circe And Anaïs Mitchell’S Hadestown, Abby Swartzentruber

English Senior Capstone

In the novel Circe and the musical Hadestown, Madeline Miller and Anaïs Mitchell create transformative retellings of selected Greek myths, where the narrative perspective is shifted to the women, allowing for a deeper examination of the complexity of these characters. Circe details the life of the titular goddess as she grapples with the tension between her exile and her agency, experiencing a complex web of non-linear emotions. In Hadestown, Eurydice must learn to overcome her pessimism to trust another, while Persephone must abandon her coping mechanisms and finally stand up to the abuses of her husband, Hades. Mitchell …

"Everyone Learns, Nobody Changes": Images And The Ideal In Anna Karenina And Closer, Leah Kiers

English Senior Capstone

The main characters in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Patrick Marber’s Closer literally and figuratively surround themselves with images of themselves and others that define how they choose to see and be seen. Using the framework of Tolstoy’s What Is Art?, this paper evaluates how these images affect the characters’ relationships with one another. Tolstoy writes that art should enable humanity to pursue an ideal of unity with one another, but the characters’ ideals are more self-centered, making it so that the images they use prevent them from authentically connecting with each other. Proximity with suffering and death can tear …

On Parallel Paths: Learning Through Case Studies In The Writing Pedagogy Course, Alyssa Devey, Christina Saidy, Mohammed S. Iddrisu, Seher Shah, Marlene A. Tovar

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article reports on a case study project assigned in a writing pedagogy course. The authors, four graduate teaching assistants and their professor, share their case study questions, experiences, and challenges. Via the case study assignment, the TAs identified parallel experiences they shared with their students. Recognizing parallel paths helps first-year TAs reflect on their experiences as teachers and learners, build connections with students, and develop sustainable teaching practices beyond the first year. The authors share strategies for identifying parallel paths and encourage TA educators to incorporate them into the writing pedagogy course.

Unpacking Writer Identity: How Beliefs And Practices Inform Writing Instruction, David Premont

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Although identity research is common in educational studies, little research explores the connections between identity and pedagogy, and far fewer specifically examine how writer identity influences writing pedagogy. Additional research exploring the connection between writer identity and writing pedagogy is necessary to offer nuanced teaching strategies to strengthen writing pedagogy. The present study explores the connections between writer identity and writing pedagogy for three preservice English teachers with strong writer identities during their respective student teaching experiences. Interview data were utilized to explore writer identity and analyse connections to writing pedagogy through In Vivo coding in this narrative inquiry. Findings …

Writing Without Audiences: A Comprehensive Survey Of State-Mandated Standards And Assessments, James E. Warren

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Writing studies professionals agree that students must learn to write for specific audiences. Despite this professional consensus, there is reason to believe that this skill is not widely tested in state-mandated writing assessments. In this study, we survey the state content standards for English Language Arts and the state-mandated writing tests for high school students in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. While all states have adopted standards that require students to write for specific audiences, only a small percentage test this skill on state-mandated assessments. We argue that the consequences of this misalignment between standards and assessment …

A Pen, A Pencil, Or A Keyboard: Writing Center Tutors’ Perceptions, Mirta Ramirez-Espinola

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

A Pen, A Pencil, or a Keyboard: Online Writing Center Tutors’ Perceptions

Author, Adjunct Faculty, Grand Canyon University

Abstract

Writing can be challenging for some students, even those who have graduated high school and are moving forward to higher learning. Thus, an idea about students and writing support led to a study about writing centers and the individuals responsible for supporting struggling writers. This qualitative case study explored the tutors’ perceptions of online writing tutoring and investigated how tutors perceive their work using both asynchronous and synchronous online tutoring modes at a 4-year university. Though the writing center participating in …

Utopian Promises, Dystopic Realities: Teaching Bell Hooks “No Love In The Wild”, Naimah H. Ford

Feminist Pedagogy

This original teaching activity discusses bell hooks’ film review of Beasts of The Southern Wild and explains how it can be used to encourage students to recognize how popular culture reproduces and reinforces disturbing paradigms. This original teaching activity, based on hooks’ review “No Love in The Wild,” encourages students to be informed while navigating visual images in popular culture. This activity also explains how hooks’ film review and the film can be used to empower students with strategies to analyze film and other visual images that are seemingly progressive but support the strictures and structures that reinforce patriarchy, racism, …

Engl 200: Writing About Writing (The Problem Of The University), Flora De Tournay

Open Educational Resources

"The Problem of the University" is a (largely) open education syllabus that marries a criticality of/with the university as a site and space of knowledge making and knowledge suppression with a metacognitive writing approach for undergraduate students. The syllabus' contents include texts from bell hooks, Paolo Freire, Derrida, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, among others.

Complete and updated syllabus available at https://waboutw.commons.gc.cuny.edu/