Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Allowing The Untellable To Visit: Investigating Digital Folklore, Ptsd And Stigma, Geneva Harline

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the introduction of 2012 issue of The Journal of Folklore Research, Diane Goldstein and Amy Shuman issue a “call to arms for folklorists … to concentrate on the vernacular experience of the stigmatized.” (Goldstein and Shuman, 2012:116). Drawing on this call to arms, this thesis investigates how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is portrayed in social media through memes and captioned images. I argue that the genres of memes and captioned images in digital folklore work to help mitigate the stigma of PTSD because the veneer of anonymity in the digital world allows people with PTSD to be willing …

How To Rate A Book: Goodreads, Taste, And Reading In The 21st Century, Dylan Burns

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

“What shall the individual who still desires to read attempt to read this late in history?” asks Harold Bloom. Writing at the end of the 20^th century, Bloom’s quote anticipates the information explosion that the age of the internet brought to the reader (even if his emphasis is on the unpopularity of reading rather than the explosion in options). Social media sites like Goodreads prove that reading is still popular, yet Bloom’s question of what does someone read is still salient. More than ever, reading is a social activity, to be shared, debated, and justified between millions of would …

Promoting Intercultural Competence In Diverse U.S. Classrooms Through Ethnographic Interviews, Ekaterina Arshavskaya

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

To meet the demands of contemporary society, students needs to develop the ability to interact effectively with people from different cultures. To advance this goal, a project involving ethnographic interviews was introduced to an intercultural communication course. Participating students' attitudes toward other cultures were measured on a Likert scale at the beginning and end of the project. The findings show that through the interviews, the students developed greater awareness of their own cultures and of themselves within their culture and deepened their knowledge of other cultures. Yet, the majority of the students did not show greater interest in learning a …

Effectively Teaching A Second Language: Principles And Practices, Alexander Gatica

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is the amalgamation of the author’s research and experience during his time in the Master of Second Language Teaching program. The first section contains the Teaching Philosophy, which centers on applying effective teaching methods, increasing learner motivation, and incorporating technology into the classroom. The next section consists of three artifacts in which the author further investigates specific aspects of language teaching. The language paper focuses on the effect that identity has on motivation to learn a language. The literacy paper discusses how to increase vocabulary acquisition via a mobile-assisted language learning application called Duolingo. The culture paper addresses …

Shallow Bones, Brian Lee Cook

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The research for this thesis examined historical and recent events embodying persecution both directed towards and perpetuated by the Mormon church. In order to convey the complexity of persecution, I examined stories told by church members, accounts written during the early years of the religion, and scholarly pieces written about the church's history. These stories revolved around the assassination of Joseph Smith and the Mountain Meadows massacre.

To portray the events surrounding the Mountain Meadows massacre, I performed a site visit, documented scenery, and discussed the massacre with others visiting the site. The great majority of my Mountain Meadows descriptions …