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- Creator:
- Macias, Paul
- Description:
- Statement of Problem: In spring, 2007, I instructed a section of College Composition in which I found myself guiding students toward a rhetorical model based in individual authority, despite my intentions to encourage a more inquiry- or dialogue-based model of authority. This experience caused in me these beliefs: claim to individual authority can be defined and found in student writing; student writing that makes claim to individual authority can be distinguished from student writing that doesn't; and both institutional and instructor texts, as well as instructor discourse, can be correlated with a student writer's tendency to persuade by means of individual authority. Sources of Data: I collected institutional curriculum and four bodies of research from four different College Composition classrooms, each of which includes instructor texts (syllabus and assignment sheet), instructor discourse (oral description of assignment sheet), and student texts (essays in response to assignment sheet). I analyzed two of these bodies of research. Conclusions Reached: Claim to individual authority can be defined and found in student writing. Student writing that makes claim to individual authority can be distinguished from student writing that doesn't. Both institutional and instructor texts, as well as instructor discourse, can be correlated with a student writer's tendency to persuade by means of individual authority.
- Resource Type:
- Masters Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Marquardt, Kimberly Grace
- Description:
- In 2031, a woman inherits a box full of books and notes for a thesis on postmodernism, history and post-1980 British fiction, but the thesis itself is missing. Thus begins an exploration of how postmodern concepts of historical knowledge, marginalization, time and metafiction influence five literary works: Flaubert's Parrot, by Julian Barnes; Moon Tiger, by Penelope Lively; Chatterton, by Peter Ackroyd; The Passion, by Jeanette Winterson; and Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard. The literary analyses of Brian McHale, Patricia Waugh, Linda Hutcheon, and Amy Elias are covered, in addition to the critical discussion affecting the History profession as espoused by Hayden White, Keith Jenkins, Perez Zagorin and Arthur Marwick. In the late twentieth century, postmodern thought complicated, and in many ways constrained, the ways we view history. Yet, as these five works show, postmodernism has also expanded those vistas. The little we do know about the past, despite its tentative claim to truth -- and, perhaps most importantly, the limitless possibilities afforded by those discrepancies -- is more than enough to keep writers like Barnes, Lively, Ackroyd, Winterson and Stoppard writing -- and their readers reading.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Perlongo, Kassandra Marie
- Description:
- The purpose of Mythic Archetypes is to investigate Tolkien’s involvement with Welsh language, mythology, and history. Tolkien’s goal was to write a mythology for the people of England, and devise a “Secondary World” with real world or “Primary World” attributes. The thesis focuses on British Celtic, or native Welsh, language, mythology, and history and examines how these three ingredients reflect Tolkien’s “Primary World” truth. Finally, the overall intention is to contribute to the conversation about Celtic literature and the fantasy genre. The thesis examines Welsh mythology for background information. The criterion for this reviews some of the following literature: The Mabinogion, Trioedd ynes Prydein: the Welsh Triads, The Mabinogi and Other Welsh Tales, The Four Ancient Books of Wales, and Welsh Celtic Myth in Modern Fantasy. Then, the thesis focuses on Tolkien’s involvement with Welsh and the parallel in his “Secondary World,” Middle-earth. The criterion for this portion reviews some of the following literature: The Lord of the Rings, Angles and Britons O’Donnell Lectures, Myth and Middle Earth, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. Finally, after full examination of all relevant literature, the thesis was written. The principal conclusion found Tolkien involved with Welsh language, mythology and its history. British Celtic language and history merged into the narrative design of his epic, thus, working as spiritual “Primary World” reflections, comprising the heart and soul of Middle-earth. Mythic Archetypes opened broadly, charting Tolkien’s involvement with Welsh language and history, and then each chapter focused on individual and spiritual aspects in The Lord of the Rings. The results revealed that Welsh language and mythic references provided the truthful, spiritual component Tolkien desired in his fantasy epic.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Honeycutt, Christina Dawn
- Description:
- In the 1960s, higher education become more accessible to historically excluded groups, such as women, minorities, and the working class, forever changing the culture and population of college campuses. As a result of these changes, in 1974 the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” resolution was passed by the membership of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). Although the resolution evolved out of the growing need to address the variety of Englishes that are increasingly used at most schools, many first-year college composition instructors neglect to enact the resolution in their classrooms. Instead, many language teachers still cling to a pedagogy that favors the sole use of traditional academic discourse. Traditional academic discourse excludes the linguistic and cultural experiences of many Americans, especially historically underrepresented groups. Its mythos is so entrenched within American learning institutions that many teachers are at a loss of how to go about teaching traditional academic discourse differently or in conjunction with other pedagogies. As a result, I developed a pedagogy that reconciles the tension and conflict between the tenets of the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” resolution and traditional academic discourse, a pedagogy that transcends the border and boundaries of them both, thereby creating an equitable space for the study of composition that is unfixed, experimental, and liberating while still empowering students with the necessary knowledge to gain entrance to the dominant discourse. Sources of Data In order to develop a pedagogy that reconciles the sometimes conflicting tenets of the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” resolution and traditional academic discourse, I researched existing literature on composition theory, focusing mainly on the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” resolution; the history of teaching composition and rhetoric in the United States; alternative discourses and hybrid genres; the matrix of language, power, and culture; and portfolio theory. Additionally, I developed a questionnaire, “Challenging the Traditional Discourse of the Academy: Authorizing Alternative Discourse Forms in the First Year College Composition Course” for California State University Sacramento (CSUS) teachers and students. As a result of the questionnaire, I was able to generalize about what teachers are doing in the classroom today, what students think about that, and how receptive teachers and students are to the idea of challenging traditional academic discourse. Conclusions Reached Based on my research, I was able to develop a pedagogy that includes the tenets of the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” resolution and traditional academic discourse while correcting the failures of each. The Antevasinist Pedagogy, partially derived from both Critical Pedagogy and Border Pedagogy, is a portfolio-centered, multi-discourse, multi-genre approach that includes dialectical diversity and alternative rhetorical patterns in the classroom. Antevasinist teachers and students reconcile the conflicts and gaps among the “Students’ Right” resolution and traditional academic discourse by studying the conventions of each and problem-posing their connections and disconnections, by making the conflicts and questions inherent within them visible and explicit. When a course includes the conventions of traditional academic discourse and questions of power concerning exclusive, gatekeeping discourse communities, as well as including the conventions and politics concerning alternative discourses and hybrid genres in the curriculum, writers can transcend the boundaries and limits of these pedagogies. This transcendence cultivates authentically aware, self reflective writers who are not only critically conscious of themselves and their writing, but also of the audience and the rhetorical situation.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Henning, Rebecca Leigh
- Description:
- This thesis serves as a pedagogical introduction to the theory of social-expressivism, or the convergence of two main composition theories: expressivism and social constructivism. The author conducted a textual analysis of Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff’s Being a Writer: A Community of Writers Revisited using Thomas Huckin’s context-sensitive method of examination to trace social-expressivist patterns throughout the textbook. The author’s analysis of her course syllabus, writing assignment prompts, and peer workshop scripts verify the value of social-expressivism as a theory and classroom pedagogy that develops students’ “composing flexibility,” or the ability for students to compose private and public texts while recognizing the natural intersections of personal and academic discourses.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Paxson, William Charles
- Description:
- There is a large amount of historical detail in this story, and if I were to point out where fiction begins and history ends, and why I did it that way, I would have to write a preface larger than the book. For the reader. however, some guidelines are important. I followed two: (1) Testimony at the trial and messages, reports, and letters that appear in the story are taken from House Executive Document 122 of the 1st Session, 43rd Congress: Official Copies of Correspondence Relative to the War with the Modoc Indians (Serial Set 1607). (2) I have used that source plus additional historical and anthropological data to invent episodes, dramatize known incidents, and characterize participants.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Bacon, Robert Russell
- Description:
- Dino Buzzati was born in 1906 and has published several novels as well as other collections of short stories. Ii Deserto dei Tartari (The Tartar Steppe) is his only novel that has been translated and published in English. His other works are: L'invasione degli Orsi in Sicilia (The Invasion of the Bears in Italy), II Crollo della Baliverna (The Ruin of the Constable), II grande Ritratto (The Great Portrait), Un Ancora (One More), II Colombre (The Pigeon), In quel Preciso Momento (In that Precise Moment), and Un Caso Clinico (A Clinical Case). Dino Buzzati is a well-known Italian writer who can easily take a place with Verga, D'Annunzio, and Moravia as one of the most prominent and representative of contemporary authors in Italy. He, like many other Italian writers, is most adept at the novella or short story, and his themes are basically existential. His characters are often overpowered by fear and insecurity; and one is struck by the similarity between the world they inhabit and that of Kafka's characters, for alienation is one of the central issues in his stories. The first story, The Dog Who Saw God, is both cynical and humorous. The opportunism of the central character, the baker, is exposed very skilfully as he and the other inhabitants of the city of Tis become enslaved by their secret fear of a dog; who they think is, in some sense, divine. Afraid to admit their fear to each other, but also afraid to renounce allegiance to the dog, they find themselves imprisoned by their superstition and ignorance. There is an interesting conflict in the story between the people's reverence for the dog and their shame that they would alter their behavior merely because of a dog. The second story, The Seven Messengers, is the shortest of the three stories and is most characteristic of Buzzati. It is very similar to The Tartar Steppe. The central character leaves home and security behind to enter a world that gradually becomes so strange it seems unreal. The hero is finally overcome by exhaustion, feeling totally estranged from all that seems familiar. The Seven Floors has much in common with The Seven Messengers in that the action in both leads to gradual alienation. The hero in this story is subjected to the world inside a famous hospital. He is well cared for, and sincere attempts seem to be made to cure him. Incidents become gradually more disturbing, however, as he is moved and handled against his will and in violation of his original doctor's orders. He becomes frustrated and eventually resigned as he is totally unsuccessful in having any voice in how he is to be treated or what floor he is to be placed on.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Engler, Muriel
- Description:
- It was the purpose of this project (1) to present seven specific scripts suitable for the teaching of English, speech, and radio broadcasting at the secondary level by recording on magnetic tape; (2) to show the need for scripts of this particular type; (3) to point out several advantages to both teacher and student of the use of tape recording; and (4) to determine in terms of accepted teaching objectives some accomplishments possible through the use of appropriate scripts in conjunction with the tape recorder.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- English
9. Creating space for difference: using auxiliary spaces to enact border pedagogy beyond the classroom
- Creator:
- Pearsall, Beth
- Description:
- The fundamental belief expressed in this project is that diversity is necessary for learning and that often mechanisms that assess and track students work to erase diverse perspectives from classroom populations. Such homogenizing practices make the enactment of a contact zone pedagogy in a composition classroom particularly challenging. The purpose of this project is to forward an argument in favor of mainstreaming basic writers and to propose a diversion of funding from the basic writing program to expanded and targeted support services available to students across all disciplines. These services, primarily in the form of adjunct tutorials and an expansion of the role of the writing center, are designed to not only address a wider variety of student writer needs, but also to create spaces where students can more freely engage in a critical questioning of academic discourse. This programmatic design honors diversity through both the creation of more diverse classroom populations and an implementation of a multi-faceted network of writing support services.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- English
- Creator:
- Laurgaard, Rachel K.
- Description:
- The adventures of the Donner Party have never been retold in the form of a children's story, undoubtedly because of certain tragic and gruesome aspects which were dwelt on in adult accounts. However, the children of the party stated in later years that they were too young to comprehend the tragic impact of those months in the mountains, and their parents, of course, did everything in their power to keep them from realizing it. The immediate concerns of hunger and discomfort took up their attention, and, once back in civilization and well-fed, they remembered the happy days of the earlier part of the journey as well as the grim months when they were snowbound. To make their picture of the past living and vital, modern youngsters need to know about real children who traveled the trail of the covered wagons, and the things that really happened to them. The story of Patty Reed and Dolly is a true story, and, as such, a valuable piece of Western Americana. It should be made available to children of today to deepen their understanding and appreciation of the pioneer children of the past. This is the story of pioneering as seen through the eyes of the children and told by their symbol, the little wooden doll.
- Resource Type:
- Thesis
- Campus Tesim:
- Sacramento
- Department:
- English
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