The purpose of this study is to address the question of whether graduate students, who have finished their undergraduate study at Boise State University (BSU), feel they were adequately prepared by their undergraduate education to meet writing challenges at the graduate level. Professors have also raised questions as to what level of preparedness incoming graduate students should have. With BSU set to implement a new approach to learning writing across the curriculum, this study may aid in defining at-risk areas in writing; identified by both graduate students and faculty. Surveys will be given to graduate students who have completed their undergraduate degree from Boise State University as well as to the faculty teaching graduate courses. The purpose of the survey is to get students to self-assess the level of their preparedness and identify specific areas of deficiency. The survey given to the faculty will be much the same but with an emphasis on evaluation of the writing of incoming graduate students in general. Follow-up focus group discussions will enable more in-depth exploration of issues raised by the surveys. Data from these surveys will be analyzed and correlated with the outcomes of the new Communication in the Discipline (CID) courses to see if there are areas of writing need - and if the new CID courses will fill those needs. I hypothesize that there will be areas in which each group wants improvement, and that there will be a strong correlation between the two groups. I also propose that the CID course outcomes will specifically address some of the identified areas of need. This research project has the potential to identify areas of current need, as well as provide a base from which follow-up research may evaluate the ongoing success of the Boise State CID courses.

Most American universities provide academic support for multilingual students. These supports tend to fall into the realms of one-on-one tutoring, study groups, or specialized classes. Less common, however, are institutionally provided social supports – that is, support settings not focused on classroom specific education or academic learning, but instead provide an environment where students can develop a sense of community, form relationships with their peers, and ultimately gain a better understanding of U.S. culture. To assess the impact that institutional social supports can provide, we will conduct a case study of two students participating in Thursday English Afternoons (T.E.A. Time) at the Boise State University Writing Center while taking regular college courses during the summer intersession. We will consider the role that T.E.A. Time fills among students’ other social and academic activities, whether it fills a need that is otherwise absent, and we will assess it for positive impacts on students’ academic work. To conduct this case study, two participants will fill out pre and post surveys, and they will be interviewed three times over the course of this study. The surveys will assess students’ perceptions on the T.E.A. Time program, and how it relates to their lives in the United States. The interviews will focus on students’ lives, both in the classroom and in social situations outside of T.E.A. Time, and will be analyzed to determine common themes that suggest social or academic needs that are not otherwise being met. We hypothesize that this study will show participants self-reporting a significant increase in confidence with spoken English and will show strong support for the T.E.A. Time program among participants. Additionally, we will explore possible links among T.E.A. Time, students’ social lives, and their academic performance.

The recent increase in international students at the University of Washington (UW) has been an extremely controversial issue. As undergraduate tutors in a writing center that serves these students, we are concerned with how this changing institutional climate affects both the students we work with and the university. This has prompted us to ask: What are these students’ needs, how can we best support them, and what institutional structures and policy must be changed or developed in response to the increasingly multilingual and multicultural demographic of the university? Through further development of a peer-led group tutoring program, Targeted Tutoring (TT), we have explored these questions and their implications for academic support models and policy relating to English Language Learners (ELLs) and international students. In particular, we have focused on researching ELL policy and support mechanisms at other universities and developing research designed to assess how student feedback about classroom and writing experiences and their perceptions of second-language writing at UW can be used to improve existing programs and policy. In practice, this has focused on efforts to design student-centered research methods and materials (reflective writing, surveys, interviews and observations), used in conjunction with TT, that can supply student feedback in order to assess our response, and the university’s response, to the increasingly diverse student body. While incomplete, this research has already shown promise. It has demonstrated the value of opening new avenues for students to communicate their needs, concerns, and views – providing the university with a clearer picture of these students’ needs and enabling a more effective response to, and support of, an increasingly diverse student body. In doing so, our research has the potential to be a valuable resource for students, administrators, and academic support programs and inform the university’s response to the changing student population at all levels.

The Common Core State Standards were developed in collaboration with teachers, school administrators, and experts, in order to provide a clear and consistent framework to prepare American students for college, the workforce, and successful competition in the global economy (www.corestandards.org). The Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (henceforth, “the Standards”) were published on June 2, 2010 and have since been adopted by forty-five of the fifty states, including Washington. As schools begin the enormous effort of re-shaping their curricula to meet the Standards, students and teachers will find themselves subject to many changes. This presentation focuses on the changes that will impact the teaching of literature in the high school English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. It reveals the underlying assumptions the Standards make about literary texts: that they are not argumentative texts, that they therefore cannot be used toward the teaching of argument, and that they are therefore somewhat irrelevant to the Standards’ goals of college and career readiness. It then draws upon interviews I conducted with local ELA-teachers and relevant academic literature in order to critique these assumptions, demonstrating that literature not only can be used to teach argument, but should be. In short, it makes the case that using literature to teach argument better prepares students for college and the workforce than the use of informational text alone and, moreover, imparts the additional benefit of preparing students for responsible citizenship in a democracy.

My research aims to counter the notion that women do not mind the silencing, sexualization, and objectification of their bodies by providing a platform whereby the often unseen and unheard female body can voice a resounding reply that, on the contrary, she does mind, and very much so. My research examines works of contemporary historical fiction, like Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life, in order to explore the silencing of particular women in critical moments of capitalist transformation within and beyond the United States: the transatlantic slave trade, colonization, and imperialism, and the subsequent 20th century proliferation of neoliberalism, nation-building, and imperialism. It highlights this silencing by tracing traumas the female body endures. And does this specifically by defining the different female body parts that function as primary shock-absorbers as women who are coping with the effects of dislocation, displacement, and diaspora are not only gendered and sexualized in these labor markets but are also raced – a key component of representation and sexual exploitation. Vehemently criticizing the phallocratic order responsible for these various states of uprootedness is Luce Irigaray, whose essay “This Sex Which Is Not One” is concerned with the search for and implementation of a uniquely feminine language. My research interrogates the possibility of such a language existing and the significance it would bear in breaking the univocal shroud restricting the expressions and movements of the female body. This analysis utilizes a Marxist reading of the commodification of woman and her sex, as well as Irigaray’s conception of mimesis as it pertains to the recognition and viewing of the female. The injuries of being sexualized, gendered, and raced, unfortunately restrict the feminine discourse that female bodies could potentially produce by dehumanizing the female and rendering her nothing but a voiceless soft slip of flesh.

Little is known about the 19th Century painter Francois Leupalle and his 1832, oil on canvas painting, Marie Taglioni and Joseph Mazilier in the First Scene of La Sylphide. Despite Leupalle’s obscurity, many Romantic Ballet history books reproduce the painter’s La Sylphide as visual evidence for Romantic Ballet. Leupalle’s painting, then, represents not only La Sylphide but also the Romantic ballerina. In the 19th Century, the ballerina usurped the danseur and reached celebrity status. Through her pointe work, Taglioni helped to facilitate this radical shift. If her pointe work symbolized this sea change, why then does Leupalle illustrate Taglioni barefoot? Lithographs of this period predominantly portray dancing ballerinas, framing their pointe work; yet Leupalle’s barefoot ballerina kneels beside a kilted Scotsman, who slumbers in an armchair, surrounded by a vista of mist, light and foliage. This paper examines how Leupalle’s choice to portray Taglioni as barefoot affects scholars’ use of the painting as visual evidence for Romantic Ballet. Through analysis of the painting and archival documents, this research critiques the use of this image as visual evidence of the Romantic ballerina using male gaze and visual pleasure.

Examining three of Booker prize winner Ian McEwan’s novels Atonement, At Chesil Beach and Saturday provides a passage into his exploration of changing attitudes and viewpoints regarding female sexuality during the later 20th and early 21st century. Utilizing the genre of historical fiction, McEwan explores the various sociological and cultural influences such as improving neonatal care, contraceptives and improved birth control options that severed the previously inescapable link between sexuality and motherhood. Additionally, the rise of women in higher education and sectors of the workforce beginning in the 1930s onwards contributed to the autonomy and, as these novels indicate, increasing sexual freedom of women. Each novel explores the 1930s, 1950s and 2000s respectively as critical turning points in British culture. In the 1935 pre-WWII setting of Atonement, the prevalence of women in college and independent professions challenge gender norms. Against this backdrop, McEwan examines reciprocal sexual desire against victimization and societal attitudes towards women as equally desirous individuals. At Chesil Beach explores the physical relationship of a newly married couple during the 1950s and the emergence of clinical contraceptives. Finally, Saturday examines the attitudes of a mother and daughter in a post-sexual revolution setting and explores issues of generational differences as well as the link between sexuality and victimization still present in a contemporary time period. Ultimately, critically examining the attitudes and historical contexts of each novel against other scholarly work provides a literary interpretation of the evolution of attitudes regarding female sexuality, and sub issues of autonomy, consensual desire, the role of women and victimization, spanning from a pre-WWII era to contemporary society. 

Renaissance poet George Herbert is known as an innovator in poetic style and construction, but conservative or traditional in his content and subjects. This research explores an alternative interpretation that argues instead that his poems are actually radical innovations in structure that express and reveal the substance – function reflecting form. Herbert’s poems “Paradise” and “Easter Wings”, demonstrate this subversive and subtle, even subliminal, messaging. This methodology reveals his revolutionary attitude toward both poetic structures and content. By embedding alternative readings and perspectives into his poems, Herbert simultaneously explored the malleability of interpretations of both form and content, while subtly subverting and redefining traditional interpretations of his topics. Style and textual shapes are his tools for melding the cyclical elements of his topical inspiration with the outward appearance of the pieces. When read “in the round,” these poems reveal Herbert viewing cycles in life and text through slightly different perspectives and elements, creating duality and continuity. Both forwards and backwards, the content and form echo the other, as the circular readability contributes to and reflects the cyclical nature of the topic and content of the two poems. In this way, Herbert radically experimented in redefining the boundaries between form and focus.

Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book was published in 1894 and included the short story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Since its original publication, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi has been published outside of this collection, with its adaptations mainly targeting children. Through textual studies, my research is employing an examination of the text through the application of an anthropological lens. I focus on comparing the original text to a 2006 "Easy Reader Classic" edition of the text as well as the 1975 Chuck Jones animated film adaptation. These two adaptations dramatically alter the presence of the themes of family, religion, and violence. The alteration of these themes prompt further exploration into their significance. This in depth analysis frames my research and allow a shifting of focus from Rikki-Tikki-Tavi to its audience. Any discussion of audience tends to start with categorization, but I wish to prove that this approach can be dangerous, especially for scholars. By concentrating on the categorization of the audience, one loses sight of what the audience intends to do with the text. The audience's relationship with a text is defined by their intent, or more explicitly, how they utilize the text. When literature is identified as for children and subsequently adapted, how is it changing the audience's relationship with that text? Through these adaptations of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, I plan to investigate how drastically audience intent is altered through adaptation of the original version. Researching the loss of themes as well as the simplification of Kipling's text will allow me to extrapolate the affects of these changes on the audience's intent.