Scholarly Work - English

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/8827

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“Although Adolescence Need Not Be Violent…”: Preservice Teachers' Connections Between “Adolescence” and Literacy Curriculum
(2010-02) Lewis, Mark A.; Petrone, Robert
This article reports the findings of a study that examined how and why a group of pre-service secondary literacy teachers conceptualized and created various curricular activities involving young adult literary texts as part of their work for a teacher education course on teaching literature. Specifically, this article examines the systems of reasoning about the concept of adolescence that undergirded and rationalized these pre-service literacy teachers' curricular activities. Excerpts of the pre-service teachers' rationales and sample activities are presented here to illustrate how these pre-service teachers perceived adolescence as primarily a time of identity formation, especially one fraught with danger, and literacy curriculum, particularly the study of young adult literary texts, as a vehicle to help their future students traverse this tumultuous time. In presenting these findings, this article argues for secondary literacy teachers and literacy teacher educators to rethink and complicate their normalized assumptions of adolescence and secondary students.
Anointed
(The University of North Carolina Press, 2023-09) Misener, Mindy
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: For years, Mary would lie awake at night tallying her memories of her mother, making sure none were slipping away. Martha, Mary's older sister, cared more for their mother's things—her shawl, the sandals imprinted with the shadows of her heels and toes. Martha disdained Mary's obsession with memories as much as Mary disdained Martha's obsession with objects, but even at eight and ten years old they each knew to allow the other her grief, and so their relationship, which could have turned into a permanent battleground, was mostly a place of peace.
Critical Literature Pedagogy
(2014-08) Borsheim-Black, Carlin; Macaluso, Michael; Petrone, Robert
Domestic Entrapment and Supernatural Protection: Mapping the Ambiguous Relationship Between Female Subject and Domestic Space in Shirley Jackson's "House Novels"
(Montana State Univeristy, 2022-05-13) Moosbrugger, Meghan MacKenzie
Shirley Jackson’s three “house novels” offer new ways of understanding the tensions between women and their domestic spaces in the post-World War II American society. Studying The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and The Sundial through the lenses of Gothic literature and spatial theory gives literary critics and scholars valuable insights into Jackson’s representation of women and how they interact with and form relationships to their public and private spheres. This paper will apply Robert Tally’s mapping concept to consider each of the houses represented within Jackson’s novels as a map portraying the ambiguous relationship between female subject and domestic space.
Ecological Adaptation in Montana: Timon of Athens to Timon of Anaconda
(Cambridge University Press, 2021-02) Minton, Gretchen E.
In this article Gretchen E. Minton describes her adaptation of William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton’s 1606 play Timon of Athens. This adaptation, called Timon of Anaconda, focuses on the environmental legacy of Butte, Montana, a mining city that grew quickly, flourished, fell into recession, and then found itself labelled the largest Superfund clean-up site in the United States. Timon of Anaconda envisions Timon as a wealthy mining mogul whose loss of fortunes and friends echoes the boom-and-bust economy of Butte. The original play’s language about the poisoning of nature and the troubled relationship between the human and more-than-human worlds is amplified and adjusted in Timon of Anaconda in order to reflect upon ongoing environmental concerns in Montana. Minton explains the ecodramaturgical aims, site-specific locations, and directorial decisions of this adaptation’s performances, which took place in September 2019. Gretchen E. Minton is Professor of English at Montana State University, Bozeman. She has edited several early modern plays, including Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, and The Revenger’s Tragedy. She is the dramaturg for Montana Shakespeare in the Parks and Bozeman Actors Theatre, and her directorial projects include A Doll’s House (2019), Timon of Anaconda (2019–20), and Shakespeare’s Walking Story (2020).
The Ecological Resonance of Imogen’s Journey in Montana’s Parks
(Cambridge University Press, 2022-10) Minton, Gretchen E.; Gray, Mikey
In this article Gretchen Minton and Mikey Gray discuss an adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragicomedy Cymbeline that toured Montana and surrounding states in the summer of 2021. Minton’s sections describe the eco-feminist aims of this production, which was part of an international project called ‘Cymbeline in the Anthropocene’, showing how the costumes, set design, and especially the emphasis upon the female characters created generative ways of thinking about the relationship between the human and the more-than-human worlds. Gray’s first-person narrative at the end of each section reflects upon her role of Imogen as she participated in an extensive summer tour across the Intermountain West and engaged with audience members about their own relationship to both theatre and the natural world. This is a story of transformation through environmentally inflected Shakespeare performance during the time of a global pandemic. Gretchen E. Minton is Professor of English at Montana State University, Bozeman, and editor of several early modern plays, including Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, and The Revenger’s Tragedy. She is the dramaturg and script adaptor for Montana Shakespeare in the Parks and the co-founder of Montana InSite Theatre. Her directorial projects include A Doll’s House, Timon of Anaconda (see NTQ 145, February 2021), Shakespeare’s Walking Story, and Shakespeare for the Birds. Mikey Gray received her BA in Theatre and Performance from Bard College, New York, with a conservatory semester at NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art) in Sydney. She has performed in four productions with Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, while other actor engagements include Chicago Shakespeare Theater, American Conservatory Theater, Strawdog Theater Company, The Passage Theatre, and McCarter Theatre Center.
Homo medialiteratus and the media literacy proxy war: mapping the U.S. response to digital dismisinfo
(Informa UK Limited, 2023-07) Robinson, Bradley; Fassbender, William J.
This article presents findings from a visual network analysis study mapping the collective response to digital disinformation and misinformation, or digital dismisinfo, in the United States. Inspired by the digital dismisinfo-driven 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the study has identified key public and private actors actively responding to digital dismisinfo, examined the nature of their responses, and traced how their responses interact with those of other actors. The study’s findings reveal how media literacy efforts have become embroiled in a proxy war between platforms and politicians over the causes and consequences of digital dismisinfo. The authors argue that through such dynamics emerges the figure of homo medialiteratus, the media consuming individual who must bootstrap their way to truth in the face of an unrelenting tide of digital dismisinfo.
“I can almost recognize its voice”: AI and its impact on ethical teacher-centaur labor
(Emerald, 2024-03) Fassbender, William Joseph
Purpose. This study builds on previous theoretical work that considered artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential for creating “teacher-centaurs” whose labor could be accelerated through the use of generative AI (Fassbender, in review). The purpose of this paper is to use empirical methods to study centaur teachers and the division of labor (Durkheim, 1893/2013) that arise from outsourcing teaching tasks to AI. Design/methodology/approach. Multiple case study (Stake, 2006) was used to collect data on two secondary English teachers who were early adopters of generative AI. Data included semi-structured interviews as well as ChatGPT chat logs, which helped in describing how teaching approaches evolved using AI technology. Findings. Results showed that teachers used AI for planning, instruction and assessment. AI-augmented teaching practices allowed teachers to complete tasks with greater speed, which in turn increased stamina and short term work–life balance. Given the novelty of AI, concerns about data privacy and academic integrity raised ethical questions. Originality/value. ChatGPT’s rise to popularity in 2023 brought with it significant discussions about education, specifically how students would use AI primarily as a tool for plagiarism. This study takes a different focus, considering how early adoption of AI has begun changing teacher labor, offering implications for the future of the teaching profession.
Linking Contemporary Research on Youth, Literacy, and Popular Culture With Literacy Teacher Education
(2013-07-23) Petrone, Robert
The aim of this article is to expand the dialogue about how contemporary scholarship on the intersections between youth, literacy, and popular culture might inform literacy teacher education. Specifically, this article is designed to (a) orient literacy teacher educators who may be somewhat unfamiliar with this particular line of scholarship to a few of its major concepts and K-12 classroom implications and (b) propose several ways this line of scholarship might open up possibilities for literacy teacher educators to help pre-service literacy teachers develop culturally responsive teaching practices. To address these goals, this article first provides an introduction to several common ways popular culture has been theorized. From this introduction, the article explains the following three concepts within contemporary scholarship that investigates youth engagement with popular culture: (a) popular culture as a site of identity formation for youth; (b) popular culture as a context for literacy development; and (c) popular culture as a vehicle for sociopolitical critique and action. In addition, this article illustrates pedagogical implications these concepts have for K-12 literacy education, including how literacy instructors adopt ethnographic stances toward youth engagement with popular culture to reposition youth and ascertain their popular culture funds of knowledge, bridge standard literacy curricula to students’ popular culture funds of knowledge, and develop literacy curricula to facilitate students’ sociopolitical critique and action. Finally, this article explores how this line of scholarship may open up spaces within literacy teacher education for K-12 pre-service literacy teachers to grapple with the politics of literacy pedagogy.
The Power to Speak and Listen: Democratic Pedagogies for American Literature Classrooms
(2005-05) Petrone, Robert; Gibney, R.
Presupposition as investigator certainty in a police interrogation: The case of Lorenzo Montoya's false confession
(2018-07) Gaines, Philip
This article presents an analysis of the use by police investigators of presupposition-bearing questions (PBQs) in interrogation as a process for communicating certainty of guilt. Among the techniques of interrogational maximization employed by police is the communication to the suspect of the interrogators’ certainty of the suspect’s guilt. While social science research notes that such communication of certainty is given directly, for example by statements that they ‘know’ the suspect is guilty or by direct accusations such as ‘you did it’, this analysis shows that certainty of guilt can also be communicated by presuppositions embedded in interrogation questions. Discourse analysis of the complete transcript of the interrogation of a 14-year-old suspect reveals further that through the use of 117 PBQs, interrogators are able to accrue inadvertent admissions to three crucial global ‘facts’ about the suspect’s involvement in the crime – each of which is composed of multiple subsidiary ‘facts’. In addition to identifying the role of PBQs in eliciting inadvertent admissions, the analysis also notes how PBQs serve as ‘a powerful instrument in the implicit assertion of debatable propositions’ as part of the interrogational record.
Raising issues of rurality in English teacher education
(2013-10) Schade-Eckert, Lisa; Petrone, Robert
Despite the fact that each of us taught in English education programs in four other states—all of which have visible rural demographics—it took moving to Montana for us to fully recognize the need for our increased attention to specific issues of rurality when working with pre-service English teachers. In Montana, issues of rurality are unavoidable. As the fourth largest state in terms of area (behind Alaska, Texas, and California, respectively), Montana ranks as the state with the third lowest population density in the United States (behind Alaska and Wyoming). Moreover, unlike many other states that are often thought of as rural (e.g., Nebraska, Kansas), no major urban centers exist throughout the entire state; even today, Montana is often referred to as a “frontier” state...
Reluctantly recognizing resistance: An analysis of representations of critical literacy in English Journal
(2012-11) Petrone, Robert; Bullard, Lisa
Teaching the Research Paper for Local Action
(2006-03) Borsheim-Black, Carlin; Petrone, Robert
The Youth Lens: Analyzing Adolescence/ts in Literary Texts
(2015-02) Petrone, Robert; Sarigianides, Sophia Tatiana; Lewis, Mark A.
Drawing from interdisciplinary scholarship that re-conceptualizes adolescence as a cultural construct, this article introduces a Youth Lens. A Youth Lens comprises an approach to textual analysis that examines how ideas about adolescence and youth get formed, circulated, critiqued, and revised. Focused specifically on its application to young adult literature, a genre of writing that explicitly names it audience, this article explores how a Youth Lens provides a much needed critical approach to interpreting and teaching young adult literature within literacy education, especially given the problematic representations of youth in many of these literary texts. Specifically, this article a) discusses the central assumptions that govern a Youth Lens; b) provides an explanation of the lens, including published and new examples and guiding questions; c) presents an in-depth case of how a Youth Lens illuminates new possibilities for understanding The Hunger Games; and, d) offers specific implications a Youth Lens has for the analysis of young adult and other literary texts,approaches to teaching young adult literature courses for pre-service literacy teachers, and secondary literacy pedagogy involving young adult literature and media texts.