Scholarship & Research
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Item Writing-about-writing and Joan Didion: creating a space for emotion as epistemic tool in first-year composition(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Christen, Julie Ann; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Kathleen RyanThis project considers the problem of the cultural binary created between emotion and reasoning as ways of knowing. I address this binary within the context of first-year composition (FYC) by developing three central tenets for emotion as epistemic tool through a review of emotion scholarship in rhetoric and composition. These include: 1) emotions must be specific and nameable; 2) emotion challenges cultural assumptions and beliefs; and 3) we use the connection between emotion and experience as a method of inquiry. Having established these tenets, I situate emotion as epistemic tool in a writing-about-writing (WAW) approach to FYC and argue that this pedagogy is an effective site for emotion as epistemic tool, though it lacks concrete examples for how this works in writing. To address that, I suggest Joan Didion's memoirs as an access point for students to see emotion working as epistemic tool outside academic writing. Finally, I connect these agendas in a curriculum design for a WAW course in FYC on emotion as epistemic tool that includes a course schedule, assignment sheets, and unit rationales.Item A critical review of genre based instruction in a writing and research course for second langauge graduate students(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2014) Mahoney, Shannon Kathleen; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Doug DownsThis study examines a recently developed EAP (English for Academic Purposes) course that was largely guided by the genre based instruction promoted by Swales and Feak and outlined in the textbook used in the class: 'Academic Writing for Graduate Students' by Swales and Feak. Although the theory behind and the acclaim for genre based teaching has received significant attention in literature in EAPs, limited studies have been published about its application in EAP programs for graduate students at language institutes. This project aims to contribute to filling that gap by outlining a course taught at an independent language school in Bozeman, Montana in the summer of 2014. The study looks at the ways sentence level and other larger textual features developed in the students' writing in response to the classroom activities, assigned independent work, and regular student conferences. The results indicate that to varying degrees and in varying areas student writing developed during the course. The study concludes that although the type of genre based instruction used in the course may pose some challenges for a class situated outside of the students' discipline and without disciplinary support, there is still much to be gained from it.Item Lolita last star : a theoretically informed narrative of survivance(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2010) Young, Micaela Marie; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Greg Keeler; Susan Kollin (co-chair)Common missteps by non-Native writers lead to literary representations of Native Americans as tragic figures slumping towards inevitable annihilation, as museum Indians and simulations of the real, mystical and noble "savages," (yes, this still occurs in contemporary film and literature), or simply as inactive members of contemporary life. Authors also attempt to unveil and profit from sensitive spiritual and personal secrets, and offer explanations that do not match reality, leading to grave offenses, and the continuation of harmful stereotypes. In this respect, Lolita Last Star intentionally avoids discussions of spiritual and cultural traditions, or the actual personal lives of "real life" people, because these areas are guarded for good reasons, and instead focuses on native presence in contemporary American life, in the surprisingly complex, globalized space of the Rocky Mountain West. In other words, the final product is a narrative of Survivance; a concept first explored academically by Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor, in his book Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance. Survivance, I would argue along with many others, may not be as theoretically complex as it first appears. At its most basic level, "Survivance is a practice, not an ideology, dissimulation, or a theory." The concept of Survivance only becomes difficult when we look to the spectrum of responses to conditions that inspire the need to do more than survive. Survivance is coping, but it is also subversion, creation, amusement, ingenuity, reimagining, the provision of new explanations, and recapturing one's own destiny. The characters and their actions in Lolita Last Star respond in illustrations of full human vibrancy that transcend space and time, definitions, borders, accusations of authenticity, oppression, domination, petty moralities, victimry, and they move us all one step closer to self-sovereignty and human dignity. They show that if anything westerners contain cultural universes and are better for it. The only frauds are the people too scared to step out of their narrow focus of what a westerner, an Indian, a firefighter, or a cowboy is. They are never afraid to ask, "Where the hell are we supposed to go from here?"