Scholarship & Research
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Item The impact of peer reivew on constructing arguments based on the claim-evidence-reasoning framework(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Knapik, Kevin; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Greg FrancisClassroom peer review strategies have the potential to help students engage in a vital practice of the scientific community. Performing peer and self-critique helped students calibrate their personal level of skepticism so that they can accept accurate claims more frequently when the claim is paired with data. Furthermore, students hold themselves to a higher standard when selecting data to be gathered in a designed experiment after applying critique to multiple approaches to the same assignment. This study was implemented to determine whether explicit peer review and self-reflection strategies impact student perception of the peer review process. Additionally, the study investigated whether the same strategies impact student success on performance assessments where they design their own experiment and critique a fictional experiment. The results indicated that practicing peer critique establishes a sense of confidence in the process. Students thought that peer review was valuable in making outcomes more accurate. Moreover, students were able to narrow their dependent variables more effectively when designing their own experiment and they were more effective at identifying elements of the fictional experiment that were problematic.Item The android in the anthropocene: a material ecocritical reading of Philip K. Dick's 'Do androids dream of electric sheep?'(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2017) Miller, Quentin Samuel; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Susan KollinPaul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer's concept of the Anthropocene recognizes the human role in climate change and situates the species within a geological timescale. While the idea of the Anthropocene has been adopted by a wide group of academics, scholars working with what they call 'new materialism' describe this naming of our geological time as an overestimation of human agency. They emphasize a furious search for meaning in an environmental context that asserts human superiority to and separation from nature. Instead, new materialists rethink outmoded trends in environmental, historical, and literary theory by recognizing the agency of nonhuman nature. Interestingly, Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?', anticipates the anxiety that emerges when humans confront the limits of their agency. He offers robotic animals, organic androids, and a post-apocalyptic space within which humans and nonhumans co-construct meaning and navigate the limits of agency in the late Anthropocene. New attention to materialism allows critics to recognize 'narrative agency,' which endows the nonhuman with meaning assembled with the human rather than through them. Through this material ecocritical framework, human/nonhuman and natural/cultural dualisms may be disrupted, allowing new ways to theorize the human. This paper traces the ways that Philip K. Dick lays the groundwork for an ecocritical posthumanism, demonstrating how nonhuman nature interacts with the human in ways that extend boundaries of agency. In his vision of the near future, the author engages readers in a critical conversation exposing problematic perspectives of nature and the human's place therein.Item A final good : indexing as a critical method and as text(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2003) Wiseman, Michelle LeeItem The medium of subversion : graphic literature and the hybrid/discrete debate(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2003) Marvin, Robert Christian; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Susan KollinItem Fifth-grade children's preferences for illustrations in middle-grade basal reading materials(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Education, Health & Human Development, 1977) Lucas, Daniel JoeItem The end of the wor(l)d as we know it : textuality, agency, and endings in postcolonial magical realism(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2013) Urschel, Janna Mercedes; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert BennettThe magical realist novels One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Beloved by Toni Morrison, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz exemplify the concerns of critical literacy theory for counter-oppressive textual agency through highlighting paradoxes in the nature of text and its relationship to agency implicit in the interaction between authors, texts, and readers. The nature of magical realism as a literary mode as it fits into postcolonial thought and engages with reader response theory allows for an analysis of the "apocalyptic" endings of these novels that shows that they engage in ontological disruption and conscientization on the part of the reader with reference to their role as reader, or consumer, of texts.Item Film and Music : an overlooked synthesis(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2009) Wiessinger, Scott Reinhard; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Theo Lipfert.Music and image are intricately joined in almost all modern film and video. Despite this, scholars of both fields rarely address the two media as they act on each other. Cognitive studies give an interesting window on the way the brain processes music and image, but again, they do not address the intersection of the two. A few studies, most notably by Marilyn Boltz, do exist that deal with music/image joint processing, and the effect of one on the other. Boltz's work reveals the great potential of further work, both scientific and scholarly, into the synthesis of music and film. A theory of the interaction of the two is clearly needed.Item Less like science, more like film : the use of non-redundant images to facilitate critical thinking in science film(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2009) Zemel, Dustin Reed; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Ronald Tobias.It is the tendency of films and television programs promoting scientific subject matter to use semantically redundant images in juxtaposition with expository narration. Producers and filmmakers alike recognize that this powerful combination bolsters the appearance of objectivity in the piece, and thusly the scientific credibility of the presentation. Critics Carl Gardner and Robert Young argue that this type of stylistic self-containment hurts the advancement of science, and call for a new method of presentation that would encourage discourse and openness instead of closure. This essay highlights the atypical science films of Charles and Ray Eames, Errol Morris, and Jean Painlevé to show how the incorporation non-redundant visuals can facilitate a personal, critical reading amongst their viewing audience.Item The depiction of indigenous African cultures as other in contemporary, Western natural history film(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2006) Shier, Sara Ann; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Ronald TobiasImages of the indigenous other have always been used in accord with the imperialistic movements of the Western world. Filmmakers continue to use the basic model of depicting people of indigenous cultures as exotic and more primitive than people of Western cultures with the effect of validating Western values and reinforcing the perceived superiority/authority of Western values over other value systems. This form is readily apparent in the treatment of the indigenous people of Africa in natural history films from the inception of the medium to present day. I will examine films from the 1920s through the present day. If filmmakers are to create successful natural history films that incorporate people of indigenous cultures, they must critically study the histories and mythologies that inform these films in order to avoid making the same mistakes.Item Chasing the dream : literature and regional construction in California's Great Central Valley(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2006) Bryson, Rachel Welton; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Susan KollinAs a region, California's Great Central Valley can be defined through the physical and cultural characteristics assigned to the space by its residents. Not unlike the larger regions of which it is part, the Valley's cultural landscapes have long been constructed as sites of wealth, fertile ground, and opportunity. Drawn to the region's myriad promises and possibilities, populations moving into and within the region often search for their part in a frequently elusive California Dream. Yet as with any place, the lived experience of the Valley's residents is often far removed from the construction of the region as a land of prosperity and mobility. Tracing the various constructions of region in the Great Central Valley requires an understanding of cultural and regional identity as complex and multifaceted. No two individuals experience the landscapes they inhabit in the same way; as a result, any attempt to define a unitary regional identity in the Valley is ultimately problematic. Despite the diverse experiences and interpretations of the Valley and its inhabitants, many overlapping themes emerge, resulting in what I call a "regional imaginary'-a set of meanings assigned to a region by its residents. Although many methods exist by which to explore and tentatively define the idea of a regional imaginary in the Central Valley, one of the most productive involves utilizing critical regional approaches to literature and other narrative works. By examining the many novels, poems, and other narratives written about the Valley, the various cultural, historical, and natural forces that converge and conflict in the Valley's landscapes may begin to come into focus.