Florida College English Association’s
2004 Conference
The Continuing Tradition
Wednesday
7:00 Board Meeting
Thursday
8:00 Registration
9:30 Session A
Room 1
Dr. Patricia Gaitely
Assistant Professor of English
Palm Beach Atlantic University
Dr. Susan Jones
Assistant Professor of English
Palm Beach Atlantic University
Moving Memories: the Semiotics of Memento Mori on Florida Highways
Florida highways are becoming textualized by death. More and more monuments to the unfortunate victims of the automotive age are appearing at the side of the road, and the signs of mourning are shifting with Florida’s changing ethnic diversity. In addition to stationary monuments, the increasing movement of populations is matched by memorials in motion—texts of mourning not only on motor vehicles but on human bodies as well. This paper will examine Florida’s changing textual landscape of memento mori.
Richard McKee
Ringling School of Art and Design
Storm Surge
Serenade
This overview of Tim Dorsey's satiric briefcase trilogy proposes that the narrative's protagonist, Serge A. Storms, is a sterling postmodern example of the antihero. While Serge can come off as the occasional homicidal maniac, his victims are most often despicable louts out to deface the fading pastoral tenor of Florida through their greed and criminality. In spite of the ghastliness of his deeds in pursuit of a briefcase full of five million dollars in exploited cash, Serge is a protector and preserver of Florida whose actions and words suggest parallels to shaman, trickster, and Robin Hood. In addition, one subtext the trilogy conveys is that Florida is no longer South Eden, Paradise, or a great subtropical treasure of unbridled, honest opportunity. It is a proverbial den of thieves and perverts. So stay away.
Maurice O’Sullivan
Rollins College
(Re)Creating Florida
For over 500 years writers have been creating and recreating Florida. Like our cartographers, whose maps often reveal as much about their creators as their subjects, our writers have presented a Florida that reflects imagination as much as experience, assumption as much as observation, and expectation as much as reality. From conquistadors to naturalists, these descriptions tell us a great deal about the cultural values and cognitive systems their authors embrace.
Room 2
Steve Brahlek
Palm Beach Community College
Common Mistakes and Quick Fixes in the Composition Classroom
If one examines a number of freshman essays, there are relatively few mistakes that plague the average freshman writer, and with a little instruction, a bit of practice and a lot of motivation, these writers can make significant improvements in the quality of their work.
Larry Byrne
Barry University
Ecocriticism and Romanticism: Tradition or Treason?
Almost since its first “official” stirrings in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s ecocriticism has linked itself strongly with the writings of Romanticism, particularly the poetry of the 19th century British Romantics. No doubt the reasons for this connection are only too obvious, for if ecocriticism can be defined most broadly and simply as the study of the relationship between literature and the environment, it could certainly find no more fertile ground for its exercise than the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and their younger disciples. Indeed, Wordsworth in his famous Preface to the Lyrical Ballads states plainly that his purpose is to see how far the language of common, “rustic” men can be turned into poetry.
Yet following close upon the heels of this initial bond, two strong counter movements have appeared to complicate the relationship between ecocriticism and Romanticism. The first has sought to expose the ways the anthropocentric focus of most Romantic writing had a dismissive effect, imaginatively and philosophically, on nature and its landscapes. In more recent years, post-modern critics have raised a second objection by insisting that the Romantics, rather than celebrating a “real” world, tried to use the creative power of the human imagination to transcend nature and to make language itself the source of a new, “improved” earth.
This paper seeks to sort out very briefly these various threads in the ongoing and uneasy relations between ecocriticism and British Romanticism in order, finally, to suggest that it may be possible to design a course that both teaches students about ecocriticism and its methods and introduces them to the poetry of the Romantics in a way that might make it more accessible and timely than, unfortunately, it has of late become.
Helen O’Hara Connell
Department of English/Foreign Languages
Barry University
Miami Shores, FL
Who’s Left in the Literary Tradition? A Discussion of Frequently Taught Authors in Introduction to Literature Courses
The complex process by which an author or literary work becomes part of a so-called literary tradition involves, among other things, the assignment of an author or work in the college curriculum. These assignments are primarily grounded in works included in published texts, i.e., anthologies, collections packaged as commodities for consumption. These anthologies reflect the bias of editors and reviewers and are viewed as objects of so-called high culture. This paper surveys frequently taught short stories in introduction to literature courses during the 1950’s and 1960’s and contrasts these stories and their authors with those taught today. Nine widely used introduction to literature anthologies are compared with earlier anthologies and collections to determine what authors and stories remain in the tradition, i.e., the introduction to literature tradition. The purpose of this paper is to dispel certain myths about “canon” in literature anthologies and to raise certain questions for consideration.
11:00 Session B
Room 1
Douglas Ford
Manatee Community College
Owl Goingback’s Four Directions: Mass Market Horror
Fiction As Native American Story-telling”
Florida novelist Owl Goingback created a unique place for himself both in
Native American literature and in mass-market horror fiction with his 1996
novel, Crota. In winning the Bram Stoker Award given every year by the
Horror Writer’s Association, Goingback’s novel became a celebrated Native
American voice in a genre often marked by unflattering stereotypes and
conventions—most typically, the Indian spirit who returns from the dead to
avenge the misdeeds committed by Euro-Americans. In Crota, Goingback
subverts the traditional horror narrative even as he seems to conform to its
trappings. The typical linear narrative of a mass-market horror novel
increasingly appears as a text of multiple directions under Goingback’s hand,
where hybridity becomes a source of strength and survival rather than fear (as
is often the case in conventional horror fiction). In a reply to one of my
e-mails, Goingback described how his characters “reflect how hard it is for a
Native American to live in a modern white society, and how important
traditional values really are for their survival.” This paper details how
Crota both fits into and subverts conventional horror fiction by creating a
place for a historically excluded Native American identity.
Dr. Anna Lillios, Associate Professor
University of Central Florida
Everglades Evil in KILLING MR. WATSON by Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen’s Killing Mister Watson depicts the Everglades as a state of mind, a symbol of liminal space, outside the rule of law, society, and human values. If there is indeed “an affinity between people and places,” as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings claims in Cross Creek, then a certain type of lawless, antisocial character would be attracted to the Everglades. E.J. Watson fits this profile; yet, the nature of his evil character is mysterious. His portrait and the setting blend together, so that both are one and the same. Just as the River of Grass is “never wholly known,” according to Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Matthiessen forces us to make our own judgments about this outlaw.
Andrea L. Best, MFA
Instructor, Department of English
College of Arts and Sciences
Lynn University
Literature as Environmental Activism: An Analysis of Environmental Literature in South Florida and its Role in Motivating Social Change
The paper will explore several literary works dealing with the unique South Florida ecosystem and discuss how they bridge the gap between the literary arts and politics by helping to draw public attention to the damaging effects of agricultural and urban development upon the fragile and invaluable Everglades ecosystem. Calling upon the framework laid out in C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures (1959, 1998), regarding the lack of communication between the literary intellectuals and the science intellectuals, I will examine the possibility of political efficacy within the realm of the literary arts. Works discussed will include: The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), Silent Spring (1962, 1994), and A Sand County Almanac (1949). After touching upon the works and their affect upon policy making within South Florida, I will make an argument for the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to matters involving the development of environmental policies.
Room 2
Kevin Morgan, Julia Rawa, and Li-Lee Tunceren
St. Petersburg College
This presentation will attempt to discuss some of the pedagogical and political issues involved in online learning. Online learning requires a new pedagogy of instructional design and delivery that presents new political issues for instructors in navigating different institutional cultures. Audience participation will be welcomed as we explore some of the political issues facing teaching and learning English online at colleges and universities across the state of Florida. Institutional cultures and resistance to online learning will also be explored and discussed.
William G Wall, PhD
Professor of English
SFCC
Addressing
Culture-Specific Technophobia in At-Risk First Year Students
Resistance to using computers as learning aids seems unusually common in our Learning Community for First Year At-Risk students. This resistance is concentrated in minority students, especially African-American students. There appears to be no direct correlation between students’ technical competency and their resistance. We will explore our growing awareness of this phenomenon, narrate what we have done to address the resistance, and invite participants to share their experiences and practices that they have attempted to use to address culture-specific technophobia in their classrooms and institutions.
Room 3
FADE
Susan Nugent, et al
Annual meeting of Florida Association of Departments of English
12:30 Lunch
TBA
Adjunct Luncheon
Regina Dilgin
Frank Littler
Karen R.
Tolchin
2:00 Session
C
Room 1
Policy
Eaton
Brahlek
Tar Baby-Roundtable Discussion
Room 2
Cynthia Lyles-Scott
Florida Atlantic University Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33316
Heeding the Anti-heroine’s Call
Not just a great sandwich, the hero is
the person who always comes through in the end, defeats the mighty foe, rescues
the damsel in distress, and most importantly, does it all without losing his
virtue or compromising his morals – ala Galahad, Jesus Christ, or Atticus
Finch. As James Bonnet writes, unlike the “ideal” heroic archetype, the 21st
Century hero falls painfully short of the perfect persona of the traditional
hero. In reality, the modern hero more closely resembles the anti-hero
archetype, whose perfection lies not in an unwavering moral stance but in the
ability to stoically withstand, or in some cases overcome, the darkness he
already holds inside his own heart. And more than likely, “he” is a she. From literature to celluloid to the electric
glow of the small screen, the 21st Century hero not only still
fights the good fight and slays the bad guys, but she does so in heels and with
a dark, sarcastic and gusty feminist attitude that has been lacking from
heroines for far too long. The traditional fairy tale Prince Valiant hero
archetype that kisses the heroine, bringing her to life as both a character and
as a woman, is dead. As Joseph Campbell writes in The Hero With a Thousand
Faces, “the hero-deed to be wrought is not today what it was in the century of
Galileo. Where then there was darkness, now there is light; but also, where
light was, there now is darkness” (388).
Jeff Morgan
Lynn University
Ever since its discovery by Ponce de Leon during the Easter
season of 1513, Florida has often been represented in literature as an ideal
setting with rejuvenating powers. During the early days of discovery by Spanish
explorers, the Indians of South Florida and the northern islands of the
Caribbean held a joint fable of a Fountain of Youth. After Ponce's exploration,
writings about Florida and the fabled Fountain of Youth began to appear. The
most notable of these is De Orbe Novo: The Four Decades of Peter Martyr,
written in 1516 by Peter Martyr d' Anghiera and first published in 1530. In De
Orbe Novo, Peter Martyr writes of the Fountain of Youth as a symbol of
regeneration. From that starting point emerges a ground swell of literature
referring, at least symbolically, to the Fountain of Youth. One of the
lesser-known examples of that literature is Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's The
Story of Avis, published at the height of the Age of Realism in American
literature in 1877. In this often overlooked novel, Phelps initially represents
Florida as that ideal setting with rejuvenating powers, but she soon tempers
that ideal so that her work not only becomes instructive of late
nineteenth-century realistic fiction in America, but also becomes one of the
first American novels to demythicize the Fountain of Youth that for so long
characterized Florida in American literature.
Elizabeth Barnes
Stetson University
The Writing Studio Program: Adapting a 3rd Space Pedagogy to Stetson University
The Writing Studio model, one of five nationally recognized approaches to basic writing, was created to shed light on the assumptions that academic institutions tend to make about under prepared students and to prevent these assumptions from defining and further ostracizing these struggling writers. The Writing Studio attempts to offer a “3rd space” pedagogy wherein student writers and a writing studio leader can navigate the kinds of inhibitions and resistance that prevent many freshmen from becoming proficient writers. In this workshop-based program, students meet once a week in a small group setting outside of, though in tandem with, their regular English class. This presentation will offer a general outline of the Writing Studio model (originally developed at the University of South Carolina) and discuss how the program has been adapted to address the specific institutional needs of Stetson University, a small private university.
Keith L. Huneycutt
Florida Southern College
The Brown Sisters Contemplate Territorial Florida, 1835-1850:
An Introduction to the Writings of Corinna and Ellen Brown
In 1835, two sisters with literary aspirations, Corinna and Ellen Brown of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, moved with family members to Mandarin, Florida. They had jointly submitted a novel in 1834 to a prize competition in Philadelphia and continued writing in Florida. Corinna won a small prize for a tale published in the Philadelphia Saturday Chronicle in 1837. They worked together on a Florida novel, which they never completed; however, a manuscript first chapter survives along with manuscripts of stories and essays written at various times, sometimes jointly and sometimes separately. Ellen in particular maintained hope for a writing career.
Neither Ellen nor Corinna had much publication success, but their writing talents were not wasted as they recorded their Florida experiences and impressions in correspondence. Between 1835 and 1850, as they moved from one Florida home to another, each sister found time to write to relatives, usually several times a week; fortunately, many of these letters survive. They comment on living conditions in trying and sometimes dangerous circumstances on the frontier, on local and national politics, and on society in various towns, filling a gap when apparently little was written in Florida.
Room 3
Courtney Ruffner
Manatee Community College
Intellectual Entanglement: Pound and Moral Insanity
With the help of Psychologist J.C. Prichard and critic E.A. Poe, we are able to view Ezra Pound as an intellectual suffering from moral anxiety not as a delusional, psychologically inept writer
Jeff Grieneisen
Manatee Community College
Canto XXXI—The Epi(c) Center
"Cantos XXXI-XXXIII"
provide the intersection of all of Pound's major themes of the political and
artistic hero, time, ideas into action and economy, heaped upon the worthy
shoulders of Pound's central political hero, Thomas Jefferson.
Deborah C. Teague
Breaking
from Tradition: Bringing Sensitive Topics out of the Closet and into Teacher
Training
Session 3:30
Room 1
Dan McGavin, John
Ribar, and David Nixon
Palm Beach Community College
Borderlands
Teaching English has theoretical and practical approaches that become dominant within particular time periods and for particular reasons. The more prevalent dominant thinking becomes, the easier it is to forget or deny other beliefs and practices. Like worn pathways, popular approaches to learning become too familiar, blind us to what might be new or interesting, and make us distrust or fear that which is outside familiar borders. Indeed, if knowledge is a construct, it must be a construct of multiple voices and multiple consciousnesses, each of which become subject to the mediation of popular social leaders and, less obviously and more dangerously, from those who find themselves in the borderlands.
English and Composition theory and practice have inhabited different spaces at different times, drawing borders along and around that which is popular and familiar. The current circumscribed space of process and the social construction of knowledge has been incorporated so thoroughly into the culture of English and Composition theory and practice that considering other approaches is thought of as going down the wrong path.
Thinking differently is not right or wrong, but always, as Foucault reminds us, “dangerous.” It may mean fighting for a book change that will be unpopular. It may mean being marginalized at meetings because those who represent difference don’t represent the line of logic that represents “current thinking.” Marginalized teachers are unseen and unheard, and that’s if they are lucky. Teachers who visible follow a different path to the same end and express different and unpopular opinions in the process risk the potential for full-time status, continuing contract status, tenure, rank, or other promotion. Indeed, thinking differently risks an entire career path.
Like inhabiting a space that becomes familiar, we are always already embedded in a culture and a practice, as Heidegger says, that keeps us blind to its constraints and makes even the thought of thinking differently nearly impossible. However, those willing to explore regions away from the dominant cultural preferences can create new opportunities for students and teachers alike.
Gloria Anzaldua, in her book Borderlands, provides a familiar metaphor that can help free us from our cultural limitations. In a very practical sense, residency within a borderland, while dangerous, encourages an appreciation for the practical uses of different cultures, a willing tolerance for ambiguity, and a willingness to experience and be changed by the unfamiliar. Living in Nogales, Brownsville, Ciudad Juarez, or Tijuana, experiencing difference allows us to think differently than the dominant socially constructed paradigm.
Residency in the borderlands of English and Composition cultures, a space where old and new meet and mingle in interesting ways, allows us revalue other approaches. Exploring English and Composition practices, contextualized in the borderland between old and new, might help teachers legitimize other approaches, enliven student learning, and, perhaps, contribute towards making departmental struggles and career paths more manageable.
The three parts of our proposal:
§ John Ribar begins with the notion of “Identity Narratives” or dominant ideologies and their impact on English teachers and students. Teachers can empower students to look at the social and cultural contextualization of all writing by being sensitive to and countering dominant narratives.
§ David Nixon follows with the notion of bringing uncommon and unfamiliar content and teaching practices into the classroom as a way of modeling independent thinking, valuing it, and socializing difference.
§ Dan McGavin concludes with the notion of the department as hegemony and the consequent difficulties to unpopular or discordant teachers. It’s all Discipline and Punish.
Room 2
Regina Dilgen
Palm Beach Community College
Inviting Humanism into the Classroom: Some Applications of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to College English.
Prospectus: Humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow developed his famous hierarchy of needs to explain the stages through which a person develops over a lifetime. Maslow’s theory has relevance for the college English classroom. It can be used as a prompt for student writing and for a discussion of the role of the humanities in our lives. It also provides an interesting approach for character analysis in literature. Although Maslow used the hierarchy to consider the arch of an individual’s life span, faculty might use it as a paradigm to consider the evolution of student behavior throughout the semester.
The presentation will include a review of the hierarchy, active participation, and some film clips.
Kathleen
Anderson
Palm Beach Atlantic University
Heroic Women In Jane Austen's World and in Ours
Can women of today become heroes by following in the footsteps of
Jane Austen's stunningly impressive women? Austen's six completed novels collectively provide us with a guide to female heroism
itself. The qualities and deeds that define each heroine's greatness
will be explored, building from the least to
the most heroic character in the
manner of a self-help book.
The presenter will relate Austen's characters to the
influential women in her own life and will also invite articipants to give examples of heroic women they have
known.
Dr. Lillian Schanfield
Professor of English
Barry University
Hamlet and Anthropology: Still Plucking Out the Heart of Its Mystery
Terms such as “puzzling,” “disquieting,” “inscrutable,”
“inexpressible,” “mysterious,” and “indeterminate” have regularly been ascribed
to Hamlet. This essay suggests that Hamlet is enigmatic because
it is anthropologically unsound. It argues that “pseudo” cultures of many of
the plays—similarly created from composite elements--can still be considered as
having cultural “integrity” when the beliefs, perceptions, customs, morals,
behavior, and values as demonstrated by their inhabitants appear to emanate
from that culture. Hamlet, however, presents its audience with such an
overwhelming mix of Elizabethan, Danish, Medieval, Renaissance, Catholic,
Protestant, political, familial, courtly, linguistic, literary, sexual,
philosophical, legal and psychoanalytic elements, as to impose on its audience
a rich but impossible burden of intellectual multi-tasking. It is suggested
that the source of the difficulty rests less in the history of multiple
sources, layerings and accruals—pointed to by some scholars as the reason for
the play’s artistic shortcomings--and more in an incomplete and unsatisfying
fusion of these into a coherent “culture.”
Maureen Goldstein
Lynn University
The Redemption of Julius King
This paper is about the timelessness/timeliness of Iris Murdoch's novel -A Fairly Honorable Defeat- and its critical reception as a simple representation of duality when it was published in 1970 in contrast to a more contemporary and broader interpretation of the complexities of plot, characters and their interaction as the unraveling of the human psyche and its composition
5:00 Reception
8:00 Murder in the Cathedral
10:00 Poetry Reading
Friday
8:00 Registration
9:00 Session E
Room 1
Shelly Hedstrom
Faculty, ESL/English for Academic Purposes Program
Palm Beach Community College
Lourdes Lopez-Merino
Faculty, ESL/English for Academic Purposes Program
Palm Beach Community College
Mike Sfiropoulos
Faculty, ESL/English for Academic Purposes Program
Palm Beach Community College
This panel presentation will offer participants the opportunity to learn more about English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and participate in ongoing dialogue concerning the response of Florida higher education to the educational needs of its English as Second Language (ESL) learners. The panel will begin with a primer on key concepts in the fields of English as a Second Language and English for Academic Purposes. This general introduction to ESL/EAP will be followed by a historical overview of the events leading up to the 2001 implementation of EAP programs in Florida’s community college system, including current efforts to continue the standardization process. This introduction and overview will be followed by a presentation of EAP efforts at the local level—at Palm Beach Community College. Areas of concern and the college’s response to those concerns will be presented, including the specific challenges of the growing population of so-called “generation 1.5” students—those students who struggle with both ESL needs and the developmental needs of native speakers of English. The panel will offer recommendations for anyone interested in implementing EAP coursework or programs at their institutions. The panel will conclude with an opportunity for open discussion concerning the challenges faced by individual educators as well as institutions in ensuring the educational needs of this vital population are met.
Room 2
William G Wall, PhD
Professor of English
SFCC
Toward a Culture of Trust
On most campuses, including ours, there is a respect for discipline specific competency in our colleagues, but that same confidence does not extend to campus-wide issues. Recently this problem has been termed “relational trust”; it focuses on the relationships between faculty across disciplines and between faculty and administration. This situation has existed for a millennium, so it is nothing new. What is new is that research is beginning to show a strong correlation between the strength (or weakness) of relational trust and student success. In fact, a study from University of Chicago supports the idea that relational trust is the most important factor in student success. Thus improving relational trust has become an integral part of our students’ success.
English departments are by their nature interdisciplinary, and composition skills apply across all disciplines. Therefore, English departments are poised to lead the effort to improve relational trust in all directions. We will review highlights of current research, explain what SFCC is trying to do to address the issue of trust, and solicit suggestions from participants for improving relational trust on all our campuses.
Patrick McMahon
Tallahassee Community College
Five Truths about Teaching College English: And the Lies We Tell Ourselves to Stay In Denial about Them
This talk examines the psychological foundations that underlie the teaching and learning roles in college English classrooms. Using a mix of hyperbolic satire and experience-addled philosophy, the speaker skewers conventional thinking about Reading, Writing, Response to Writing, Classroom Management, and Service to Humanity and Art.
Karen R.
Tolchin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English Composition
Florida Gulf Coast University
Claim, Support, Warrant, and Lights, Camera, Action: Using Toulmin Logic to ‘Read’ Films in College Composition Courses
This talk will explore various strategies for using the exceptional visual literacy and focus of the current generation of college students to help them cultivate written argumentation skills. Philosopher Stephen Toulmin devised a system of breaking down any argument into three manageable, vital elements. By applying Toulmin Logic to narrative and documentary films, students develop critical thinking skills, eschewing passive absorption in favor of active analysis. The system may furnish a point of entry into an otherwise daunting ‘text,’ and foster both thorough investigation and effective communication. Students abandon the superficial “thumbs up, thumbs down” model of film criticism in favor of a more sustained grappling with the images, information, and narratives they encounter on the screen when they are called upon to do the following: make a claim about the ‘text,’ preferably one gleaned from a topic question that genuinely intrigues them; mine the ‘text’ for evidence to support that particular reading of it; and demonstrate a grasp of the underlying assumptions that fuel the argument as a whole. Toulmin Logic may help college students make meaning of film through the process of writing.
Room 3
Panel: 21st Century
Approaches to Teaching Literature -- English for Academic Purposes and/or
Florida Writers
Dr. Kirk Curnutt
Troy University
Hemingway in the Classroom Context
To place our pedagogical work in context, Dr. Kirk Curnutt begins our panel with an outline of Hemingway's place in American culture and collective identity. Known for his work with socio-economic and class structure during Hemingway's High Modernist period, Curnutt will trace the American and international perspectives on Hemingway from Modernism through today.
Jaime' L. Sanders
University of South Florida
Lesson: "How to Perform a Close Reading of a Text -- Ernest Hemingway’s “A Day’s Wait” as a Cultural Artifact"
As the self-proclaimed creator of the “Iceberg Theory,” Hemingway’s works are a logical choice for teaching students how to perform a close reading of a text. I challenge students with the Hemingway’s short, short story “A Day’s Wait” – a seemingly simplistic story of a 9 year old boy with the flu. “A Day’s Wait” is not only an excellent illustration of Hemingway’s theory that a story, like an iceberg which is 7/8 submerged under the surface, is strengthened by the 7/8 that is omitted from the page. The 1/8 of the iceberg, the words on the page, is where we begin our critical examination of Hemingway’s story.
Students are asked to read the story before class meets, but are not given any guidelines by which to read or explore the story. Students are only informed that “A Day’s Wait” is a true story which happened to Hemingway and his son Jack when Jack was 9 years old. The factual information blinds them since they do not believe the differing levels of meaning which we explore in literature exist in the “real world,” in their world. This approach reinforces the idea that we need to always be critically thinking about our own thoughts, feelings, actions and inaction, as well as constantly engaging critically with the world around us.
Through exploring the hidden ideologies at work in the minds of the characters, students are also introduced to Modernism as a historical and literary movement, as well as the crisis of modernity as a real state of being – not just a literary technique. Students come to see Hemingway’s story as a cultural artifact which helps them to accept literature as a way to study American history in all its conflict and conformity.
Trista Snook, MS
Monroe Middle School
American Superheroes from Hemingway to Today: Rhetorical Definitions of What 7th-Graders Value
Dr. E. Stone Shiflet
University of South Florida
Superheroes from Hemingway to Today: Rhetorical Definitions of What First-Year Writers Value
In this presentation, a five-part collaborative assignment between first year college writers and 7th grade English students will be outlined. In the 7th grade classroom of Trista Snook, students read a Hemingway story highlighting the cultural differences between America and Europe. This experience is followed by a collaborative experience of creating multicultural superheroes that reflect the value system of the 7th grade learners. Those students then collaborate with Stone Shiflet's college first year writers in an attempt to further broaden the 7th graders perspective on what Americans and the world value as super heroic.
In Shiflet's classroom, critical thinking is the focus in the on-going "writing as process" assignment throughout the first half of the semester. First year writers prepare to enter the 7th grade classroom and offer reader response on the middle school understanding of superheroes by first putting the American value system in the context of the American Constitution and the American literary tradition of masculine icon Ernest Hemingway. As the 7th graders study Hemingway to improve global perspective and reading comprehension, the college students incorporate the Constitution and American heroes past and present to create a personal understanding of American identity, both at home and abroad.
10:30 Session F
Room 1
Patrick Tierney
Palm Beach Community College
Thematic Approach to Composition II
The purpose behind the presentation is to demonstrate multiple thematic approaches to the teaching of comp II as an effective way to teach argumentation. The session will be titled the "Crazy, Family dysfunctional, War-mongering, unethical American Dream" approach to Comp II. I will include a video analysis of American culture in the context of the critical thinking skills needed to write a successful argument.
Judith E. Swartout
Assistant Professor of English
Palm Beach Atlantic University
English for Academic Purposes Or Prep English MARK MY WORDS!
We, along with our students, should be aware of the importance of the insignificant apostrophe. One of these misplaced marks can send a message that can affect us on a personal, as well as, on an academic level. From the observations made, it can be seen that there can be consequences to just putting this little punctuation mark in the incorrect place. Some of these errors could result in not earning a good grade, tarnishing the reputation of a school, lowering our estimation of a famous person, or not being hired as an English professor. From Trump to Pre-K, a Show & Tell presentation of the misused apostrophe will be followed by a quick fix for English instructors to use in their classrooms to help students avoid this error.
Cirillo, Erica
Instructor, Prep English
Palm Beach Community College
The Basic Writing Classroom: Integrating Pedagogical Theory and Technology
In the ongoing debate of technology in the classroom, one truth is accepted on both sides of the argument: Pedagogy must drive the technology, not the other way around. I, myself, had problems justifying most of the technology in use in a writing classroom, and decided to take technology currently used in many classrooms and ground it in basic writing pedagogical theory. By looking to progressive theoretical works first, and then finding the technology best suited to those theories, I propose a course plan that brings technology to the basic writing classroom. Blogs, synchronous chat rooms, and discussion boards, along with challenging readings, such as Gloria Anzaldua, can be integrated into basic writing pedagogy put forth by basic writing theorists such as Mina Shaughnessy, Andrea Lunsford, and Patricia Bizzell.
Collaborative work, long agreed by many to facilitate the students’ learning, can be achieved through online communities. Concepts such as audience, subject and author can be implemented by using WWW assignments. Making connections from the traditional written text and authoritative author to a virtual text and the student author can instill confidence in students’ use of their analytic skills, and encourage analytical self-reflection in their writing. Finally, taking James Paul Gee’s discussion on discourse and putting it in the framework of technology can assist students in reaching an understanding of different discourses, and promote fluid transition between primary and secondary discourses.
Basic writing students demand a different curriculum than those entering freshman composition classes. The basic writer comes to the classroom with many obstacles already in place. Even before being placed in a basic, or prep, writing class, most students have already felt ostracized and alienated from mainstream schooling. However, integrating technology into the basic classroom, if thoughtfully approached by the instructor by insisting that pedagogy drives the technology, can enhance the basic writing experience for the student.
Room 2
Marilyn Brannen
MA - English FAU
From Inside/Outside to Within: The Role of the Native Intellectual in Liminal Space
Postcolonial theory deals in part with the binary relationship between colonizer and colonized. The separation between the two is not a clean line, but a space that is straddled, or bridged by a member of the colonized - the intellectual. The native intellectual (NI) (see Franz Fanon, "On National Culture"), needs to move beyond the 'inside/outside' relationship and within the space created by virtue of his very existence. It is within this liminal space that change can occur to create a new relationship independent of the binary of colonized/colonizer.
Steve Glassman
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
The 19th Century Nonfiction Melville
Everyone knows Herman Melville's Moby Dick was the great sleeper novel
of the 19th Century. Thirty years after Melville's death he was
rediscovered and proclaimed a great American novelist. In 1839 the New
York lawyer John Lloyd Stephens jumped on a mule and jogged off into the
fastness of Central America. Stephens went in search of
cities of a lost civilization he'd heard whisperings of in Europe and
New York. The country was rife with civil war and other disturbances,
but Stephens did indeed find his lost civilization. He also penned two
books which I believe are worth of consideration as the great nonfiction
novels of the 19th Century. This presentation will introduce the audience
to Stephens and his work.
Steve Brahlek
Palm Beach Community College
brahleks@pbcc.edu
The Continuing Tradition
The literary canon in Western culture goes back thousands of years and includes hundreds, if not thousands, of cultures. During that time, style and taste has changed numerous times, but theme and conflict have remained constant. Although it is important to understand the time and culture that helped shaped the works that we read, it is also important to remember that man’s nature has remained the same throughout the ages. Contemporary individuals face the same challenges that our ancestors faced throughout the millennia.
Room 3
Sheila Levi-Aland
Valencia Community College
Reading Shakespeare Aloud in the Classroom
Scenes that clearly demonstrate the basic elements of drama (plots,
character, dialogue, and idea), are very obvious when seen on stage but are
often lost when read aloud in a classroom.
Students often struggle with word pronunciation and meaning, so this
presentation will explore ways to help release some of the apprehension and
engage students in what can be difficult language. The emphasis in this presentation is on how words act as cues for
“doing” rather than just passive words on a page. While this presentation is utilizes Shakespeare’s works, it can
be customized for any piece of literature read aloud in the classroom.
Peter H. Schreffler
Department of English
Florida Southern College
pschreffler@flsouthern.edu
This paper describes and analyzes an experimental effort at Florida Southern College to require all new freshmen to read the same book, write a short paper that provokes discussion of it, participate in a discussion, and write a brief analysis of the discussion. Student reaction to the assignment and to the book itself will be discussed. And within the broader tradition of required common readings, this paper will informally assess the effectiveness of this particular assignment.
Joanna Pettas
Florida Atlantic University
Freshman Writing Class as a Facilitator of Self-Discovery
12:00 Lunch
12:30 Guest Speaker
Susan Mitchell
FCEA
© 2004 Florida College English
Association