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Item The Dangers of Power: Government Control in the Worlds of Condie’s Matched and Lowry’s The Giver(North Dakota State University, 2020) Haley, Deborah FaithThis paper considers the topic of government control through the context of young adult dystopian literature. The novels The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry and Matched (2011) by Ally Condie are specifically considered in their connection to governmental control over an entire society. The novels The Giver and Matched both provide views into worlds where such basic human experiences as language use and memory are controlled, so that the protagonists—Jonas (The Giver) and Cassia (Matched) –find themselves torn between trusting what they have been told all their lives by their respective societies and what they have come to understand through their own experiences apart from the controlled environment of the government. Through these novels, we are shown the complete stagnation of the human experience possible when government structures are allowed to control all aspects of life in a culture, society, or country and no one challenges their decisions.Item Dancing through Issues of Class and Race in the Composition Classroom(North Dakota State University, 2017) Silvernail, Margaret ElizabethWithin the writing classroom, teachers (and students) tend to understand writing and rhetoric as a mental activity, rarely considering the body’s role in effective communication—even more rarely do they incorporate the body into everyday pedagogy. Bringing hip-hop into the writing classroom helps students see and learn how communication and rhetoric can be expressed through movements and words. It also allows students to examine issues related to race and other minorities who use hip-hop as an outlet for emotive expression and working through struggles they face on a daily basis. This pedagogy opens up deeper conversations about race, class, and the placement of identity, providing students more active practice in working with these issues. The pedagogical strategies in this paper highlight the intersections of emotion, writing, movement, and rhetoric, and also explore strategies that help students better understand the rhetorical sphere and how bodily movement works within it.Item Advancing Gender Equity in STEM: Antenarratives and Feminist Leadership Practices in Policy Work(North Dakota State University, 2020) Petts, Ashleigh RyannWhile the field technical and professional communication (TPC) has long been concerned with workplace writing and policy writing, few studies have addressed the process of policy writing within an academic context. Using antenarrative and apparent feminism methodologies, this dissertation explores the policy writing process and feminist leadership practices of the DESIGN Committee, a group of women academics who worked to propose new policy to address gender inequity in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields for faculty working in their statewide educational system (SES). Employing methods of observation, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and artifact collection over a period of three years, the researcher sought to answer two research questions: What does the process of policy writing look like for the DESIGN Committee? In what ways do feminist leadership practices, as performed by the committee leader and other committee members, influence the work of the DESIGN Committee? Through the creation of an antenarrative of the DESIGN Committee’s policy work, three important threads stand out: proximity, transparency, and accountability. These threads provide an alternative to the dominant narrative of the committee’s work. In addition, the committee leader’s use of feminist leadership practices, such as creating community, encouraging self-empowerment, and fostering collaboration, impacted the efficiency of the policy writing process. These results point to important factors for future policy writers to consider when composing policy to address diversity, equity, and inclusion or when employing feminist leadership practices.Item Pregnancy, Illness, and Violence : The Power Discourses of Motherhood in Mary Morrissy's Mother of Pearl(North Dakota State University, 2011) Oster, Rebecca RenaeThis paper aims to explore the connection between the power structures of religion and medicine within Mary Morrissy's Mother of Pearl. Morrissy's text explores the ways in which women are oppressed by the Irish construct of perfect motherhood, which stems from the internalized social control exemplified in the religious and cultural expectations of women. Morrissy's text points out that a woman's national and individual identity is directly defined by her role as a mother and a religious figure. Morrissy's text critiques this construct and shows it to be unattainable as the power structures create a new form of oppression that continues to mandate the mother construct through bodily control. The connection between these power structures is exemplified through the geographical and political borders of Ireland as well as the physical borders of women's bodies. The medical power structure physically invades women's bodies and leaves them scarred, marked, and dependent on the construct for any identity. Morrissy's text critiques this impossible standard and a culture's tendency to perpetuate the myth of perfect motherhood within the ideological community.Item Facing Death in The Book Thief: Confronting the Real of the Holocaust and Mortality(North Dakota State University, 2018) Fincel, AbigaylThis paper examines the personification of Death in The Book Thief and its impact on young adult readers using Slavoj Žižek’s analysis of the Real and Hayden White’s discussion of how history and its representations in historical fiction shape the present. I argue that Death’s complexity as a character enables him to escort young adult readers from one understanding of reality into a deeper, more complex reality by forcing them to confront their mortality and the Holocaust. In confronting readers with these realities, The Book Thief, through the character of Death, shapes how young readers conceptualize mortality and the Holocaust.Item Heteronormative Recovery in the Bell Jar(North Dakota State University, 2012) Junglas, Gretchen ThereseIn Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood struggles to form a true identity. She emulates many women as a way to see how various identities work for her. One of these identities is that of a lesbian. During the novel’s 1953 setting, lesbianism was not a socially acceptable lifestyle. Esther struggles with own internalized homophobia as well as the control of her doctors. She undergoes treatment during her hospitalization that is suggestive of sexual conversion therapy at the time, including the use of electricity as a tool of discipline. Doctors lead her toward an identity that is not necessarily true or healthy. The novel suggests that recovery is actually heteronormative conformity.Item A Zoomable Assessment: Navigating the Ecologies of Writing Program Assessment(North Dakota State University, 2022) Warner, MatthewThis dissertation project explores the potential for using an inferential statistics test (t-tests) within an existing writing program assessment design. The purpose of using inferential statistics is to provide several perspectives on a data set collected using the existing assessment design thereby improving what a writing program administrator can learn about the program. To demonstrate the use of statistical tests, I selected as a variable of interest participation in an international collaboration, the Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project (TAPP). Based on this variable, I asked, can inferential statistics identify whether participation in TAPP created a difference in student portfolio scores for a program outcome? To perform the t-test, I calculated the mean portfolio scores for TAPP and for Non-TAPP groups. Then, after sorting the program data by course, two courses, a writing in the health professions and a writing in the technical professions, had enough sections participate in TAPP to conduct two more tests, one for each course. The tests posed the same question, whether participation in TAPP had a difference in portfolio scores for a program outcome, but had zoomed from the program level into the course level. The tests indicated that at the highest level (the program) participation in TAPP did not have a statistically significant difference on portfolio scores. The tests at the other level (the course) indicated that participation in TAPP did not have a statistically significant difference on writing in the health professions but did have a statistically significant difference on writing in the technical professions. Possible explanations for these results are examined in relation to existing writing studies literature. The approach of examining several levels is dubbed a zoomable assessment because the statistical tests allow for more nuanced examinations, that is, the tests zoom into the data set. Based on the findings, I propose further uses and possible limits of uses of inferential statistics as a complement to existing assessment designs. As part of the proposal, I advocate for assessment design, such as zoomable assessment, that is accessible, meaning the design does not require special software or extensive knowledge of advanced statistical analysis methods.Item Implications of Translation: Examining English Word Patterns in a First-Year Spanish University Textbook(North Dakota State University, 2015) Miller, Alyssa RenaeIn this study, I examined Vistas, a first-year Spanish university textbook, for its use of Greco-Latinate and Anglo-Saxon words as English translations. Using David Corson’s work as a starting point, I analyzed a foreign language textbook, expanding upon his list of texts organized by their percentage of Greco-Latinate words. By analyzing this one textbook, I hoped to inspire others to question the language preferences being instilled in students. My results indicated a nearly equal distribution of Greco-Latinate and Anglo-Saxon words, but the textbook authors rarely supplied multiple translations with both Greco-Latinate and Anglo-Saxon options. This initial study suggests a move away from more traditional views of the role of Greco-Latinate words in academic material. However, further studies are required to identify any overarching trends.Item Indigenous Ecocriticism and the Relationships Between Humans and Nature in Catherine Knutsson’s Shadows Cast by Stars(North Dakota State University, 2022) Nelson, Kerri NicoleIn the midst of the climate crisis, Young Adult dystopian literature offers a glimpse of the possible dark futures in store for all of us. Yet Indigenous Young Adult literature revises the natural world not as the enemy of the survival of human beings, but as a possible ally. In Cassandra Knutsson’s Shadows Cast by Stars, a plague is raging and Indigenous blood is key to human survival. Through her journey to save her community, Cassandra demonstrates how she builds a more positive relationship with nature. By offering alternative possibilities for how to treat and interact with nature, Shadows Cast by Stars recreates nature as agentive and sentient rather than inert or bent on destroying human beings. Instead, Shadows educates its readers on the positive relationships with nature possible within Indigenous ecocritical epistemologies.Item The Human Animal : Posthumanism in John Steinbeck's Cannery Row(North Dakota State University, 2011) Rohwedder, CeCeIn this paper, I examine John Steinbeck's Cannery Row on the basis of the posthuman vision that courses through it, as it does through many of Steinbeck's works. I propose that Steinbeck presents human and animal worlds that intermingle, mimic, and sustain one another; what Steinbeck described as non-teleological may justifiably be considered posthuman. In Cannery Row, people of various social positionings and mental capacities are presented plainly and matter-of-factly, without even a hint at causation or judgment of their character, abilities, behaviors, morals, or actions. The novel is grounded in a vision of close inter-species connections in which humans are not any better than any other animate species, and animals are not inferior to humans; we are alike more than we are not. Three ideas, developed in three separate chapters of this paper, are central to demonstrating the posthumanism of Cannery Row with its clear affinities to the posthumanism delineated by Cary Wolfe in What ls Post humanism? These include interspecies connectedness, the shared bond of suffering, and pet-"owner" relationships. Cannery Row, as well as The Logfrom the Sea of Cortez, also by Steinbeck, exemplifies the interconnectedness, similarities, and interdependencies between species, including humans who sense animals' unspoken pain and act to alleviate it, animals and humans who experience alienation and ostracism and suffer from it, and a dog who lives with as much independence and autonomy as her human housemates, to reveal a world that is not anthropocentric but rather posthuman. Human beings in the novel are placed side by side with non-human characters who are similarly presented, and there is a sense of equality and inclusiveness between biological species observed being themselves. The bond of suffering is shared by humans and nonhumans, who acknowledge and respond to suffering in other species. Relationships between humans and pets showcase distinctions between Cannery Row 's humanist and posthuman characters. The clear conclusion is that Cannery Row embraces posthumanism.