IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks :: Browsing by Author "Fox, Stephen L."

Browsing by Author "Fox, Stephen L."

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Adapting Writing Center Pedagogy for Composition Classrooms: A Metacognitive Approach
(2012-05-04) Gellin, Laura M.; Fox, Stephen L.; Buchenot, Andre; Hogue, Teresa Molinder
While a writing center tutor may view her role as a coach, a commentator, and a counselor, the tutor actually serves as scaffolding, a temporary, supportive replacement of the processes more experienced writers can manage alone without a tutor, namely, the metacognitive processes of self-assessing, self-monitoring, and self-motivating. Metacognition then becomes the essential factor in adapting writing center practices into the composition classroom. By re-conceptualizing the three roles of a writing center tutor and re-visioning the classroom into a more “pure” learning space, tutor-teachers improve students’ writing skills, increase their engagement, and redirect students’ focus toward the writing process rather than the grade. To demonstrate the efficacy of this adapted writing center approach in the composition classroom, I created an authentic, challenging project in which the pre-project activities, task design, work process, and reflection assignment enact my proposed theory. By adopting this approach, tutor-teachers ultimately empower students and design compositional tasks that act as a catalyst for transforming the way students understand themselves as writers and as students.
All the Pieces Matter: Fragmentation-as-Agency in the Novels of Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, and Shani Mootoo
(2013-01-30) Morguson, Alisun; Springer, Jennifer Thorington; Fox, Stephen L.; Henry Anthony, Ronda C.
The fragmented bodies and lives of postcolonial Caribbean women examined in Caribbean literature beget struggle and psychological ruin. The characters portrayed in novels by postcolonial Caribbean writers Edwidge Danticat, Michelle Cliff, and Shani Mootoo are marginalized as “Other” by a Western patriarchal discourse that works to silence them because of their gender, color, class, and sexuality. Marginalization participates in the act of fragmentation of these characters because it challenges their sense of identity. Fragmentation means fractured; in terms of these fictive characters, fragmentation results from multiple traumas, each trauma causing another break in their wholeness. Postcolonial scholars have identified the causes and effects of fragmentation on the postcolonial subject, and they argue one’s need to heal because of it. Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo prove that wholeness is not possible for the postcolonial Caribbean woman, so rather than ruminate on that truth, they examine the journey of the postcolonial Caribbean woman as a way of making meaning of the pieces of her life. This project contends that fragmentation – and the fracture it produces – does not bind these women to negative existences; in fact, the female subjects of Danticat, Cliff, and Mootoo locate power in their fragmentation. The texts studied include Danticat’s "Breath, Eyes, Memory" (1994) and "The Farming of Bones" (1999), Cliff’s "Abeng" (1984) and "No Telephone to Heaven" (1987), and Mootoo’s "Cereus Blooms at Night" (1996) and "He Drown She in the Sea" (2005).
Black, Brown, Yellow, and White: The New Faces of African American English
(2009-03-18T18:53:14Z) Vanegas, José Alfonso; Shepherd, Susan; Upton, Thomas A. (Thomas Albin); Fox, Stephen L.
This thesis began, as I imagine most theses do, as a very formal and very orthodox research paper. While it continues to be this to a measurable extent, it has undergone a metamorphosis. In these pages I discuss the serious challenges faced in schools (as well as the setbacks endured inside their walls) by native-English speaking children of all cultures and creeds, who speak forms of English other than Standard English (hereafter SE) in their homes and with their family and friends. I then contrast these challenges with the stark advantages enjoyed by children who, due likely to their inherited socio-economic class, make regular use of SE inside their residences and with their peers and relations. One non-standard dialect of English found in widespread use by young boys and girls in the United States is African American English (hereafter AAE). Because success in U.S. schools depends heavily on students’ production and comprehension of SE, those youngsters who already employ SE as their principal language are at an immediate educational advantage, one that is, by default, not afforded to children who as a rule speak a dialect/language other than SE, such as AAE. Within these pages you will find an official statement made by the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Executive Committee that soundly validates African American English as a true, rule-governed linguistic system, and thus a language. I also discuss my view that to devalue a child’s language in school, by not validating it as true, operative speech—“Don’t talk that way, that’s wrong!”—is, in essence, to devalue the whole child. It is an act that will be perceived negatively and reacted to negatively by most children. In addition to these issues, I discuss the prevalence of AAE in American society at large, as well as its prevalent use by non-African American youth.
Orwell's Unmediated Hand: The Compositional Stages of Nineteen Eighty-Four
(2012-02-29) Wilzbacher, Melisa Katharine; Eller, Jonathan R., 1952-; Touponce, William F.; Fox, Stephen L.
Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a hallmark example of the first, great cautionary sociological and political dystopias of the postwar era. Over the last sixty years, literary critics have thoroughly studied the plot, setting, characters, themes, scenes, subliminal meanings, and overt meanings of this text. However, very few critics have utilized one of the most precious resources available for analysis of Orwell’s creative process – the surviving, but fragmented, stages of early composition. In order to understand the full significance of these pages, it is necessary to illuminate the presubmission history of Nineteen Eighty-Four from the point at which George Orwell began composition to the date of press submission – a span of roughly twenty-nine months, from the summer of 1946 to November 1948, when Orwell’s British publisher, Secker and Warburg, received the typesetting copy. Nineteen Eighty-Four, his final work, is also the sole Orwell novel where manuscript stages are known to survive. The submitted typescript survives in the Orwell Archives at University College in London, and its underlayer reflects the fullest development of Nineteen Eighty-Four under Orwell’s unmediated hand. Although the 1947 manuscript is a conglomeration of hand written pages, typed pages, hand corrected pages, and type corrected pages, it is vital that literary and textual criticism focus on what the manuscript reveals about Orwell’s development of the narrative structure and text.
A Role for Film in Writing Pedagogy
(2010-02-26T19:50:39Z) Wieland, John A.; Fox, Stephen L.; Di Camilla, Frederick J.; Davis, Ken, 1945-
This thesis discusses the use of film in the composition classroom. It is divided into four chapters: The Argument, The Audience, Film as a Pedagogical Tool, and The Future. Chapter One (the Argument) discusses the different ideas about using media in the classroom, and how it is good practice to do so. New ideas on teaching from education expert Ken Bain (What the Best College Teachers Do) are presented. Bain suggests that as long as the instructor is confident in his or her subject, any innovative thing they do in class is all right. Malcolm Gladwell’s ideas from The Tipping Point are applied to the classroom: the Law of the Few, Connectors, Mavens, Salesmen, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. Presentations couched within a Gladwell frame can prove to be extraordinarily effective. Chapter Two (the Audience) analyzes the Millennial students, and discusses their views on learning and media. These students see learning as a commodity and view modern media with a bit of contempt. Therefore, to use media in the classroom the instructor must be innovative. Chapter Three (Film as a Pedagogical Tool) examines various different applications of film use in the classroom. It also looks in depth at using David Mamet’s films in the classroom, especially Glengarry Glen Ross, The Edge, and The Verdict, which use classical structure to persuade and argue. Chapter Four (The Future) looks at the work of Howard Gardner and his theory five minds: the Disciplined Mind, the Synthesizing Mind, the Creative Mind, the Respectful Mind, and the Ethical Mind and how we must prepare to teach to them all. In the conclusion I posit that the students of today and the students of tomorrow will require new and innovative techniques to be taught effectively, and that film is versatile and flexible enough to do it.
Shadows of the Ravine: Mortality-Themed Discards from Bradbury's Illinois Novels
(2009-09-30T18:12:30Z) Harley, Gabriel M.; Eller, Jonathan R., 1952-; Touponce, William F.; Fox, Stephen L.
This thesis offers a focused examination of thematically-related story-chapters that Ray Bradbury originally intended for his first novel concept—Summer Morning, Summer Night, a book set in the vivid memories of his own small-town Midwest childhood. The stories at the heart of this thesis were discarded from the project (often referred to by Bradbury as the “Illinois novel”) by the time that he published a portion of the original project as Dandelion Wine in 1957. As that novelized story cycle is perhaps the best-known of all Bradbury’s “Green Town” books, I intend to use it as a springboard for identifying and examining those stories that were discarded, left unfinished, or eventually published as stand-alone tales in other outlets. Since all of these stories were eliminated before Dandelion Wine emerged as the first published portion of the larger Illinois novel, I will further explore how their hypothetical presence or actual absence may have affected Dandelion Wine as a whole, from inception and development to publication and popular reception, as well as investigate what these tales may reveal about the evolution of Bradbury as a writer.
Signifying in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Harriet Jacobs' Use of African American English
(2010-07-19T19:26:49Z) Reynolds, Diana Dial; Shepherd, Susan Carol; DiCamilla, Frederick J.; Fox, Stephen L.
Research on Harriet Jacobs' slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl exploded after 1981, when Professor Jean Fagin Yellin discovered textual evidence for refuting then-current claims that Lydia Maria Child was the author of this engrossing story. Child was indeed the book's editor, but Yellin discovered letters from Jacobs among the papers of abolitionist Amy Post that proved that the ex-slave was the author of her own narrative. Though the research this discovery engendered has been quite extensive, especially regarding the narrative's close adherence to the conventions of a sentimental novel, very few scholars have attempted to deal with a feature relatively unique to Jacobs" narrative: the use of African American English (AAE) in representing the speech of a number of her characters. Nor has any scholar exclusively focused on the authenticity of her representation of AAE. This paper, a first step in such an effort, demonstrates that Jacobs' use conforms to features found by linguists in their studies of contemporary AAE and Early Black English (EBE).
When to Best Apply Peer Response Activities to the Writing Process in the High School Classroom
(2009-09-30T17:53:39Z) Costello, Ryan James; Fox, Stephen L.
This study explored how to best incorporate peer response activities into the high school classroom. Three honors 10th grade classes completed peer response activities at different places in the research paper writing process, modeling Elbow and Belanoff's "bones, muscles, and skin" analogy. Surveys and final draft grades were used to evaulate where and how peer response can have the most benefit.
Women Like and Unlike Us: A Literary Analysis of the Relationships Between Immigrant Mothers and Their Bicultural Daughters
(2010-08-31T18:29:19Z) Yalimaiwai, Davinia; Kovacik, Karen, 1959-; Fox, Stephen L.; Rebein, Robert, 1964-
The analytical and creative chapters of my thesis display the best and the worst of bicultural daughters and their mothers as writers represent this relationship in short stories. Throughout the analytical chapters, I show that the through their fiction these writers help us understand that the bicultural daughter/immigrant mother relationship not only is affected by general feelings of matrophobia – as Adrienne Rich points out – but also by different pressures and paradigms that can only be experienced if the daughter belongs to and/or associates herself with a different culture than that of her mother. I hypothesize that the stories reflect these paradigms as usually negative because the pressures from both “American” society and the immigrant mother are often so great that the bicultural daughter cannot embrace either one fully. However, with the adverse feelings from both mother and daughter, comes a realization from both that neither will succeed in dominating the other. Once this is established, both mother and daughter will either reach a consensual agreement to disagree, or will continue having a hostile relationship. By including my own short stories in context with the analyses done for the stories by Kingston, Tan, Pietrzyk and Danticat, I hope to bring interest to this genre for further analysis on the bicultural daughter and immigrant mother relationship as depicted in short stories.
Worlds collide: integrating writing center best practices into a first year composition classroom
(2010-07-29T18:56:53Z) Sherven, Keva N.; Fox, Stephen L.; Shepherd, Susan Carol; Hogue, Teresa Molinder
As an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to work in the University Writing Center (UWC) at IUPUI. This opportunity influenced my life in many ways, but none more important than my teaching. Looking back on my time in the UWC, I did not realize the connection between writing centers and composition classrooms. As a graduate student, I began to read literature that defined composition classrooms and writing centers as separate worlds. However, once I was an instructor, these two worlds were seamless weaving in and out of each other to the point that I couldn’t separate them. In fact, I didn’t understand how one could. I had read literature defining composition classrooms and writing centers as different worlds but was having experiences in the classroom that contradicted this perception, so I wanted to investigate how these experiences influenced my teaching. I sought out literature that explored the writing center-composition classroom connection to look at specific elements of my teaching and how they tied to UWC practices. This case study grew out of the initial challenges I faced as a new instructor, which led me on a journey to find my own approach to teaching composition. That journey resulted in the implementation of writing center best practices, that I learned as a tutor, into my teaching philosophy, and this background equipped me to approach writing instruction as a facilitator, guiding students to become better writers.This case study examines which writing center practices, gleaned from my experiences in the UWC at IUPUI, I’ve incorporated into my classroom, why I’ve chosen these practices, and what student feedback reveals about these practices.

Browsing by Author "Fox, Stephen L."

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