Category: Uncategorized

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Personal Identity Narrative Essay

When I teach first year composition courses, I have students write some type of personal narrative for their first essay. This typically involves them relating a story about themselves and creating an argument based off of what they learned from their own personal experience. Recently, instead of having students do a personal narrative where they relate any story from their lives, I have been … Read More Personal Identity Narrative Essay

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My Trip to Whitney Plantation

A couple of weeks ago, I finally had the opportunity to go to the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, LA. I have written about the Whitney before and some of its history; today, I want to focus on my experiences at the Whitney and how those experiences differed from what I encountered at other plantations and historical museums. Before I delve into this discussion, I … Read More My Trip to Whitney Plantation

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The Elevator Pitch in the Composition and Literature Classroom 

During the spring semester, I taught three freshman composition courses, and even though each course was a little different, I had all three do a proposal essay as one of their paper assignments. I have done this type of assignment before, and typically it’s been hit or miss with how well students do with writing their proposals. For the most part, I tell them … Read More The Elevator Pitch in the Composition and Literature Classroom 

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What Does the Cover Say?

One topic that has always interested me is the visual representations of literary works. Visual artists from Gustave Dore and E.W. Kemble illustrated everything from Dante’s Divine Comedy (1320) to Paul Laurence Dunbar’s The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories (1900). Thinking about these visual representations along with the text provides an interesting conversation, not just regarding how the images and texts interact but how … Read More What Does the Cover Say?

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Constructing the “Past”

At the end of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Quentin and Shreve construct, without knowing the “true” events, the burning of the Sutpen house. Describing “the driver and the deputy” pulling Miss Colfield out of the inflamed house, the narrator states, “he (Quentin) could see her, them; he had not been there, but he could see her” (376). The construction of that scene conflates … Read More Constructing the “Past”