The file at right contains a course-by-course summary of the major concepts, theoretical stances, and methods learned -- and how they were applied -- during 2010-2014:
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Research: Summer 2013 to Spring 2014, NARRATIVE & PRODUCT FILES
Summer 2013
Courses:
EDG 7939 : (In place of Adv Grad Sem 2): Research Process Drama Research Methods (Dr. Jenifer Schneider)
In this independent study, a colleague and I met periodically with Dr. Jenifer Schneider to discuss a number of readings about process drama and, for me, writing as performance. A complete annotated bibliography of readings is listed below, but particularly influential readings included:
Courses:
EDG 7939 : (In place of Adv Grad Sem 2): Research Process Drama Research Methods (Dr. Jenifer Schneider)
In this independent study, a colleague and I met periodically with Dr. Jenifer Schneider to discuss a number of readings about process drama and, for me, writing as performance. A complete annotated bibliography of readings is listed below, but particularly influential readings included:
- Altheide's (2002). Creating fear: News and the construction of crisis -- Altheide compares the problem frame of the medieval morality play with the same frame used in modern news reports, saying the modern “problem frame is a secular alternative to the morality play” with characteristics including: (1) narrative structure, (2) universal moral meanings, (3) specific time and place, (4) unambiguous content, (5) focus on disorder, and (6) cultural resonance (p. 47). However, medieval morality plays presented “eternal themes and truths,” putting problems in a broader perspective; a modern problem-frame news report tightly focuses on specific, individual events framed as a more general this-could-happen-to-you are “produced and packaged in a process that formulates social complexities and simplistic problems” (p. 49). Altheide also shows how modern news stories contain the inverse of these six characteristics.
- Bowell & Heap's (2005) article, Drama on the run: A prelude to mapping the practice of process drama -- Bowell and Heap identified six “foundations upon which a process drama can be built” (p. 61), which I see as corresponding to the literary elements of plot, setting, characters, theme, style/tone, genre; these six could be used as a method of mapping text.
- Goffman's (1974) Frame Analysis and also "The Production of Self" -- Goffman spoke of "the basic dialectic" in performed and non-performers, saying, "In their capacity as performers, individuals will be concerned with maintaining the impressions that they are living up to the many standards by which they and their products are judged. Because these standards are so numerous and so pervasive, the individuals who are performers dwell more than we might think in a moral world. But, qua performers, individuals are concerned not with the moral issue of realizing these standards, but with the amoral issue of engineering a convincing impression that these standards are being realized. … To use a different imagery, the very obligation and profitability of appearing always in a steady moral light, of being a socialized character, forces one to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways of the stage” (p. 23). From “The Production of Self”
These two files contain products from EDG7939: Process Drama Research Methods (Summer 2013):
goffmandramaturgy.061913.docx | |
File Size: | 100 kb |
File Type: | docx |
anderson.writingasperformance.summer2013.docx | |
File Size: | 168 kb |
File Type: | docx |
RED7910: Directed Research / Reading and Language Arts (Dr. Jenifer Schneider) In this directed study, I revisited a text used in the Literary Theory class I had taken during the Spring 2013 term. The text, Terry Eagleton's (2008/1983) Literary Theory: An Introduction (Anniversary Edition), contained a history of literary theory and made connections between literature and other societal forces that seemed applicable to my dissertation work. Additionally, I knew I wanted to use a hermeneutical approach to interpreting the documents in my dissertation, but I had not encountered much writing about hermeneutics. My two projects, then, were to 1) map the text of at least the Introduction to Eagleton's work, using techniques similar to the chart I created during the Linguistics and Religious Studies courses, and 2) to create an annotated bibliography of sources -- especially the works of Howard (1982), Pokorny (2011), Ricouer (1976) -- explaining hermeneutics.
These two files contain products from RED7910: Directed Research/Reading and Language Arts (Summer 2013):
eagleton.literarytheory.outline.2013.docx | |
File Size: | 269 kb |
File Type: | docx |
hermeneutics.annotatedbib.summer2013.docx | |
File Size: | 170 kb |
File Type: | docx |
FALL 2013
No courses taken Other research work: Dissertation work: In early August, I met with my committee to present a prospectus of my planned dissertation work. In October, I defended the proposal (documents are listed on the previous page, "Administrative Documents and Progress Toward Completion." The committee approved the proposal but asked for greater clarification of the methods and a stronger connection to literacy. I continue to work on these aspects of the project. During the Fall 2013 and into January 2014, however, I had access to the microfilmed documents I needed. I spent many hours scrolling through microfilm and scanning documents for the study to come. |
Other research work:
Paper Presented at Children's Literature Association Conference: During June 2013, I attended the Children's Literature Association Conference in Biloxi, Mississippi, where Becky Powell and I presented a co-written paper, "The World is Flat, Stanley: Globalization, ethnocentrism, and absurdity in an early-reader chapter book." At the end of the session, we were approached by the editors of a book about early-reader readers and asked to consider submitting a proposal. We did, it was accepted, and we have been guided through three extensive revisions thus far. The book goes to the publisher in September 2014.
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Submitted article, later accepted for publication: In October 2013, I submitted "Straddling Boundaries: Gutta-Percha Willie and the 1870 Education Act," a paper I had written as part of an independent study with Dr. Mozzella Mitchell in the Religion department, to North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies. In this paper, I provided a brief history of the secularization of Western education and a more extensive history of the events leading to the 1870 Education Act in Great Britain (providing for public, but compulsory, education and involving the same three tensions as we face today in the U.S.). Then I analyzed Gutta-Percha Willie, a children's novel first published in serial form in 1872, as MacDonald's treatise on educating children. MacDonald influenced a number of British and American authors, including G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and others, so this work provides a basis for understanding other works about children and for understanding the roots of particular thoughts about childhood and educating children. The article was accepted and was published in Spring 2014, although the journal date is 2013 (they use the date of submission). The article has not been posted online yet, although I have received print copies of the journal. Once archived, the article can be found in Volume 32, 2013: http://www.snc.edu/northwind/archive.html
Grant proposal / Letter of Intent submitted: In October 2013, Jenifer Schneider and I, as co-investigators, along with Mozella Mitchell, USF professor of Religion, and Csaba Osvath, theology professor at Hillsborough Community College and Literacy Studies student at USF, submitted a Letter of Intent to Fordham University's Templeton-funded project, Varieties of Understanding: New Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Theology. Our project, "Exploring the ‘Ambiguous Edges’ of Understanding at the Nexus of Children’s Literature, Religion, and Education," proposed studying thirty award-winning children's books for answers to these central questions:
Grant proposal / Letter of Intent submitted: In October 2013, Jenifer Schneider and I, as co-investigators, along with Mozella Mitchell, USF professor of Religion, and Csaba Osvath, theology professor at Hillsborough Community College and Literacy Studies student at USF, submitted a Letter of Intent to Fordham University's Templeton-funded project, Varieties of Understanding: New Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Theology. Our project, "Exploring the ‘Ambiguous Edges’ of Understanding at the Nexus of Children’s Literature, Religion, and Education," proposed studying thirty award-winning children's books for answers to these central questions:
- As viewed through the layered lenses of narrative theology theory, a literary theory of understanding as incarnation, and reader-response theory, to what extent and how do authors and illustrators of contemporary award-winning children’s books explicitly and implicitly present and/or portray theological questions such as what it means to be human, what is the nature of reality, and does anything exist apart from our realm of experience? How do the authors explicitly and implicitly address whether and how we can understand answers to these questions and/or whether and how we can understand the absence of answers to these questions?
schneideranderson.letterintent.rfp_theology.1012513..pdf | |
File Size: | 3099 kb |
File Type: |
Paper presented at Literary Research Association Conference: In December 2013, I attended the Literacy Research Association Conference in Dallas, Texas, where Patriann Smith, Jenifer Schneider, Aimee Frier, and I presented "Busting Open Waterbusters: Finding Meaning within the Visual, Aural, and Choreographical Layers of an Imagined World." However, the paper presented was very different from the proposal submitted. In considering how to combine our two voices, I drew on material read in the Summer 2013 Research in Process Drama course and on previous scriptwriting experience to produce a script for four voices. After performing the analyses at the conference, we turned the paper into a methods paper for submission to the LRA Yearbook. It was not accepted, but we are continuing to shape it and to submit it to other journals.
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SPRING 2014
Above is my final project, a PechaKucha, synthesizing the final writings studied during the course. Below, are two other papers I produced:
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Course:
ENC6333: Contemporary Rhetorics (Dr. Marc Santos) When I take courses outside of the College of Education, I learn as much about different ways of learning, thinking, and writing as I do about different areas of content. In this course. Thankfully, the various courses I had taken provided enough of a philosophical background that I was able to hold my own, but the discussions of contemporary philosophies and understandings of rhetoric -- way beyond word-based language -- were deep and articulate, even among the master's-level students (about half of the students). Dr. Santos also teaches Rhetoric of Technology and a Multimedia course, so this course also had a multimedia requirement, a PechaKucha format presentation. |
Other research work:
American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference Notes: Even though none of the proposals of which I was part were accepted for presentation, I attended the AERA Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was particularly interested in the Confucianism, Taoism, and Education SIG that was holding meetings before the main conference and that also sponsored a number of sessions during AERA. All of the courses I had taken to that point -- in all disciplines -- considered only Western philosophers and perspectives. Eastern perspectives were conspicuously absent from the discussions except in one book I studied in the Religion course. At AERA 2014, I chaired two sessions of the Religion SIG, attended several arts-based research sessions (kudos to the ABER SIG for a full selection of sessions / see file below), and attended several sessions on spirituality and education.
Of particular note is the session I attended sponsored by the Spiritual Research SIG. They were issuing a call for papers on the topic of developing a new paradigm for conducting spiritual research, and the concept of pre-originary rhetoricity I had read about in the Contemporary Rhetorics course seemed a perfect fit. I will discuss the outcome in more depth in next year's Annual Review; suffice it to say I found much to learn at AERA. When I returned, I spent quite a bit of time transcribing my notes and looking up additional resources. The file is linked below.
Long story, short? I found new methods to consider for conducting research and discovered new avenues to explore.
American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference Notes: Even though none of the proposals of which I was part were accepted for presentation, I attended the AERA Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was particularly interested in the Confucianism, Taoism, and Education SIG that was holding meetings before the main conference and that also sponsored a number of sessions during AERA. All of the courses I had taken to that point -- in all disciplines -- considered only Western philosophers and perspectives. Eastern perspectives were conspicuously absent from the discussions except in one book I studied in the Religion course. At AERA 2014, I chaired two sessions of the Religion SIG, attended several arts-based research sessions (kudos to the ABER SIG for a full selection of sessions / see file below), and attended several sessions on spirituality and education.
Of particular note is the session I attended sponsored by the Spiritual Research SIG. They were issuing a call for papers on the topic of developing a new paradigm for conducting spiritual research, and the concept of pre-originary rhetoricity I had read about in the Contemporary Rhetorics course seemed a perfect fit. I will discuss the outcome in more depth in next year's Annual Review; suffice it to say I found much to learn at AERA. When I returned, I spent quite a bit of time transcribing my notes and looking up additional resources. The file is linked below.
Long story, short? I found new methods to consider for conducting research and discovered new avenues to explore.
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