Schedule and Abstracts

Composition studies and writing center studies often borrow ecological terms to describe the organic connectivity of writing processes. Although tutors often mediate between students and professors, composition classrooms and writing centers still have trouble reaching their shared goal of student success. Embedded tutoring models place tutors not only in the writing center but also in classrooms for the duration of a course. As embedded tutors work alongside students and professors in multiple settings, they bridge pedagogical and hierarchical gaps. Looking at embedded tutoring stories through ecocomposition’s three keys--place, relationship, and voice--provides strategies for tutors and instructors to cultivate connection.

Colonial metaphors are often so baked into the genetic code of videogames that they go largely unexamined by players and the wider culture. In this essay, I consider the various rhetorical overlays in games that distinguish them from other media; I examine the way counter-hegemonic games are rhetorically constrained by their procedural neocolonialism through an analysis of Ubisoft Quebec’s triple-A title Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry, a game that exemplifies the tension between narrative and procedural rhetoric; and I discuss some smaller indie games, autoethnographic modding projects, and gaming communities that demonstrate the potential of games as fruitful forms of resistance, self-definition, and dialogue between subaltern and dominant voices.

Drawing on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, this paper examines physical and metaphorical representations of home in Toni Morrison’s Paradise, particularly in the Convent. I argue that Morrison presents the notion of home as an action, along with a transgressive domesticity that helps the Convent women in overcoming their individual past traumas and create alternative notions of family and home.

In nineteenth century ghost stories, the hand is a pronounced feature of the ghost which is otherwise difficult to pin down as a literary figure. This study contends that the tactile exchanges between the ghost’s hands and living bodies are a recurrent trope and heuristic. These tools allow us to formulate a discourse of ghosts and to better understand the agency inscribed within them. I term this the “ghost-hand function” and argue that it is expressed in two distinct ways: combat and confirmation. The ghost-hand combat function dramatizes the struggle between life and death. I analyze this through the ghost stories of O’Brien, Wilkie Collins, and Margaret Oliphant. The conclusions offered by this analysis are unsettling as the literary figure of the ghost is often far more identical to ourselves than we might think. The ghost-hand function helps to reveal a subversive discourse that undergirds the ghost story. This discourse illuminates how the ghost as a literary figure progresses over the second half of the nineteenth century and the ways in which that configuration is informed by issues of mortality, memory, mourning, and grief that haunt both the living and dead.

Even though many teachers and students are aware of the importance of teaching and learning English pronunciation, pronunciation instruction still seems to be an incidental part of English classes in Japan and is rarely taught in a structured way. According to recent studies, successful pronunciation instruction is a crucial element of increasing learner confidence, intelligibility and engagement. This literature review concentrates on developing research-informed insights and suggestions for teaching pronunciation in Japanese classrooms. The presenter discusses various causes and solutions for pronunciation deficiencies in Japanese classrooms. Finally, the presenter considers the implications of this research and their own experiences teaching English to Japanese students to provide recommendations for educators.

Research on U.S. immigrant parents often reveals a deficit perspective on parents' engagement with their children's schools. There is a need to refute and dismantle this thinking, in particular with respect to the narratives of Latina mothers and their experiences. This literature review examines U.S. based scholarship (qualitative studies, prior reviews) with a focus on the experiences of Latina mothers of diverse demographic backgrounds with children in K-8 schools. Emerging themes include: (1) persistent mismatches in expectations about the role of Latina immigrant mothers in their children’s education between school personnel and linguistically minoritized parents; and (2) the need to understand the women’s experiences, as parents and adult learners, through the lens of official policies, including immigrant and special education laws. This underscores the need to further examine the social and institutional complexities that immigrant parents face in U.S. public schools. The presentation concludes with practical suggestions that value the inherent strengths and practices that immigrant families possess.

In Dan Simmons's Hyperion series, his most important characters are faced with death and resurrection and profoundly alter the course of the story. His main characters die in grand spectacles and only to resurface later. Through resurrection, Simmons is able to create new narratives through ambiguous endings.

More information coming soon!

More information coming soon!

More information coming soon!

Educators have recognized that willingness to communicate (WTC) in the target language is an important aspect of second language (L2) development/acquisition and language proficiency. However, for many multilingual students, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, communicating in classes has become a challenge due to various psychological, social, and cultural factors, as well as limitations of online learning. There is a dearth of literature on WTC in online classes as most of the research is based on in-person or face-to-face classes; therefore, the purpose of my paper is to explore and understand the recent discoveries regarding WTC and suggest teaching strategies to promote WTC, so that future educators and researchers have methods for promoting, and hopefully, increasing WTC in L2 online classrooms. Lastly, I hope my paper can contribute to increased discussion of WTC and to further the discussion regarding WTC to be more inclusive and flexible regarding remote learning in multilingual classes.

English language classrooms are traditionally heteronormative spaces in which queer voices are frequently silenced, ignored, and repudiated. As a result, today’s TESOL practitioners are often called on to be inclusive of LGBTQ+ identities and “to queer” their classrooms, or, in other words, to encourage their students to critically identify, discuss, and challenge inequities in our society. However, training opportunities for pre- and in-service language teachers to queer their praxes remain a rarity in the field. In this presentation, I will report findings from my interviews with five Bay Area ESOL teachers who take active steps to queer their classrooms. Drawing from the participants’ approaches, lessons learned, and advice, I will share pedagogical implications and highlight possible solutions to address the lack of queer-inquiry training currently available to ESOL teachers.

More information coming soon!

The present paper seeks to analyze and compare the life and social perception towards transgender community in the United States (Mock) and India (Revathi) through two contemporary coming-out stories. Revathi’s text focuses on the ‘hijra’ community, a term used to refer to trans individuals in India who are a marginalized group with their distinct culture, isolated from society. In this paper, I focus not only on the challenges that Revathi and Mock face as trans women but also, and more importantly, how the society they are placed in responds uniquely in context to its culture and legal rights for trans.

More information coming soon!