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Students will read and write about literary texts critically and closely. The course emphasizes recursive reading and writing processes that encourage students to discover, explain, question and clarify ideas. To this end, students will study a variety of genres as well as terms and concepts helpful to close analysis of those genres. They will practice various forms of writing for specific audiences and purposes. Students will reflect on and develop critical awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses as readers and writers. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 12 pages of formal revised writing.
Home plays a significant role in our lives. What does "home" mean to you? Is it a geographical location (the country and city you were born in and/or live in)? Is it an emotional bond with family members and other people like yourself? Is it a sense of shelter, comfort, safety, and being welcome when you move to a new place? When one is born in a country but moves to another, where is one's home? In this course, we will explore the many ways American writers have represented their senses of home and senses of being homeless in a variety of literary works--novels, short stories, plays, and memoirs. We will investigate through our readings and discussions what it means to live in America, whether as a citizen, an immigrant, or an international. We will consider how our senses of home are often bound up with issues such as memory, hope, loss, regionalism, alienation, and globalization. Authors to be read will include Ernest Hemingway, Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Alice Walker, Eva Hoffman, and more. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 15 pages of formal revised writing. Prerequisite: ENGL 121 (ESL). Please note that this section is only open to English as a Second Language students.
Home plays a significant role in our lives. What does "home" mean to you? Is it a geographical location (the country and city you were born in and/or live in)? Is it an emotional bond with family members and other people like yourself? Is it a sense of shelter, comfort, safety, and being welcome when you move to a new place? When one is born in a country but moves to another, where is one's home? In this course, we will explore the many ways American writers have represented their sense of home and senses of being homeless in a variety of literary works--novels, short stories, plays, and memoirs. We will investigate through our readings and discussions what it means to live in America, whether as a citizen, an immigrant, or an international. We will consider how our senses of home are often bound up with issues such as memory, hope, loss, regionalism, alienation, and globalization. Authors to be read include Ernest Hemingway, Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Alice Walker, Eva Hoffman, and more. The writing load for this course is 15 pages of formal revised writing. Prerequisite: ENGL 121 (ESL). Please note that this section is only open to English as a Second Language students.
Students will read and write about literary texts critically and closely. The course emphasizes recursive reading and writing processes that encourage students to discover, explain, question and clarify ideas. To this end, students will study a variety of genres as well as terms and concepts helpful to close analysis of those genres. They will practice various forms of writing for specific audiences and purposes. Students will reflect on and develop critical awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses as readers and writers. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 12 pages of formal revised writing.
Students will read and write about literary texts critically and closely. The course emphasizes recursive reading and writing processes that encourage students to discover, explain, question and clarify ideas. To this end, students will study a variety of genres as well as terms and concepts helpful to close analysis of those genres. They will practice various forms of writing for specific audiences and purposes. Students will reflect on and develop critical awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses as readers and writers. The writing load for this course is a minimum of 12 pages of formal revised writing.
The study of the historical, structural, and semantic features of the English language; systems of English grammar. Required for secondary licensure in communication arts and literature students. Prerequisites: ENGL 201, 202, 203, or 204
Academic History
Ph.D. in English, University of Washington M.A. in English, Kansas State University M.A. in Applied Linguistics, The Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China B.A. The Central University of Nationalities in China, Beijing, China At St. Thomas since 2006
Expertise/Specialties
Discourse Theory and Analysis Linguistics and English Language Study Language and Ideology Rhetoric and Stylistics
Selected Publications
"Nation and Globalization as Social Interaction: Interdiscursivity of Discourse and Semiosis in the 2008 Beijing Olympics' Opening Ceremony." Semiotica (Forthcoming).
"Collision of Language in News Discourse: A Functional-Cognitive Perspective of Transitivity." Critical Discourse Studies 8.3 (2011): 1-17.
"Verticality, Horizontality, and States of the Self: Cognitive Metaphors for the 'Spatial Self' in Chinese Autobiographical Writings." Metaphor and Symbol 26.1 (2011): 68-95.
“Transitivity and Lexical Cohesion: Press Representations of a Political Disaster and Its Actors.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010): 3444-3458.
“Intertextuality and Nationalist Ideology: Discourse of National Conflicts in News Discourse in the United States and China.” Discourse and Society. 20.1 (2009): 85-122.
"Pidgin and Code-Switching: Linguistic Identities and Multicultural Consciousness in Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey." Language and Literature (13:3): 271-289, 2004.
"Virginia Woolf's Narrative Language and Her Androgynous Ideal in Mrs. Dalloway." (In Chinese). Foreign Literature Criticism, Feb. 2004: 17-24, 2004.
Selected Presentations
“The ‘Split Self’ Phenomenon – Cognitive Linguistic Theory and a Cross-cultural Perspective.” American Association for Applied Linguistics 2010 Convention. Atlanta. March 2010 .
“Models of the Self: Metaphor, Culture, and Cross-Linguistic Variation.” Modern Languages Association 2009 Convention. Philadelphia. December 2009.
"Constructing Nationalist Ideologies in the News Media." National Communication Association 2006 Convention. San Antonio, Texas. November 2006.
"Metaphorical Conceptualizations of the Self in English and Chinese." AILA 2005: 14th World Congress of Applied Linguistics. Madison, Wisconsin. July 2005.
"Non-Standard Language Forms in Kingston's Work." Hawaii International Conference on Social Sciences. Honolulu, Hawaii. June 2004.
Membership in Professional Organizations
Modern Language Association American Association for Applied Linguistics National Communication Association
