Promoting the Social and Emotional Learning of Middle School Students in Japan Through Collaborative Classroom Inquiry

This case study focused on the influence of a collaborative classroom inquiry approach, called “philosophy for children Hawai’i” (p4c Hawai‘i), and involved the social and emotional learning of a class of 39 seventh grade middle school language arts students in Japan. This approach helps learners explore ideas with peers and their teacher. Research indicates Japanese middle schoolers have few opportunities to learn how to develop and maintain relationships, as they do not interact daily with many people. Data for this study included video and audio recordings of the p4c Hawai‘i sessions, students’ responses to a social and emotional learning survey, interviews with the teacher, a focus group interview with students and students’ written reflections. Findings indicated the p4c Hawai‘i approach afforded opportunities for students to improve socioemotional skills, such as self-awareness, awareness of others, development of relationships and responsible decision-making. Using the p4c Hawai’i approach, students expressed theiropinions, even if they were different from others. At the same time, learners listened respectfully to peers to gain their perspectives, which cultivated positive relationships. Listening to different perspectives appeared to promote students’ decision-making skills. Different from traditional approaches, it is noted that teachers who use p4c Hawai‘i become facilitators. As facilitators, they assume a less hierarchical position, as they guide students and model how to share and listen. This approach shows promise in helping teachers support positive social and emotional learning for children in Japan and may assist in reducing social reclusiveness and youth suicide

Revisiting the Six Declines of Contemporary Youth: Considering Adventurous Outdoor Learning as an Intervention

This article discusses six declines of youth patterned after Kurt Hahn’s similar declines from a century ago. Outlined as a theoretical construct, the author describes the role of adventurous outdoor learning experiences as positively influencing youths’ emerging sense of “self.” After describing an underlying theoretical framework for the six declines, the background and rationale are discussed for each separate decline. A summary of the various “selves” is presented for the declines, progressing from empty, through social, to healthy self. Finally, adventurous outdoor learning is identified as a potential intervention for youth with the potential to remedy some of these declines

For the Greater Good: Establishing a New Scholarship Fund to Support Student Employees

In the fall of 2022, the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University launched an initiative to raise funds for academic scholarships that would support library student employees. While not unique among academic libraries, such scholarship programs are not common. This article shares not only the background and reasons why we pursued this initiative but also shares the methodology and research we did to implement the program

Off With Her Head! An Analysis of Female Awakening Through Social Deviance in Lynn Nottage’s Las Meninas

The Victorian Era brought the evolution of a distinctly feminine writing trope: the development of female characters’ personal awakenings through acts of social deviance. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) is a prime example of this phenomenon, wherein main character Edna Pontellier, disinterested in the expectations of upper-class French-Creole life, participates in an emotional affair to actualize her own autonomy. This essay seeks to determine the significance of this literary trope in contemporary playwright Lynn Nottage’s Las Meninas. The play follows the woes of French Queen Marie-Thérèse as she becomes dissatisfied with her position on the margins of French Courtly society and has an affair with another excluded person, Nabo, an African with dwarfism. Nottage’s parallel to the writings of Victorian female authors, like Chopin herself, emphasizes a desire to advocate for the advancement of women through the lens of Early Modern society. Additionally, the parallel reveals the continuity of the tradition of representing women’s recognition of their autonomy through deviant actions from nineteenth-century through twenty-first-century literature. The presence of this tradition in twenty-first century literature demonstrates that women are seeking similar social advancement in the present day

“A truly happy woman has, it is said, no history”: Relational Utopia in A Woman of To-Morrow: A Tale of the Twentieth Century

British novelist and feminist essayist Alice Coralie Glyn is rarely mentioned in studies on Victorian feminism or speculative fiction, despite the distinctive nature of her literary work and biography. Alongside the feminist critical trend exploring the paradigm of the “lost,” “forgotten,” or “overlooked” female author,5 this paper argues that the hybridity of Glyn’s work may also have further contributed to her marginalization

Classroom Calming Corners: Peaceful Spaces for Times of Transition

In a school environment, it is important to have a response strategy when students experience dysregulation of their emotions. Promoting social and emotional learning assists students in developing these skills. Mindfulness is one practice that helps students de-escalate when their emotions begin to elevate. One strategy, a classroom calming corner, is an area of the room equipped with soft furnishings and soothing materials to help students return to equilibrium so that they are able to remain in the learning environment. Data from the findings reveal that calming corners in one elementary school classroom and one middle school classrooms were successful and valuable for students returning to a state of equilibrium. Overall, students and teachers reported satisfaction with using the calming corners

An Ever-Expanding Field

Those of us who study nineteenth-century literature are sometimes met with sneers by some who think the literature of this era has nothing to say about our contemporary world or who believe that anything worth saying about these works has already been said. Of course, neither of these erroneous ideas could be further from the truth. To counter the first misconception, I like to recommend that people read the first twenty pages or so of Oliver Twist (1837-39). This novel’s exploration of the lives of the poor and of the government’s role in relieving poverty is strikingly current nearly two hundred years later. As to the second misconception, I can only suggest that a willful ignorance would cause a person to hold such an opinion. The richness, complexity, and diversity of nineteenth-century texts provides an inexhaustible source for scholarly commentary and debate. Moreover, the age that produced these works was steeped in social, political, cultural, scientific, and intellectual upheaval, and we are still coming to terms with many of the changes that occurred during this time. Clearly, there is still much to be said about nineteenth-century literature. In order to help facilitate scholarship about this incredibly complex field, the editorial staff of this journal has expanded to include a Pedagogy Editor and a Media Reviews Editor.Any academic journal has college educators as a core constituent of its readership, and many academics can attest that being a skilled researcher in a field is quite different than being an expert teacher, and vice versa. With this in mind, I19 seeks to publish pedagogical pieces in which scholars of nineteenth-century literature can share assignments, course designs, and classroom activities with others to help facilitate the teaching texts in our field. We are therefore pleased to introduce Vivian Delchamps of the Dominican University of California as our Pedagogy Editor who will lead our efforts in publishing scholarship on teaching the fantastic literature of this era.The Incredible Nineteenth Century(Volume 2, Issue 2; Whole Number 4) Fall 20246Dr. Delchamps’s areas of expertise include nineteenth-century literature, illness, pain, and disability, and she studies how nineteenth-century women writers such as Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Frances E. W. Harper “used literature to supplement diagnostic ways of knowing and capture the raw potential of disabled embodiment.” She has published essays in Poetry and Pedagogy, Insurrect!, and other venues, and she has an article forthcoming on The Wizard of Oz.Teaching science fiction, fantasy, and fairy tale of the nineteenth century is complex on many fronts. Firstly, as shocking as it may be for those of us who grew up loving these genres, many students are not as familiar with the fantastic as we assume they will be. The first novel I ever taught was Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), and near the end of the first class, after a minimally successful discussion, a dismayed-looking student raised her hand and asked, “Why doesn’t she just write about things on Earth?” At that point I realized how badly I had failed, and that I should have begun the discussion of this book, before we had even started reading, about the conventions of science fiction and how authors often use this genre as a way to displace problems from our everyday reality so that issues are defamiliarized and we can look at them with a fresh point of view. Better preparation would have helped my students be more open to the ways Le Guin explores sex, gender, and culture in this novel. Secondly, as mentioned above, the nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented change, and students studying literature from this time need to understand its history and culture. Nineteenth-century society can be both alien and startlingly similar to our own, and helping students see how this era in many ways gave birth to the world we live in can help them to appreciate its literature. Finally, the teaching of literature from any time period and of any genre is a complex undertaking, and as educators we are always looking for better ways of reaching our students.The Incredible Nineteenth Century(Volume 2, Issue 2; Whole Number 4) Fall 20247The stories the nineteenth century produced maintain a central spot in popular imagination still today. Consider, for instance, how many reinterpretations of Frankenstein (1818) or Dracula (1897) have been produced by film studios in just the past two years. Or, think about the ways the works of Edgar Allan Poe have remained a staple of American cinema and television for decades, ranging from Vincent Price movies to The Simpsons (1989-present). Even beyond these canonical works and authors, the nineteenth century remains a time period that Hollywood loves to engage with and recreate. Because of the popularity of nineteenth-century fantasy, science fiction, and fairy tale throughout various forms of media, this journal has expanded to include a Media Reviews Editor, a position that will be filled by Joe Conway. Dr. Conway studies early American literature, pop culture, and economics in literature and culture, and he is the Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He writes that our culture in the twenty-first century still needs “the tropes and characters of the nineteenth century in order to make sense of itself. Moby Dick was Big Oil before Exxon and BP, Dracula foreshadows vulture capitalism, Frankenstein’s monster continues to embody marginalized consciousness.” In regards to contemporary recreations of the nineteenth century in contemporary media, he says “Despite changing technologies—videogames replacing books, for example—we can’t shake the sense we are still citizens of the nineteenth century.” He teaches early sf writers such as Shelley, Hawthorne, and Wells along with their twenty-first century descendants like Nnedi Okorafor and Silvia Moreno-Garcia. He also teaches neo-slave narratives beside nineteenth-century autobiographies of formerly enslaved people, and Edgar Allan Poe beside Toni Morrison. He writes that “Anna Kornbluh describes our contemporary culture as one of pure ‘immediacy,’ and so one way to ensure the work of previous writers continues to hold relevance for our students is by demonstrating how much a part of the past continues to haunt the present.”The Incredible Nineteenth Century(Volume 2, Issue 2; Whole Number 4) Fall 20248In our media reviews section, we plan to highlight not only fantastic writings from the nineteenth century, but also science fiction and fantasy set in this time. One of the most interesting aspects of studying literature from previous eras is the ability to trace how succeeding generations have interpreted those works, and how they have injected their own concerns and ideas into it. Also, especially in the context of nineteenth-century literature, contemporary media set in this time provides the opportunity for previously silenced voices to be heard. Populations that suffered atrocities during the nineteenth century—those who suffered from industrialism, class oppression, sexism, homophobia, global colonization, slavery, or Manifest Destiny, for example—now have the chance to tell their own stories.Nineteenth-century studies is a field that is ever-expanding, and having these two new positions will enhance I19’s ability to engage in conversations about teaching texts written in this century and about new media inspired by this time. We hope the contributions of this journal will have a meaningful impact on the study of this complex and intriguing field

Donor Stewardship While Waiting for a Development Officer at the UConn Library

The University of Connecticut (UConn) Library faced a series of budget cuts in recent years, which resulted in the loss of a dedicated development officer in 2017. Understanding the importance of continuing to build new relationships that could result in donations, and the need to maintain relationships with existing donors, members of the staff took on various development roles in addition to their existing job descriptions. Core development officer activities including monitoring gifts, communicating with donors, and fiscal tracking and reporting, were now dispersed. In addition, active outreach opportunities became a focus: including introducing electronic newsletters on behalf of the library and Archives & Special Collections, event planning, and oversite of donor related projects. Even with the success of individual staff members performing these activities on behalf of the library, more was needed to coordinate, communicate, and lay the groundwork for optimally supporting the reinstatement of a development officer in the future. In response to this dispersed and uncoordinated approach, the dean established the Library Advancement & Donor Stewardship (LADS) group to bring cohesiveness to the work, and to audit and account for the effort involved in development activities. In this article, LADS members share history, recent achievements, future expectations for LADS, and presents a case study for supporting a coordinated development approach.

For the Dead Travel Fast’: Foreign Contagion in Dracula

Existing as a “dead man made alive” (Stoker, Notes 17), Count Dracula reflects Victorian fears of foreignness and illness spreading into the individual bodies of English citizens and the national body of English society. Lorenzo Servitje notes that cholera, in particular, was linked to the understanding of disease as enemy (34). Throughout Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), the Count exists as a physical manifestation of this diseased, foreign enemy threatening the safety and civilization of England. Between 1831 and 1866, cholera epidemics in England resulted in the deaths of over a hundred thousand men, women, and children in three waves of contagion (Underwood 173), which served to emphasize and reinforce racial understandings of the disease

Where “dead people lay like saints”: Gothic Modernism in Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God

This paper examines how Cormac McCarthy uses Gothic and Modernist modes in Child of God, a novel primarily known for its place in the Southern Gothic genre. In Gothic Modernism, writers blur traditional literary techniques—in the form of Gothic tropes or stylistic choices such as the framing narrative, unsettling landscapes, or depictions of madness—into Modernist techniques, using experimentation to evoke alienation or engage in social critique. I argue that Child of God, though published in 1973, is a Gothic Modernist text due to McCarthy’s stylistics, aesthetics, themes, and tropes. By looking at the novel through the lens of Gothic  modernism, we better understand McCarthy’s reasoning, influences, and methodology for telling the story of Lester Ballard. For example, McCarthy depicts the grotesque, death, and decay in eerie settings suggesting isolation, alienation, disillusionment, and individualism, layering the novel with nuance and experimentation. By bridging gaps between genres, eras, and aesthetics, McCarthy challenges readers’ expectations of the novel form and how we are complicit in our communities. I use research from Gothic Modernist scholars such as John Riquelme and Charles Crow to support the argument that McCarthy, consciously or unconsciously, uses Gothic and  Modernist tropes in his stylistic approach to the novel