This essay examines a small selection of Swedish newsreel and documentary short films, primarily travelogues, produced shortly before and after the second world war. The general aim is to expose differences in the representation of “The Other” and the “ethnic Swede” by applying a critical discourse analysis. The purpose is to illuminate how the material positions the latter as the norm and then contextualize this with xenophobic currents that had developed up until the middle of the twentieth century. Theoretical and methodological framework is drawn from the field of cultural studies as well as the nonfiction film. The analysis shows that the Swedish newsreel and travelogue indeed, to a high degree, possessed these currents even though part of them, mainly the anti-Semitic ideas, seems to relapse after the Holocaust.

[First paragraph of Preface] I set out to write an essay three years ago that started with the line “I always find God in the bathroom—don’t ask me why,” which is entirely true and says so much while explaining so little. Within a page and a half I briefly introduced a scene, a memory,where I had sequestered myself in a toilet stall in the bathroom on my sorority’s dorm floor at Eastern Kentucky University. I mentioned the scenario—I was hiding from a serial rapist who, for some reason, decided I’d be a good target—in just a few paragraphs and moved on as if it had the paltry significance of last week’s soggy newspaper lying under the dog bowl. After all, I only wrote it because it was a required exercise in my first graduate writing class; I was going to write my thesis in fiction.

ABSTRACT LINKS AND DISCONNECTS BETWEEN THIRD GRADE TEACHERS’ BELIEFS, KNOWLEDGE, AND PRACTICES REGARDING NONFICTION READING COMPREHENSION INSTRUCTION FOR STRUGGLING READERS by Nicole P. Maxwell In the current era of accountability, U. S. teachers face strict demands from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to ensure that all students’ reading achievement meets the requirements of their respective grade levels (Coburn, Pearson, & Woulfin, 2011). These demands are especially stressful when teachers have students who struggle with reading. Regrettably, many students grapple with reading difficulties, particularly with comprehending fiction and nonfiction texts (Allington, 2011). The purpose of this study was to examine the beliefs and understandings three third grade teachers held concerning nonfiction reading comprehension instruction for struggling readers and how these beliefs and knowledge influenced their pedagogical practices. This qualitative, interpretive case study examined their beliefs using the theoretical lenses of epistemology (Crotty, 2007; Cunningham & Fitzgerald, 1996; Dillon, O’Brien, & Heilman, 2004; Magrini, 2009), social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978), transactional theory of reading (Rosenblatt, 1994), and the sociocognitive interactive model of reading (Ruddell & Unrau, 2004). The following research questions guided this inquiry: (1) How do third grade teachers support struggling readers when navigating nonfiction texts? (2) What are these third grade teachers’ beliefs and understandings about struggling readers? (3) How do these beliefs influence the third grade teachers’ pedagogical practices with struggling readers? Data collection lasted for five months and involved interviews, classroom observations, teacher debriefs, and the collection of artifacts, including DeFord’s (1985) Theoretical Orientation to Reading Profile (TORP). Data analysis was conducted using the constant comparative approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The findings in this study revealed links and disconnects between the accommodations teachers believed their struggling readers needed and what they actually provided their struggling readers. These teachers faced pressures of time constraints and a focus on testing, which affected their pedagogical practices. Furthermore, they demonstrated a reliance on content area textbooks and dissatisfaction with the accessibility of nonfiction materials. These findings highlight the need for pre-service and in-service teachers to have access to quality nonfiction materials to use in the classroom and instruction on how to provide nonfiction comprehension instruction to their struggling readers.

Confessions of an American Ginseng Addict uses the Lazy Branch Holler in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky as a setting for a creative nonfiction work, which uses history, confession, remembrances, and digressions to tell the story of a man dealing with loss, mental health issues, environmental sustainability, and the power of ginseng. In the style of Desert Solitaire and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the narrative is a discursive work of raw unadulterated gonzo writing.

This project presents the results of a case study of creative nonfiction (CNF) pedagogical practices in undergraduate composition studies and creative writing courses at The University of Arizona, exploring how those who teach CNF at this top-ranked school for the study of the genre are shaping knowledge about it. This project analyzes within a rhetorical framework the various subject positions CNF teachers assume in relation to their writing and teaching as well as the teaching methodologies they utilize. I do this to articulate a theory of CNF pedagogy for the twenty-first century, one that represents the merging of individualist and public intellectual ideologies that I have observed in teacher interviews, course documents, and pedagogical publications about the genre. For students new to the genre, so much depends on how CNF is first introduced through class discussion, representative assigned prose models, and invention activities when it comes to creating knowledge about exactly what contemporary CNF is/can be and how writers might best generate prose that fits the genre's wide-ranging conventions in form, content, and rhetorical situation. Understanding how and why instructors promote certain ideologies in relation to CNF becomes increasingly important as this mode of personally situated, fact-based, narrative-privileging, literarily stylized discourse continues to gain popularity within and beyond the academy.

This thesis uses literature, film, satire, poetry, and news rhetoric to explore the evolving face of gender in today’s society. It is framed by interviews with two women who are residents of the senior living community Pilgrim Place. Each interview brings up themes and feminist concerns that are explored in the essay that follows it. In putting together this work I interviewed the two Pilgrim Place women, Teresa and Anne Marie, and discussed with them their concerns about contemporary feminism and feminist activism differences between our generations. These concerns are distilled into a series of essays that compare themes and concerns shared by the two women with a work of literature or media that compliments and complicates relevant issues. Half of the interviews included are verbatim transcripts of what was said, the other half are works of oral historical fiction based on interviews and subsequent research into the historical events in question. This thesis engages with the question of who owns a movement and whether the recognition of (or refusal to recognize) a history does damage to the movement. This thesis brings into conversation contemporary and modern media to illustrate the changing world of feminism in a way that celebrates the past and anticipates the future.

This is a collection of creative essays containing one person’s world view and experiences – factual and fiction. The intended purpose is not to make the reader think, act, or change any of his beliefs, it is simply meant to entertain him in a world that often offers few risk-free entertainments. It is hoped that the reader will be just as ignorant when he turns the last page as he was when he turned the first. Even Adam with his wonderful garden, or Aladin and his magic lamp, didn’t offer as much. I am offering reading without the danger of learning, possibly a first for literature; it is the scientific equivalent of light without heat.

This creative project is a representation of the genre of journalism that delves deeper into the lives of ordinary people. The story contained in this creative project represents a literary journalistic account of a woman's life of abuse and neglect. Narrative techniques such as scenes, digression, characterization, and vivid description are utilized to vividly chronicle a tale that strives to be both entertaining and enlightening. / Department of Journalism

This exegesis examines how a writer can effectively negotiate the relationship between author, character, fact and truth, in a work of Creative Nonfiction. It was found that individual truths, in a work of Creative Nonfiction, are not necessarily universal truths due to individual, cultural, historical and religious circumstances. What was also identified, through the examination of published Creative Nonfiction, is a necessity to ensure there are clear demarcation lines between authorial truth and fiction. The Creative Nonfiction works examined, which established this framework for the reader, ensured an ethical relationship between author and audience. These strategies and frameworks were then applied to my own Creative Nonfiction.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study attempts to explore aspects of the textual representation of Magadien Wentzel, the main character of The Number, a work of literary journalism by Jonny Steinberg. It sets out to respond to the following two central research questions: Firstly, what narrative decisions does Jonny Steinberg make in the text of The Number to convey aspects of the reality he experienced in relation to his main character, Magadien Wentzel; and secondly, what effect do these decisions have on the reader? As literary journalism is a genre with fluid boundaries and therefore various definitions, the thesis first presents the challenge of definition and lays out a broad history of the genre in its attempt to situate The Number as a work of social documentary and of literary journalism in South Africa. Taking realism as its theoretical point of departure, this study aligns itself with the view that there exists an independent, extra-textual real-world and that knowledge of this real-world can be produced and shared. In doing so, realism presents itself as a literary form associated with art that cannot turn away from harsh aspects of human existence – a characteristic mirrored by Steinberg’s (and thus his character’s) major themes. By means of a textual analysis which seeks to interpret aspects of Steinberg’s narrative decisions in his text, this study uses tools of literary realism, namely the empirical effect and the character effect, in its exploration. This research, conducted within the qualitative research paradigm, is informed in particular by the assumption that there exists an implicit communicative contract between author and reader which leads to narrative trust, seen as an indispensable quality to the non-fictional reading experience. In the case of Steinberg and The Number, this study finds that the writer’s representation of a particular reality relies to an important degree on the level of trust he is able to inspire in a reader. This is pertinent because, being factual, non-fiction demands that a reader not only imagine a world other than their own, but that they believe it too. One of the ways in which Steinberg enables a reader to trust his representation of his particular reality is by overtly placing his literary and authorial concerns alongside his reportage of Magadien Wentzel, the main character of The Number. This distinctive narrative approach results in a modification of the reader’s traditional contract with the writer, forged by the text between them, to one in which the text unites the reader with both Steinberg as narrator and Magadien Wentzel as character. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie poog om aspekte van die tekstuele voorstelling van Magadien Wentzel, die hoofkarakter in The Number, 'n werk van literêre joernalistiek deur Jonny Steinberg, te verken. Dit probeer om die volgende twee sentrale navorsingsvrae te beantwoord: Eerstens, watter narratiewe besluite neem Jonny Steinberg in die teks van The Number om aspekte van die werklikheid wat hy ervaar het met betrekking tot sy hoofkarakter, Magadien Wentzel, oor te dra, en tweedens, watter effek het dit op die leser? Aangesien literêre joernalistiek 'n genre is met vloeibare grense en daarom verskeie definisies, probeer die tesis eerstens die uitdaging van definisie te beantwoord. Daarmee lê dit ook 'n breë basis van die geskiedenis van die genre in sy poging om The Number te situeer as 'n sosiale dokumentêr en as literêre joernalistiek in Suid-Afrika. Met realisme as teoretiese vertrekpunt, vereenselwig hierdie studie hom daarmee dat 'n onafhanklike, ekstra-tekstuele regte wêreld bestaan, en dat kennis van dié “regte wêreld” geskep en gedeel kan word. So representeer realisme hom as 'n literêre vorm wat verband hou met die kunste, en wat sigself nie kan afwend van die harde aspekte van die menslike bestaan nie – 'n kenmerk wat deur Steinberg se hooftemas – en daarom ook dié van sy hoofkarakter – weerspieël word. Deur middel van 'n tekstuele analise wat poog om aspekte van Steinberg se narratiewe besluite in sy teks te interpreteer, gebruik hierdie studie aspekte van literêre realisme, naamlik die empiriese effek en die karakter-effek, in sy ondersoek. Hierdie navorsing, wat binne die kwalitatiewe navorsingsparadigma uitgevoer is, is veral geïnformeer deur die aanname dat daar 'n implisiete kommunikatiewe kontrak tussen die skrywer en die leser bestaan wat lei tot narratiewe vertroue, gesien as 'n onmisbare element van die nie-fiksie-leeservaring. In die geval van Steinberg en The Number het hierdie studie bevind dat die skrywer se voorstelling van 'n bepaalde werklikheid tot 'n belangrike mate berus op die vlak van vertroue wat hy by die leser genereer. Dit is belangrik, want synde feitelik, vereis nie-fiksie dat 'n leser nie net 'n wêreld anders as hul eie voorstel nie, maar dat hulle ook daarin kan glo. Een van die maniere waarop Steinberg 'n leser in staat stel om sy voorstelling van sy besondere werklikheid te vertrou, is deur die plasing van sy literêre en outeursbesorgdheid direk langs sy reportage van Magadien Wentzel, die hoofkarakter in The Number. Hierdie unieke narratiewe aanslag het ’n modifikasie van die leser se tradisionele kontrak met die skrywer tot gevolg, ’n kontrak wat gewoonlik deur die teks tussen hulle gesmee is, en wat verander in een waarin die teks die leser met beide Steinberg as verteller en Magadien Wentzel as karakter verenig het.