
Ruth SpackBrandeis University
Ruth Spack
Doctor of Philosophy
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44
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Publications (44)
American Indian Education: Counternarratives in Racism, Struggle, and the Law is the inaugural volume in Routledge’s series on critical race theory in education. Matthew Fletcher, a law professor, examines the legal underpinnings of contemporary American Indian education by telling stories about a fictional Michigan tribe, “loosely based” on his ow...
In Learning to Write “Indian” Amelia Katanski approaches the subject of boarding schools from the perspective of literary and cultural criticism. Using Paul Kroskrity’s model of the repertoire of identity, she explores the complexity of self-representation in both turn-of-the-century and contemporary narratives. Katanski makes a significant contrib...
As they trace the shifts in United States government Indian policy over the course of a century, K. Tsianina Lomawaima and Teresa L. McCarty develop a theoretical framework they label "the safety zone" as a way to explain the continuing conflict over the issue of cultural difference in educational settings. Drawing on extensive archival material, t...
In early 1900, Richard Henry Pratt, superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, invited Zitkala-Sa to travel as a violin soloist with the Carlisle Indian School Band on their tour of the northeastern United States. He also asked her to recite a scene from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's narrative poem, The Song of Hiawatha...
Language Lessons is a short story anthology that offers valuable insight into the inner lives of language learners. A wide variety of linguistic backgrounds is represented in the collection, and the stories examine language learning issues over a broad range of time, highlighting cultural, political, and social realities that can shape the language...
Guidelines: A Cross-Cultural Reading/Writing Text, third edition, is designed for composition courses that include multilingual learners. In Guidelines, students are challenged to think critically about what they read and to develop analytical and argumentative strategies that enable them to present and support ideas. In the process, students come...
Until Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938) published "Impressions of an Indian Childhood" in the Atlantic Monthly in 1900 and Old Indian Legends in 1901, most of the printed knowledge available to Euroamerican readers about the lives of Dakota people was transmitted by Euroamerican ethnologists. The ethnologists' work had significant limitations, for they were o...
This article examines history writing on American Indian education to show its movement from a focus on federal policy to studies that incorporate Native people’s perspectives. The article discusses the benefits and challenges of using oral histories, interviews, and autobiographies for historical analysis and points to the value of a multi-voiced,...
Studies in American Indian Literatures 16.1 (2004) 90-93
As a result of his own experience as a student and teacher, Luther Standing Bear understood that enforced English-only education in turn-of-the-century American Indian schools was robbing Native communities of their linguistic and cultural heritage. He also understood that language preservati...
As college classrooms have become more linguistically diverse, the work of ESOL professionals has expanded to include research on the experiences of multilingual learners not only in ESOL courses but also in courses across the curriculum. At the same time that ESOL professionals are trying to understand the academic challenges that learners face be...
Legacy 20.1&2 (2003) 194-195
In her study of the role of women in U.S. photojournalism at the turn of the twentieth century, Laura Wexler enacts a feminist criticism that moves beyond a mere valuing of women's contributions to a "nonessentialist theory of gender" (9). Wexler acknowledges the achievements of white middle-class women whose photograph...
This remarkable study sheds new light on American Indian mission, reservation, and boarding school experiences by examining the implementation of English-language instruction and its effects on Native students. A federally mandated system of English-only instruction played a significant role in dislocating Native people from their traditional ways...
Enriching ESOL Pedagogy: Readings and Activities for Engagement, Reflection, and Inquiry is a collection of thought-provoking articles and activities designed to engage practicing and prospective ESOL teachers in an ongoing process of reflecting on, critically examining, and investigating theory and practice. Its twofold purpose is to provide a the...
Negotiating Academic Literacies: Teaching and Learning Across Languages and Cultures is a cross-over volume in the literature between first and second language/literacy. This anthology of articles brings together different voices from a range of publications and fields and unites them in pursuit of an understanding of how academic ways of knowing a...
Reacts to Ruth Spack's commentary "The Rhetorical Construction of Multilingual Students." Each reaction is followed by a response from the author. (Author/VWL)
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lesley College, 1998. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 299-318).
Guidelines: A Cross-Cultural Reading/Writing Text, second edition, integrates classic and contemporary readings with essay assignments that emphasize the connection between reading and writing. Students are challenged to think critically about what they read and to develop analytical and argumentative skills that enable them to present and support...
The TESOL Quarterly invites commentary on current trends or practices in the TESOL profession. It also welcomes responses or rebuttals to any articles or remarks published here in The Forum or elsewhere in the Quarterly.
This study examines the reading and writing strategies of one student, Yuko, over a 3-year period and traces the process she went through to acquire college-level academic literacy in English, her second language. Multiple data sources included interviews with the student and two of her political science professors, classroom observations, and text...
Examines testimonies of teachers to determine how and by whom a teacher/scholar’s authority is defined in the teaching of texts of different cultures. Looks at how teachers make themselves invisible and discusses some of the ways in which pedagogy and scholarship demand or allow for this (in)visibility through concealment or disclosure of personal...
The International Story is an anthology with guidelines for reading and writing about fiction.
The International Story features a generous selection of thought-provoking classic and contemporary short stories from many different countries. Unique to this text is an extensive section that takes students step-by-step through writing an essay that in...
Through naturally sequenced, culturally relevant reading selections and writing assignments, Guidelines: A Cross-Cultural Reading/Writing Text addresses the academic needs of students who can benefit from carefully structured support as they undertake tasks requiring increasingly complex analytical and critical thought. Building on language resourc...
In the interest of finding ways to help their students succeed in university studies, college-level L2 writing researchers and teachers have endeavored for years to define the nature of academic writing tasks. The effort to determine what academic writing is and what ESL students need to know in order to produce it has led to the development of a n...
For a long time, literature, which once played a prominent role in language study, has been excluded from both ESL programs and first language composition programs whose central aim is the achievement of linguistic proficiency. In recent years, however, many educators in both fields have again acknowledged the academic, intellectual, cultural, and...
The recent finding by composition researchers and teachers that the composing process can be taught as an intellectual and cognitive activity has led to a renewed interest in the ancient art of invention and the view that invention can be practiced as systematic procedures of discovery, the primary purpose of which is to generate ideas about a subj...
Recently, first language composition researchers have shown that by using a traditional composition teaching method which focuses on the form and correctness of a finished product, teachers ask students to produce writing which does not reflect the actual writing process. Findings indicate that most school-sponsored writing does not involve the sel...