Ethical place-lessness upon
refugees violates human rights. The proceeds from my newest book on Spatializing Cultural Landscape to advocate human rights will be donated to
Women’s Refugee Commission to support children who have been separated from
families.
Introduction
Dr. Maryann P.
DiEdwardo is an American scholar, who shares her newest research, which
involves spatializing human rights through a civic values project initiated in
2016. The theoretical basis for this book and argument center upon her current
project from 2016 fall to 2018 spring to seek peace through defining,
researching, and practicing human rights, and civic values. Her book will present research focused on the cultural landscape of
specific literary works and associated activities to engage readers. Maryann P. DiEdwardo
advocates evidence-based change through service writing, volunteering at local
and regional as well as national community engagement events, to inspire
diversity, multiculturalism, tolerance, human rights and civic values. Service to local soup
kitchens, domestic abuse centers, delivery food for soup kitchen, caring for the sick,
befriending those in need, has been her mission. First, when we walk in and see the empty soup kitchen, at Trinity
Episcopal Church, Bethlehem, PA, we see a large space with tables and chairs.
But when the workers arrive and we begin to make
the meals, we join together to serve. In the same manner, we serve to meet in
small groups with colleagues from Universities to discuss inclusive teaching.
We serve our students. Community service gatherings strengthen us.
Dr. Maryann P. DiEdwardo identifies key images, values, beliefs, and
social structures that point toward a particular cultural movement. She
explains her own healing and transformative experiences based upon her reading
and teaching of the works of Margaret Atwood, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larson, Flannery
O'Connor, Toni Morrison, and Stephanie Powell Watts to signify that the themes
of trauma have a lasting effect. Maryann studies letters and archival evidence
to acknowledge space as a methodology to teach peace. In fact, the study of
peace defines the human experience.
She has been creating presentations and teaching peace through
spatializing the study of emigration, migration, immigration, and diasporas.
Her newest two books have been presented for conferences from 2003 to the
present. In 2018 College English Association St. Petersburg Conference,
April 5, 6, 7 & 8. Original Paper Presentation. “Thomas Merton
Essays”. She was awarded a Professional
Achievement Award by the College English Association at this conference.
At the Northeast
Modern Language Association Convention 2018, she presented a paper entitled
“Writing Trauma”. In 2017, she
presented two original papers. “Lonely
Island of the Self in Feminine Practice in Writing” was presented at the
College English Association Conference. Hilton Head, SC. and “Metacognition”
for Northeast MLA 2017. Baltimore, MD. Next, in 2016 at a Recap
Education and Technology Conference in West Chester, PA, she presented “Blog
and Wiki Journaling and E-Portfolios about Themes of Nature and Place Memory to
Engage Student Voices”
In 2016, for the College English
Association Conference, Denver, CO. she presented her paper, “Dystopian Architecture in Ready Player One:
Semiotic Praxis”. She was the recipient of the Karen Lentz Award for a
Presentation by Contingent Faculty at the CEA Conference.
In 2016, at the Northeast Modern
Language Association Convention. Hartford, Conn. Maryann was Chair for Women
and Gender Studies Panel and presenter of study on the use of place as a
sign in “Black Death” by Zora Neale Hurston and “Unassigned Territory” by
Stephanie Powell Watts. Her panel initiative was published into a
contributed volume by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2016. Maryann was editor
and contributor of seven chapters. Also, she was a roundtable speaker for
“Technology and Innovative Pedagogical Frameworks”.
“Zombie
Archetypes Enliven Creative Non-Fiction Writers and Poets” was presented by
Maryann for NeMLA Conference, 2015,Toronto. She was also presenter for a
roundtable where she gave a paper based on her Ebook entitled Adjunct
Life.“Poetics, Zora Neale Hurston and Chinua Achebe” was her paper for the
College English Association, 2015. She was presenter. She was also moderator
for a panel on Creative Writing, in Indianapolis.
Maryann was invited to present for Online Lecturer Education. Open Simulator.
November 9, 2014. Sunday. “Metacognition, Prezi, Research, and the 21stCentury
Scholar”. http://conference.opensimulator.org/2014/program/research-education/
For NeMLA,
in 2014, she presented at the 45th
Annual Convention with her paper entitled “The Short Story in the African
American Literary Tradition and Authentic Assessment”. She presented “The
Nature of Gender Study” for the College English Association in Savannah,
Georgia, 2013. Lilly Conference, Washington D.C. she presented “The Fourth R”,
her book about original frameworks that connect cultures. PCEA in Scranton, PA April, 2012 she gave her
paper on “Creative Journaling As the Basis for Writing the Short Story and
Methodology for Creating Paradigms for Frameworks in Writing Classes in the
University Setting for Traditional and Distance Students.”
Maryann studies letters and archival
evidence to acknowledge space as a methodology to practice human rights and
civic values. In fact, the study of human rights and civic values define the
human experience. She applies the conceptual frameworks of the metaphysics of
presence (deconstruction) and meta-ethics (ethos). She seeks to resolve
questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, virtue
and vice, and justice and crime. Imagination, individualized by each writer,
captivates us.
The
Civic Values Project
Reflection on the study
of literature and space is centered on a
remembrance of a marvelous days of writing. The basic formula includes wisdom
of Plato’s Phaedo as a backdrop to
our efforts to write. Also, thoughts on literacy also apply to knowledge of
mechanisms that form writing goals. Writing is a human right. Archives are primary
sources. Letters, excerpts of evidence, survive to share moments of humanity. Journals
share inner life. Art is essential as a space to view human creative instinct
as well as short fiction and novels. Space (study of diversity,
understanding global perspective, cultural awareness of diverse peoples through
analytical strategies, close reading, the analysis of figurative language, and
the comprehension of narrative structure)
My goals are a case study about my scholarship in writing
with the specific curriculum based on a definition of civil rights and civic
action plan with 1) civic voice 2) humility 3) commitment to positive growth 4)
understanding capacity, streamlining 5) collaboration and diversity with a
focus on writing as action and recording the writing in a book about the
significance of the writing of place and space. A civic writing project
includes short stories and novel by Watts, drafting definitions of civic values
and civil rights, volunteering, reflecting, establishing community, dialogue
approaches, global engagement, active learning with a scholarly approach, an inherent
study of Semantics. She demonstrates
life story writing, journaling, and formal study of civic values in a setting
to promote and sustain peace. The study emulates the goals of our
concentrations on human rights and social justice in our department of English.
With our civic voices, we humbly commit to positive growth in the study of the
novel. Paramount to the study of civic values is the development of
self-efficacy and personal agency. Our semester focuses on a practice of four
projects in the form of evaluative essay argumentative structure, to select,
honor, and practice our civic values.
Stephanie Powell Watts, a Pushcart Prize Winner, is the main theme. I
also teach Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s
Tale.
Audience
Target audience includes scholars of Spatiality, (1)Nella Larsen, Gender
Studies, African American Studies, Women’s Literature, Human Rights and Civic
Values, Service Writing, and in particular, cultural poetics, cultural
criticism, folklore, semiotics, semantics, Caribbean Studies, (2)Zora Neale
Hurston, graduate students, and professional researchers and writers. Other
areas include but are not limited to (3)Willa Cather Studies, Flannery
(4)O’Connor Scholarship to inspire a renewed interest in her works as a way to
teach civic values and human rights; (5)Margaret Atwood and the current trend
in scholarship about her works as beacons for Human Rights including her recent
lecture for community in the Lehigh Valley, PA; (6)Stephanie Powell Watts;
(7)Toni Morrison; slavery; domestic abuse; tolerance; interreligious studies;
and non-violence as well as mindfulness.
Tolerance,
diversity, understanding global perspective, cultural awareness of diverse
peoples through analytical strategies, close reading, the analysis of
figurative language, and the comprehension of narrative structure define Spatializing
Cultural Landscape to Advocate Human Rights. A civic
writing project includes rhetorical analysis and creative non-fiction, drafting
definitions of civic values and civil rights, volunteering, reflecting,
establishing community, dialogue approaches, global engagement, active learning
with a scholarly approach, an inherent study of Semantics. Lehigh University English 011 Fall 2017, I
demonstrate life story writing, journaling, and formal study of civic values in
a setting to promote and sustain peace. The study emulates the goals of our
concentrations on human rights and social justice. With a civic voice, I humbly
commit to positive growth in the study of the writing. Paramount to the study
of civic values is the development of self-efficacy and personal agency. I
continue to present community engagement projects.
I
investigate the useful social functionality of literature as well as
theoretical processes of the literary scholar, regarding the power of writing
for cultural change.
Spatializing cultural
landscapes advocates human rights through the lens of critical hermeneutics which
offers an approach that is very different from traditional hermeneutic
approaches. Critical hermeneutics takes nothing for granted. In fact, it is the
taken for granted nature of understanding that is the object of study and, in
particular, where that knowledge comes from. Hermeneutics stops at the point of
saying that knowledge and understanding is historically and socially bound.
Critical hermeneutics continues where traditional hermeneutics leaves off, by
embarking on an examination of those social and historical conditions which
make understanding possible. I address social functionality of literature as
well as theoretical processes of the literary scholar. Further, I advocate evidence-based
change through service writing, volunteering at local and regional as well as
national community engagement events, to inspire diversity, multiculturalism,
tolerance, human rights, and civic values. As a scholar, I
presented a project on Thomas Merton and writing as action for Trinity
Episcopal Church Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on September 10, 2017. Driven by my
research about the significance of writing of Merton about O’Connor as a civil
rights thinker. I argued the purpose of writing as action. At a Community
Lecture series for a lecture series called SAGE at Penn State University at the
Penn State Lehigh Valley campus, I shared latest research on “Tolerance” on
December 1, and 2017 with a slide show and lecture to signify the action of
researching information about civic values.
I presented a paper for the CEA College English Association Conference
on April 7, 2018 a prose elegy “Flannery O’Conner: A Prose Elegy” from Thomas
Merton’s 1966 collection of contemplative essays Raids on the Unspeakable.
The collection was first published in 1960 and subsequently published in 1961,
1964, 1965, and 1966. The text includes a Prologue, fourteen essays, and
original art by Merton. His words honor the late writer Flannery O’Conner.
In
fact, the study of peace defines space to me.
Previous research and background for this book concern Maryann’s recent
publication as editor and contributor of the book entitled, American Women
Writers, Poetics, and the Nature of Gender Study. Published in 2016 by
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, I
investigate pedagogical practices in American women’s literature rooted
in the foundation of feminine myth. I study the processes of authors who create
voices of characters from the past. Her projects study language, to focus on
metaphorical grammatical constructions, unique and specific with form and
function. I interpret works to capture the essence of style, as well as the
rhetorical function of the basic structures of grammar, diction, and syntax in
a literary work as message and meaning.
My
class fuses into a learning community for reflection, discovery, and peer
editing for student motivate on and success. I actively engage students. Through the paradigm of active
learning, we engage in reading
key articles by scholars in the field in blogs, wikis, web sites, books,
pamphlets, newsletters, or journals or other material demonstrating techniques of
close reading in order to explicate a text with terms of the literary scholar
that apply to writing across the curriculum
and
differentiating among major literary genres to converse, to analyze, and to use
cultural heritage.
Students possess qualities of memory
based upon human every day experiences similar to those experiences within
literary works they read. I play pod casts of sample student essays that show
how students recall events or conditions based upon the relationship of reading
to memory. One of my students recalls her own beliefs in mercy killing
and relates her heritage based upon family and cultural beliefs in the right to
life. Students use life story writing next to recount experiences
that may help them find thesis. We write for a global multiethnic and ageless
audience. Stories can indeed reach all readers. To write, we engage memories of
readings, life experiences and imagination. Accordingly, these three patterns
compose voice on the written page. But, writing is an essential like skill
needed for human dignity.
Social justice as a paradigm for
the English classroom resounds with tension and resolution dependent upon the
silent resilience of the individual. Mythological Literary Criticism and Film
Theory as a lens into archetypes through analysis of personal essays on
identity by James Baldwin, Bernard Cooper, Eric Liu, N. Scott Momaday, Brent
Staples compared to the themes of masculinity the Films Finding Forester, In
America, The Avengers and the popular
DVD series Freaks and Geeks and The
Twilight Series reveals visions of the human condition. In Finding Forester, Jamal, African
American, is urban youth, with serious issues, the absence of his father.
Furthermore, Jamal’s struggles compare to the comic book figure Thor. Based on
Nordic legends, Thor has also is without his father’s full presence (father is
in a coma). Both are archetypes who live out the masculine identity through
story and emotions. In America also explores the relationship between a male
aids patient who is also black to Irish immigrants with striking mythological
and archetypical consequences. Pop culture themes in DVD series Freaks and Geeks and The Twilight Series also portray
masculinity in the archetypical universes created by current imaginative
writers. Freaks and Geeks explores
males weaker than the female protagonist. The
Twilight Series present masculinity of the different eras to show
domination of the feminine as opposed to the masculine.
