Essay Features Research Articles

ChatGPT versus human essayists: an exploration of the impact of artificial intelligence for authorship and academic integrity in the humanities

Generative AI has prompted educators to reevaluate traditional teaching and assessment methods. This study examines AI’s ability to write essays analysing Old English poetry; human markers assessed and attempted to distinguish them from authentic analyses of poetry by first-year undergraduate students in English at the University of Oxford. Using the standard UK University grading system, AI-written essays averaged a score of 60.46, whilst human essays achieved 63.57, a margin of difference not statistically significant (p = 0.10). Notably, student submissions applied a nuanced understanding of cultural context and secondary criticism to their close reading, while AI essays often described rather than analysed, lacking depth in the evaluation of poetic features, and sometimes failing to properly recognise key aspects of passages. Distinguishing features of human essays included detailed and sustained analysis of poetic style, as well as spelling errors and lack of structural cohesion. AI essays, on the other hand, exhibited a more formal structure and tone but sometimes fell short in incisive critique of poetic form and effect. Human markers correctly identified the origin of essays 79.41% of the time. Additionally, we compare three purported AI detectors, finding that the best, ‘Quillbot’, correctly identified the origin of essays 95.59% of the time. However, given the high threshold for academic misconduct, conclusively determining origin remains challenging. The research also highlights the potential benefits of generative AI’s ability to advise on structuring essays and suggesting avenues for research. We advocate for transparency regarding AI’s capabilities and limitations, and this study underscores the importance of human critical engagement in teaching and learning in Higher Education. As AI’s proficiency grows, educators must reevaluate what authentic assessment is, and consider implementing dynamic, holistic methods to ensure academic integrity.

Narrating Shared Futures

This visual essay features students’ projects from the MSc2 design studio ‘Transdiciplinary Encounters: Narrating Shared Futures’ offered at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture in Spring of 2022, which served as an inspiration for this issue of Footprint. Designed and taught by the issue editors, Aleksandar Staničić and Angeliki Sioli, the course combined cultural heritage and literary narratives to ask students: How can places of memory be rethought using literary techniques, so that they provide the ground for new meanings to emerge and get shared across different cultures? Seven visionary architectural projects featured in this essay, offered their responses to this pertinent question that is fundamental for narrating, imagining and, ultimately, creating shared futures.

Del insomnio zamorano. Lo que no se platica, pero que la noche permite mostrar.

This photo essay features moments captured during late-night walks in Zamora, Michoacán, between 2020 and 2023, the years in which the city had among the highest murder and disappearance rates in the world. It explores the use of home altars and cenotaphs in the face of the silence surrounding these crimes in public expressions. Following the lead of Zamorano (2022), Reyero (2007), and others, the images were handed out at random, generating an opportunity for people to discuss violence, mourning, fear, and the stigma that hangs over families who have lost relatives. The most moving part of the text—responses sent in anonymously by people who had seen these photographs—is shared in the captions.

“Loving Our Own Bones”: Intimate and Life Affirming Work

Julia Watts-Belser offers readers a gift in her outstanding book. She invites us to notice a liberative and life-giving epistemological frame, one that calls us all into being with ourselves that does not dismiss our bodies and selves but that beckons us towards attention and appreciation, honest looking, and compassionate care of who we really are, how we are diversely and variably made, and how we make our way in this world. This brief essay features two questions: What does it mean to know through a lens of subversive knowledge? And. How ought we read and investigate new possibilities (of knowing) that emerge from disability wisdom?

Are Written Syntax Features Related to Writing Quality? An Examination of Spanish and English Compositions by Bilingual Children.

There is limited research on the writing of young Spanish-English bilinguals and their writing in both languages. In the current study, we addressed whether written syntax features differed by language (English and Spanish) and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program (dual or English immersion). We also examined whether Spanish and English syntax features were related cross-linguistically and related to writing quality within languages and whether these relations to writing quality were moderated by grade level, English learner status, and instructional program. We examined written syntax features of Spanish and English essays by simultaneous and emergent bilinguals in Grades 1, 2, and 3 in either Spanish-English dual immersion or English immersion instruction in the United States (N = 278). Essays were scored for quality and evaluated for mean length of T-units, number of verbs, number of noun agreement words, and number of subject agreement words accurately conjugated. Written syntax features significantly differed by language and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program. Grades 2 and 3 wrote longer utterances, more verbs, and greater noun agreement accuracy than Grade 1. Syntax features were related to writing quality within languages, but Spanish relations were weaker for English learners than non-English learners and for dual immersion students than English immersion students. Our findings suggest written syntax features may be useful for evaluation of English-Spanish simultaneous and emergent bilinguals' writing. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25927366.

Disability in the Civil War Era

Abstract: This essay features a discussion among several scholars of disability in the Civil War era on the major themes and issues within this small field. The panelists, including both historians and literature scholars, reflect the interdisciplinary nature of disability studies and make the case for why disability analysis is critical to understanding of the Civil War era. Disability, they argue, enriches our studies of slavery and freedom, military service, federal power and bureaucracy, the home front and veteranhood. The panelists also consider paths for future research, such as increasing our use of material history and exploring disabled lives during Reconstruction.

»Der Aufsatz […] war gar nicht so ›sexy‹ wie das Bild.«

TThe present essay features Das Magazin, a popular East German monthly magazine that appeared in the GDR for the first time in 1954. The author analyzes the photographic depiction of women in issues of the 1950s. This analysis starts with the magazine’s prominent and well-researched nude photographs, but later focuses on other images of female bodies, i.e. in photo montages, to explore the different variations in which women were depicted in Das Magazin. A close examination of the images in question, their position and contextualization within Das Magazin allows for a look beyond the pages of the printed product and sheds light on the work of the layout artists. In doing so, the author argues that its creators revived certain visual strategies that had already been cultivated by the popular press in the interwar period and which were also existent beyond the boundaries of the GDR press. Thus, the notion of GDR magazines’ production practices can be enriched by transnational and historical perspectives.

Jewish Environmentalism in the United States: Achievements, Characteristics, and Challenges

Abstract Concern for the environment is recognizably present in contemporary Judaism, especially in the United States. Along with practitioners of other world religions, Jews have responded to the eco-crisis by reinterpreting canonic texts, articulating eco-theologies, and reenvisioning traditional Jewish rituals. Today there are Jewish environmental organizations and Jewish thinkers who inspire Jews to appreciate the agricultural roots of Judaism, cultivate an environmentally concerned lifestyle, green the practices of Jewish institutions, and advocate the ethics of creation care. Together these activities constitute a Jewish environmental sensibility that allows us to generalize about “Jewish environmentalism,” although it falls short of constituting a cohesive “environmental movement.” Focusing exclusively on Jewish environmentalism in the U.S., this essay features the academic discourse on Judaism and ecology, the official resolutions of Jewish denominations about environmental matters, and the main activities of Jewish environmental organizations. Judaism is a highly variegated religious tradition that speaks in many voices. Nonetheless, there are shared canonic texts, foundational beliefs, ethical values, and literary tropes that characterize a distinctive Judaic perspective. From that vantage point, development of the physical world is religiously permissible, but it must cohere with the ethical values and legal principles of Judaism. It is not surprising, therefore, that socially progressive Jewish environmentalists have been vocal critics of the extraction industries, transnational capitalism, and wasteful consumerism that have greatly contributed to the eco-crisis. Highlighting the biblical commandment to pursue justice (tzedek), some Jewish environmentalists have applied social justice to ecological matters and promoted the ideal of tikkun olam (“repair of the world”). The essay surveys the achievements of Jewish environmentalism and notes persistent challenges.

Роль Фрэнсиса Бэкона в становлении жанра философского эссе в Англии

This article aims to examine the problem of the formation of the philosophical essay in England, the specific features of early philosophical essays to analyze the information structure of the early philosophical essay, and determine the role of F. Bacon in the origin and development of this genre. The author of the study used structural, conceptual and contextual methods. The results of the study can be used in classes on the analysis of English-language texts of various genres at linguistic universities.

THE EFFICACY OF THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM METHOD IN IMPROVING DANCE SPORTS SKILLS AMONG TEENAGERS

This study aimed to determine how well the Flipped Classroom model improved dancing athletic skills at the Dalian Learning Center. With 30 respondents for the experimental group instructed to utilize the Flipped Classroom approach and 28 respondents for the control group, this quantitative research uses a quasi-experimental methodology. Pre-test, post-test, and checklist are the instruments that are employed. Pre- and post-test instruments were used to compare the performance of the experimental group and the control group in terms of essay writing. The checklist tool was used to examine the content processing elements of the pupils' essays. The content processing features of the students' essays were examined using the checklist tool. The Statistical Package for Social Science Software (SPSS) Version 23.0 was used to analyze the data that had been collected. T-test analysis was used to analyze the study's findings further. Compared to a mean score of 14.00 and a standard deviation of 3.620 for the control group, the experimental group's mean score was 20.64 with a standard deviation of 2.244, indicating better outcomes. Teachers can use the findings of this study to apply the Flipped Classroom Method better efficiently and methodically o various topics or student points.

Assessing the content quality of essays in content and language integrated learning: Exploring the construct from subject specialists’ perspectives

Assessing the content of learners’ compositions is a common practice in second language (L2) writing assessment. However, the construct definition of content in L2 writing assessment potentially underrepresents the target competence in content and language integrated learning (CLIL), which aims to foster not only L2 proficiency but also critical thinking skills and subject knowledge. This study aims to conceptualize the construct of content in CLIL by exploring subject specialists’ perspectives on essays’ content quality in a CLIL context. Eleven researchers of English as a lingua franca (ELF) rated the content quality of research-based argumentative essays on ELF submitted in a CLIL course and produced think-aloud protocols. This study explored some essay features that have not been considered relevant in language assessment but are essential in the CLIL context, including the accuracy of the content, presence and quality of research, and presence of elements required in academic essays. Furthermore, the findings of this study confirmed that the components of content often addressed in language assessment (e.g., elaboration and logicality) are pertinent to writing assessment in CLIL. The manner in which subject specialists construe the content quality of essays on their specialized discipline can deepen the current understanding of content in CLIL.

Maroon, Fiiman, Busikondeesama: A Play on Identity in Three Speech Acts

This essay features discussions with and among Suriname Maroons engaged in cultural work about the names they choose in self-reference. Maroon is just one choice of many; others include Fiiman (free person) and Busikondeesama (hinterland person). Each name differently configures their relationships to various people, places, and ideas across time and space. These reflections question and challenge what communicative work Maroon does in figuring and prioritizing specific components of a broader cultural and historical nexus. The authors deliberately center contemporary Suriname Maroons—not only as cultural stewards but also as individuals actively involved in theorizing Maroon legacies and futures.

Animal Histories of the Civil War Era ed. by Earl J. Hess

Reviewed by: Animal Histories of the Civil War Era ed. by Earl J. Hess Marcy S. Sacks (bio) Animal Histories of the Civil War Era. Edited by Earl J. Hess. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022. ISBN: 978-0807176917. 288 pp., cloth, $45.00. In his provocative contribution about the late nineteenth century sectional debate over the National Zoo, Daniel Vandersommers notes that laughter often erupted on the floor of the US House of Representatives when members considered whether to fund the proposed park. Animals, Vandersommers explains, “were not considered subjects worthy of discussion” and therefore provoked disparaging outbursts when they were mentioned in the chamber (235). Fortunately for us, historians are increasingly taking a different view of animals, as Earl J. Hess’s wonderful edited volume, Animal Histories of the Civil War, ably highlights. Indeed, the anthology answers the call that Vandersommers makes for scholars to “think about [animals] as parts of larger systems while we simultaneously consider them as individual beings” (236). The thirteen entries of this volume collectively do just that. Spanning a chronology from the antebellum era into the early twentieth century (though mostly focused on the Civil War period), the essays explore the importance of animals both as omnipresent living beings and as creatures instrumental in shaping the human experience. While Hess asserts that the “fundamental objective of the book is to raise the awareness of Civil War scholars to the presence of nonhuman animals in the story of the war,” the contributors valuably do far more than this, demonstrating how profoundly influenced humans are by other living beings (2). Many of the essays feature ways people exploit animals to fulfill myriad needs. Antebellum Southern whites relied on dogs and camels for their utility in buttressing white supremacy and cotton profits. Lorien Foote demonstrates the importance of bloodhounds to the creation of a carceral landscape that ensnared Black people within the system of slavery. And in telling a story about the introduction of camels to the American South in the decade prior to the Civil War, Michael Woods exposes proslavery advocates’ dreams of creating an expansive hemispheric empire. Humans’ dependence on animals uncovered vulnerabilities during the war, as some of the collection’s most valuable chapters highlight. Abraham Gibson’s work on warhorses makes the surprising connection between environmental conditions in the South and challenges to Confederate military capabilities. A dearth of high-nutrient pastureland in much of the Cotton Kingdom meant that many [End Page 92] Southerners imported horses from west of the Appalachians. As the war dragged on, the Confederacy found itself at a substantial equine disadvantage, made worse by the further degradation of forage land caused by the conflict itself. By 1865, Gibson tells us, “Grant had more horses than his opponent had soldiers” (94). This imbalance strategically benefitted the US army, helping to explain the war’s eventual outcome. And in perhaps the collection’s standout work, for the way it obligates us to reimagine numerous aspects of Southern ideology and the war, Jason Phillips analyzes hogs not only as an exploitable food source but for their connection to “slavery, western expansion, sectionalism, secession, Civil War, emancipation, memorialization, and Reconstruction” (135–36). Emblematic of cultural and economic differences between the North and South, hogs were inscribed with sectional symbolism. Expecting them to fend for themselves, Southerners released hogs onto the open commons. The booming population offered proof, Southerners insisted, of their society’s harmony and superiority. Northerners, however, eschewed the fierce independence represented by such reliance on the land and instead penned their animals. Trusting in the public and the government, they viewed their own livestock husbandry as demonstrative of Northern ingenuity and enterprise. These differences, Phillips informs us, had real-world consequences in some unexpected ways. The dependence on open commons in the South contributed to expansionist pressure—the root of the sectional conflict altogether. Not only were Southerners seeking more cotton land as they looked westward, but they also needed pastureland. And while the South boasted more swine per capita at the start of the war, the North raised fatter hogs and already had systems in place for packaging the meat. The United States was therefore more able...

Poetics and Axiology of S. D. Dovlatov as a Publicist (Based on the Material of Portrait Essays of the Tallinn Period of Creativity)

The popularity of Sergey Dovlatov's fiction is unconditional, but his journalistic legacy is a little–studied area. During the study of Sergey Dovlatov's publications published in 1972-1975 in "Soviet Estonia", we came to the conclusion that these texts should be considered not only from the point of view of their thematic and stylistic originality, but also from the perspective of the author's axiology. The article examines an important aspect of Sergey Dovlatov's work – the author's focus is not so much on the formation of new value categories, as on the actualization of existing ones, which presuppose the reader's return to the established generally accepted "norm". The object of the study is the portrait essays of the writer Sergei Dovlatov, published in the newspaper "Soviet Estonia" in the period from 1972 to 1975. The subject of the study is the poetic and axiological features of portrait essays of the Tallinn period. The article pays special attention to the headings "Man and profession" and "Your profession", within which Dovlatov's essays are often published. The content of these essays does not go beyond the ordinary materials of the party periodicals, but a detailed study of the texts allows us to identify some features inherent in all portrait essays of the author. The main conclusions of the article are to define a set of axiological dominants that can be traced in the texts of Sergey Dovlatov, a publicist. In his publications, the writer defines a number of universal values, which include the significance of human life, the possibility of presenting different points of view, empathy and complicity, as well as the harmonious existence of the ordinary and sublime.

Investigating the writing performance of educationally at-risk examinees using technology

This article demonstrates how recent advances in technology allow fine-grained analyses of candidate-produced essays, thus providing a deeper insight on writing performance. We examined how essay features, automatically extracted using natural language processing and keystroke logging techniques, can predict various performance measures using data from a large-scale and high-stakes assessment for awarding high-school equivalency diploma. The features that are the most predictive of writing proficiency and broader academic success were identified and interpreted. The suggested methodology promises to be practically useful because it has the potential to point to specific writing skills that are important for improving essay writing and academic performance for educationally at-risk adult populations like the one considered in this article.

Development of L2 disciplinary literacy: A multidimensional analysis

Bilingual education programmes have become popular worldwide in part because they are believed to facilitate second/foreign/additional language (L2) learning, often with English as the target L2. In such programmes, students learn content and L2 simultaneously, but a common difficulty they encounter is mastering disciplinary literacy in the L2. However, research exploring bilingual students' development of L2 disciplinary literacy remains scarce. Therefore, this paper analyses a corpus of biology examination essays produced by a stratified sample of students studying in English medium education (EMI) in Hong Kong (204 essays totalling 45,823 words) using Multidimensional Analysis Tagger (Nini, 2015). The multidimensional analysis shows that this sample generally produced texts containing features closely related to scientific exposition. This paper also compares the features of essays written by students at different levels of academic performance as measured by their examination scores. The results show that the essays produced by students with better scores were more similar to academic prose, consisted of denser and more abstract information and used more academic vocabulary, nominalisation, conjunctions, and passive voice. This study demonstrates a potential relationship between students' mastery of disciplinary literacy and their academic achievement, thereby having implications for pedagogy in bilingual education programmes.

IN MEMORIA ESSAYS IN THE WORKS OF V. DANILENKO

The article analyzes the genre features of the memorial essays as a separate type of essay. Emphasis is placed on the specifics of this work in comparison with the obituary and portrait essays while high lighting its place and role in modern writing. Some in memoria essays in the works of V. Danylenko, dedicated to N. Zborovska and Y. Gudz, have been specially studied. The role and specificity of a number of motives in these works, originality of titles, figurative characteristics, functions of details, polydiscursivity, etc. are emphasized. Conclusions are made about the inmemoria essayas a separate discursive practice, which arose as a result of a combination of several genres and discourses, endowed with special opportunities to create the image of the deceased and the image of the author at the same time.

ФИЛОСОФИЯЛЫК АСПЕКТИДЕ ЭССЕНИН ӨНҮГҮҮ ТАРЫХЫ

The article discusses the peculiarities of the emergence of the essay genre in world culture and philosophical aspects. The origin of the genre of essays and essays - a special form of thinking based on the construction of the essay. It was noted that in the process of understanding the world and man and his attitude to the world, philosophy and literature have a common goal, and theoretical philosophy or fiction is included in the essay as a genre of frontier literature that is not seen as a genre. Consideration of features of philosophizing and features of essays, creation of their comparative characteristics; philosophy and essayist: the relationship of categories; study and analysis of philosophical essays of different countries and eras. All the above-mentioned scientific researches, together with the fulfillment of the set goals, tried to prove that the essay was a way of philosophical thinking, which later became a literary genre.

Venus and Adonis The Rape of Lucrece, and the Shakespeare Canon

This essay revisits one of the oldest topics of Shakespeare criticism: the relation between Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and the plays. From Charles Gildon forward, critics see the narrative poems as a "promise" of the plays. This critical template, however, puts history backward: Venus and Lucrece become linear promises of an art that does not exist. The critical template also endorses the faulty paradigm underwriting Shakespeare criticism: the poems are the product of a "man of the theater." William Shakespeare was a man of the theater, but he was also a print poet who saw five poems published during his lifetime: Venus (1593), Lucrece (1594), "The Phoenix and Turtle" (1601), Sonnets (1609), and A Lover's Complaint (1609). In particular, Venus and Lucrece invaluably record a fiction of their role in Shakespeare's dramatic canon. In turn, the plays record a fiction of the performance of the printed poems. By revising the received wisdom, we may introduce a more accurate map of Shakespeare's literary career. This map preserves the integrity of a developing Shakespeare canon of poems and plays, and it recognizes that the poems gesture to the plays and the plays to the poems. To support this argument, the essay features evidence from Shakespeare's own canon fictions: intratextual moments in the poems and plays that record a narrative about the structure of his career. Yet other evidence emerges: from the narrative poems' genre, minor epic; from a neglected canon topos emerging from antiquity, "great things and small"; from the poems' reception history; and from both biography and bibliography. Venus and Lucrece are not simply commercially driven works produced in a youthful moment of dramatic inactivity; they are types of generic form and literary character in a remarkably structured canon on page and stage. As Shakespeare gets ready to retire, he presents his canon in Cymbeline in just this way. In the end, we may view Venus and Lucrece as integral to his dramatic career, at once fountains and foundations for comedy, history, tragedy, and romance.

"I am--I am a Chinese": The Death of Plural Identities in Mrs. Spring Fragrance

Amidst the ubiquitous racist discourse of the 19th century, Sui Sin Far emerged as a pioneering Asian American writer, dedicating her life to writing fiction, essays, and journalistic articles that combatted anti-Chinese sentiment. Situated at the complex nexus of racial, religious, and socio-economic tensions, her short story collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912) illustrate the collision between Chinese efforts to preserve their cultural traditions and Western assimilatory forces. While few scholars have commented on the role of children in Mrs. Spring Fragrance, this essay draws attention to that neglected subject, arguing that Sui Sin Far represents children as malleable, organic sites for anti-Chinese authorities to reinforce constructions of singular identity. Within a nation that holds no place for the existence of the “un-American,” how do the malleable bodies of children fall victim to singularity? Coupled with Amartya Sen’s identity theory, this essay features the deconstruction of three short stories—“In the Land of the Free,” “Pat and Pan,” and “The Wavering Image”—and its characters’ complex grappling with divergent versus singular affiliations.