Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

To Early Modern Catholic Lay People, Jacob Blewitt

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

My process for writing this essay was rather simple, albeit grueling. I read and reread Martin Luther's To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation many times in order to fully understand his message. Then, I wrote an outline of his work so that I could summarize it accurately. After completing my summary, I began to analyze Luther's main points to develop my own position on the subject, which I then wrote about. This, however, was just the beginning of my process. Under the guidance of my instructor, Dr. Mackay, I revised and tweaked my paper over and over again …

Piracy: Trouble In The Digital Sea, Samantha M. Franklin

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

When I was assigned this research project, I brainstormed, and shortly after, I took my ideas to the Write Place. I decided to write about piracy and found several sources using the library’s catalog. I met with my professor to understand her comments on my paper and had 3 drafts, including my original rough draft, my peer-edited rough draft, and the final draft after I met with my professor and edited my own paper.

Does This Picture Make Me Look Fat?, Alexis Reynolds

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

For this assignment, my English 200H class was asked to research and form an argument surrounding a pertinent issue regarding gender in the United States. The topic I chose to explore was the relationship between women’s body image and the growing thin ideal portrayed in the media. Throughout the research process, I compiled an annotated bibliography, conducted original research in the form of a survey, and composed three drafts, two of which were peer edited and one of which received feedback from my professor. I hope my paper brings awareness for the necessity of action regarding this issue in our …

Analysis Of The Unc Paper Classes Scandal, Paul R. Maricocchi

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

To begin this research paper, I scanned the list of possible topics that Dr. Biswas handed out in class. The topic that intrigued me most was college cheating scandals. However, I wanted to find one to specifically write about, rather than discuss cheating in college at large. After some searching, I came across the ongoing cheating scandal at The University of North Carolina involving their athletic programs. As an avid sports fanatic, I was interested. I did some basic reading on the case and decided to choose it as the focus of my paper. Throughout the writing process I read …

Searching For A Nonexistent Childhood, Josh Segalewitz

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

When I started this writing process, I knew that I wanted it to be as personal as possible. I remember a wave of relief coming over me when the topic of Anti-semetism was revealed because, being Jewish with a grandfather who survived the holocaust, it is something that I am very familiar with and comfortable discussing. This was the first major research project I had been assigned, but I found that I had a knack for researching (and even found it enjoyable). While much of the research was particularly painstaking because of the tragic nature of it and its closeness …

My Struggle For Literacy, Kristen Sanson

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

One of my favorite parts of English 100 with Dr. Krummel was the amount of freedom I had writing every essay. There were almost no limitations about what to write, and there were no set boundaries as to what I could do. This allowed me to grow as a writer in ways I didn’t think possible. The very first essay, the literacy narrative, was very terrifying at first. I had no idea what I was supposed to write about so I just tried to write from the heart. I was unsure if I had done it correctly, so one day …

Revision Crítica Del Concepto De Género En El Discurso Escrito Y Su Aplicación Didáctica A La Enseñanza De Las Lenguas Con Propósitos Específicos. Critical Review Of The Genre Concept In Written Discourse And Its Pedagogical Application To Language Teaching For Specific Purposes, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

This paper provides a theoretical review of how the concept of academic and professional discursive genres has evolved, from a linguistic perspective when it first emerged to its current sociocognitive perspective. The stage it has reached is due to intertextuality and interdiscursivity processes caused by the contact between different disciplines. Similarly, the paper discusses some of the most current didactic recommendations on genre teaching proposed by the languages for specific purposes (lps) approach. The discursive genre has been regularly used in lps since learning how to develop the typical genres of a discourse community is a fundamental requirement to succeed …

“Classbook Sense”: Genre And Girls’ School Yearbooks In The Early-Twentieth-Century American High School, Amy J. Lueck

English

In the spring of 1908, the students of Louisville Girls High School (LGHS) in Louisville, Kentucky, inaugurated their first school annual, a special edition of the school’s quarterly literary journal dedicated to the senior class. The object of this volume, as delineated in the preface, was “to collect into a narrow compass, and to arrange in a form convenient for reference, and consultation, a choice selection of the remarkable utterances, and pictured thoughts of the great among all classes, but chiefly of the great Seniors among the class of nineteen hundred and eight” (LGHS, Record 2). That is, a primary …

The Dramatization Of Cultural Hybridity And The "In-Between" Turkey In Fazıl's Künye, Önder Çakırtaş

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Dramatization of Cultural Hybridity and the "In-Between" Turkey in Fazıl's Künye" Önder Çakırtaş addresses Turkey's historical context and exposes how political, social and cultural changes were expressed in Turkey's public sphere. Using Niyazi Berkes's theory of secularism as proceeding of modernism Çakırtaş discusses different examples of stylistic strategies of cultural hybridity in the playwright's historical-based play, Künye. He investigates how political changes in pre-Turkey times signify Turkey's national striving, and how the Ottoman-conservative past metamorphoses into Turkic-secular. The study juxtaposes the perceptions of 'introduction to Westernization' and 'departure from Islamic past' in a period …

Ted Talks As An Emergent Genre, Julia Ludewig

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "TED Talks as an Emergent Genre" Julia Ludewig analyzes TED talks—short, informational, and entertaining presentations that are given during TED conferences in North America and abroad—as a hybrid and emerging genre. Based on a qualitative interpretation of 14 such talks, she offers a list of recurring thematic, argumentative, and rhetorical features, which she aligns with three parent genres—the sales pitch, the memoir, and the academic lecture. Comparing recent versions of TED talks with three older talks from the 1980s and 1990s, she suggests an historical trajectory, which emphasizes the professional performance character of recent talks and their …

Approaching The Value And The Future Of The Novel: A Book Review Article On Boxall's Scholarship, Yili Tang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama And The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Claire T. Solomon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (1929-2016)" Claire Solomon analyzes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope as an apparatus of capture (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand). More precisely, her article models how such tropes imply modes of reading anachronistically and metafictionally that decontextualize gestures of resistance and conflate female writers, performers, and characters across time and place. Solomon offers a situated formalist reading of Argentine playwright Salvadora Medina Onrubia's 1929 drama, Las descentradas, revealing an avant-garde counterpoint of melodrama and metafiction as an ambiguous alternative to capture.

Plato's Machiavelli: Reconsidering Callicles' Speech In Plato's Gorgias, Steven Thomason

Presentations and Lectures

Although often dismissed as a villain, Callicles’ views about philosophy, politics, and human nature expressed in his speech in Plato’s Gorgias criticizing Socrates turn-out to be similar to Socrates’ own thoughts about philosophy, politics, and human nature when compared to Socrates’ arguments in other dialogues such as the Republic. However, Socrates obfuscates these similarities through his use of rhetoric in the latter part of the dialogue in order to conceal a more fundamental disagreement about the priority and relationship of philosophy and politics. This similarity and obfuscation constitutes an important and overlooked teaching of Plato’s Gorgias.

Apologies For Cross-Posting: Composing Disciplinary Affects And Conflicts On The Wpa Listserv, Zachary Beare

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Drawing on theories of counterpublics, online communication, and affect, this dissertation argues that the Writing Program Administrators Listserv (WPA-L) functions as an important site of disciplinary knowledge-making and theory-building for the field of Composition and Rhetoric. The dissertation examines the WPA-L as a discursive space in which members of the discipline build community, debate pressing issues, and strategize how best to advocate for their individual and collective interests. At the same time that these qualities reveal how the listserv functions as counterpublic space for the discipline at large, the dissertation argues that sub-disciplinary counterpublics made up of individuals marginalized within …

Approaches To Undergraduate Research In Writing—For Writing Teachers, Jenn Fishman

Jenn Fishman

Constructing A Sociological Biography: A Surprisingly Complex Autobiographical Practice, Sara Louise Wheeler

The Qualitative Report

Biographical statements are an important part of impressions management in the academic milieu. These statements provide an online presence, accompany our academic products, and represent us in the academy. This becomes a high stakes activity, which can be quite anxiety provoking. As a qualitative sociologist with a particular interest in auto/ biography, producing such a statement really ought to be easy - putting into words: who I am, what I do, and where I am currently located. However, writing sociological biographies requires a fine balance, particularly during the early career phase, when we may be juggling projects, research directions and …

A Walk Into The Past: Access To Adoption Records, Anna N. Beck

Exigence

Thousands of children are adopted every year, yet a majority of these children have no knowledge of who their parents are or where they come from. Adoptees should have the right to access their birth records and medical history. Furthermore, it is vital for adoptees to have an understanding of their cultural identity, just as most American do. The right to birth records is a fundamental right to every citizen of the United States. Adoptees should be granted the right to know who their parents are, with consent from the birth parents, where they come from, and why they are …

America’S Diabetes Crisis: There Is No Reason!, Faith M. Tucker

Exigence

Many Americans are unaware of the diabetes crisis. Experts estimate that in the near future, a third of all adults in the United States will be diagnosed with diabetes. For diabetic patients, lack of management can swiftly lead to complications that can be life changing and even life threatening. Having a physician who can work closely with a patient to try different methods of medication and therapy can make the difference between the success and failure of a patient. Unfortunately, many people diagnosed with diabetes do not take their diagnosis seriously. A substantial percentage of diabetics cannot afford to manage …

Death With Dignity, Jane E. Sawtell-Fearn

Exigence

This paper examines the issue of euthanasia, or physician assisted suicide, which has become increasingly prominent in the media and subject to public debate in recent years, both in the United States and the United Kingdom. This can largely be attributed to the publicity surrounding high-profile cases in which people suffering from terminal illnesses have ended their lives through voluntary euthanasia, and the increase in “suicide tourism” to Switzerland from the United Kingdom and other countries. The paper analyzes common arguments against euthanasia such as religious objections and concerns about a “slippery slope” leading to involuntary euthanasia. It reviews individual …

As If By Magic: Unleashing Critical And Expressive Voices Through A Rhetoric Of "This/And" In First-Year Composition, Nolan Chessman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation engages academic, creative, and student genres in conversation in order to challenge the strict discursive and stylistic boundaries placed around college writing, particularly in first-year composition. Because this project aims to thrust first-year writing pedagogy beyond the confines of fixed genre forms, its inquiry is multimodal, intermingling writing styles and research modes so that, in scholar-teacher Wendy Bishop’s words, “I can think in and through them all” (“Places to Stand” 17). The particulars—or “data”—informing this study are primarily archival, textual (often a combination of the two), experimental, and experiential. Broadly speaking, this inquiry consists of seven chapters, which …