Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Austin Taylor Papers, 1916, Austin Taylor

Center for Restoration Studies Archives, Manuscripts and Personal Papers Finding Aids

No abstract provided.

The Spectacle Of The Bomb: Rhetorical Analysis Of Risk Of The Nevada Test Site In Technical Communication, Popular Press, And Pop Culture, Tiffany Wilgar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a rhetorical analysis of presentations of risk across three different sites of inquiry: technical communication, the popular press, and pop culture. This dissertation focuses on The Nevada Test Site (NTS), a nuclear testing facility near Las Vegas, Nevada, and analyzes presentations of risk in language of the technical report following an NTS accident in December 1970. Project Baneberry, a routine underground nuclear test, became the accident known as "The Baneberry Vent" when it cracked through the earth and vented into the atmosphere, exposing NTS employees and nearby communities to radiation. Presentations of risk in the technical document …

This Center Brought To You By [Insert Logo Here]: Writing Center Administration In The Corporate University, Denise Landrum-Geyer

Faculty Articles & Research

No abstract provided.

Research And Rhetorical Purpose: Using Genre Analysis To Understand Source Use In Technical And Professional Writing, Lee-Ann K. Breuch, Brian N. Larson

Brian Larson

This chapter describes a pilot study of student research-based writing in a technical and professional writing course designed for college-level juniors and seniors across the curriculum; fifteen analytical research papers are coded based on the rhetorical move John Swales (1990) calls "reference to previous research" to increase our understanding of how students use sources to introduce, support, or compare/ contrast ideas and previous research. Student papers in this study overwhelmingly used sources to support main ideas, occasionally used sources to introduce ideas, often in the form of topic sentences, but rarely used sources to compare/ contrast ideas. The frequency of …

Fast Professor: Strategies For Surviving The Tenure Track, Patricia Welsh Droz, Lorie Stagg Jacobs

Academic Labor: Research and Artistry

In response to Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber’s 2016 manifesto on academic deceleration, The Slow Professor, the present article posits that the slow approach is dangerous for those seeking tenure, but is nevertheless a fruitful resistance philosophy to be adopted once tenure is achieved. For those seeking tenure, we advise an alternative philosophy, FAST professing, as a means to mediate workplace stress and offer to those on the tenure-track a pragmatic alternative to premature slow professing. We outline the nature of the stress in today’s academic climate, suggest identifying the major sources of stress, and finally, offer strategies to …

Terms Of Time For Composition: A Materialist Examination Of Contingent Faculty Labor, Jesse Priest

Academic Labor: Research and Artistry

Bruce Horner’s seminal book, Terms of Work for Composition: A Materialist Critique provided Comp-Rhet WPAs with a methodology for infusing our conversations about work and labor with a holistic understanding of how these reflect on the lived experiences of students, teachers and administrators. Drawing on empirical data including surveys of contingent faculty at a large northeastern research university, as well as textual analysis of teaching material and an NCTE position statement, I propose the inclusion of a materialist-oriented conceptualization of time to the discussion began by Horner and others. Using the lens of how time is allocated, I argue for …

Rhetorical Listening And Strategic Contemplation As Research Tools: Learning From Edwin Hopkins And Early Attempts At Labor Reform In Composition, Rebecca Gerdes-Mcclain

Academic Labor: Research and Artistry

This paper is a personal and historical study of the labor conditions of composition teachers, in which I present the work of Edwin Hopkins, a professor at the University of Kansas from 1889 to 1937, who collected data on composition teaching between 1909 and 1915 in an attempt to reform the labor conditions of composition teachers. The paper is necessarily personal because I employ rhetorical listening, developed by Krista Ratcliffe, and strategic contemplation, developed by Jaqueline Jones Royster and Gesa Kirsch, as research methods for engaging with historical and archival research. Both of these methods require careful analysis of my …

"Collegiality As A Dirty Word? Implementing Collegiality Policies In Institutions Of Higher Education", Courtney Adams Wooten, Megan A. Condis

Academic Labor: Research and Artistry

Abstract: Collegiality is integral to the healthy functioning of any academic department and is a necessary professional attribute for new faculty, who often spent their graduate school careers with relatively little involvement in institutional politics, to develop. However, the recent trend to explicitly outline tenure and promotion requirements for collegial behavior gives us pause. We question if a collegiality statement for tenure and promotion could function as yet another obstacle between faculty from background that have historically been underrepresented in the academy (women, people of color, LGBTQ individuals, people with disabilities, etcetera) and their bids for tenure.

"Our Stories" Of Becoming A College Student: A Digital Writing Project For First Year Students, Philip Kreniske, Karen Goodlad, Jennifer Sears, Sandra Cheng

Publications and Research

This blogging assignment serves as a low-stakes activity that encourages students to make sense of the social, emotional, and bureaucratic challenges in their transition to college, and to simultaneously develop digital literacy.

Understanding The Needs Of Fraternity, Sorority, And Cooperative Learning Students, Rachel Bremer, Harry Denny

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Presentations

This presentation draws inspiration from the Meaningful Writing Project and other studies of writing center usage. Instead of exploring who is coming in for tutorials, we study where students are getting support outside of writing centers. We confirm earlier research that Purdue students seek out writing help from parents and friends, and we hope to begin programming that empowers bother groups to act as better writing mentors.

Challenging Calls For Civility, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In conjunction with her article "When Free Speech Disrupts Diversity Initiatives: What We Value and What We Do Not," Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt writes about civility codes and free speech for Academe Blog.

Pronouns (Slides), Angela Gulick

Style and Mechanics

These slides identify when to use pronouns and provide a list of frequently used pronouns Also covers indefinite pronouns, pronoun agreement, with a note on "it" and "they." Lastly, the slides provide instructions for how to monitor pronoun use in Microsoft Word.

“Higher” School: Nineteenth-Century High Schools And The Secondary-College Divide, Amy J. Lueck

English

This article traces the emergence of nineteenth-century U.S. high schools in the landscape of higher education, attending to the gendered, raced, and classed distinctions at play in this development. Exploring differences in the conceptualization and status of high schools in Louisville, Kentucky, for white male, white female, and mixed-gender African American students, this article reminds us of how these institutional types have been situated, socially inflected, and structured in relation to broader political and power structures that transcend explicit pedagogical considerations. As a result, I argue for the recognition of high schools as historically significant sites in the history of …

Syllabus, Assignments, & Selected Handouts (Fiqws-Writing / Architecture), Tim Dalton

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus and its related course materials draw on readings, videos, and multimodal texts to teach rhetoric and argumentation to first-year writers through a varied exploration of questions of design, aesthetics, and access.

Note: This course was paired with a course in the architecture program.

Course Syllabus (Fa18) Coli 110--World Literature I: "Worlds Of Absurdity And Nothingness", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Course Description:

An approach to the question of absurdity through world literature and a few philosophical and critical texts with a view towards possible modes of resolution

Sinister Subshade: The Revival Of The Ku Klux Klan In Modern America, Taylor Ashton Spicer

Masters Theses

Through the implementation of qualitative analysis this study purposes to discover if there exists possible correlation between President Trump’s assent to power and the increasing legitimacy of the Ku Klux Klan. Using Ernest Bormann’s (1972) Fantasy Theme Criticism, the Knights Party official website and the Donald J. Trump official website are systematically analyzed for dramatis personae (character), setting and action. The rhetorical visions compiled from each analysis are compared employing Ernest Bormann’s (1980) Symbolic Convergence Theory. Resulting analysis suggests little to no correlation between the two movements. The two websites provide very different rhetorical visions with no overlap. The work …

Learning From Failure: Making The Feedback Loop Work, Natalie Bishop, Pam Dennis, Janet Land, Hannah Allford

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

“I spend hours providing feedback, but I have no idea if my students read it” is a common phrase echoed across college campuses. While best practices in teaching pedagogy laud the feedback cycle, many instructors question the impact their feedback has on their students’ writing. As the feedback loop continues to be a trending cog in the machine of formative assessment and authentic education, an essential component of the loop is often overlooked: the conversation.

Presenters will focus on providing easy-to-implement “conversation” opportunities for students to respond to instructor feedback. This reflective practice provides insight into a student’s learning processes, …

“Partnering To Understand Undergraduate Research And Writing Longitudinally”, Donna Scheidt, Cara Kozma, Holly Middleton, Kathy Shields

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

In her longitudinal case study of a single undergraduate, College Writing and Beyond (2007), Anne Beaufort investigates several knowledge domains contributing to students’ development as writers. As a team of librarians and writing faculty in research and teaching partnership, we hope to build on Beaufort’s work by examining and elaborating the role of research with respect to writing development by sharing findings from our own longitudinal study of undergraduates’ development as writer-researchers. Specifically, we are interested in the ways in which undergraduates’ research interfaces with their writing practices as they advance through their general education coursework and various disciplines. How …

Who’S Evaluating The Evaluators? Cognitive Biases, Fake News, And Information Literacy, Jon C. Pope, Kim Becnel

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

In response to the increased attention to “fake news” and “alternative facts” as information challenges in the wake of the recent election cycle, librarians and educators have dramatically stepped up efforts to cultivate basic information literacy skills, especially prioritizing the careful evaluation of online sources of information. While these critical source evaluation skills are an essential component of functional information literacy, the recent emphasis on them is predicated on a model of communication that assumes that the readers of these online sources are capable—and desirous—of making informed, objective judgments about the credibility of an external information source. Rhetorical theories, however, …

Libguides ~ Ways To Engage Students In First Year Seminars, Carol Wittig

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

The University of Richmond offers students an array of First Year Seminars to choose from during the fall and spring of their freshman year. All seminars provide opportunities for critical reading and thinking and establish a foundation for effective written and oral communications skills, information literacy, and library research skills. As a common student experience and taught in lieu of a freshman composition sequence, First Year Seminars offer ways for librarians to collaborate with faculty through Library Research Sessions. The overall goals of the FYS Library Research Sessions are to introduce students to fundamental library resources and services, while developing …