Digital Commons Network^™

Generation(Al) Matters: Story, Lens, And Tone, Louise Weatherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

This essay tells a story of how “generation” came to matter in rhetoric and composition/writing studies; analyzes and advocates for “generation” as a lens through which to examine disciplinary studies and activities; and considers how we can productively engage in generational relations between individuals and groups. It adopts a framework of “hospitality” (adapted from Richard and Janis Haswell) to develop a concept of “cross-generational relations” as an aspirational category. An ethic of hospitality is proposed to facilitate respectful, productive relations among generational groups, which recognize and enact interdependence but allow for a wide range of stances and strategies of interaction …

“Fantastic Tricks Before High Heaven,” Measure For Measure And Performing Triads, Emily Bryan

English Faculty Publications

Reading Measure for Measure through the logic of substitution has been a long-standing critical tradition; the play seems to invite topical, political, and religious parallels at every turn. What if the logic of substitution in the play goes beyond exchange and seeks out a triadic logic instead? This insistent searching for the triad appears most notably in the performance of Measure for Measure by Cheek by Jowl (2013–2019). Cheek By Jowl’s strategies of touring, simplicity, movement, and liberation create a dynamic and ever-evolving performance. This article puts Cheek by Jowl’s performance of Measure for Measure in conversation with C.S. Peirce’s …

Full Disclosure / Now What?, Daniel P. Richards

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction: The Politics, Praxis, And Performativity Of Teacher Neutrality, Daniel P. Richards

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Dwelling In The Ruins: Recovering Student Use Of Metaphor In The Posthistorical University, Daniel P. Richards

English Faculty Publications

This article argues that the field of Rhetoric and Composition has long harnessed the active potential of metaphor to change its own practices but has considerably overlooked student use of metaphor--a particularly urgent oversight given the metaphorical battleground that constitutes the discourse of contemporary higher education. Using this exigency, the article 1) explains how a more thorough reading of Lakoff and Johnson's popular work on metaphor theory can re-energize Rhetoric and Composition to be more inclusive of student experiences in classroom coverage of metaphor and 2) offers imaginative but concrete pedagogical approaches and activities aimed at facilitating student learning of …

Powerlessness Repurposed: The Feminist Ethos Of Judy Bonds, Mary Beth Pennington

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Shaping Presence: Ida B. Wells’ 1892 Testimony Of The ‘Untold Story’ At New York’S Lyric Hall, Anita August

English Faculty Publications

Ida B. Wells stood before a crowd of the social hierarchy of black women from Boston, Brooklyn, New York City, and Philadelphia at New York’s Lyric Hall on October 5, 1892.

Wells’ 1892 testimonial, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases, is the founding rhetorical text in the anti-lynching movement that called for a moral, religious, and legal referendum on lynching in America. By forsaking all of the commonplace rationale for lynching and the Southern social comfort that came with it, Wells reframed the simplistic characterizations of lynching with new questions to demonstrate its structural features. With the …

Prologemena To An Future Rhetoric Of Shadows, Shades And Silhouettes, Gene Washington

English Faculty Publications

In this essay, following the implications of "prolegomena" (Greek: "to say before"), i describe what a rhetoric constructed of textual shadows (the word "shadow" in a text) would look like. Specifically, what would be the various motives and rhetorical intentions, for a writer (of all genres) to employ the word "shadow" or a member of its semantic "family."

Liminal Practice In A Maturing Writing Department, Louise Wetherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

[First Paragraph]

In Spring 2011 I was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Grant to "consult, collaborate, and inform" on the future of the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg, located in the city of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. The Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications department (hereafter, RWC) was a pioneer in writing instruction in Canada, where it became the first unit to establish itself independently as a department with a full-‐time faculty committed to both teaching and scholarship in writing and rhetoric. It remains a rare phenomenon on the Canadian higher education scene, where studies …

Cooper And Crummell: Dialogics Of Race And Womanhood, Elizabeth J. West

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rhizome National Identity: "Scatlin's Psychic Defense' In Trainspotting, Jennifer Jeffers

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Of Providence And Rhetoric: The Failure Of Alexander Crummell’S Anglo-African Nationalism, Elizabeth J. West

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Feminism And The Public Sphere In Anne Brontë'S The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, Rachel Carnell

English Faculty Publications

The bipartite narrative structure of Anne Brontë's 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' (1848) has been interpreted recently as an attempt to subvert the traditional Victorian rubric of separate spheres. Reconsidering this novel in terms of Jürgen Habermas's concept of the 18th-century public sphere broadens the historical context for the way we understand the separate spheres. Within Brontë's critique of Victorian gender roles, we may identify a reluctance to address the Chartist-influenced class challenges to an older version of the public good. In hearkening back to an 18th-century model of the public sphere, Brontë espouses not so much a 20th-century-style challenge …