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Houses Of Hospitality: The Material Rhetoric Of Dorothy Day And The Catholic Worker, Sean Michael Barnette

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents an analysis of the material practice of hospitality in the Catholic Worker movement during the 1930s. Dorothy Day (1897-1980), a radical Catholic social activist, co-founded the Catholic Worker movement in 1932, and one of the movement’s goals was to provide hospitality to poor and unemployed people. Day’s understanding of hospitality, and consequently the practice of hospitality at Catholic Worker houses, was shaped by Day’s experiences as a radical during the 1910s and 1920s, her conversion to Roman Catholicism, and her notions of gender; each of these factors led Day to understand hospitality as consisting primarily in materially …

Constructive Engagement: Second Life In The Composition Classroom, Richard Nathan Samuelson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The recent development of digital tools has spurred educators to think differently about how they teach and how they can use computers in their classrooms. The use of virtual worlds, in particular Second Life, in higher education has been the focus of quite a few studies, although few if any researchers have evaluated the value of Second Life in a hybrid implementation of a first year composition course. This thesis is based on such an experiment—in the fall of 2010, I taught 23 students in a hybrid English 101 course that included Second Life in the first three assignments. The …

Two New Heuristics In Response To Formulaic Writing: What Lies Beyond Oversimplified Composition Instruction, James T. Davis Ii

English Dissertations

Many high school and college composition students have misused formulaic organizational structures, most conspicuously the five-paragraph theme, as invention tools. This misappropriation comes from teacher and student tendencies to oversimplify both the processes of writing instruction and its practice into countable and inflexible forms. In order to help students move towards improved invention models that respond to the overall rhetorical situation, this dissertation offers two new models of invention, the x, y thesis and the argument guide models. Beginning at the invention stage and extending recursively to all stages of the writing process, these two heuristics help guide students towards …

Ordinary Explorations, Amelia M. Endo

Honors Theses

In her poem “Poetry” Marianne Moore gracefully states the physical reactions people experience as a result of reading poetry, such as eyes dilating and hair rising. Moore asserts, “these things are important not because a/ high‐sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because/ they are/ useful”. For this reason, I not only read but also create poetry. I wrote this collection of poems intending to trigger reactions from my readers that would be “useful” to them. I decided that the most tactful way to do so was to write about my own personal experiences. Inspired by notable poets such …

The Necessary Blend Of Narrative And Technology In Composition: Identity Crisis Embraced, Jessica A. Lewis

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Wendy Bishop’s work, “Suddenly Sexy: Creative Writing Rear-ends Composition,” is focused on the necessity of flexible relationships between first-year composition professors and creative nonfiction writers for the improvement of composition pedagogy. This emphasis on collaboration and merging is even more important now due to the personal relationships and self-awareness established in online writing environments. In addition to the exploration of confused definitions in expressivist theory and the negotiation that Bishop puts forth in her work, this thesis focuses on the new influences of online writing environments on writing culture. Through the process of research and narrative, Bishop’s ideals and goals …

Integrating Multimodal Composition Techniques In First-Year Writing Courses: Theory And Praxis, Bret Zawilski

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The body of this thesis seeks to explore the costs and benefits of instituting a multimodal composition pedagogy within first-year writing. Contested definitions of multimodality and multimedia provide a background for delving into the printed-word dominated discourse, where image, sound, and animation are all placed in a subordinate position relative to that of the written word. Within, many theories of multimodality and composition pedagogy are placed in contrast with one another in an attempt to discern connections in the body of already published theoretical material. The primary method of data collection for this document involved the investigation of secondary sources …

Definitions Of Labor: A Study Of Working-Class Graduate Student Writing Instructors, Casie Janelle Fedukovich

Doctoral Dissertations

“Definitions of Labor: A Study of Working-Class Graduate Student Writing Instructors” presents six narratives of self-identified working-class graduate student writing instructors. Broadly, it explores their individual definitions of class and the pedagogical import of these definitions. Chapter One introduces the topic through radical reflexivity, as the researcher queries her own positioning in relationship to the working-class identity, before moving to detail methods and methodologies. Chapter Two provides a literature review beginning with early scholarship on Impostership Studies and moving through single-authored and collected working-class academic autobiographies. Chapters Three through Eight present the individual narratives of the participants. These interpretive chapters …

The Life And Works Of Edvard Grieg, Leah Kennedy

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Composer Edvard Grieg merged a Classical and Romantic style of music with traditional Norwegian characteristics to create his own unique, complex style that is still widely performed today. His music changed the way we think of Romantic music and foreshadowed 20th century styles that would emerge only a few years later. His compositions vary throughout his life based on other composers’ innovations and his own preferences, but how much did Grieg’s personal life affect his music? And how did his life events shape his emerging style during his career? This information is displayed in a lecture recital format and will …

Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics: A (Strange) Comic(S) View Of Writing In The Age Of New Media, Sergio Figueiredo

All Dissertations

This dissertation finds its exigency in 'The 9/11 Commission Report,' and specifically its claim that 'a failure of imagination' that dismisses possibilities relates to the work currently in focus within rhetoric and composition studies as it relates to writing (with) new media. My argument relies on the underdeveloped concept of `imagination' in composition as a way to argue for an alternate theoretical framework for addressing what writing (with) new media entails as a growing form of art. As such, I take up Geoff Sirc's invitation to `remake' his English Composition as a Happening with all of its references to avant-garde …

Sounds Carefully Crafted: Dionysius Of Halicarnassus And Literary Composition, Francisco Lopez

English Theses

Modern rhetoric takes many influences from the classical era, but aural components of rhetoric are not often included in rhetorical education. This paper examines the techniques used by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his essay On Literary Composition, where he explored the components of arrangement of words in clauses for greatest impact when read and spoken aloud. Dionysius utilized meter and aesthetic placement of words to create work that was technically skilled and appealing to the listener or reader.

Dionysius built on ideas from rhetoricians of 4^th and 5^th century BCE Athens for his definition of style. His writing …

Transfer Within Fyc Tracing The Operalization Of Writing-Related Knowledge And Concepts In Composition, Laura Martinez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study traces the transfer of writing-related knowledge and concepts from the composition classroom into the writing assignments composed by students within the same course. Working in a first-year-composition classroom taught through a writing-about-writing curriculum, the researcher observed students as they navigated from the initial learning of concepts such as rhetorical situations, writing processes, and discourse communities, into an application of these concepts in various writing assignments, including rhetorical analyses and discourse community profiles. By analyzing a composition instructor's objectives for her assignments and observing the interaction between students and their instructor in a single composition course for the duration …

Gender And Race, Online Communities, And Composition Classrooms, Jill Anne Morris

Wayne State University Dissertations

As the culmination of a two-year long Internet ethnographic study of three separate sites, I use examples of women and minorities fighting against discrimination online to explore the power structures inherent to networks and how these might affect classroom practice. I will show how our ordinary assumptions in rhetoric and composition as well as computers and writing about the necessity of safe spaces in fostering communication about gender and race and safety for people of color and women online might actually be harming the rhetorical effectiveness of these writings. To focus this discussion, I will develop three case studies and …

Response In Real Time : Bringing Context To A Semester's Responses To Student Writing, Scott James O'Callaghan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Within the field of Composition, research into responding to student writing has most frequently studied individual responses outside the material contexts in which those responses were produced. Advice given to teachers of writing on how best to respond to large amounts of writing--perennially a feature within the reality of the work writing teachers do--has tended to be similarly acontextual. However, further research into response must take into account writing teachers' material conditions and situatedness.

Subtle Shifts: Using The Brightest To Darkest Modal Concept To Express Jazz Harmony, John Anthony Madere

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this paper, I will outline a method of composition that I believe has been highly under-used in jazz composition. I have studied the work of composers Ron Miller and Maria Schneider, and have used their concept of brighter to darker modes to further my modal exploration. With explanation and musical examples, I will explain two possible ways to achieve 12 modes that progress from bright to dark, and then from dark back to bright. Another purpose of this paper is to provide a compositional aid to other composers interested in this concept and the subtle shades of major and …