Digital Commons Network^™

Radical Reflection: Toward The Transformation Of Everyday Teaching And Learning In English Composition, Royal Brevvaxling

Theses and Dissertations

Education is a necessary component in the emancipatory transformation of current capitalist society, with its exploitative social relationships, to one which is based on promoting and supporting human growth and potential. A libertarian education, as Paulo Freire writes of it, "must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students" (Pedagogy of the Oppressed 59).

An additional impediment to developing education useful for this transformation is the separation of thought from action in educational theory and practice. The field of composition studies similarly operates according to …

Constructing Loyalty, Citizenship, And Identity: A Rhetorical History Of The Japanese American Incarceration, Kaori Miyawaki

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reexamines loyalty, citizenship, and identity in the United States by closely reading historical materials about the Japanese American incarceration. The Japanese American incarceration is a unique and important historical event for studying citizenship and identity, since it was a moment in the U.S. history that citizens of the country were incarcerated by their government. This raises a larger question beyond the incarceration. What does it mean to be a loyal American citizen?

By closely analyzing texts generated by the U.S. government, the Japanese American community, and White American photographers, I identify multiple, conflicting meanings and implications behind the …

Phantom Rhetorics: From Pathos To Affect, Julie Dawn Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

Despite much interest in scholarship on affect and emotion in the field of rhetoric and composition in the last several decades, scholars have not yet used this scholarship to revise or extend rhetorical understandings of pathos. In our field, pathos is still primarily conceived as a linguistic tool and is rarely theorized as more than a rhetorical appeal. This conception of pathos overlooks the varied roles of emotions in rhetorical situations (e.g., how embodied or mediated emotions persuade). I argue that extending studies of pathos to include affect theory reveals more complicated rhetorical functions of pathos. But rather than treat …

A Pedagogy Of Persistence: Access Through Arrangement In The Age Of New Media, Jennifer Kontny

Theses and Dissertations

Fostering access in our writing classrooms has been a centrally important goal in the field of rhetoric and composition since the social turn in the 1980s. As a means of creating classroom spaces that help students gain access to new identities and ways of being in the world, those in our discipline have long privileged pedagogies that focus on invention. This dissertation traces the work of those in diverse areas of the field in order to show our wide-spread favoring of invention (or creativity, discovery, and the "new"). Unfortunately, I argue that the attention we have paid to invention has …

Using Writing Studio Pedagogy To Help Students Reclaim Their Disabilities And Sexualities In A High School Writers' Workshop, Matthew Kim

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an exploration into what students stand to gain from being mentored in terms of reclaiming their disabilities and sexualities. Writing studio pedagogy supports the following ideas: an understanding that composition is a social process and, therefore, must take place in a social environment, an acceptance of multiple composing tools, multiple problem-solving strategies, an acceptance that students possess many and different creative thinking processes, an awareness that spatial design matters for successful teaching and learning, and, finally, an understanding of writing as play. My primary research question is how can practicing writing studio pedagogy transform the writing classroom …

Political Third Parties' Representation In"The Big Three": 24-Hour Cable News Networks' Ideological Construction Of The American Political Duopoly, William Breault

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis conducts content and functional analyses to investigate the amount and functions of third-party mentions in 24-hour cable news networks. Additionally, this thesis applies framing tactics, ideographs, and other rhetorical theory to examine strategies utilized to ideologically construct cognitions regarding the current American political duopoly.

To Thine Own Self Be Cruel: An Analysis Of The Use Of Self-Deprecating Humor As A Rhetorical Strategy By Figures In Positions Of Authority, Brian Sorenson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the use of self-deprecating humor as a rhetorical strategy by figures in positions of authority. A close textual analysis is performed on eight White House Correspondents' Dinner speeches by U.S. presidents. Two speeches are analyzed from each of the four chosen presidents. The presidents whose respective uses of self-deprecating humor will be analyzed are Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Crime And Poverty In Detroit: A Cross-Referential Critical Analysis Of Ideographs And Framing, Jacob Jerome Nickell

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the relationship between crime and poverty is rhetorically constructed within the news media. To this end, I investigate the content of twelve news articles, published online, that offered coverage of crime in the city of Detroit, Michigan. I employ three methods in my criticism of these texts: ideographic analysis, critical framing analysis, and an approach that considers ideographs and framings elements to be rhetorical constructions that function together. In each phase of my analysis, I developed ideological themes from concepts emerging from the texts. I then approached my discussion of these findings from a perspective of …

Fashioning A Rhetoric Of Style: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Urban Street Style Representations In New York City, Amber Pineda

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how urban street styles are used rhetorically within local boroughs in New York City as a form of resistance to the dominant fashion industry that dictates what is "in fashion" through media. A total of fifteen video blogs developed by The New York Times were analyzed, each containing a representation of one of the five boroughs of New York City: Staten Island, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens. The analysis identified themes of a rhetoric of style, consisting of primacy of text, imaginary communities, aesthetic rationales, market contexts, and stylistic homologies. These themes were then analyzed by drawing …

Consuming Food Memoirs: Identity, Experience, Legitimization As Rhetorical Sustenance, Kayla Bruce

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a rhetorical analysis of nonfiction food texts as representative of a facet of life writing texts, and as they are currently viewed and used by readers both within and outside of the academy. The examination of food texts focuses around Kate Christensen's 2013 food memoir Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites and her food blog, Don't Let It Bring You Down that proceeded and followed the publication of the food memoir. Likewise, author Molly Wizenberg's food blog Orangette preceded the publication of her 2009 food memoir A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen …

Building Complexity, One Stability At A Time: Rethinking Stubbornness In Public Rhetorics And Writing Studies, Chris Mays

Theses and Dissertations

In deliberative argument, in political discourse, in teaching, and in casual conversation, as rhetors we often hope that our attempts at interaction will have some effect on the participants in these discursive environments. The phenomena of stubbornness, however, would seem to suggest that, despite our efforts, there are times when rhetoric just doesn't work. This dissertation complicates this premise, and in so doing complicates common understandings of both stubbornness and rhetorical effect. As I argue, rhetorical effects exist within a complex rhetoric system, within which they circulate and are interconnected with a diversity of other rhetorical and non-rhetorical elements. …

Engaging Engagement: Framing The Civic Education Movement In Higher Education, Chad Woolard

Theses and Dissertations

Civic education in higher education is housed in various types of institutions (i.e. community colleges, four year universities, public and private institutions), institutional offices, academic departments, and larger, cross-campus initiatives and organizations. Civic education programs promote numerous activities to foster student engagement both inside and outside the classroom. Many in higher education have embraced the civic education movement; however, as with other social movements, the civic education movement is still a contested area. Defining civic education (i.e. civic engagement, service learning, political engagement, community engagement, etc.) becomes problematic because there seems to be as many terms for civic education as …

Nonfiction, Documentary And Family Narrative: An Intersection Of Representational Discourses And Creative Practices, Kristine T. Weatherston

Theses and Dissertations

Nonfiction, Documentary, and Family Narrative:
 An Intersection of Representational Discourses and Creative Practices explores the role of personal memory, family history, and inter-generational storytelling as the basis for making a nonfiction film. The film, American Boy, tells the story of my mother’s immigration to the United States after the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956, opening a discussion of four generations of my family life in the context of historical events, exile, self re-invention, and identity formation. As a media producer and nonfiction author, I narrate my understanding of these events to my infant son, as a way of communicating …

Rhetorical Ripples: The Church Of The Subgenius, Kenneth Burke & Comic, Symbolic Tinkering, Lee A. Carleton

Theses and Dissertations

Humor has long been an effective way to engage difficult sociopolitical topics in a way that avoids polemical confrontation and provides opportunity for pleasure, catharsis and self-knowledge. In the context of today’s polarized politics and protest, creative satirical performance that deploys “symbolic tinkering” can provide a “comic frame of reference” that, according to Kenneth Burke, more effectively conveys its message while providing reflexive insight. The satirical Church of the SubGenius naturally practices this rhetorical frame in their multimedia creations. Using the lens of Burke’s Attitudes Toward History, this essay is an analysis of SubGenius rhetoric with a focus on …

Seeing The Sausage Made: How Compromise Works In Large Groups And Representative Bodies, James E. Crawford Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Inspired by the lack of Congressional compromise during the 2013 federal shutdown, I explore how compromise works in large groups and representative bodies. An on-line survey, personal interviews, and a discourse analysis of the Congressional Record yield a diverse collection of data, including personal and public stories of compromise. I examine the stories and other data through an eclectic mix of contemporary scholarship, borrowing literary theory from the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, socio-linguistic concepts from American linguist James Paul Gee, and moral philosophy from Israeli thinker Avishai Margalit. I also incorporate the work of political scientists Amy Gutmann and Dennis …