Digital Commons Network^™

Removing The Mask Of Comedy To Reveal The Person Beneath: A Rhetorical Analysis Of How Three Comedians Engage In, And Go Beyond, The Post-Comedy Turn, Steve Ingham

Wayne State University Dissertations

From court jesters to lounge performers, the ‘Chitlin’ Circuit’ to vaudeville, radio to Netflix, the goal of comedy has been the same: use a comic frame to make the audience laugh. However, some modern comedians have altered that paradigm, including purposefully non-comedic material in their stand-up specials. While other comedians have done this before, they did so as an addendum to the narrative of their special, not as an integral part of that narrative. In this project, I engaged in a rhetorical analysis of three modern comedians, through the lens of humor theory, as they included purposefully non-comedic material, engaging …

Constitutive Memories Of City Space: Rhetorics Of Civil Rights Memory In Detroit’S Urban Landscape, Scott Mitchell

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation examines public memories of civil rights injustice and resistance as constitutive rhetorics of urban culture and spatiality for the city of Detroit. By studying the city of Detroit as it navigates an ongoing period of dramatic change and redevelopment, this study demonstrates how material manifestations of memory become the constitutive forces that define what many describe as “Detroit’s heart and soul.” This project illustrates the embedded cultural logics produced from sites of public memory, thereby arguing city spaces as locations bound to their legacies and beholden to material and symbolic consequences of their past. This dissertation proceeds through …

Pathetic Politics: An Analysis Of Emotion And Embodiment In First Lady Rhetoric, Stephanie Lynn Wideman

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation explores the theoretical and practical relationship between our understandings of emotion’s role in political decision-making. In this pursuit I seek a resurrection for pathos’s legitimacy in persuasive studies through the pursuit of the pathetic political realm. This work has three primary concerns: how may pathetic power be accessed, from where does this power originate, and how might political actors enact this power for their own political goals. I draw primarily from theories related to visual rhetoric and the body in order to provide perspective on how the body is politicized through the pathetic realm. Theoretical perspectives are drawn …

Public Subjects: Wayne State, Institutional Texts, And Public Rhetoric, Michael Mcginnis

Wayne State University Dissertations

Applying a public sphere approach to Wayne State, I argue that the university has defined itself as a public subject within public debates about race, educational access, and economic development in the city of Detroit, even when such commitments to its local urban public sphere have existed uneasily alongside its ambition to function as a research university with a primary research mission within a wider public sphere of peer research universities. I focus on Wayne State University’s urban mission and open for consideration the ways the university has both expanded and contracted its relationships to its local and academic public …

Interactive Security: The Rhetorical Constitution Of Algorithmic Citizenship In War On Terror Discourse, Avery Henry

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation traces algorithmic citizenship as it is constituted through war on terror discourse. Utilizing Ron Greene’s rhetorical materialism, this project analyzes corporate discourse along with presidential address and policy to map how they interpellate citizens’ subjectivity. Specifically, the dissertation follows George Bush’s presidential rhetoric as he defines the war on terror and invites the public to participate. Then the dissertation examines how the political discourse associated with government 2.0 is also an economic discourse that works to articulate citizenship alongside consumerism. The next chapter follows the presidential rhetoric of Barack Obama as he intensifies the surveillance and war fighting …

Distant Localities: The Rhetorical Contradictions Of Local Food Narratives, Anna Grace Zimmerman

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation explores the rhetorical construction of the local food movement through the narrative genre of the food exposé. On its face, local food appears to be a grassroots movement, and yet, through an analysis of the tropes used to describe and construct the movement, another story emerges – one intended for elite audiences. Using narrative critique, this project explores both the narratives of local food, as well as the deployment of that narrative into the material world and in the construction of particular identities. Ultimately, I argue that the narratives of local food give the impression that this way …

Detroit's Sport Spaces And The Rhetoric Of Consumption, Anthony C. Cavaiani

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation argues how Detroit’s spaces of sport consumption rhetorically configure the city’s identity. Specifically, this project interrogates the city’s sports spaces and argues how they anchor identity in the following ways: through the production of accessible discourses, through the emphasis on certain discourses and the de-emphasis of other discourses, through the regulation, control and biopower of the city’s sports spaces and their rhetorical effect on Detroit’s identity, and through the creation of distinct public memories produced from these discourses.

Commedia: Rhetoric And Technology In The Media Commons, Conor James Shaw-Draves

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the organization of individuals through online social media applications and other community-building websites, such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Google Maps, and online classrooms, using the Aristotelian rhetorical concept of the commonplaces as well as political, critical, and legal theory. Based on these analyses, this dissertation also provides pedagogical recommendations for the teaching of writing with technology in both online and physical classrooms.

Recognition Of The Transgender Self: An Examination Of The Apologia Of The 'Pregnant Man', Erika Marie Thomas

Wayne State University Dissertations

In 2008, Thomas Beatie, a legally recognized male, transgender man, became pregnant with his first child and approached the American mass media to tell his story and defend his decisions. Shortly thereafter, the public fought against his image, attempting to normalize his body and gender. Beatie's unique gender blurring, his choice for exposure and social recognition, and the resulting public controversy surrounding the incident makes for an important test case to understand Beatie's discursive and visual strategies directed toward the American public.

This study, a rhetorical examination of the discourse and iconic visual image used by Beatie while his pregnant …

Saving The Home Of The Tadpoles One Tree At A Time: A Framing And Pedagogical Analysis Of Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement, Anke Thorey Wolbert

Wayne State University Dissertations

While often mistaken for `just' an environmental organization, Kenya's Green Belt Movement (GBM) is engaged in environmental protection, feminism, human rights, education, sustainable development, democratic participation, and peace issues, amongst others. This diverse approach to social change makes it sometimes difficult to place the GBM within current social movement theory. To further our understanding of the GBM's unusual approach, this dissertation examines the framing efforts of the GBM's leader, Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai, as well as the organization's educational practices. Leaning on Entman's (1993) and Kuyper's (2006) definitions of framing, this project analyzes the development of the GBM's frame(s) …

The Intersection Of Image, Rhetoric, And Witnessing: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Abu Ghraib Prisoner Abuse Scandal, Elizabeth Jane Durham Smith

Wayne State University Dissertations

This project looks at the Abu Ghraib Prisoner Abuse Scandal and the ways those figured in the notorious images were named as "bad apples" to explain the shocking scenes to a mainstream American collective as well as expands more traditional understandings of witnessing through the examination of this complex moment. Beyond the narrowly legal and political issues, the photographs from Abu Ghraib also raise questions about how images of atrocities are received, interpreted, and contested with this project rephrasing the question "what do we see when we look at the images from Abu Ghraib?" to that of "what did we …

An Africentric Reading Protocol: The Speculative Fiction Of Octavia Butler And Tananarive Due, Tonja Lawrence

Wayne State University Dissertations

This examination of Africentric speculative fiction (ASF) applies an Africentric reading protocol to selected works of Octavia E. Butler and Tananarive Due. Butler's Parable Series and Due's African Immortals Series are examined using seven elements of Africentric narrative specific to cultural speculative fiction. Finally, I discuss the implications of using an Africentric reading protocol as an example of cultural analysis that can be adapted to the textual analysis of culturally specific works of fiction.