Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Virtual Agency: A Hermeneutic Examination Of The Network And Actors Within The Composition Classroom, Ronald Dean Straight

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation explores the visible and invisible rhetorical choices made in, around, and through the composition classroom and its community of practice, students, faculty, technologies, staff, and other undiscovered actors, through Actor Network Theory and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The discoveries will better situate the impact of identities and actancy within composed, hybrid worlds. Students, society, the world is now collectively connected and able to communicate, acquire knowledge, and interact on a virtual world stage. The exigence for this dissertation's exploration is that Moore, et al. (2016) concluded that students did not make a connection between the technology they have access …

The Representation And Shaping Of The Hispanic Identity And The Assignment Of Power In Three Types Of Hsi-Related Discourse: Hea Amendments, Utep President Diana Natalicio Convocation Speeches, Academic Articles, Julie Ann Rivera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation examines the impact of Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) related written discourse on the representation and shaping of the Hispanic identity and the assignment of power. Performing a critical discourse analysis of three types of written HSI-related discourse: amendments to the Higher Education Act (HEA), academic articles, and UTEP President Diana Natalicio convocation speeches, I look below the surface of the discourse to draw out implications for Hispanic students and HSIs. My analysis merges Norman Fairclough's method of Critical Discourse Analysis, known for its focus on the relationship between language and society, with Lloyd Bitzer's The Rhetorical Situation, which will …

The Rhetoric Of Mental Health: An Examination Of The Recategorization Of Autism Spectrum Disorder In The Dsm-5 And Its Absorption Into Public Discourse, Elsa Martin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation explores the discourse of mental health across genres and public spaces. The research of this project is situated within the overlap of the fields of Disability Studies (Brewer, Selfe, Yergeau, 2014; Brueggeman and Kleege, 2003; Kerschbaum, 2012; Lewiecki-Wilson, 2003) and Rhetorics of Health and Medicine (Keränen, 2013; Kopelson, 2009; Segal, 1994; Scott, Segal, & Keränen, 2013), a space that focuses on the rhetoric of mental health (Chrisman, 2008; Emmons, 2008; Hacking, 2009). Following the principles of these fields, this project deconstructs the recategorization of autism in the DSM-5, the media coverage it received, and the public reception of …

Silent Subjects: Silence In Theories Of Subjectivity, Nikki Ann Agee

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Postmodern theories describe human subjectivity as fragmented. (Faigley 12). Unlike Enlightenment thinkers, who theorized the Cartesian subject as an autonomous, stable, rational self with "privileged insight into its own processes" (111), postmodern theorists "decisively [reject] the primacy of consciousness and instead [have] consciousness originating in language, arguing that the subject is an effect rather than a cause of discourse" (Faigley 9).

The idea that language constructs who subjects are, how they are, and who they may and may not become is very powerful, for it suggests subjects cannot consciously know themselves apart from language. Self-knowledge results from social, institutional, and …