Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The "Communal Gaze:" How The Collective Community Responds To The Narratives Of Sexual Violence Vocalized By Black Women, Brianna Christie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research theorizes, from within a Black Diasporic experience, the epistemic power communal gazes have on women who share, or consider sharing, their narratives of experiencing sexual violence. Black women’s experience with sexual violence in the African Diaspora is complicated by historical legacies and norms within their communities (Hartman, 1997; McDonald, 2019). The present study builds on and extends gaze theory, feminist standpoint(s), and aesthetic theory, particularly as related to the body as a rhetorical space. Informed by these theoretical perspectives and critically honoring Black women’s stories of (considering) sharing their experiences of sexual violence, this thesis addresses three research …

From Self-Help To Self-Harm: Rhetoric In The Self-Help Industry, Grace S. Royle

Non-Thesis Student Work

Over the past several years, the self-help industry has become increasingly more successful and sought out; especially in the United States, whose modern society celebrates individualism and self-improvement. However, within this new and unregulated field lie several unknowns and invisible dangers. Multiple instances involving popular and beloved gurus have ended in tragedy, twisting cases of self-help into self-harm. This paper chases after just how this is possible and discovers that weaponized communication is largely to blame.

From Self-Help to Self-Harm: Rhetoric in the Self-Help Industry discusses the cases of James Arthur Ray, Keith Raniere, and Isaac Hershkopf to uncover how …

Speak For Yourself: Examining Subjectivity And Trauma In American Literary Journalism, Nathaniel Poole

Honors College

Due to their relevance and emotional draw for readers, stories of tragedy and suffering are a nearly inescapable aspect of journalism. However, the routine reporting and formulaic styles associated with coverage of these events has contributed to audience compassion fatigue. Studies have been done on the success of some journalists who have historically pushed the boundaries of style and deployed literary strategies to elicit emotion and subvert compassion fatigue in their reporting. However, there is more room in the scholarship on this subject for studies of the specific strategies that contemporary literary journalism writers use and how they adapt them …

Using Engaged Rhetorical Methods To Understand And Inform Collaborative Decision Making About Dams And Restoration In The Penobscot River Watershed, Tyler Quiring

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How do we understand what to do with rivers and dams? How might rhetoric, the ancient study of persuasion, inform and shape this understanding as it relates to river restoration practices? Ecological approaches to rhetoric provide ways for engaging in decision making about dams and river restoration. In this dissertation I present three projects that bring media discourse analysis, reciprocal case study, and cross-cultural digital rhetoric to sites of collaborative decision making about dams and rivers in the Penobscot River watershed (Maine, USA). In this place, the prominent Penobscot River Restoration reconfigured several hydroelectric dams to improve fish passage and …

A New Materialist Rhetoric: Theorizing Movement From A Rhetorical Ethnography Of Hiking, Bryan Picciotto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the field of rhetoric, conventional concepts of movement depend on dialectical theories of materiality that posit matter is not rhetorical until acted upon by human sign or symbol systems. New materialist philosophy, which considers the dynamism of matter without situating materiality in dialectical relationship to language, provides a theoretical context for reconceptualizing the rhetoricity of movement. Working from a nondialectical approach to materiality, this dissertation theorizes how movement functions rhetorically, specifically within cultural practices of hiking. For this project, I participated in 15+ hikes at state and national parks in Maine, and generated a multimodal archive of 1,000+ audio, …

Inaugural Lifespan Writing Research Conference Report, Ryan J. Dippre

Reports

From May 31 – June 2, 2018, an international group of scholars met in Athens, Ohio to discuss lifespan writing research and plan the next steps of the Writing through the Lifespan Collaboration’s central goal: a multi-site, multi-generational study of writing. The conference consisted of five plenary talks, four small-group discussion sessions, eighteen individual presentations during three breakout sessions, and a full day of reviewing the progress of both the Collaboration and the conference and planning next steps for lifespan writing research. The proceedings of the conference and the June 2 meetings were recorded and are available on Box for …

A Promising Candidate: An Exploration Of Graduate Matriculation Genres, Megan D. Bishop Gervais

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study emerges from the author’s personal experience of interacting with unfamiliar genres as she prepared her application for a graduate program in English. In a liminal space between graduating from her undergraduate program and applying for admission to a graduate program, her interaction with graduate admission genres was fraught with tension and a lack of the assumed knowledge that would inform her on how to strategically interact with these genres. This lack of tacit knowledge and absence of scaffolding lead her to compose a “statement of purpose” that did not adequately demonstrate that she was a “promising” graduate student, …

The New Writing Series, Spring 2016, The University Of Maine Honors College

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

In its thirty-fourth consecutive semester of programming, the New Writing Series will host six readings featuring four poets (John Keene, Prageeta Sharma, Divya Victor, and John Yau) and two fiction writers (Emily Fridlund and Joanna Walsh).

These writers are all highly active across the full spectrum of literary activity. They are editors, publishers, and anthologists; translators and tale-tellers; art-makers and trail-blazing scholars.

The New Writing Series brings innovative and adventurous contemporary writing to the University of Maine's flagship campus in Orono on selected Thursdays at 4:30pm.

Speech Of Mr. Severance, Of Maine, On The Right Of Petition, Luther Severeance

Maine Bicentennial

Luther Severance (1797-1855) was a printer, politician, and diplomat. He established the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, Maine in 1825 and served in both the Maine House of Representatives and State Senate. A prominent member of the Whig party, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives serving during the 28th and 29th sessions of Congress (March 4, 1843–March 3, 1847).

Rep. Luther Severance response to efforts Rep. Edward Black of Georgia and Rep. George C. Dromgoole of Virginia to amend the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives to prohibit discussion on the floor of any proposal of measures …

A Discourse Delivered At Brunswick, Maine, April 6, 1820, The Day Of The Annual Fast In Maine And Massachusetts, Asa Cummings

Maine Bicentennial

Text of a sermon delivered by Reverend Asa Cummings on the state of Maine's first Day of Public Fasting, April 6, 1820 which includes references to the moral issue of slavery, which played a role in the establishment of Maine as a free state. Cummings (1790-1856) was a Congregationalist minister born in Andover, Massachusetts. He graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1820 and held the pastorate in Yarmouth, Maine from 1821 to 1825. He served as editor of the Christian Mirror newspaper following his retirement from the ministry.

A Sermon Delivered In Augusta, June 23, 1819: Before The Maine Missionary Society, At Their Twelfth Anniversary, Jonathan Cogswell, David Thurston, Ammi R. Mitchell, Kiah Bayley, Eliphalet Gillet

Maine Bicentennial

The text of a sermon presented by Jonathan Cogswell to the Maine Missionary Society in Saco, Maine on June 23, 1819. The document includes extracts from the report of the Trustees of the Maine Missionary Society including the Treasurer's statement and list of donors and donation amounts. The pamphlet also lists the names of Maine Missionary Society members by town and the names of officers elected on June 23, 1819.

Causes Of An Unsuccessful Ministry: A Sermon, Preached At The Ordination Of The Rev. Samuel Johnson, Over The Church And Society In Alna, November 25, 1818, David Thurston

Maine Bicentennial

The text of David Thurston's 1818 sermon which includes an admonition for preachers to remember their place in the church, to adhere to "truth [as] the principal means of awakening sinners and of sanctifying saints," and to modify their preaching style "to the capacity of their hearers."

An Oration Delivered Before The Republicans Of Portland, July The Fourth 1817, Ashure Ware

Maine Bicentennial

Fifty-three years before the Fourth of July was established as a national holiday by the United States Congress, Judge Ashur Ware expressed before a political gathering in Portland, Maine, that the holiday was "the only day marked in our callendar as a national festival, and this not by the authority of the government, but by the voluntary act of a free people..."

Ware states: "The minions of despotism, the pimps and parasites and panders of kings are always ready to decry liberty; and recent events in Europe have quickened the general feeling of hostility to every form of freedom into …

Blessedness Of The Pious Dead: A Sermon Preached In Winthrop, At The Interment Of Mrs. Elizabeth Fillebrown, Consort Of The Hon. Thomas Fillebrown, Who Departed This Life October 23, 1817, Aged 46, Eliphalet Gillet

Maine Bicentennial

Text of a sermon preached by Rev. Eliphalet Gillet at the interment of Elizabeth Cheever Fillebrown (Aug 1771-Oct 1817) at East Winthrop Cemetery in Winthrop, Maine, the central theme of which is, transformation. "Death to man is not the destruction of being, but a change in the mode and place of his existence." The sermon includes a brief profile of the deceased (p 15-16).

A Sermon On Infant Baptism, Preached At Winthrop, Nov. 4, 1804, At The Baptism Of The Rev. Mr. Belden's Child To Which Are Subjoined The Rev. Mr. Fisher's Hymn On Infant Dedication, And The Rev. Mr. Sewall's Poem On The Mode Of Baptism, Eliphalet Gillet

Maine Bicentennial

Rev. Eliphalet Gillet's expansive sermon expounding on the similarities and differences of Judaism and Christianity focusing predominantly on the quality of character and redemption.