Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Richardson, Ridley, And Tatís Jr. Versus The Public: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Athlete Self-Defense Rhetoric And Public Response, Jillian Schemenauer

Theses and Dissertations

This project addresses issues brought forth by critical race theory through analysis of three marginalized athletes’ rhetorical response to accusations of wrongdoing on social media, as well as how members of the public receive the athletes’ self-defense rhetoric and identities. Through three case studies, I utilize apologia theory and tenets of image restoration theory to give meaning to how Sha’Carri Richardson, Calvin Ridley, and Fernando Tatís Jr. respond to accusation. In response, I analyze how members of the public attend to issues brought forth by critical race theory through their exhibition of color-blind racism and/or rhetorics of whiteness. In the …

Toward Truth And Reconciliation: Public Memory, Philosophical Pairs, And The Edmund Pettus Bridge, Allyson K. Hayden

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis connects the rhetoric of Bryan Stevenson which advances truth and reconciliation for racial healing in the United States to a case study of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. I examine common cultural invocations of the bridge that support the persistence of a blurry public memory that occludes visibility of its original memorial dedication to a known white supremacist and instead celebrates it as a landmark of the civil rights movement. I also analyze arguments for both changing and keeping the name of the bridge that occurred between 2015-2020, illustrating ways in which Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s philosophical …

Translanguaging To Sustain Multilingual Communities In Higher Education, Mohammad Anisur Rahman

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation study investigates the translanguaging interactions among teachers and students who share a common non-English language and what these exchanges might entail. It finds that multilinguals often hesitate to bring out their non-English languages in academic settings as they fear it (translanguging) may result in othering them in academic spaces since it is predominantly monolingual. Despite these challenges, multilinguals interact with their instructors through rhetorical translanguaging (Bloom-Pojar) often in peripheral spaces like the instructors’ offices. The study illustrates multilinguals rhetorically translanguage through the primary step of relationship building that reveals their complicated language ideologies. It also shows through cultivating …

Toward A Cultural Rhetorics Praxis Of Care For Digital Storytelling Projects About Reproductive Justice, Danielle Marie Koepke

Theses and Dissertations

Recent events have drawn national attention to the fight for reproductive rights. However, Black women, Indigenous women, Women of Color, and LGBTQ+ people have long been fighting for reproductive justice, which connects reproductive rights to issues like immigration rights, fair wages, housing, quality education, and safe neighborhoods. There has also been a shift towards reproductive justice scholarship in rhetoric and writing studies. This dissertation focuses on the efforts and experiences of the Promotores de Salud, Latinx health promoters working for reproductive justice in Wisconsin. By constellating rhetorics of reproductive justice, cultural rhetorics, and queer and feminist scholarship, this dissertation builds …

Dialogic Language As Digital Ethos: An Analysis Of Language Used In The Anti-Vaccine Conversation On Twitter, Jeffery A. Sternstein

Theses and Dissertations

Many scholars attribute social media’s influence with a rise in distrust of expert advice. These scholars have suggested that people are turning to non-experts for advice because those non-experts seem to be more willing to openly discuss medical issues while also providing empathy, as opposed to the experts who have been trained to speak with detached authority. For this dissertation, I have done a study to find evidence supporting these theories. To do this, I looked at the Twitter conversation which has been focusing on anti-vaccination themes. Drawing on tweets from within that conversation, I conducted an inter-rater reliability test …

Hot Licks And Rhetoric: Collecting, Community, And Disruptive Literacies, Joseph P. Serio

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic dissertation investigates the activities and tactical technical communications (TTC) of underground music collectors. Through this it explores the concepts of community and institution that compositionists and technical writing scholars use as ways to address social influences on writing, but which fail to explain how these milieus influence the writers and their genres. Collectors of Recordings of Independent Origin (ROIOs), through the use of increasingly disruptive technologies, moved from passive listeners to active producers of music for sharing freely, garnering opposition from the music industry as their activities moved online. This study views the relationship between the music industry, …

Seeking Justice And Effecting Organizational Change: Kategoria As A Form Of Rhetorical Leadership, Marnie Lawler Mcdonough

Theses and Dissertations

Organizational scandals at both the institutional and leadership levels abound in society, and, with growing platforms and forums to level allegations, public accusations by myriad individuals have increased. As an understudied genre, kategoria, or speeches of accusation, should be considered for their ability to influence change. In this study, I argue that kategoria can be employed as a form of rhetorical leadership and utilized as a tool to disrupt value hierarchies and, thus, effect organizational change. This investigation assumes a genre analysis to move beyond establishing accusation simply as a classification of forensic rhetoric but to illustrate that the generic …

Voices Of The Say Her Name Campaign: Theorizing An Activist Rhetoric Of Blame, Alisa Davis

Theses and Dissertations

There is a lack of research in communication scholarship that analyzes how Black women employ blame from their unique standpoint. To combat this, this thesis analyzes the Say Her Name Campaign to demonstrate the ways Black women employ an activist rhetoric of blame that deconstructs their historical erasure in the discourse about antiblack police violence. Drawing upon Black feminist scholarship and epideictic rhetoric, I argue that an activist rhetoric of blame, used by Black women, dramatically puts on display the life of individuals who have experienced injustices and exposes blameworthy misogynoir attitudes in order to criticize the inherent flaws within …

A Culture Of Civic Action: Deliberative Pedagogy For Composition, Trevor Colin Sprague

Theses and Dissertations

Despite rhetoric and composition maintaining a role as a producer of democracy, democratic deliberation has not appeared widely as a pedagogical practice, outside of reinforcing traditional modes of argumentative writing. This dissertation articulates the dispositions and practices for a deliberative pedagogy in composition that supports students’ development of rhetorical understandings of social-political life, actively redresses exclusions and inequities in dominant understandings of democracy, and engages the discipline with a progressive vision of social change. Agency and citizenship are re-theorized as a grounding to this pedagogy, making clear how a wide variety of communicative acts support the processes and aims of …

Social Movement And Reaction: The Joe Rogan Experience And Making Sense Of #Metoo With Standup Comedian Podcasters, Daniel James Russo

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores standup comedian podcaster reactions to the #MeToo Movement (2017-2020). The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is used as a database to explore commentary on #MeToo from 12 standup comedian podcasters (SCPs). The exploration seeks to answer if and how SCPs represent a dominant social group using discourse to pushback against, accept, or, at the least, critically reflect on the #MeToo movement as it relates to appropriate sexual conduct and appropriate reactions to inappropriate sexual conduct. With the understanding that frames provide schema for making sense of issues, a rhetorical framing analysis was conducted to looked at how standup …

A Pedagogy Of Access Advocacy, Molly E. Ubbesen

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

A PEDAGOGY OF ACCESS ADVOCACY

by

Molly E. Ubbesen

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2020

Under the Supervision of Professor Shevaun Watson

I propose “a pedagogy of access advocacy” for students and teachers based on practices developed in the first-year composition classroom. A pedagogy of access advocacy aims to destigmatize the access needs of students and teachers by inviting them to share and support each other’s needs and to center and celebrate the creation of collective access. This dissertation brings together theories and methodologies from composition, rhetoric, disability studies, teacher action research, and critical discourse analysis to examine student reflections …

'Would You Say You Had Sex If...' Rhetorical Meaning-Making Within Intimate Encounters And Their Discourses At The Macro, Meso, And Micro Levels, Megan Orcholski

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advances a deeper understanding of the rhetoric of intimate encounters by analyzing meaning-making practices at the intersections of sex, sexuality, and sexualized violence at the macro, meso, and micro levels. The object of my analysis is discourse about sex, sexuality, and sexualized violence, but this analysis also has implications on understandings of how corporeal rhetorics, or communicative meaning within bodies, are operating in moments of intimate encounters. Throughout my chapters, I interrogate how normative scripts around sex are constructed, disseminated, and perpetuated, how these normative assumptions impact intimate encounters and their connected public discourses, and how these normative …

A Player’S Sense Of Place: Computer Games As Anatopistic Medium, Kristopher John Purzycki

Theses and Dissertations

This project works to understand how open-world computer games help generate a sense of place from the player. Since their development over a half century ago, computer games have primarily been discussed in terms of space. Yet the way we think about space today is much different than how those scientists calculated space as a construction of time, mass, and location. But as computer games have evolved, the language has failed to accommodate the more nuanced qualities of game spaces. This project aims at articulating the nuances of place through phenomenological methods to objectively analyze the player experience as performed …

A Pedagogy Of Techno-Social Relationality: Ethics And Digital Multimodality In The Composition Classroom, Kristin M. Ravel

Theses and Dissertations

I bring together the relational ethics of feminist critical theory with approaches of multimodal rhetoric to examine the ethical implications of composing on social media platforms. Most social media platforms are designed to value consumerism, efficiency, quantity of web traffic, and constant synchronous response over concerns of responsible and critical communication. I propose a rhetorical approach of techno-social relationality (TSR) as an intervention against such corporate-minded design. Through this approach, I argue that civil engagement is not limited to people’s social responsibilities but rather is entwined in complex, material-technical contexts. By considering the responsibility of our machines as much as …

Agency At The Seams: A Posthuman Approach To Disability In Family Interactions With Communication Technologies, Mary Jean Clinkenbeard

Theses and Dissertations

“Agency at the Seams: A Posthuman Approach to Disability in Family Interactions with Communication Technologies” explores issues of agency, interdependence, and disability for children learning to use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies. In this project I use a conversation analytic methodology to examine how parents, children, and therapists interact with each other as they learn to use AAC technologies. I explore how breakdowns in communication occur and how participants work to negotiate and repair uncertainties in communication. My research findings suggest that communication through AAC is a collaborative process that is shaped by the interactions of assemblages of actors …

Rhetorics Of Opacity, Social Change, And Communal Cultivation: Case Studies Of Glbtq Christian Advocacy During The 1960s And Early 1970s, Joshua Holman Miller

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation probes questions about community and advocacy, analyzing four case studies involving GLBTQ Christian advocacy from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. Each case study involves the use of rhetoric to hide or downplay markers of the at-the-time stigmatized “homosexual” identity. The examined case studies are Bayard Rustin’s advocacy work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, William Johnson’s ordination paper, and the 1973 Christian Reformed Church’s study report. To engage these texts, the dissertation develops theories about and methods for examining rhetorics of opacity—silence, hidden appeals, discourse that obscures, rhetorics of …

Agents Of Change: Scholarly Intervention At The Science-Policy Nexus, Daniel Card

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines an emerging “engaged rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine” (ERSTM)—an effort to ensure rhetoric’s “broader impacts” by more directly engaging the practices of science and sociotechnical policymaking. Through careful analysis of engaged rhetorical practice, I identify divergent conceptualizations of both rhetoric and engagement and subsequently draw on new materialist rhetorical theory and empirical research on science communication and public engagement to advance “problem-oriented rhetorical catalysis” (PRC) as a mode of engagement capable of advancing rhetoric’s institutional value and ethical commitments without abandoning its core disciplinary expertise and areas of inquiry. I further suggest the PRC is uniquely …

Negotiating Matters Of Concern: Expertise, Uncertainty, And Agency In Rhetoric Of Science, Danielle Devasto

Theses and Dissertations

Debates over GMOs, vaccines, and climate change are but a few examples that highlight a growing body of high-stakes scientific controversies and the manifest difficulties inherent in communicating about them. Addressing these and similar issues requires navigating a wide array of competing scientific, technological, social, democratic, environmental, and economic exigencies. The development of scholarly approaches that can account for the complexity and dynamism of these cases is an essential part of ensuring effective, ethical interaction between scientists and publics. In this dissertation, I explore one such case, the L’Aquila earthquake controversy, in which seven technical experts were charged with manslaughter …

"We'll Get Through This Together": Fan Cultures And Mediated Social Support On Amc's Talking Dead, Jeremy Vincent Adolphson

Theses and Dissertations

In this rhetorical analysis, the role of fandom through the technological advances in new media communication and its impact on social media are examined. Specifically, I analyze the rhetorical strategies that individuals use online in order to create narratives reaffirming their own conceptualizations of what it means to be a fan. This dissertation explores how changes in our contemporary media landscape has afforded a new space in popular culture, particularly the television genre of the Live After Show, which is specifically geared towards fans gaining public momentum, while highlighting the productive and performative elements of fan labor. The primary texts …

The Basovizza Monument: Rebranding Public Memory, Constructing Identity, And Normalizing Political Agenda, Louise Zamparutti

Theses and Dissertations

In the early 1990s, Italy’s former Fascist party, the newly renamed Alleanza Nazionale (AN), began to promote a new interpretation of events that occurred in the final stages of World War II. In collaboration with local and national civic organizations, the AN promoted this rendition of history by publishing fictionalized memoirs and popular narratives, producing a nationally aired television drama, and finalizing the construction of a new national monument. The Basovizza Monument was officially inaugurated on February 10, 2007, and is now a popular attraction for tourists and classroom visits. This monument is the subject of my case study. My …

Amplifying Lgbtqia+ Presence Through Queer Legal Worldmaking: The Role Of Affect In Renegotiating Value Hierarchies In Political Argument, Hilary Ann Rasmussen

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I propose to better explain the argumentative processes by which communities are constituted in political crisis moments and how, within those moments, social movement and legal rhetorics co-create the rhetorical possibilities for queer legal worldmaking. Specifically, I argue that affect functions as an important tool within argumentative loci of presence (magnitude, proximity, and severity) and is intimately connected to value-warrants in political argument. When the affective resonance of polices exclusive of LGBTQIA+ persons is made present, deeply held values can be reappropriated in order to enact political change. Queer legal worldmaking is less about the creation of …

Expanding Composition Pedagogies: A New Rhetoric From Social Media, Ashley Evans

Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, the field of rhetoric and composition has valued long-form essay writing, which requires students to engage patiently and at length with revision. In contrast, students today spend much time outside of school producing fast-paced and short posts for social media. This dissertation argues that students’ social media interactions provide them nuanced, dialogic, and complex rhetorical understandings about writing—but that students need help developing discursive processes to support transfer of their social media knowledge to other writing contexts, including long-form academic writing. Drawing from two semesters of in-class study, I construct for first-year composition classrooms a pedagogy that embraces and …

Bodily Boundaries: Inflammatory Bowel Disease And Rhetorical Enactments Of Self, Molly Margaret Kessler

Theses and Dissertations

Chronic illnesses are seven of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States and the prevalence is rising. Of the many chronic illnesses, one group of diseases present particular concern and mystery—autoimmune diseases. These conditions manifest when a patient’s body attacks itself, causing a myriad of symptoms that often leave patients debilitated. Since 2013, I have been examining the contexts in which patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)—one type of autoimmune disease—reconsider their bodily boundaries while managing new, challenging communication experiences. The results of this research are presented in my dissertation, Bodily Boundaries: Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Rhetorical …

Identifying With “The Native” In Anglo-American Environmental Writing: A Rhetorical Study, Alexis Piper

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

IDENTIFYING WITH “THE NATIVE”

IN ANGLO-AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING:

A RHETORICAL STUDY

by

Alexis F. Piper

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2016

Under the Supervision of Professor Anne Wysocki

In an effort to contribute to rhetorical theories of “identification” this dissertation examines Anglo nature writing written for Anglo audiences in the United States over several centuries. In my conclusion, I suggest approaches current nature writers might use to offer audiences ways of engaging with Indigenous peoples and Native conceptions of environment that are more ethical, appropriate, and effective than approaches used in previous centuries. I maintain that such approaches could potentially …

Collective Management In A Cooperative: Problematizing Productivity And Power, Avery Edenfield

Theses and Dissertations

Since the mid-twentieth century, the structure of the workplace has undergone a transformation. While the conventional firm with its rigid bureaucracies is still in use, many businesses have grown increasingly flexible, flat, and polycentric: “empowerment” and “innovation” are the coin of the realm. As the way we work changed, professional communication scholarship pivoted to consider communication practices in these structures.

While professional communication scholars have long discussed these kinds of organizations, they have not discussed an increasingly popular alternative: cooperatives. Owned and operated by the people who use them, these organizations can significantly affect the communities in which they operate. …

The Ambience Of Innovation: A Material Semiotic Analysis Of Corporate And Community Innovation Sites, Reed Stratton

Theses and Dissertations

There are unprecedented opportunities in professional and technical writing (PTW) and rhetoric research thanks to a contemporary expansion of rhetorical studies beyond the linguistic/symbolic and into the material, accounting for the rhetorical contributions of “nonhumans” (Latour Reassembling the Social). Material rhetoric frameworks such as Thomas Rickert’s ambient rhetoric and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, provide fertile grounds for PTW/rhetoric research that explores the diffusion of “rhetoric into material space” (Rickert xii) which has especially exciting implications for the study of place and how it embodies values and rhetorically shapes acting, thinking, and the entire spectrum of “human flourishing” (Rickert xii).

This …

The Rhetorical Ties That Bind (Or Divide): President Barack Obama's Attitude Of Tolerance In An Age Of Ultra-Partisanship, Thomas Archie Salek

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I explore how President Barack Obama’s rhetoric seeks to shift conversations away from traditional notions of the political and into more localized discussion and forms of civic engagement. Using three case studies from his second presidential term, I stress that Obama’s rhetoric illustrates how a leader can use speech as the incipient act for fomenting a new attitude toward civic engagement. For Obama, this involved shifting the locus for political change away from Washington and lawmakers and onto the American electorate themselves. To empower individuals, Obama’s rhetoric stressed that ultra-partisanship was a contagion facing America in the …

Theology, Logic, And Rhetoric: The Rhetorical Practices Of Theology In Political Action Speeches Of Contemporary American Clergy, James William Vining

Theses and Dissertations

THEOLOGY, LOGIC, AND RHETORIC:

THE RHETORICAL PRACTICES OF THEOLOGY IN POLITICAL ACTION SPEECHES OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CLERGY

by

James W. Vining

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2016

Under the Supervision of Professor Kathryn Olson

In this dissertation, I contribute to scholarly conversations about religion and political action rhetoric by revealing the important complexities and abundance of rhetorical resources found in various theologies. Through close textual analyses of three political action speeches by contemporary clergy members in North Carolina and the identification of key theological emphases in those texts, this dissertation displays that there is not simply one way that religion functions …

Two Strivings: Uplift And Identity In African American Rhetorical Culture, 1900-1943, Jansen Blake Werner

Theses and Dissertations

During the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century, the notion of “uplift” functioned as a major thematic within African American rhetorical culture. In this milieu, “uplift” generally connoted a sense of collective self-help. However, in contrast to more generalized reform efforts, uplift was expressed as a distinctly intraracial endeavor. That is, rather than overtly leveraging the dominant white society to enact legal or political reforms, uplift typically centered on the ways in which African Americans could enhance the quality of black life independent from white involvement.

Understood as public proposals for how African Americans could employ forms of self-help to …

Critical Affects: Laughter As Inquiry In First-Year Writing Courses, Nicholas James Learned

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

CRITICAL AFFECTS: LAUGHTER AS INQUIRY IN FIRST-YEAR WRITING COURSES

by

Nicholas J. Learned

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor Dennis Lynch

In this dissertation, I work to rethink our current approaches to teaching critical thinking and writing in attempt to collapse the distance between the critical/rhetorical methods we teach in Rhetoric and Composition and the ways students interact rhetorically in their everyday lives. I am prompted to this line of inquiry by a problem I note in both theory and practice: the critical methods we teach in our writing courses rarely translate to real-world behaviors, …