Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Framing Contexts And Immersion: The Functionality Of Trpg Frames In Dimension 20’S Fantasy High Series, Lyndsey Clark

Student Research Submissions

This paper uses a form of rhetorical criticism known as frame analysis to analyze the perspective frames within the context of tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs). The three frames of interest in this study include the person frame, the player frame, and the character frame. These frames are used to contextualize certain person, player, and character interactions and immersion contexts within the first season of Dimension 20’s actual play podcast, Fantasy High. Through these three frames, we can see the breakdown of the person, player, and character mindset, as well as the overlap of thought, emotions, and ideas between …

An Inclusive Framework For Ministry: Fostering The Spiritual Formation Of Children In A Multicultural Church, Jennifer Reinsch Schroeder

Doctor of Ministry Theses

This project thesis was designed to foster the spiritual formation of children in a multicultural church. A diverse team was assembled to design a curriculum to be used with volunteers in a children’s ministry context. Through seven two-hour sessions held over eight weeks in the spring of 2022, the curriculum development team first examined what it means to embody a multicultural perspective of the gospel while at the same time investigating the negative impact of a White, Eurocentric expression of Christianity. Next, they collaborated to develop a theological construct that centered around (1) the idea of being created in the …

Centering Community College Students' Experiences: A Multiple Methods Study Of Multiple Measures For Writing Placement, Nicole L. Hancock

English Theses & Dissertations

Community colleges are trying to reform their placement procedures from use of a single placement test score to a system that collects multiple measures to be used either as a replacement solitary measure or in conjunction with other measures for more accurate placement into writing courses than what occurred with the placement test, which often resulted in disparate impact for students of color. In this study of multiple measures placement assessment for writing courses, I critique several large studies of community college multiple measures assessment for the lack of a community college perspective. The studies largely supported use of high …

A Nexus Of Literate Activity: The Design Of Writing Assignments In The Disciplines, Lauriellen Stankavich

English Theses & Dissertations

Writing plays a critical role in higher education as students are inducted into disciplinary practices through different genres, methodological repertoires and argumentation strategies. In Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) initiatives, the instructor serves as an embodied reservoir of disciplinary knowledge and an arbiter of literate practices but most crucially employs the mediating capacities of the writing assignment as a potent pedagogical nexus. In this practice space, the instructor acts as designer of the pedagogical experience—the course as a whole and writing assignments in particular. This study used interviews, survey, and the collection of syllabi and other instructional artifacts to examine …

Esl To Composition Transitions: Investigating The Differences In Disciplinary Values Among Two-Year College Faculty, Amy M. Flessert

English Theses & Dissertations

In this qualitative methods study, I draw on Paul Kei Matsuda’s 1999 article “Composition Studies and ESL Writing: A Disciplinary Division of Labor” to examine if, more than 20 years after its publication, there is still a significant disciplinary division between ESL writing and first-year college composition. I surveyed writing instructors from both ESL and ENG at Mid-Atlantic Community College (MACC) regarding what they value as “good” writing. I also worked with three faculty members – one in ENG, one in ESL, and a third who teaches in both departments, serving, in this study and the department, as a “bridge” …

Natural History Of Discourse Of Missouri House Bill 1042: Bringing A Critical Perspective To Policy Engagement In Two-Year Contexts, Mary Casey Reid

English Theses & Dissertations

In this autoethnographically-infused natural history of discourse (NHD) (Silverstein and Urban, 1996; Slembrouck, 2001), I use methods from critical discourse studies (CDS) to trace 10 years of changes in “remediation” discourses within a corpus of texts associated with Missouri HB 1042, a piece of legislation passed in 2012 that requires higher education institutions to “replicate best practices in remediation” (CBHE, 2013). After providing national and state context related to HB 1042 and the discourses circulating within the HB 1042 corpus of texts, I describe what I call the “higher ed’s remediation problem” discourse, focusing on three discourse features that I …

On Analyzing Literature And Visual Rhetoric With Practices Of Teaching Grammar In The Context Of Writing, Julie Schwab

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio contains three analytical works and a lesson plan for a college composition course. The first piece analyzes technology and the Internet and discusses how the ideas presented in M.T. Anderson’s dystopian novel Feed can apply to our world today. The second piece analyzes J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit as a piece of children’s literature and considers how one may use this novel to help teach college students how to write children’s literature. The third piece analyzes the social media trend of fitspiration (fitness inspiration) and discusses the impact this has on viewers and what can be done about it. …

Out Of The Body, Onto The Page: Awakening The Role Of The Body In Writing And Practical Applications Of Embodied Composition, Jasmine Jackson

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Academic writing courses privilege a style of learning that often excludes the awareness of the body. In this thesis, I propose an exploration of the role of the body as an active agent in the writing process. This thesis collates and queries research on embodiment to provide what a sample of embodiment theory and writing activities that facilitate embodiment in the classroom might look like by bringing in interdisciplinary studies to help fill the gap of research on embodied composition in the field.

In doing so this thesis argues in favor of an embodied approach to composition and is supported …

Assembly Line Americans: Labor, Language, And Literacy At Ford Motors, Vincent Portillo

Dissertations - ALL

Assembly Line Americans: Labor, Language, and Literacy at Ford Motors explores the significance of Henry Ford’s and Ford Motor’s industrial education project, which impacted the working-class life and educational development of migrants and US citizens alike. Ford’s industrial education project emerged in its Highland Park, Michigan plant where Ford produced Model T’s and in 1914 founded the Ford English School (FES). The FES engaged an Americanization curriculum as a way of preparing a largely migrant workforce for labor on the assembly line and to apply for US citizenship in the name of developing an industrial class of labor. I begin …

Weathering The Storm: Navigating Urban Ecologies Of Communication In Times Of Crisis, Austin Hestdalen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores cities as urban ecologies of communication in which crises emerge and are given significance within the dialogic relations cultivated among public actors attempting to make a living, together, within the shared historical-cultural contexts of everyday life. To describe cities as urban ecologies of communication is to describe them in terms of urban communication and its interdisciplinary foundations in the study of rhetoric, philosophy, planning, policy, architecture, sociology, geography, and media. The first chapter introduces the challenges of urban risk and crisis management within the complex ecologies of communication constituted by cities and reviews how ‘risk’ and ‘crisis’ …

To The Glory Of God Evaluating Origen’S Exposition Of The Scripture In His Leviticus Homilies, Andrew Johnson

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Johnson, Andrew M. “To the Glory of God: Evaluating Origen’s Exposition of the Scripture in His Leviticus Homilies”. Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2022. 237 pp.

Origen has been called “Adamantine,” an impossibly hard metal. Many have found his work to be strong and powerful and equal in its density. Origen’s preaching is almost impenetrable to the Evangelical preacher. This dissertation seeks to offer an entry for modern evangelical preachers to engage with the historic practice of figural exposition in Origen’s Leviticus homilies. The dissertation investigates the interpretative, homiletical and rhetorical histories which intersect in Origen’s homilies. It unpacks Origen’s use …

Transformation From Orality To Literacy: Studying The Effect Of Orality In Al-Jahiz’S Al-Bayan Wa Al-Tabyeen., Faiz Alasmari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The transition from orality to literacy is the focus of this dissertation. Studying orality and literacy in Western Academic scholarship focuses on the transitional phase (transition from orality to literacy) of the Western transitional. This project widens the focus of the transitional phase and analyzes the transitional phase of the old traditional Arabic culture. The dissertation analyzes both oral and transitional phases of the old Arabic culture. It studies the unique characteristics of these two phases (oral and transitional). Isnad was the main feature of the Arabic transitional phase. Isnad is a chain of narrators who convey sayings. Every narrator …

Visual Rhetoric And The English Careers Website, Ifeoma C. Oforah

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

We live in a fast-paced, visually-saturated 21st-century world where people want to access the latest information as quickly and conveniently as possible. Images play a role in efficient communication because they can convey concepts that words alone cannot. The pairing of visual content with written text is ubiquitous in everyday communication. Visual content functions to supplement and complement the written word, further engaging the audience and creating a thorough understanding. The persuasiveness of visual content cannot be ignored. This thesis analyzes the pictorial elections I made as an intern for the English Department using the concepts I gleaned from researching …

Drawn To Life: A Common Theory Of Making, J. Ryan Garner

All Dissertations

My research pivots around questions of making, its importance to all of life, and the challenges it faces in the contemporary world. The research is grounded in simple questions such as: what is making, what are its instruments, and can we do it on purpose? I approach these questions as if through binoculars. With one eye, I want to establish an account of making that is plain and somewhat quotidian. This will ensure the long-term viability of my study. With the other eye, I look for an account of making that is theoretically substantial and thoroughly vigorous. I apply …

Language Ideologies In First Year Composition Textbooks, Joanna Clevenger

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This thesis examines how standard language ideologies are perpetuated in the five most frequently assigned first year composition textbooks from four higher education institutions in Southern California’s Inland Empire. Standard language ideologies position one variation of a language as superior, correct, appropriate and the normal variation of a language which everyone should be able to speak. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, the five textbooks were analyzed in order to uncover the embedded power and hegemony over women, people of color, and those from a lower socioeconomic status which are prevalent throughout society because they are unchallenged and widely accepted as the …

Inventing Network Composition: Mobilizing Rhetorical Invention And Social Media For Digital Pedagogy, Jacob Richter

All Dissertations

Inventing Network Composition: Mobilizing Rhetorical Invention and Social Media for Digital Pedagogy investigates how students learn through writing and invention in digital social networks. Pursuing a primary research question of How do student composers invent within networked social media environments?, the dissertation examines how social media and digital writing tools can help students to learn, connect, and share generatively. The core theoretical contribution that this dissertation offers is a theory of network composition, which is a mode of invention that composers engage in social media environments that is intensely social, that is structured by a digital interface, that …

Rewilding With Ar And Vr: Facilitating Care With Photography In Physically Immersive Apps, Kailan Sindelar

All Dissertations

In this dissertation I analyze two AR apps from Internet of Elephants, Safari Central and Wildeverse, and one VR app from National Geographic, National Geographic: Explore VR. These three apps use photography as the central tool for engagement, attempt to educate users, and prompt them to care about wildlife and wilderness. However, the ethical consideration of design has largely ignored representations of the environment, especially as it may intersect with facilitating care for wilderness and wildlife that is experiencing the effects of habitat destruction and environmental degradation. This project begins developing a critical discussion of how wilderness and …

Rewriting Writing As Transmodal And Translingual: Tranßcribing Japanese., Alex Way

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the use of different scripts in Japanese writing practices to disrupt English-language and Western-centric approaches to multimodal composition. Early chapters establish a brief history of the Japanese writing system (JWS) and explore its functionality. I trace the JWS’s development from borrowed Chinese characters (kanji), which were adapted to the Japanese language through the translation process of kundoku, to the contemporary system which utilizes the supplemental phonetic scripts of hiragana and katakana, in part, to represent Japanese syntax. Building on this historical context, I demonstrate how the use of the Japanese multi-scripts (hiragana, katakana, and kanji) in conventional …

Taiwanese Indigenous Representation, Rhetoric Of Resistance, And Heteroglossia In Warriors Of The Rainbow: Seediq Bale., John Yu-Choh Chang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the relationship between Taiwanese indigenous narrative and rhetoric, in textual representations of the Seediq people and the 1930 Musha Incident. It explores how the forced colonization of Taiwanese indigenous people affected their identities and cultural representation, and how multi-voiced forms of narrative, storytelling, and meaning-making have rooted in indigenous oral traditions and rituals that counter colonial representations. Across a range of cultural texts, I identify what I call Taiwanese indigenous rhetoric of resistance (TIRR), drawing on Simon J. Ortiz’s theory of indigenous literature and oral traditions as indigenous-nationalist forms of cultural resistance. In addition, I draw on …

Reviewer Perceptions Of Englishes In The International Journal Of Nuclear Security, Rachel Brooks

Masters Theses

Linguistic bias in academic publishing, the idea that a manuscript would be rejected due to its language alone, is a growing area of concern and study. Scholars are particularly concerned that EAL (English as an Additional Language, often referred to as “non-native”) writers face this bias more than first-language English authors. The research on linguistic bias relies on understanding the perceptions about language that belong to reviewers, authors, and other parties involved in publication. This MA thesis project investigates peer reviewer perceptions of English language usage in the manuscripts that they review using the International Journal of Nuclear Security (IJNS) …

The Paratexts Of Audience Engagement: Cover Matter That Draws In And Keeps Readers, Athena L. Edwards

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Within the book publishing industry, purchase statistics often determine a book’s success. This metric neglects crucial factors of reader engagement (i.e., reception and anticipation of current and future work) such as level of interest and appreciation. By blending key concepts from work on assemblage, ecology, reader-response, audience invoked, and media studies, this thesis attempts to (re)invigorate the discourse of book paratexts’ role in inspiring reader engagement. As a manifestation of various voices performing and contextualizing a core text for readers, paratexts are a key component to the discursive uptake of books by readers and their publics. Book covers, specifically, are …

Ownership And Writer Agency In Web 2.0, Thomas Pickering

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores what it means for writers to maintain agency and ownership over their textual productions in big data age, where to write means to participate in a complex weave of software, code, and networked algorithms, and where writing produces both conventional text and data. Given how much everyday writing flows through proprietary digital platforms, my dissertation asks: how can we carve out a model of ownership that centers the agency of writers and users in the face of corporate web platforms that aggressively appropriate the value of our textual productions? Digital writing scholarship has responded by appealing to …

My Soul Cries Out: Reimagining Lament For Research And Language Practice With Edwidge Danticat, Tanya Jo Woodward

English Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

This thesis examines the implications of the genre of lament for the writing classroom. The thesis will address how Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian author, expresses joy and sorrow in her writing and how she can serve as a model text for students as they write. The thesis will also consider what Danticat's use of language means for the writing classroom, language policies, and the CCCC's "Student's Right To their Own Language" position statement. As Danticat explores the individual and communal juxtaposition of tragedy and celebration, her writing echoes the varied tenor and emotions of the Psalms. The Psalmic style is …

The White House: No Drugs Allowed, Olivia A. Jones

Communication Studies

The War on Drugs is a long-term metaphorical war designed to reduce illegal drug distribution, trade, and use by maintaining significant punishment for drug dealers and users. This paper serves to examine how U.S. presidents throughout history have impacted this drug war through their targeted rhetoric and ensuing policies. I examine the research question, “How have presidents used their rhetorical power to perpetuate the War on Drugs while pushing a tough-on-crime narrative that portrays certain drug users and minorities as deviants responsible for crime?” Historical contexts, primary sources, and existing research are used to examine the issue. Using Ideographic Criticism, …

Expressivism And Its (Dis)Contents: Tracing Theory And Practice From History To Here And Now, Sasha A. Maceira

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the theory and practice of expressivism as a pedagogy viable for the twenty-first century. Expressivism, in its inception (1960s), was wrongly perceived in many ways for the seemingly superfluous nature of its intentions; mainly it was targeted as an elitist, individualistic approach to the teaching of composition, only seen as suitable for a privileged student body. What was entirely overlooked that expressivism offered, were the more conventional ideologies and activities, such as process theory and peer review—things we use and cherish to this day. What I discovered through archival research was that expressivism then was inadvertently divided …

An Overheated Debate: The Influence Of Premillennial Apocalyptic Rhetoric On Climate Reform Discourse In The United States, David Charles Gall-Maynard

Dissertations - ALL

Despite decades of scientific research and increased civil and governmental calls for reform, the United States continues to spiral toward climate catastrophe. Apocalyptic rhetoric helps us understand how even the most pressing environmental and societal threats are perceived differently according to audiences' rhetorical and ideological frameworks. Drawing on the work of Barry Brummett and Kenneth Burke, I argue that the premillennial sub-genre of apocalyptic rhetoric constitutes a rhetorical frame through which many secular climate reformers and evangelical Christians make sense of the environmental and societal impacts of climate change. In chapters that analyze secular and Christian climate reform discourse and …

Receiving A Queen: A Queer And Trans Feminist Classical Reception Rhetorical Historiography Of Elagabalus, Thomas William Passwater

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation studies representations of Elagabalus, the sovereign of Rome who ruled between 218–222ce, after her assassination to examine how depictions and historical accounts of Elagabalus's life make rhetorical decisions about Elagabalus's identity and being that can foreground the composer's relationship to history and the function of history as a rhetorical force. Thus, this project, through studying Elagabalus's composers, raises questions about the nature of figure studies and history. The project draws on trans, queer, and feminist theories and rhetorics which help highlight the contingent and conflicting nature of Elagabalus's identities across representations without settling them into a singular narrative …

Adam Smith And Corporate Communication: Convergence, Embodiment, And Enhancement, Lazarus Langbiir

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

ADAM SMITH AND CORPORATE COMMUNICATION

Convergence, Embodiment, and Enhancement

By

Lazarus Langbiir

May 2022

Dissertation supervised by Dr. Ronald C. Arnett

The importance of Adam Smith’s thought and legacy for understanding corporate communication today is at the heart of this dissertation. Corporate communication is seen in this study as “one corporate body” interacting with its stakeholders in a complex world by embracing multiplicity or difference and managing communication needs in a manner that is coherent. By examining the thought and legacy of Adam Smith within the field of corporate communication, this dissertation seeks to extend the understanding of corporate …

Isocrates's Place In Postmodern Advertising, Christopher Barkley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study in communication and rhetoric seeks to ascertain constructive applications for distinct advertising practices by examining Isocrates’s work and place in postmodern advertising. The focus uses 5 principles known to Isocrates which are: 1) commonwealths of households, 2) integration of reputation, elegance, substance and style, 3) education and public discourse, 4) phronesis and praxis, and 5) truth and verisimilitude. These 5 principles can form a constructive and practical advertising approach. This study is important. It examines Isocrates through the lens of advertising and extends the research done about him by leading Isocrates scholars who have looked primarily at his …

A Content Analysis Of Queer Slang On Tik Tok, Kuri Benitez

Student Research Submissions

Social media platforms’ concentration of diversity and interactions has accelerated the rate of cultural change on the Internet. With the rise of Tik Tok, a video-sharing social media platform, language used by marginalized groups is being incorporated into the platform’s slang due to the rapid rotation of trends. This study aims to provide data to a new field related to Tik Tok culture and the effects of trends on marginalized groups.

Using qualitative content analysis, this article studies an LGBTQ+-inspired Tik Tok trend to determine if the portmanteau of “-ussy”’s meaning has changed from its original use and if trends …