Arts and Humanities Commons^™

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 …

The Third World Women’S Alliance: History, Geopolitics, And Form, Ariane Vani Kannan

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation focuses on the work of the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA), a women-of-color-led activist organization that maintained active chapters in New York City and the Bay Area between 1971-80. Drawing on archival research and qualitative interviews, I reconstruct how the group invoked, constructed, and circulated intersecting Third World histories and geopolitical analyses through political education, publications, and cultural events. In addition to this historical study, I seek to understand the ongoing presence of the TWWA in educational spaces through interviews with archivists and professors across disciplines. This project makes three contributions to the field of Rhetoric and Composition: …

The Unstated Premise Of The Prose Pentateuch: Yhwh Is King, James Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

The Pentateuch portrays God acting like a king, but almost never applies the title, “king,” to God, in marked contrast to many other parts of the Hebrew Bible. This terminological discrepancy between, on the one hand, all the major pentateuchal sources and, on the other hand, much of the rest of the Hebrew Bible, calls for explanation. Attention to a common and ancient rhetorical strategy of argumentation, the enthymeme, provides an explanation in the form of an unstated premise. The premise that YHWH is Israel’s king strengthened the persuasive force of the prose Pentateuch by remaining unstated.

On Archival Work In Digital Communication And Becoming Archival Ourselves, Krista A. Kennedy

Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition - All Scholarship

Text of plenary talk given at Theorizing Communication in a Digitally Networked Age, Penn State Communication Arts and Sciences Summer Symposium, 14 June 2017, The Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center, University Park, PA.

Writing Commentary As Ritual And As Discovery, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

This study combines rhetoric, ritual studies, and comparative scriptures studies to open new avenues for understanding both biblical texts and their cultural history as a scripture. Labelling commentary as ritual, specifically as a ritualized genre of text, leads to the observation that commentary not only contributes to the Bible’s status as a scripture, it depends on that status as well. Ritual theories provide explanations for the dynamic interaction of tradition and innovation in commentary writing. Analysis of commentary writing and reading as a form of ritualizing the semantic dimension of a scripture provides a step forward in understanding how religious …

The Trees Within The Forest: Extracting, Coding, And Visualizing Subjective Data In Authorship Studies, Krista Kennedy, Seth Long

Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition - All Scholarship

Kennedy and Long tackle questions related to the treatment of digital texts as evidence of writing activity, where the object of inquiry is the author and authorship more generally. With sections on extracting, coding, and visualizing data, they offer a useful set of methods that can form the core of a study or be recruited to triangulate analysis of primary source materials.

Seattle, Rhetorical Velocity, Identity Shift, Transnational Politics, And Materiality: Watching Rhetoric Bleed, Brian J. Bailie

Dissertations - ALL

Seattle, Rhetorical Velocity, Identity Shift, Transnational Politics, and Materiality: Watching Rhetoric Bleed examines how the writings of Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos shaped the philosophical underpinnings of the overall 1999 WTO protests, and more specifically, the philosophical underpinnings and the physical experience of one protest group in particular: the Mechistas of Washington State.

(Re)Constructing A Landmark: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Brown V Board Of Education At Fifty, Christine A. Geyet

Writing Program – Dissertations

This dissertation examines the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary with emphasis on its civic and social rhetorical functions. The analysis focuses on the two week period leading up to the fiftieth anniversary and the dedication of the Brown v Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka. Data was gathered from various web sites related to the National Historic Site and the events in Topeka on the weekend it was dedicated, and from database records of national and international news sources. These materials were analyzed in three categories beginning with the …

The Political And Legal Uses Of Scripture, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"We're Still Here!": The Rhetorical Education Of The Prince Edward County Free School Association, 1963-1964, Rebecca Candace Epps-Robertson

Writing Program – Dissertations

>"We're Still Here!": The Rhetorical Education of the Prince Edward County Free School Association, 1963-1964, was directed by Lois Agnew. In 1954, the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors voted to withhold funding to public schools in reaction to the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. Public schools remained closed for five years in this county. The White community created and sustained a private segregation academy. The Black community worked to provide a variety of programs to keep students engaged. In 1963, the Kennedy Administration took note of the Black community's plight. Black community leaders and members of the Kennedy …

The Rhetoric Of Mom Blogs: A Study Of Mothering Made Public, Madeline Yonker

Writing Program – Dissertations

This dissertation examines the phenomenon of mom blogs to determine their handling of conventional motherhood and the rhetorical nature of their discourse. Unlike other prior studies of blogs and specifically of mom blogs, the dissertation examines both the blog entries themselves and the many comments such entries generate from readers.

In addition, it seeks to determine the values and rhetorical practices of any community that might be established through such blog commenting. To accomplish these aims, the dissertation focuses on the entries and comments from three particular blogs chosen to represent the network of mom bloggers.

The commonplaces or ideals …

Food For Thought: Sustainability, Community-Engaged Teaching And Research, And Critical Food Literacy, Dianna Winslow

Writing Program – Dissertations

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. Marion Nestle's Food Politics. Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. The films Food, Inc. and The Future of Food. Debates over the industrialized food and farming system currently circulating in nonfiction books, documentaries, and public forums have immediacy for college students--and for anyone who eats. Food for Thought: Sustainability, Community-Engaged Teaching and Critical Food Literacy argues that fostering the development of critical food literacy is necessary for college students to have a voice in current and future public conversations on food politics and environmental sustainability, and the social …

The Count's Dilemma, Or, Harmony And Dissonance In Legal Language, Ian Gallacher

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers have had a long, but ambivalent, relationship with metaphor. Viewed by some as a mere literary device, a trick of language that "adds little of substance to an argument," metaphor is seen by others as an essential component of legal language, a rhetorical device inseparable from thought. On one thing, though, all can agree: lawyers only have words to express their thoughts, so they have an obligation to use words, whether used metaphorically or not, as exactly as possible.

This article offers a critique of the way lawyers meet this obligation when they use metaphors based in musical language. …

Aaron And The Golden Calf In The Rhetoric Of The Pentateuch, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

In the Pentateuch, the contrast between law and narrative, or more precisely, ritual instructions and ritual narrative, is nowhere more stark than in the relationship between the Golden Calf story (Exod 32-34) and the instructions for building the Tabernacle (Exod 25-31, 35-40). The former vilifies Aaron by placing him at the center of the idolatrous event while the latter celebrates Aaron and his sons as divinely consecrated priests. Though source criticism has long since distinguished the authors of these accounts, it does not explain the intentions behind a literary juxtaposition that is too stark to be anything but intentional. Nor …

Using Ezra's Time As A Methodological Pivot For Understanding The Rhetoric And Functions Of The Pentateuch, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

The Persian period saw the transformation of pentateuchal materials into a scripture, the Torah. The story of Ezra exemplifies that transformation by its description of his manipulation of the physical scroll, his oral reading of it before the people of Jerusalem, and his arrangement for its professional translation/interpretation by Levites. These rituals have characterized the function of the Torah (and other scriptures) from that time forward. The Persian period, however, also marks a major change in the nature of our evidence for the form, contents and meaning of pentateuchal materials. The only historical evidence from before the time of Ezra …

The Rhetoric Of Sacrifice, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ritual Rhetoric In Ancient Near Eastern Texts, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

Many ancient Near Eastern texts reflect a concern for ritual accuracy. They depict ancient kings justifying their ritual practices on the basis of supposedly invariable tradition and, frequently, on the basis of old ritual texts. They also invoke ritual acts and omissions to explain the course of past history and to promise future punishments and rewards. In fact, very many texts assert that ritual performance is the most determinative factor in the success or failure of rulers and nations. The rhetoric of ritual therefore pervaded royal propaganda as well as temple texts. It also provided the principal rationale for criticizing …

Ritual Rhetoric In The Pentateuch: The Case Of Leviticus 1-16, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

The writers of the Pentateuch combined distinct ancient literary conventions of ritual rhetoric from diverse genres in order to place ritual concerns at the thematic and literary center of the Torah. The combination emphasizes the ritual texts as key components of the Pentateuch's persuasive strategy. Ritual rhetoric plays a vital role in unifying the Pentateuch's diverse contents into a persuasive argument for obedience to Torah and for cultic mediation by Aaronide priests. In the Second Temple period, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers presented a utopian religious ideal (worship in the Tent of Meeting surrounded by the idealized camp of the twelve …

Performing The Torah: The Rhetorical Function Of The Pentateuch In The Second Temple Period, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

The Torah comes equipped with instructions for its own performance: a public reading of the entire scroll before the assembled people of Israel (Deut 31:9-11). The books of Kings and Nehemiah portrays similar ceremonies occurring in 7th and 5th century Jerusalem (2 Kgs 22-23; Neh 8). Yet later liturgical readings have rarely presented the entire Torah scroll at one time. Juxtaposition of biblical depictions of public readings with rhetorical analysis of the Pentateuch’s contents as well as evidence for its uses in the Second Temple period provides a test case for evaluating the possibilities and limitations of performance criticism of …

The Torah As The Rhetoric Of Priesthood, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

In the Second Temple period, the Torah gained scriptural authority through its association with the priesthoods of the Jerusalem and Samaritan temples. The Torah, in tum, legitimized these priests' control over both the temples and, for much of the period, over the territory of Judah as well. An original function of the Pentateuch then was to legitimize the religious and, by extension, the political claims of priestly dynasties. This point has rarely been discussed and never been emphasized by biblical scholars, however, which makes the subject of the Torah's relationship to the Second Temple Aaronide priesthood as much about the …

'Olah: The Rhetoric Of Burnt Offerings, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

The ‘olah offering receives pride of place in most lists of sacrifices in the Hebrew Bible, including the ritual rules of Leviticus. Its prominence in these texts suggests that the writers expected its mention to have an effect on their audience. This rhetorical effect must be evaluated and understood before the references to the `olah can be used to reconstruct ancient religious practices reliably. A comparative analysis of the rhetoric about the `olah suggests that its priority burnished the image of priests as devoted selflessly to divine worship and drew attention away from their economic interests in the sacrificial system …

The Rhetoric Of Ritual Instruction In Leviticus 1-7, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

Formal and structural features of Leviticus 1-7 distinguish these chapters as some of the most systematic texts in the Hebrew Bible. In a collection of literature otherwise noted for its sweeping narratives and urgent sermons, these methodical instructions for the performance of five kinds of offerings, presented twice in different arrangements, have suggested to many interpreters that they preserve examples of an ancient genre of ritual instruction. However, the identification of a ritual genre in these chapters (and elsewhere in the Pentateuch) has failed to account for all the features of this material. The present form of Leviticus 1-7 can …

Modelli Retorici Tra Predica E Romanzol'esempio Di Anton Giulio Brignole Sale, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Seventeenth-century preachers often coupled their preaching to novel writing. This essay investigates the sermons and the novels of the Jesuit Anton Giulio Brignole Sale (1605-1665), to identify rhetorical strategies that were applied both to religious and secular writings.

Reader Identification And Alienation In The Legal Rhetoric Of The Pentateuch, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

Three voices dominate Pentateuchal discourse in turn: the omniscient narrator relates the stories of Genesis and Exodus, YHWH delivers the laws of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, and Moses combines narrative and law in the rhetoric of Deuteronomy. These three dominant voices of the Pentateuch are interdependent and almost interchangeable: the anonymous narrator, like Moses the scribe, requires both divine inspiration and reader acceptance for authorization of the story; the divine lawgiver requires reader acceptance of human mediation of the commandments; the prophetic scribe depends on authority delegated by both God and readers to interpret the stories, the laws, and the …

The Legal Characterization Of Moses In The Rhetoric Of The Pentateuch, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

The force of law depends on the authority of its promulgator. Self-characterizations by lawgivers play a vital role in persuading hearers and readers to accept law and in motivating them to obey it. Pentateuchal laws therefore join narratives in characterizing law-speakers as part of a rhetoric of persuasion. They present, however, two speakers of law, one divine (YHWH) and the other human (Moses). I will show that this dual voicing of pentateuchal law has two effects: it restricts Deuteronomy's prophetic characterization of Moses to the narrower definition of prophecy presented in the previous books, while it uses Moses' scribal role …

The Legal Characterization Of God In The Pentateuch, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

The Pentateuch develops God's character in stories of divine creation and destruction, promise and fulfillment, battle and redemption. The laws of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers supplement such direct characterization by the impressions provided by YHWH's speech. Speeches always indirectly characterize their speaker by providing the basis for inferring the kind of person who talks this way. So the law codes voiced directly by God provide a powerful impression of the divine character.

Rhetorical Strategy In The Composition Of The Pentateuch, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

The Hebrew Bible rarely depicts the reading of books or documents, but when it does, it usually portrays public readings of entire law codes. Whether by Moses, Joshua, Josiah or Ezra, law readings to public assemblies play prominent roles in various biblical books. It is not my intention in this essay to discuss Israel's tradition of law readings in depth, but rather to explore its implications for the form of Israel's extant laws as found in the Pentateuch. The tradition of public law readings points out the rhetorical function of law in ancient Israel. The accounts of readings depict these …

Public Readings And Pentateuchal Law, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

References to reading are remarkably sparse in the Hebrew Bible. Though the variety of forms and styles in the biblical books attests an ancient literary culture in Israel, there is little explicit mention of reading prophecy and virtually no references to reading hymns or history. Most references to reading portray the reading of law.

Such references provide valuable insights into how the Pentateuch's writers expected their work to be read. Reading expectations make up the components of genre and shape the conventions used by writers to compose their works. Thus accounts of law readings also illulllinate the ancient literary conventions …

The Punctator's World: A Discursion (Part Two), Gwen G. Robinson

The Courier

Part One of this serialized survey (Courier 23.2, Fall 1988) dealt with the emergence of a late-Classical and early-Christian interest in eliciting, with 'euphuistic' punctating techniques, the voice patterns inherent in text. Part Two, herewith, gives attention to the Middle Ages. In this haphazard era, logical punctuation, which concentrates on syntactical structures and is therefore more appealing to eye than ear, begins its faltering growth.

The Decline Of The Written Word, William Safire

The Courier

Part of a commencement speech delivered by William Safire to the graduating class of 1978 at Syracuse University, William Safire bemoans the state of rhetoric and the written word, chastising not only the White House but society at large. He argues attention spans have steadily waned over the years, with popular culture filling the void where intellectual discourse used to exist.