Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Organizations Ensuring Resilience: A Case Study Of Cortez, Florida, Karla Ariel Maddox

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Resilience” has often been defined by examining case studies in resilience failures. In contrast, this case study utilizes the oldest, still functional fishing village in Cortez, Florida to rhetorically analyze how organizational communicative practices have worked to ensure its resilience. Situating this conversation within Rhetoric proves valuable since so many attempts to define and utilize “resilience” seek to capitalize on its positive connotation but distort resilience definitions and practice. This dissertation explores three research questions: 1. “What systems and/or structures made our continued existence possible and what ideologies or goals drove their creation?” 2. “What ideologies, perceptions, and/or goals inspired …

Mental Illness Diagnosis And The Construction Of Stigma, Katie Lynn Walkup

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how mental health legislation and related policy documents contribute to identification, diagnosis, and stigmatization. Using a mixed methods approach including content and stylometric text analysis with R as a heuristic for close and critical reading, I demonstrate how these documents normalize mental health concerns as a public threat. To do this work, I analyze how the Florida Mental Health Act (Chapter 394) and the Florida Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act (SB 7026) circulate and sustain dominant narratives about mental illness. I trace where these narratives are distributed into Florida school districts’ mandatory mental health …

9/11 Then And Now: How The Performance Of Memorial Rhetoric By Presidents Changes To Construct Heroes, Kristen M. Grafton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study is concerned with American presidential rhetoric at the cross-section of hero rhetoric and memorial address. It analyzes presidential memorialization of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. 9/11 is arguably the most significant tragedy in recent American history. The purpose of this study is to identify the type of hero each president since 9/11 has attempted to construct of himself for the public and discuss the rationale behind that hero construction. To complete this objective, I analyze the second 9/11 memorial speech from the presidencies of Bush, Obama, and Trump for hero construction. A close reading examining the …

Instrumentalization Theory: An Analytical Heuristic For A Heightened Social Awareness Of Machine Learning Algorithms In Social Media, Andrew R. Miller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

New innovations in information management and communication technologies have produced technological assemblages which have radically altered the way people socialize and interact with the world. The most significant and ubiquitous of these technologies is what is colloquially referred to as ‘machine learning.’ Like most, if not all, technologies, machine learning models are neither wholly good nor bad. Their functional ethics are largely determined by the context in which they are employed. However, their ubiquity demands that we develop a heightened social consciousness of the way machine learning simultaneous constrains, manipulates and democratizes social processes. In order to develop better social …

"The Fiery Furnaces Of Hell": Rhetorical Dynamism In Youngstown, Oh, Joshua M. Rea

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to define the theory of rhetorical dynamism and illustrate how this theory can be applied to studies of rhetoric and place. The study builds on current rhetorical scholarship and adds to it with the four characteristics of rhetorical dynamism: that places are rhetorically invented, that they hold rhetorical tensions, that they are fluid and constantly evolving, and that they are active participants in a reciprocal rhetorical process. Rhetorical dynamism is illustrated in two places, Westlake Terrace and Idora Park, each in Youngstown, OH. By building a rhetorical history of each site, the study shows how each place …

Taking An “Ecological Turn” In The Evaluation Of Rhetorical Interventions, Peter Cannon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to develop a new method for the evaluation and assessment of therapeutic libraries in a health ecology. To do so, I employ a modified version of Lloyd Bitzer’s rhetorical situation as a methodological tool for the investigation of health ecologies by applying an ecological analysis to an alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment center in Tampa, Florida. By modifying Bitzer’s rhetorical situation schema and expanding the concept of health ecologies, I develop several innovations useful for tracing the impact of actants and rhetorical events specific to health and medicine. A major focus of this dissertation is a …

Becoming A Woman Of Isis, Zoe D. Fine

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I examine how terrorism is produced and consumed in communication. Using discourse analysis, I investigate how terrorism is constituted in the accounts of four women described in online news reports as having joined, or almost joined the so-called Islamic State (IS): “Alex,” constructed as having been lonely and flirted with IS; “Khadija,” presented as a schoolteacher turned member of IS’s all-women’s brigade; Laura, described as a woman whose partner abandoned her, who met a man online, and who brought her son with her to join IS; and Tareena, referred to as a health worker who brought her …

Tensions Between Democracy And Expertise In The Florida Keys, Elizabeth A. Loyer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The proposed release of genetically modified mosquitoes (GMM) in the Florida Keys to combat the spread of diseases such as Zika prompted heated local debate, turning a seemingly routine mosquito control policy into a public scientific controversy. Arguments about the GMM derive from inventional commonplaces where the historical conflict between democratic systems of civic deliberation and the epistemic authority of expertise is instantiated. This project analyzes the topoi that Keys participants gather around to generate their argumentative positions as published in public, local print and digital news articles, blog posts, and letters to the editor between 2011 and 2016. Investigating …

Book Review: Just Remembering: Rhetorics Of Genocide Remembrance And Sociopolitical Judgment, Jeffrey Blustein

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Review of Just Remembering by Michael Warren Tumolo. A critical appraisal of the main ideas and arguments of the book and an assessment of whether the book accomplished its aims.

Navigating Collective Activity Systems: An Approach Towards Rhetorical Inquiry, Katherine Jesse Royce

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this formative intervention was to design a professional and technical communications course around rhetorical inquiry. The participants, undergraduate health sciences majors (N=22 for section A, N=20 section B), were observed throughout the fall semester of the 2014-2015 academic year. A rhetorical inquiry framework was applied via activity systems, and data were collected using several methodologies including participant observations, research questionnaires, as well as participant deliverables, and were transcribed using Daisy Mwanza's Eight-Step Model. Results demonstrated students successfully used activity systems as a means of approaching rhetorical inquiry. Furthermore, students indicated a high level of engagement in the …

Was It Something They Said? Stand-Up Comedy And Progressive Social Change, David M. Jenkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

From our earliest origins in every civilization across the globe, comic performances have fulfilled an important social function. Yet stand-up comedy has not attracted the serious academic inquiry one might expect. This dissertation argues that in the absence of public intellectuals stand-up comics are important to how we talk about and negotiate complicated issues like gender and race. These comic texts are sites of cultural critique, public discourse, tools for articulation, a means of persuasion, and serve to galvanize communities.

This dissertation argues that stand-up comedy performances are a vital part of modern American intellectual and social life and are …

Acts Of Rebellion: The Rhetoric Of Rogue Cinema, Adam Breckenridge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project was to articulate a definition and understanding of the emerging genre of rogue cinema through the lens of rhetorical theory. To this end, I lay out a theoretical groundwork based principally on the works of Kenneth Burke and Slavoj Zizek to build a definition and to analyze the works of four filmmakers whose work could be considered rogue: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Dusan Makavejev, Lars von Trier and Werner Herzog.

The first chapter is dedicated to articulating the theorists I use and showing how they can be used to examine rogue films. The second chapter is dedicated …

Informing, Entertaining And Persuading: Health Communication At The Amazing You, David Haldane Lee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is a study of the communication environment at The Amazing You, an exhibition about health and wellness with over 400 different exhibits at the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI). The purpose of this study is to describe a multi-media, multi-vocal health communication environment which incorporates forms of intervention from various medical communities of practice into a narrative about human life stages. Describing communication at a science center as circular, complex and multi-directional allows for notions of feedback to be considered in an otherwise unilinear and unidirectional process from message to receiver. This research is about science center …

’A Strange Sympathy’: The Rhetoric Of Emotion In The History Of The Nun; Or, The Fair Vow-Breaker, Elizabeth J. Mathews

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

No abstract provided.

Toward A Working Theory Of Neurorhetorics, Jeffrey L. Honnold

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This piece makes the claim that rhetoric is first philosophy--before philosophy, epistemology, ontology, or any other field--or that rhetoric is, at the least, on equal footing as these fields because:

empathy--and thusly the impulse for communication--is physiologically hardwired into humans; special distinctions between human and animal are largely artificial constructions, as is evidenced by neurosciences; "hard" science, in the form of neurosciences, is providing entrance points & opportunities for rhetoric to raise its status within the academy; and said neurosciences, in addition to empathy studies, have shown strong evidence supporting linguistic and evolutionary links between humans and other species, thereby …

Sharing The Power Of Words And Changing Lives Through College-Level Instruction In Grammar And Mechanics, Carol Ann Tillema

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Intrigued by the English language and its far-reaching applications worldwide as a standard means of communication, I begin my disquisition with a focus on the meaning and derivation of grammar and its place in the trivium of ancient and modern study. I stress the need to reemphasize college-level instruction in grammar and mechanics as a complement to rhetoric and logic by studying and teaching editing, which involves semantics, syntax, phonology, morphology, conventions, mechanics (spelling, punctuation and format), in writing centers and classrooms. Noting growing nationwide illiteracy, I research the pedagogies and writing of experts in the field of rhetoric and …

Scripting The Unscripted: Gender And Sexual Orientation In Strategy-Genre Reality Television, L Elizabeth Zollner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since 2000, there has been an explosion of "reality," or unscripted, television shows in a variety of formats. The series in which new societies are created in isolation appeared almost immediately to be influenced by certain identity constructs, particularly gender and sexual orientation. Audiences came to these shows with definite expectations already in place. I intend in this study to determine why this is so and what those expectations are.

Survivor, the germinal presentation of this genre, has as its motto "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast." However, as the show has developed through many iterations, the ability to literally survive in …

Time Bending: Temporal Malleability And Organizational Response In Crisis Situations, Gary W. Carson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 created a crisis of epic proportions for the airline industry. The attacks, on the heels of the first financial losses in four years, threatened the existence of many airlines. It was incumbent on the CEO to make sense and offer a plan to control the crisis and move forward. There were fewer audiences more attentive to this senemaking activity than the stockholders. On the cusp of the organization, shareholder management is a central job of CEOs in the 21st century. This study focuses on CEO presentations to shareholders for American, Delta and Frontier Airlines before …

Moving Thumos: Emotion, Image, And The Enthymeme, Eric D. Mason

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation connects classical theories regarding the enthymeme and thumos (a Greek word commonly translated as "heart," "mind," or one's "capacity for emotion") to modern theories of images and emotion in order to reconsider the central role of visual discourse in persuasion, ideology, and subject formation. Since "enthymeme" comes from en and thymos, meaning "in heart," etymologically the enthymeme is an argument that is realized in an individual's thumos.

This dissertation thus attempts to establish the notion of thumos in rhetorical studies by developing a theory of visual enthymemes.The understanding of the enthymeme used within this dissertation works less from …

Narrative Efforts At Social Redemption By People With Aids/Hiv, Andrea Zolnier Thelen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores four narrative texts written about AIDS/HIV and evaluates each one by applying Kenneth Burke's redemption drama, consisting of guilt, purification, and redemption. The methodology is a close textual analysis using rhetorical analysis as a way to highlight the use of the redemption drama in language. The first chapter explores the history of AIDS/HIV and makes the argument for using Burke's rhetorical approach. The second chapter briefly highlights the plot of the four narratives and provides background information and context for each book. The third chapter applies the concept of guilt to all four narratives. The fourth chapter …

Powerful Submission: Popular Texts And The Subjectivity Of Christian Right Women, Ellen L. Flournoy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Christian Right exerts considerable influence over female identity, especially through its members who have emerged as one of the most powerful voting blocks in the nation---the Christian Right woman. American Christian women, especially those considered to be on the political fringes, are virtually ignored in academic endeavors. Given their power, which defies their categorization as a "fringe" group, this academic silence is a gross oversight, especially in light of the rise of the Christian Right, which has successfully recruited millions of women to its service. This dissertation analyzes texts of Christian popular culture that contribute to the construction of …

The Enthymeme’S Role In Modern Discourse, Ryan Meehan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, I wish to demonstrate how enthymemic argument pervades modern discourse. First, I will define the enthymeme in Aristotelian terms and compare its qualities to its sibling, the syllogism. Next, I will attempt to demonstrate how the enthymeme functions, paying close attention to its psychological effects as well as analyzing how the media helps promote enthymemic discourse. Finally, I will propose a way that composition instructors can harness the idea of the enthymeme to facilitate critical thinking in the classroom. The purpose of the paper is to provide evidence that a rebirth of this classical term is in …

Reconstructing Writer Identities, Student Identities, Teacher Identities, And Gender Identities: Chinese Graduate Students In America, Peiling Zhao

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The increasing presence of Chinese international graduate students in American higher education has mandated a closer examination of their multifaceted lives against stereotypes that hinder their efforts to find, transform, or assert their identities in the dominant discourses of American academia and culture.

Cross cultural studies of Chinese international students tend to reinforce stereotypes of their writer identities, learner identities, and teacher identities. Examining these various identities discloses dichotomies that read Chinese students’ traits and behaviors as handicaps and thus characterize them as “abnormal” in relation to the “normal” traits and behaviors of Chinese students’ Western counterparts. Whereas Western student …

One More River To Cross: The Therapeutic Rhetoric Of Race In The Post-Civil Rights Era, Nigel I. Malcolm

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rhetoric of W.E.B. Du Bois contributed both to a sense of group failure among blacks and a sense of individual failure. Du Bois also created a need to explain the reasons for the failure of the group, as well as that of individuals within the group, specifically those within a segment of the black population deemed the talented tenth. Today the talented tenth is more generally spoken of as those occupying positions within the black middle class. Explanations for failure among blacks as a group are generally of two kinds. The first posits that the failure blacks experience as …

Investigating Affective Dimensions Of Whiteness In The Cultural Studies Writing Classroom: Toward A Critical, Feminist, Anti-Racist Pedagogy, Allison Brimmer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to help teachers understand the ways that affect is tied to the dominant ideology of white supremacy in contemporary U.S. society. It argues that affect—the complex confluence of feeling and judgment—is bound intricately to racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, etc. In this work I attempt to deconstruct the social construction of affect that fuels dominant white ideology— what some scholars call whiteness—in the context of white teachers and students in the cultural studies writing classroom. With the lofty yet ultimately empowering goal of effecting anti-racist change in the classroom and in the profession, I trace affective dimensions of …

Loving Loving? Problematizing Pedagogies Of Care And Chéla Sandoval’S Love As A Hermeneutic, Allison Brimmer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My thesis project is an argument for and an investigation into the complex dynamics of what I term a critical, feminist, anti-racist pedagogy. Drawing from scholarly work in the fields of feminist theory, cultural studies, whiteness studies, and rhetoric and composition, in what follows I argue for a “blurring” of the traditional reason-emotion split that, I believe, continues to stifle learners in today’s U.S. educational system. I then offer a pedagogical theory that rejects or “blurs” this split, acknowledges and examines the affective realm, and is fueled by the more holistic notion and theory of “love as a hermeneutic” put …

A Discourse Concerning Two New Compositions, Stanley D. Harrison

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project addresses problems for theorists of writing and composition that arose in the 1990s when capital privatizes the production of internetworked writing and starts operating in the manner of a practicing compositionist. I begin by noting that capital in the 1990s converted internetworked writing machines into fixed capital and started composing its version of the cultural form of the "social" we call the Internet. Thereafter, I argue that composition theorists can best understand the Internet, internetworked writing, and internetworked subjectivities if they regard capital as a formidable compositionist, one capable of making the machinofactured internetworked composition into a privately …

Institutionalized On The Margins: An Organizational History Of The Preparation Of Teachers Of College Composition, Gregory A. Giberson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The preparation of new college teachers of composition has been a disciplinary topic of interest as well as an institutional concern since the establishment in the late 1800s of the modern English department. In this project, I offer a critical history of the treatment of the topic of the preparation of teachers of college composition by the three most historically significant organizations to English as a discipline and Composition as a field of study within that discipline: the Modern Language Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. By analyzing the treatment …