Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Around Her Table: A Digital Community Archive Featuring Azorean-American Women In New England, Suzanne Lyn Parenti Sink

English Theses & Dissertations

Around Her Table is a born-digital dissertation dedicated to collecting, preserving, and validating the Azorean-American woman’s immigrant experience and cultural identity through the transformative power of participatory archives. The site address is www.aroundhertable.org. The digital exhibit features the oral histories and artifacts related to the domestic sphere of six Azorean-American families, with particular emphasis on artifacts related to the kitchen, hand-worked textiles, and religious practices. Driving the urgency for the creation of new archival records for this community is that fact that despite the nearly one million North Americans who trace their ancestry to the Azores, traditional institutional and civic …

Rhetorical Agency In Algorithm-Centered Digital Activity: Methods For Tracing Agency In Online Research, Daniel L. Hocutt

English Theses & Dissertations

Contemporary scholars in rhetoric studies and technical communication have theorized rhetorical agency as engaging human and nonhuman actors in online spaces. One such space, where the work of scholarship, teaching, and technical communication practice intersect, is online research. In online research interfaces, scholars and students alike conduct research; scholars teach and students learn the online research process toward contributing knowledge; and technical communicators design and test meaningful user experiences in these interfaces.

However, the field offers few comprehensive methodologies for studying the emergence of rhetorical agency in online search environments, where the activities of technologies, humans, corporations, and environments coalesce. …

Adding Soul To The Message: Applying African American Jeremiad Rhetoric As Culturally Competent Health Communication Online, Wilbert Francisco Laveist

English Theses & Dissertations

This study examines whether online health communications targeting African Americans could be more effective by structuring the message in the format of African American jeremiad rhetoric, a culturally unique version of the American jeremiad literary form. Health disparities (also known as health inequality) persist among African Americans despite increased health knowledge, improved communication practices, and access to health facts online. The problem is systemic, and thus a predictable outcome that requires change in societal structures that produce and maintain inequality. Individual behavior changes to improve health is also necessary. Information alone does not change behavior. Altering environmental factors is also …

The Women Of Explosive Ordnance Disposal: Cyborg, Techno-Bodies, Situated Knowledge, And Vibrant Materiality In Military Cultures, April Michelle Cobos

English Theses & Dissertations

Women’s service in the U.S. Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) community began in the 1970s amidst policy changes that opened more active duty roles to women while maintaining restrictions on their access to combat. However, in the past two decades, the changing contexts of war brought the EOD community, and subsequently, these women to the forefront of combat preceding the 2016 policy repeal, positioning these women at a poignant, kairotic moment in history. The exigency of such a project in the field of rhetoric applies to more broadly analyzing the disparities between policy discourse and the lived experiences of individuals who …

Speaking For The Grotesques: The Historical Articulation Of The Disabled Body In The Archive, Violet Marie Strawderman

English Theses & Dissertations

This project examines the ways in which the disabled body is constructed and produced in larger society, via the creation of and interaction with (and through) the archive. The archive, for the purposes of this project, is defined by scholars such as Jacques Derrida and Carolyn Steedman. It is a place where information is stored and documented, but through this process, history and power are also created and maintained. In order to properly examine the ways the archive helps shape the understanding of the disabled body and experience, I use three case studies: Richard III, Caliban and Joseph Merrick. Each …

Rhetorics Of Functionally Applicative Game Design: Designing And Testing The Project Management Game Scrummage, Matthew Carson Beale

English Theses & Dissertations

In this project, I designed and tested Scrummage, a tabletop game to teach the scrum project management system to undergraduate students. The project grew from the gaps in both academic literature and pedagogical tools for project management and collaboration in the technical communication classroom. Although the field of technical communication places significance on project management, research shows that many employers find the project management skills and knowledge of recent graduates to be under-developed. Situated in the fields of game design, game studies, project management, and technical communication, this project asks how we as educators can improve the project management learning …