Gender Performance In “Cult” Conversion Narratives: The Twelve Tribes, 2024 University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Gender Performance In “Cult” Conversion Narratives: The Twelve Tribes, Navah Chestnut
Honors Theses
While many scholars have attempted to understand the unique contours of the definition of “cult,” there are still rampant disagreements across different disciplines and scholarly persuasions about the way that a “cult” functions differently than other organizations. In this essay, I aim to clarify how the function of a “cult” is contingent upon a set of rhetorical strategies used by the group to systematically remove agency from group members. One of those rhetorical strategies is compelling individuals to perform according to strict heteronormative gender enactments. To understand how this strategy works, I will turn to four spiritually metanoic narratives published …
Towards A Posthumanist Sociomaterial Conceptualization Of Intercultural Rhetoric, 2024 McGill University
Towards A Posthumanist Sociomaterial Conceptualization Of Intercultural Rhetoric, Amir Kalan
Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization
Intercultural rhetoric has a human-centered view of culture and considers humans’ ethnicities, beliefs, and social practices as crucial components of rhetorical traditions. Conceptualizing a posthumanist sociomaterial approach to intercultural rhetoric, this article suggests that writing across cultures can be viewed as rhetorical transition between two sociomaterial networks with non-human, as well as human, factors. It explains that posthuman intercultural rhetoric can turn into a field where researchers study political, economic, and administrative networks in which texts are funded, constructed, regulated, disseminated, sold, bought, and cited. This area of writing studies would be interested in how rhetoric is constructed and used …
#Hotgirlsemestersyllabus, 2024 Rochester Institute of Technology
#Hotgirlsemestersyllabus, Katrina Marie Overby, Gheni Platenburg, Niya Pickett Miller
Feminist Pedagogy
No abstract provided.
Digital Rhetoric Of The Invisible: Bisexual Literacy Practices On Tiktok, 2020–2021, 2024 The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Digital Rhetoric Of The Invisible: Bisexual Literacy Practices On Tiktok, 2020–2021, Olivia Wood
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation uses auto- and digital-ethnographic methods to analyze the literacy practices of bisexual TikTok users primarily during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, during which time TikTok exploded in popularity among U.S. social media users, especially among young adults. It is also an exercise in neuroqueer composing, diverging at times from the norms of academic writing and the dissertation genre to perform and intentionally draw attention to neuroqueer styles of thinking and communication. I argue that bisexual invisibility and contemporary bi+ rhetorical activity must be understood within the context of LGBTQ+ political history, particularly …
Inoculant To Influence: Cultivating Critical Citizenship By Foregrounding Ontology Through Kenneth Burke And Walter Fisher’S Rhetorical Frameworks, 2023 University of Texas at Tyler
Inoculant To Influence: Cultivating Critical Citizenship By Foregrounding Ontology Through Kenneth Burke And Walter Fisher’S Rhetorical Frameworks, Mark Griffin
English Department Theses
Scholars interested in exploring the potency of the writing modality of critical pedagogy for molding students into proactive citizens will find the integration of Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism and Walter Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm instrumental, offering tools essential for cultivating a rhetorical awareness adept at navigating narratives in the 21st century. Synthesizing Burke’s rhetorical dialectic between the nature of reality and our understanding of it with Fisher’s concept that the human condition is a narrative condition yields insights into the critical writing process. This integration fosters a rhetorical awareness, serving as an inoculant to influence, countering the prevailing persuasive elements within today’s …
Designing A Drama-Based Arts Ministry For The North 10th And Treadaway Church Of Christ, 2023 Abilene Christian University
Designing A Drama-Based Arts Ministry For The North 10th And Treadaway Church Of Christ, Curtis Alexander King
Doctor of Ministry Theses
The North 10th and Treadaway Church of Christ (“Treadaway”) is a small, predominantly African American congregation located in Abilene, Texas, home of Abilene Christian University (“ACU”) and several other institutions of higher learning. Considering ACU’s Church of Christ heritage and continued affiliation with the Churches of Christ, it is no surprise that Treadaway has often served as a “home away from home” congregation for ACU students and recent graduates who choose to remain in the city. The level of integration of the students from ACU and other local colleges into the life and ministry of Treadaway has varied greatly over …
Goostly Coumforte In God: The Rhetoric Of Mysticism In The Cloud Of Unknowing, 2023 University of New Orleans
Goostly Coumforte In God: The Rhetoric Of Mysticism In The Cloud Of Unknowing, Clinton M. Sensat
University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
In this paper I analyze the rhetoric of the Cloud of Unknowing by an anonymous fourteenth-century English Catholic mystic. First, I situate the Cloud in its tradition, both spiritual and rhetorical. Then, after analyzing the linguistic arts employed, I engage in a sustained examination of the Cloud’s rhetorical technique. Ultimately, I conclude that the author of the Cloud succeeds in his rhetorical goals, even if some of his strategies are less successful than he perhaps believes, and that he does so through the use of concrete language and an appeal to the ethos of Christian monastic friendship.
Trash, Fragments, And Breaking Things: Toward A Grotesque Cripistemology For Disabled Life Writing, 2023 Clemson University
Trash, Fragments, And Breaking Things: Toward A Grotesque Cripistemology For Disabled Life Writing, Michelle Anne Lloyd
All Dissertations
Despite the boom of memoirs of mental health post-1997 and the first advertisements for Prozac, most of them follow the same formula and come from the same places of privilege. This privilege is evident in the author bios on the books themselves and the careers of the writers. The popularity of these books within both abled and disabled realms has therefore created a script that those with mental illnesses are expected to abide by. Following in the example of Margaret Price, Katie Rose Guest Pryal, Merri Lisa Johnson, and others, I resituate mental illness as mental disability and place it …
Force Displacement, Forced Perspective: The Rhetorics Of Refugee Experience, 2023 Clemson University
Force Displacement, Forced Perspective: The Rhetorics Of Refugee Experience, Jonathan Burgess
All Dissertations
This dissertation interrogates the intersection of digital media, displacement, and human rights within the contemporary geopolitical landscape, with a specific focus on the MENA region. From a perspective firmly rooted rhetoric, it dissects the complex relationship between technology and displaced populations, emphasizing the role of transmedia storytelling in shaping refugee experiences and narratives and the potential for transmedia storytelling to facilitate greater insights into needs and gaps for displaced people. Central to the analysis is the paradox of digital tools both as emancipatory devices and tools of surveillance and control, which are further elucidated through case studies.
Engaging with thinkers …
Argumentation For Critical Heterogenous Political Discussions: Constructing A Rebuttal, 2023 University of Alabama
Argumentation For Critical Heterogenous Political Discussions: Constructing A Rebuttal, Rebecca Oliver
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
This activity seeks to explain to undergraduate students how to craft a proper attack and defense in argumentation and debate, persuasion, or political communication courses. The activity teaches students 1) the parts of a basic argument structure and 2) how to construct a rebuttal using a basic argument structure. Students will argue against their true political typology by selecting an opposing typology from the Pew Research Typology Quiz. Broadly, this exercise is designed to encourage students to engage in dialogues with people who disagree with their political positionality. Specifically, the activity accomplishes this by teaching students the value of basic …
Encoding & Decoding: Artfully Modeling Communication, 2023 University of Maryland, College Park
Encoding & Decoding: Artfully Modeling Communication, Daniel L. Foster, Ashley D. Garcia
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
Drawing objects and concepts, such as cats, trees, love, democracy, and family, is probably the last activity students expect to do in a communication course. Although this sounds like an introductory art activity, creating visual representations provides a nuanced understanding of the encoding and decoding processes. Encoding and decoding are the most hidden and often the most unfamiliar and complex fundamental components of communication for students to comprehend. By engaging in this activity, students translate their decoding process into drawings, which serve as personal artifacts representative of their encoding and decoding. Students come to better conceptualize this cognitive process with …
“Party In The Communication Classroom”: Exploring Communication Competence To Raise Social Awareness, 2023 West Virginia Wesleyan College
“Party In The Communication Classroom”: Exploring Communication Competence To Raise Social Awareness, Nancy Bressler
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
This activity demonstrates communication competence and allows students to observe, assess, and ultimately utilize the model of communication competence to engage with other people successfully. To understand how to engage in communication competence, students must recognize that appropriateness and effectiveness are crucial aspects of their communication. Through the communication competence model, students examine how to achieve effectiveness in their communication by setting goals for specific contexts; they also consider to what extent their goals are achievable given the particular situation. Using a 2014 MTV Video Music Award example, students can analyze why Miley Cyrus allowed a homeless man to accept …
Introducing Public Speaking Self-Concept (Pssc): A Novel, Qualitatively-Derived Communication Anxiety And Competence Variable, 2023 South Dakota State University
Introducing Public Speaking Self-Concept (Pssc): A Novel, Qualitatively-Derived Communication Anxiety And Competence Variable, Karla M. Hunter, Joshua N. Westwick
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
Despite numerous quantitative assessments of teaching interventions that have helped mitigate public speaking anxiety (PSA), this common barrier to public speaking persists. In addition, quantitative measures may not be appropriate for all instructional goals, especially with students from across a variety of cultures. To enrich educators’ capacity to help diverse bodies of students overcome the challenges presented by PSA, this qualitative study asked students to “Please describe yourself as a public speaker” at the beginning and the end of a freshman-level, general education public speaking class. Thematic analysis identified a two-dimensional pattern within student responses (N = 51) (a …
Front Matter, 2023 South Dakota State University
Discourse: The Journal Of The Scasd, Volume 8 (2023), 2023 South Dakota State University
Discourse: The Journal Of The Scasd, Volume 8 (2023), The Speech Communication Association Of South Dakota
Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD
No abstract provided.
Calling In Antiracist Accomplices Beyond The Writing Center, 2023 Midwestern State University
Calling In Antiracist Accomplices Beyond The Writing Center, Hillary Coenen
Writing Center Journal
A reflective, ethnographic study of a grassroots, antiracist educational workshop (The Conversation Workshops, TCW) reveals that writing center (WC) pedagogy and feminist invitational rhetoric’s (FIR) influence on TCW enables participants to recognize their own and their partners’ expertise, meaningful experiences, valuable perspectives, and their need to be listened to, accounted for, and understood. In an invitational model, particularly one based on a one-with- one, interpersonal dynamic, participants are more like collaborators than audiences, an approach that can be applied in diverse educational settings, and which reflects the WC’s model of one-with- one pedagogy. This dynamic also reveals one of TCW’s …
In-Class Debate On Chatgpt, 2023 University of North Dakota
In-Class Debate On Chatgpt, Chris Gable
AI Assignment Library
Students are assigned into one of three debate teams, and will argue for, against, or a middle ground on the issue of using AI and ChatGPT in Higher Education. They present their positions in-class, cross-examine each other, and write a final reflection on the experience.
Narrative Infidelity And White Resentment In The Rhetorical Mobilization Of The Anti-Crt Movement, 2023 Louisiana State University
Narrative Infidelity And White Resentment In The Rhetorical Mobilization Of The Anti-Crt Movement, Julien Burns
LSU Master's Theses
Beginning in the summer of 2020, an activist movement has arisen in opposition to Critical Race Theory (CRT). This movement has mobilized tens of thousands of Americans and passed policy curtailing the discussion of race in classrooms despite a lack of evidence that CRT has any meaningful presence in many of the public institutions targeted. This movement challenges logic-based conceptions of rhetorical persuasion and demands an alternative model. In this thesis, I propose that a narrative conception of rhetoric provides a framework for understanding how this movement is rational, despite the falsifiability of its foundation. Specifically, I respond to Walter …
“Long Live Ear X-Tacy!”: An Oral History Study Of Rhetorics Of Nostalgia And Place., 2023 University of Louisville
“Long Live Ear X-Tacy!”: An Oral History Study Of Rhetorics Of Nostalgia And Place., Aubrie Warner
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This study aims to explore rhetorical placemaking through how people understand and construct narratives around places that no longer exist. In doing so, it examines the relationship between nostalgia and place — how rhetorical construction of place is influenced and/or informed by rhetorics of nostalgia, how our experiences influence our sense of place (past and present), and how we create continuity for ourselves in the construction and maintenance of particular narratives. This study contributes to the emerging field of rhetorics of nostalgia and places it in direct conversation with rhetorics of place and unpacks how these two are more connected …
Digitally Rural: Identifying How Technological Inequity Impacts Rural Students In First-Year Writing Courses, 2023 University of New Mexico
Digitally Rural: Identifying How Technological Inequity Impacts Rural Students In First-Year Writing Courses, Jo Anna M. Nevada
English Language and Literature ETDs
To teach composition in this era means to engage students with technology; it is all but an unspoken requirement at the majority of universities. This dissertation theorizes, however, that the imbricated use of technology in first-year writing (FYW) classrooms places rural students at an inherent disadvantage, with issues of inadequate technological proficiency and inconsistent access causing a substantial learning disparity between this student population and their urban peers. Through mixed-methods data analysis of student survey responses and final FYW course portfolios, this study reveals that the expectation of technological access and presumption of digital literacy is detrimental to rural student …