Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Sinister Subshade: The Revival Of The Ku Klux Klan In Modern America, Taylor Ashton Spicer

Masters Theses

Through the implementation of qualitative analysis this study purposes to discover if there exists possible correlation between President Trump’s assent to power and the increasing legitimacy of the Ku Klux Klan. Using Ernest Bormann’s (1972) Fantasy Theme Criticism, the Knights Party official website and the Donald J. Trump official website are systematically analyzed for dramatis personae (character), setting and action. The rhetorical visions compiled from each analysis are compared employing Ernest Bormann’s (1980) Symbolic Convergence Theory. Resulting analysis suggests little to no correlation between the two movements. The two websites provide very different rhetorical visions with no overlap. The work …

Course Syllabus (Fa18) Coli 110--World Literature I: "Worlds Of Absurdity And Nothingness", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

An approach to the question of absurdity through world literature and a few philosophical and critical texts with a view towards possible modes of resolution

“Higher” School: Nineteenth-Century High Schools And The Secondary-College Divide, Amy J. Lueck

English

This article traces the emergence of nineteenth-century U.S. high schools in the landscape of higher education, attending to the gendered, raced, and classed distinctions at play in this development. Exploring differences in the conceptualization and status of high schools in Louisville, Kentucky, for white male, white female, and mixed-gender African American students, this article reminds us of how these institutional types have been situated, socially inflected, and structured in relation to broader political and power structures that transcend explicit pedagogical considerations. As a result, I argue for the recognition of high schools as historically significant sites in the history of …

Learning From Failure: Making The Feedback Loop Work, Natalie Bishop, Pam Dennis, Janet Land, Hannah Allford

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

“I spend hours providing feedback, but I have no idea if my students read it” is a common phrase echoed across college campuses. While best practices in teaching pedagogy laud the feedback cycle, many instructors question the impact their feedback has on their students’ writing. As the feedback loop continues to be a trending cog in the machine of formative assessment and authentic education, an essential component of the loop is often overlooked: the conversation.

Presenters will focus on providing easy-to-implement “conversation” opportunities for students to respond to instructor feedback. This reflective practice provides insight into a student’s learning processes, …

“Partnering To Understand Undergraduate Research And Writing Longitudinally”, Donna Scheidt, Cara Kozma, Holly Middleton, Kathy Shields

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

In her longitudinal case study of a single undergraduate, College Writing and Beyond (2007), Anne Beaufort investigates several knowledge domains contributing to students’ development as writers. As a team of librarians and writing faculty in research and teaching partnership, we hope to build on Beaufort’s work by examining and elaborating the role of research with respect to writing development by sharing findings from our own longitudinal study of undergraduates’ development as writer-researchers. Specifically, we are interested in the ways in which undergraduates’ research interfaces with their writing practices as they advance through their general education coursework and various disciplines. How …

Who’S Evaluating The Evaluators? Cognitive Biases, Fake News, And Information Literacy, Jon C. Pope, Kim Becnel

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

In response to the increased attention to “fake news” and “alternative facts” as information challenges in the wake of the recent election cycle, librarians and educators have dramatically stepped up efforts to cultivate basic information literacy skills, especially prioritizing the careful evaluation of online sources of information. While these critical source evaluation skills are an essential component of functional information literacy, the recent emphasis on them is predicated on a model of communication that assumes that the readers of these online sources are capable—and desirous—of making informed, objective judgments about the credibility of an external information source. Rhetorical theories, however, …

Libguides ~ Ways To Engage Students In First Year Seminars, Carol Wittig

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

The University of Richmond offers students an array of First Year Seminars to choose from during the fall and spring of their freshman year. All seminars provide opportunities for critical reading and thinking and establish a foundation for effective written and oral communications skills, information literacy, and library research skills. As a common student experience and taught in lieu of a freshman composition sequence, First Year Seminars offer ways for librarians to collaborate with faculty through Library Research Sessions. The overall goals of the FYS Library Research Sessions are to introduce students to fundamental library resources and services, while developing …

Reverse Research, Robin De La Llata Aimé

Activities and Assignments Collection

Students are introduced to academic research and writing with a focus on methods of attribution.

Bridging Rhetoric And Pragmatics With Relevance Theory, Brian N. Larson

Faculty Scholarship

In this chapter, I bridge rhetoric and pragmatics, both of which concern themselves with language-in-use and meaning-making beyond formal syntax and semantics. Previous efforts to link these fields have failed, but Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory (RT), an approach to experimental pragmatics grounded in cognitive science, offers the bridge. I begin by reviewing Gricean pragmatics and its incompatibility with rhetoric and cognitive science. I then sketch RT, but importantly, I identify revisions to RT that make it a powerful tool for rhetorical analysis, a cognitive pragmatic rhetorical (CPR) theory. CPR theory strengthens RT by clarifying what it means to be …

#Digitalactivism: Examining #Yesallwomen And Teaching Social Media Activism In Technical Communication, Karishma Verma

Theses and Dissertations

In May 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others near

the University of California campus in Santa Barbara. A “hatred of women” was cited as the

reason for his crimes. This incident inspired the hashtag movement #YesAllWomen on social

media. Users shared examples of how although “not all men” engage in violent behaviors that

Rodger exhibited, all women go through their lives fearing. This thesis uses a technofeminist

framework to examine how the #YesAllWomen movement functioned as an online social

movement on Twitter to encourage conversation as well as promote change. I also discuss how

technical …

English 1101, In The News: Researching And Writing About Social Justice, Syllabus, Colleen Birchett

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

“Share Your Awesome Time With Others”: Interrogating Privilege And Identification In The Study-Abroad Blog, Kathryn Gindlesparger

College of Humanities and Sciences Faculty Papers

The genre of the study-abroad blog prompts students who are studying abroad to identify with marginalized populations they encounter during the travel experience, a practice that is particularly exigent amid the increasing commercialization of the studyabroad industry. To understand the conventions and ethical implications of the genre, the author examines an advice column on blogging abroad and students' reflections on their own writing from a recent studyabroad course. The blog conventions show that students are encouraged to use the misfortune of others to affirm their own privilege, while the interviews suggest that students need more support in responding to the …

Software Of The Oppressed: Reprogramming The Invisible Discipline, Erin R. Glass

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation offers a critical analysis of software practices within the university and the ways they contribute to a broader status quo of software use, development, and imagination. Through analyzing the history of software practices used in the production and circulation of student and scholarly writing, I argue that this overarching software status quo has oppressive qualities in that it supports the production of passive users, or users who are unable to collectively understand and transform software code for their own interests. I also argue that the university inadvertently normalizes and strengthens the software status quo through what I call …

Mao's "On Contradiction," Mao-Hegel/Mao-Deleuze, Kenneth Surin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Mao Tse-Tung's famous 1937 essay "On Contradiction" is regarded as a significant attempt to redefine and reapply Marx's notion of a "dialectical contradiction" to the Chinese revolutionary conjuncture of Mao's time. I set out the principles outlined in Mao's essay, before arguing that the revolutionary conjuncture of his time no longer exists in the era of globalization and neoliberalism. I conclude that a new conception of "antagonism" is needed, and revise Mao's position with the aid of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari.

Mapping Out Chinese Modernity And Alternative Modernity, Song Li

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, “Mapping Out Chinese Modernity and Alternative Modernity,” Song Li reviews the writings of Kang Liu, particularly his Aesthetics and Marxism. Kang Liu studies the intellectual trajectory of Chinese Marxism from its inception to its post-Mao phases of transformation by comparing it with the cultural and aesthetic thinking of Western Marxism. It provides not only a new perspective for the study of Marxism in general and Chinese Marxism in particular, but also opens up a new space for mapping out Chinese modernity and alternative modernity. Its 2012 Chinese translation makes it more accessible in China, and it will …

Introduction: Rethinking Critical Theory And Maoism, Kang Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Rethinking Critical Theory and Maoism," Kang Liu reviews the existing literature in English on the relationship of Critical Theory and Maoism and discusses the need to explore and reconstruct a genealogy of Critical Theory and Maoism within the global context of political, ideological, and intellectual currents and trends. The special issue will focus on three clusters of issues: first, the western invention of Maoism as a universal theory of revolution; second, the reception of Critical Theory in China and its relationship to Maoism; and third, the relevance of Maoism and Critical Theory today. Liu raises the question …

Maoism In Culture: A “Glocalized” Or “Sinicized” Marxist Literary Theory, Ning Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his essay "Maoism in Culture," Ning Wang discusses the importance to literature and art of Mao's famous "Yan'an Talks" as one of his most representative works. Maoism, or Mao Zedong Thought as is generally called in China, is a "glocalized" or "Sinicized" Marxism initiated and developed by Mao and his comrades in arms and successors in China. Wang argues that although Maoism is not a dogmatically "imported" Marxism from the West, it has indeed grasped some fundamental Marxist principles in combination with the concrete Chinese literary and critical practice. Thus a "glocalized" or "Sinicized" Marxist literary theory has contributed …

The Political (Un)Conscious: Rethinking Aesthetics From A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Xiaohong Zhang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "The Political (Un)conscious: Rethinking Aesthetics from a Cross-Cultural Perspective," Xiaohong Zhang adopts a cross-cultural perspective, examining the cultural-specific nuances of critical terms like race, class and gender, all of which have bearings on our perception and conception of aesthetics. Drawing on Emory Elliot's groundbreaking book, Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age (2002), the paper probes into the aesthetic experience whose primary effect is to depragmatize. Along this line of thinking, the author draws attention to the aesthetic impetus of two Nobel laureates, Mo Yan and Gao Xingjian, whose rewriting of Western classics demonstrates Chinese authors' shared predilection for …

That's So Gay!: Queer Texts In The U.S., Jesse S. Rice-Evans, Andrea Stella

Open Educational Resources

Gender is facing an identity crisis: queer identities in the new era of gender and genre are subverting paradigms of communication and genre by working with language and narrative in new ways. Queer biography and autobiography mark an important turn in contemporary literature and poetics: the shift from a male-dominant gaze towards a kaleidoscopic perspective on queer embodiment, trans and non-binary narrative, and speculative writing about other worlds & possibilities, which offer us as readers new opportunities for storytelling and thinking about writing. These forms also make space for other identities traditionally excluded from mainstream cultural narrative spaces, and we’re …

That's So Gay!: Queer Texts In The U.S., Andréa Stella, Jesse Rice-Evans

Open Educational Resources

Gender is facing an identity crisis: queer identities in the new era of gender and genre are subverting paradigms of communication and genre by working with language and narrative in new ways. Queer biography and autobiography mark an important turn in contemporary literature and poetics: the shift from a male-dominant gaze towards a kaleidoscopic perspective on queer embodiment, trans and non-binary narrative, and speculative writing about other worlds & possibilities, which offer us as readers new opportunities for storytelling and thinking about writing. These forms also make space for other identities traditionally excluded from mainstream cultural narrative spaces, and we’re …