Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

The Suicide Survivor's Guide To Crafts, Joshua Adair

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Written as a personal narrative, this essay explores the possibility of crafting as a coping mechanism of mourning by examining the relationship between the author and his mother-in-law after the suicide of his partner. Ultimately refusing to valorize crafting as a transformative or life-saving endeavor while still acknowledging its worth as a mode of living in times of trauma and otherwise, the author engages dark humor and sarcasm to look at how we craft our lives despite terrible loss.

The Liberal As An Enemy Of Queer Justice, Craig Schamel

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

Abstract

Liberalism as a historical mode of the political is the context in which the movement and ensuing struggle for queer justice emerged in most Western countries. The terminology, practices, tendencies, beliefs, ethics, laws, and patterns of political and social life which have been determined by this mode of the political, it is argued, are inimical to queer justice and render its achievement impossible. Liberalism as a mode of the political is approached from below, from knowledge gained in practical experience in queer groups which considered themselves revolutionary at least to some degree, and from the effects on such groups …

Ideographs And American Mass Media: Understanding The Narrative On The Israel-Palestine Conflict And Its Influence On Publics, Savanna Lynn Fowler

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the American mass media's narrative on the Israel-Palestine conflict to understand the power of ideographs and their influence on specific publics. I focus on two popular ideographs in mass media reporting,and, in order to examine how these ideographs are utilized to construct a narrative for the media's publics, the political ideologies they represent, the agendas they further, and the consequences their narrow use has on developing counterpublics and emerging alternative narratives around the conflict. I focus my attention on the mass media's coverage of a sixteen day Israeli shelling in Gaza and how public consent is acquired …

Fall 2015 Award Winner: The Power Of Novels, Huizi Hu

The Diana McDonald Writer's Challenge

As the saying goes, “A book holds a golden house.” This old Chinese proverb indicates that learning the wisdom that is shown in writing can lead to success. Therefore, in my home country, China, teachers always use this sentence to encourage students to study hard in order to achieve high scores. However, an interesting fact in the majority of families in my hometown is that only textbooks are considered to be useful while novels are considered to be unorthodox and a distraction to one’s studies. In most parents’ minds, reading novels is a waste of time so that they forbid …

Disciplinary Mythologies: A Rhetorical-Cultural Analysis Of Performance Enhancement Technologies In Sports, John Lamothe

Publications

In sports discourse, the relationship between athletics and technology is often paradoxical. On the one hand, modern sports rely on technology at every level, from training and tracking of players to the equipment and apparel used by athletes to the game strategies and playing fields themselves. Nearly all of these technologies are intended to increase athletic performance on some level. And yet, certain performance enhancement technologies can be criticized for being antithetical to the spirit of sports, which is framed as being a strictly natural and pure human endeavor. Using a rhetorical-cultural methodological approach, popular sports discourse is analyzed to …

Pedagogy At Play: Gamification And Gameful Design In The 21st-Century Writing Classroom, Danielle Roney Roach

English Theses & Dissertations

The language used to discuss play in current academic spaces tends to center around formal games (and computer games in particular in the 21st century classroom). Scholarly conversations tend to distort the actual practices that occur in classrooms and subsequently limit the scope of any investigation of the pedagogical function and outcomes of those practices. This project explores the use of play and games in the classrooms of nine composition instructors. From these stories, this project begins to map out a taxonomy in order to begin building toward a pedagogy of play for 21st century writing classrooms. Using a multiperspectival …

50 Años De Evolución En Los Estudios Lingüísticos Transculturales: De La Retórica Contrastiva A La Retórica Intercultural, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Making Of Knowledge-Makers In Composition: A Distant Reading Of Dissertations, Benjamin M. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Combining qualitative coding with original algorithmic and quantitative analyses, this project aggregates and visualizes metadata from 2,711 recent doctoral dissertations in Composition/Rhetoric, completed between 2001 and 2010 (inclusive), in order to establish an empirical baseline of what new and established scholars in Composition/Rhetoric agree upon as acceptable research in the field. I find that both subject matter and methodologies largely collocate within a small number of clusters, but not without cross-over among these clusters, and I call for increased dialogue among schools focusing on these different methods and subjects.

Chapter 1, 'Disciplinary Anxiety and the Composition of Composition,' reviews the …

Renaissance Humanism And The Ottoman 'Other' - Discourse Construction, Position And Power, Aramis Miranda-Reyes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 had an overwhelming geopolitical impact on Western Europe which included a discursive shift that depended greatly on the ideological construction of this event by its contemporaries for its consequences. In other words, the nature of Western European discourse subsequent to the Fall of Constantinople was rooted in the psychological impact this loss of territory had in contemporary secular and church leaders as well as their functionaries, many of which were key humanist figures. Consequently, Renaissance writers who constructed the Ottomans as 'others', were also writing within a context of power relations. In this …

Rebooting A Technical Writing Course: Control Instructional Design, Alt Information Literacy, And Delete Non-Collaboration, Kelly Diamond, Gregg Thumm

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Members of this panel, an instructional design librarian and a teaching faculty member, began collaborating in summer 2014 to revise and redesign English 305: Scientific and Technical Writing; the faculty instructor wanted to improve this course by redesigning it based on instructional design principles, but also to include more information literacy instruction into this online course.

This panel will discuss faculty’s perceived problems with the initial version of the class, including lack of student participation and poor choices of research materials for assignments. We will discuss how we tried to eliminate those deficiencies through instructional design and redesigning authentic assignments …

A Better Question Would Be: Are We The Watchmen?, Alexander Lawriw

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This assignment was meant to be a literary analysis of the famous graphic novel, Watchmen, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. In this analysis, we were supposed to look at some of the various writing/visual strategies of the novel and note how these strategies either related to or did not connect with various Catholic Intellectual Traditions. I, personally, decided to look at two of the main characters of the book, Rorschach and The Comedian, and examine how they related to the deeper Catholic and Philosophical understanding of what it means to be human. In particular, I …

Stereotypes Of Disabled In Society: A Call For Change, Emily Kimble

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

The purpose of this assignment was to research and write in an academic discipline. Students were asked to conduct academic research and to produce an argument about a “super.” The argument required that one joins an academic conversation, as he or she practiced the research and writing conventions expected of a member of an academic discipline or community. To get started, I began thinking about a topic—something that was not only important to me, but also important to society. I looked at the links provided to me by my professor that gave background information on numerous superheroes. After analyzing the …

Anti-Gay Legislation In Russia: Western Perspectives, Kelsey A. Clayback

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

My writing process first began when my English 200 professor, Dr. Kisel, assigned our final informative synthesis essay. We were given a list of topics to choose from, all of which addressed different aspects of censorship in Russia. I chose the topic of the controversial gay propaganda law enacted by President Vladimir Putin in modern-day Russia. As a class, we met in the library and learned how to find appropriate sources using UD’s online databases. We were given the assignment of finding and summarizing five credible sources for our essay. Next, we were to narrow the sources down to four …

Love Vs. Capitalism, Blake R. Coury

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

My purpose in writing this Summary and Response paper was to take a deep look at Norris’ essay, The Secret Ingredient, and focus on a main aspect that I found to be important to me. I am trying to show, using Norris’ essay as evidence, that I agree with Norris’ assertion that people are too materialistic today and that people should be focuses on love instead. The hardest challenge for me when I was working on this paper was trying to balance between using textual evidence and using my own words. I wanted to make sure that I provided …

Breaking Through The Veneer, Julia K. Hall

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

I initially approached this paper merely as an assignment for my English 100 class, but I became increasingly enthusiastic as I continued to develop my thoughts. This ordinary assignment transformed into a fun, exciting process. I pondered my favorite books, my influential teachers, and my childhood before beginning to write. The conclusions regarding my personal identity as a reader and a writer that I make in this paper were revealed to me through my reflection. After a few drafts and a trip to the Write Place, I have produced an essay that mirrors my personal literacy journey.

This Honey Bunny Ain't So Funny, Molly E. Moesner

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This assignment consisted of recounting an experience or time when you learned either a primary of secondary literacy. After a few brief brainstorming exercises including a five-minute free-write, my mind was instantly drawn to an experience I had when I was younger. This experience stuck out in particular, not only because it was the foundation of my ability to read, but also because it was my first known embarrassing story. Once I decided on this topic, I began jotting down as many details from that time as possible. I eventually pieced together my thoughts and began composing the narrative, adding …

Grids And Gestures: A Comics Making Exercise, Nick Sousanis

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Grids and Gestures is an exercise intended to offer participants insight into a comics maker’s decision-making process for composing the entire page through the hands-on activity of making an abstract comic. It requires no prior drawing experience and serves to help reexamine what it means to draw. In addition to a description of how to proceed with the exercise, this piece also includes conceptual grounding in the form of a brief theoretical discussion of the ways comics convey meaning as well as personal notes on the development of the exercise and how it has been used.

Visualizing Abolition: Two Graphic Novels And A Critical Approach To Mass Incarceration For The Composition Classroom, Michael Sutcliffe

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article outlines two graphic novels and an accompanying activity designed to unpack complicated intersections between racism, poverty, and (d)evolving criminal-legal policy. Over 2 million adults are held in U.S. prison facilities, and several million more are under custodial supervision, and it has become clearly unsustainable. In the last decade, there has been a shift in media conversations about criminality, yet only a few suggest decreasing our reliance upon incarceration. In meaningfully different ways, the two novels trace the development of incarceration from its roots in slavery to its contemporary anti-democratic iteration and offer an underpublicized alternative.

Critical and community …

Revision In The Multiversity: What Composition Can Learn From The Superhero, David Hyman

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Constant and ongoing revision is the compositional tactic through which many contemporary superhero narratives negotiate the powerful struggle between reiteration of the genre’s past, and creative expression of its future. Instead of a gradual succession of improved renditions of a text, each one effacing and superseding the imperfections of its predecessors, revision is revealed as the production of multiple versions whose differences and diversities are “capable of being in uncertainties”, as Keats describes the creative attitude which he terms Negative Capability: ontologically equal textual variations that wear their inconsistencies openly, and reject the pressure to resolve their multiplicities into the …

Pim Pedagogy: Toward A Loosely Unified Model For Teaching And Studying Comics And Graphic Novels, James B. Carter

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The article debuts and explains "PIM" pedagogy, a construct for teaching comics at the secondary- and post-secondary levels and for deep reading/studying comics. The PIM model for considering comics is actually based in major precepts of education studies, namely constructivist foundations of learning, and loosely unifies constructs inherent therein with other available frames and frameworks for studying comics. As such, the article fills a dire need in the scholarly literature on comics pedagogy and paves a way for those who seek to teach comics courses in the future but who need direction and for those who seek to study/read comics …