Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Letter From The Guest Editors: Putting Our Bodies On The Line: Towards A Capacious Vision Of Digital Activism, Ben Mccorkle, Jason Palmeri

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This is the editors' note to accompany the special issue on digital activism.

Let Me Queer My Throat: Queer Rhetorics Of Negotiation: Marriage Equality And Homonormativity, Hillery Glasby

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

“Let Me Queer My Throat: Queer Rhetorics of Negotiation – Marriage Equality and Homonormativity" is a project that grew from personal tensions the author faced while simultaneously reading critical queer critiques of the marriage equality movement and homonormativity and planning her own same-sex wedding. Rather than argue a clear-cut position, the author explores conflicting discourses on same-sex marriage and openly struggles with her multiple subject positions. Blending photography, personal writing, alternative rhetorics, and traditional academic discourse, the author investigates what's at stake with her upcoming same-sex wedding, while remaining conscious of queer politics. This project argues that queer participation in …

Blogging Borders: Transnational Feminist Rhetorics & Global Voices, Jessica Ouellette

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

As more and more digital publics emerge as generative sites for cross-cultural communication and social action, it becomes imperative for us to critically question the ways in which these spaces operate not only as platforms from which to speak, but also as platforms from which to silence. By looking at digital publics through the lens of genre and critical discourse theory, I argue that the dis/empowering and (de)linking of speakers is an intrinsic part of public discourse and one that deserves further scrutiny. Through an analysis of the global feminist blog, Gender Across Borders (GAB), this project questions the ways …

Queer The Tech: Genderfucking And Anti-Consumer Activism In Social Media, Matthew A. Vetter

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

A companion text to a piece of online activist rhetoric, this essay attempts to explain how social media networks and other digital interfaces intercede and influence users' constructions of gender and consumer identity. Gaining awareness of the influence networks have over our lives, should empower users to appropriate and subvert those networks for alterior agendas. This essay, and the activism it introduces, demonstrates an appropriation of Pinterest, a "pinboard-style" social media network, for the purposes of suberting and exposing its typical hetero-normatie and pro-consumer practices.  Â

Playing With Plagiarism: Remixing What Sticks, Dustin Edwards

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Creator's Statement: What is plagiarism shown? What does it look like? What does it do? And whom does it affect? In this project, I explore -- and provide possible answers to -- these questions by remixing popular representations of plagiarism. This work presents one possible activist intervention that teachers can take when they talk about the culturally burdened concept of plagiarism. I choose to play with plagiarism and I invite others to do the same. Following (counter)public sphere theorist Michael Warner, circulation itself can be a powerful vehicle for change. Although my audience for my argument is quite targeted (writing …

Political Third Parties' Representation In"The Big Three": 24-Hour Cable News Networks' Ideological Construction Of The American Political Duopoly, William Breault

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis conducts content and functional analyses to investigate the amount and functions of third-party mentions in 24-hour cable news networks. Additionally, this thesis applies framing tactics, ideographs, and other rhetorical theory to examine strategies utilized to ideologically construct cognitions regarding the current American political duopoly.

To Thine Own Self Be Cruel: An Analysis Of The Use Of Self-Deprecating Humor As A Rhetorical Strategy By Figures In Positions Of Authority, Brian Sorenson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the use of self-deprecating humor as a rhetorical strategy by figures in positions of authority. A close textual analysis is performed on eight White House Correspondents' Dinner speeches by U.S. presidents. Two speeches are analyzed from each of the four chosen presidents. The presidents whose respective uses of self-deprecating humor will be analyzed are Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Crime And Poverty In Detroit: A Cross-Referential Critical Analysis Of Ideographs And Framing, Jacob Jerome Nickell

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the relationship between crime and poverty is rhetorically constructed within the news media. To this end, I investigate the content of twelve news articles, published online, that offered coverage of crime in the city of Detroit, Michigan. I employ three methods in my criticism of these texts: ideographic analysis, critical framing analysis, and an approach that considers ideographs and framings elements to be rhetorical constructions that function together. In each phase of my analysis, I developed ideological themes from concepts emerging from the texts. I then approached my discussion of these findings from a perspective of …

Fashioning A Rhetoric Of Style: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Urban Street Style Representations In New York City, Amber Pineda

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how urban street styles are used rhetorically within local boroughs in New York City as a form of resistance to the dominant fashion industry that dictates what is "in fashion" through media. A total of fifteen video blogs developed by The New York Times were analyzed, each containing a representation of one of the five boroughs of New York City: Staten Island, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens. The analysis identified themes of a rhetoric of style, consisting of primacy of text, imaginary communities, aesthetic rationales, market contexts, and stylistic homologies. These themes were then analyzed by drawing …

Proper Names As Narrative Gaps: A Deconstructive Reading Of Rosario Ferré And García Márquez, Dora Suarez

Honors College Theses

This thesis argues that language in general, and proper names in particular, are surreptitious examples of narrative gaps. In this way, in the context of literature, the narrative gaps enclosed in proper names enable the audience to become an active participant in a type of writing that exceeds the limit of the specific literary text at hand. In deconstructing the way in which proper names and nicknames are used by Rosario Ferré and García Márquez, this exposition shows how names, as conveyors of different identities, systematically enable an exercise of différance: they distinguish subjects while postponing an actual description of …

The Lifestyle Of The "Urban Tribe", Nichelle D. Mcnabb, Rachel Friedman

Communications Faculty Scholarship

It was once the norm for people to get married in their early twenties,

perhaps right after college or maybe during college. Once married, there was

the need to start a family as soon as possible. However, nowadays, people

appear to be substituting (at least for this period of time after college) the

traditional family structure with a new one – the “urban tribe.” This paper

takes a critical approach to examining portrayals of rituals in “urban tribes”

in two television shows – Will & Grace and Friends in which we argue that

the progressive elements of these shows counter …

Shaping Presence: Ida B. Wells’ 1892 Testimony Of The ‘Untold Story’ At New York’S Lyric Hall, Anita August

English Faculty Publications

Ida B. Wells stood before a crowd of the social hierarchy of black women from Boston, Brooklyn, New York City, and Philadelphia at New York’s Lyric Hall on October 5, 1892.

Wells’ 1892 testimonial, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases, is the founding rhetorical text in the anti-lynching movement that called for a moral, religious, and legal referendum on lynching in America. By forsaking all of the commonplace rationale for lynching and the Southern social comfort that came with it, Wells reframed the simplistic characterizations of lynching with new questions to demonstrate its structural features. With the …

The Peters Projection And The Latitude And Longitude Of Recolonization, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In 1973, German historian Arno Peters unveiled the “Peters projection,” a map that challenged the Eurocentric Mercator style by redrawing the so-called “Third World” to appear more prominent on the global landscape. The projection sparked intense debate among cartographers about the overt use of ideology in mapping, while simultaneously championed by international groups (from the UN to church organizations) as a corrective against the marginalization of developing nations. This essay addresses how the Peters map became a rhetorical emblem for an internationalist identity within the contentious spatial conceptions constraining the Cold War. Ultimately, the Peters projection, despite its radicalism, constituted …

What Becomes Of The Subject?, Graham Macphee

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pedagogy In Action: Teaching And Writing As Rhetorical Performance, Lesley E. Bartlett

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Drawing from work in composition studies, rhetorical theory, and feminist theory, this project builds on questions of identity, embodiment, and privilege to enrich conversations about writing pedagogy and teacher development in Composition and Rhetoric. I begin with the assumption that all acts of writing and teaching are performances, whether they are marked as such or not. I engage rhetorical and feminist theories to critically read classroom moments, student writing, and composition scholarship as I urge writing teachers to reflect on the extent to which their embodied pedagogical performances align with their theoretical commitments regarding student learning and teacher development. My …

Course Syllabus (Sp14) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "The Sublime, The Uncanny, And The Imagination", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

In a world in which what counts as knowledge is predominantly restricted to the measurable and the calculable, those elements of human experience which elude and exceed these parameters are often ignored and discounted. In this course, we will examine questions of the sublime, the uncanny, and the speculative as treated in literature, psychoanalysis, and philosophy in order to think and write critically about them. Here, we will consider the possible extent to which an openness to such experiences can enrich our lives.

Shifting Spaces In Digital Rhetoric: Ephemera In The Age Of Infinite Memory, Geoffrey Gimse

All NMU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

SHIFTING SPACES IN DIGITAL RHETORIC: EPHEMERA IN THE AGE OF INFINITE MEMORY

By

Geoffrey Gimse

The storage capacity of digital systems has expanded at an incredible rate over the past decade. This new and growing space and the rapidly evolving technologies that surround it have become an intrinsic component of the digital creative process, and yet they remain relatively unexamined. The methods by which creative works are offloaded from the human mind, abstracted into data objects, and ultimately placed into an external storage medium are an excellent starting point for this type of critical analysis. This paper seeks to …

Ritualized Rhetoric And Historical Memory In German Foreign And Security Policy, Sara A. Hoff

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Recent changes in German foreign policy behavior have led to questions about Germany's European vocation. At the center of this inquiry is Germany's struggle to resolve the intersection between historical memory and present day international responsibility, especially in cases involving the use of force. This dissertation examines how and when historical memory has influenced, shaped, and informed contemporary German foreign and security policy and rhetoric by examining cases within two policy areas: out of area operations and nuclear nonproliferation. Focusing on the case of Libya, this dissertation also considers the cases of Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Nuclear nonproliferation, a global …

Teaching Grammar-In-Context In College Writing Instruction: An Update On The Research Literature, Zak Lancaster, Andrea R. Olinger

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Does grammar instruction help to improve students’ writing? Should writing instructors focus on grammar in first-year composition or other university-level writing courses? These questions persist among writing professionals despite a long tradition of research-based conclusions that explicit grammar instruction has no effect or even a harmful effect on students’ writing development (e.g., Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, and Schoer, 1963; Harris, 1962; Hillocks, 1986; McQuade, 1980; Wyse, 2001).

These conclusions, of course, have had considerable influence on writing scholars’ views of grammar instruction. Some writing scholars, furthermore, have found theoretical backing for the case against grammar instruction in the linguist Stephen Krashen’s argument …

"That Doesn't Sound Like Me:" Student Perceptions Of Semiotic Resources In Written-Aural Remediation Practices, Jennifer Johnson Buckner

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines students' composing practices when working with unfamiliar modalities, attending to students' messy material and cognitive negotiations prior to their production of a polished multimodal project. Working from a conceptual vocabulary from composition studies and semiotics, I frame composing as an act of semiotic remediation, attending to students' repurposing and understanding of written and aural materials in composition and their impact on their learning. Specifically, this research uses a grounded theory methodology to examine the attitudes, experiences, and composing practices of first-year writing students enrolled in a composition II course at a private, liberal arts institution in the …