Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Scully And Me: Or, The X-Files, Revisited, Rita Malenczyk

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This essay reflects on the longevity of The X-Files phenomenon through the lens, primarily, of gender. The common interpretation of the two agents' roles as reversing traditional male/female stereotypes--Scully, the female, is rational, while the male Mulder is imaginative--has never seemed particularly right to me, especially when one throws Scully's Catholicism into the mix. Rather, it seems that, throughout the series, two belief systems come into conflict; while Mulder's appears privileged because of his gender, the show subtly critiques that privilege through its portrayal of Scully's Catholicism.(I suppose this essay is, in a way, an attempt to figure out what's …

Like Me, Like Me Not, Paul Muhlhauser, Andrea Campbell

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

For us the lack of a "Dislike" button on Fb creates an important asymmetry in communication and promotes a particular Fb worldview. As you pluck our petals, you'll get to see the ways we interpret the presence of "Like" and the absence of "Dislike" buttons.

Intermodality In Teaching Writing, Margarette Christensen

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation articulates a writing pedagogy based on a theory of intermodality to help writing instructors navigate the affordances and challenges of multimodal composition. Drawing from recent discoveries in neuroscience about how the brain makes meaning, I situate this pedagogy of intermodality – literally, “between the modes” – within the Rhetoric and Composition traditions of embodied rhetoric and visual/multi-sensory rhetoric. A pedagogy attuned to intermodality capitalizes on how the senses (“modes”) work together to create meaning when composing with sound, image, movement, and text. In addition to the five senses, intermodality also incorporates the cultural, social, and material aspects of …

Design & Communication: The Future Of Service-Learning, Ulrike Gencarelle M.A., Laura Gabiger Phd, Deana Marzocchi

Computer Graphics Department Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Poster for a presentation at the Eastern Region Campus Compact Conference 2012.

Depicted are online writing class projects, as well as web and print design examples created by Johnson & Wales (Providence Campus) Digital Media department design students for non-profit organizations in Rhode Island communities.

Come As You Are, As I Want You To Be: Grunge/Riot Grrrl Pedagogy And Identity Construction In The Second Year Writing Program, Rory J. Callais

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A look at how artists in the grunge and Riot Grrrl movements constructed public identities that typically appealed to the economic, cultural, and social conditions of the early 1990s. These public personas -- perceived as “honest” -- were defined by negotiation with mainstream culture, the notion of the “confessional,” and gender construction. By examining how these identities were constructed, composition students can see how cultural influences mediate their own identity construction. A “grunge/Riot Grrrl” pedagogy is proposed that encourages students to look at how identities are constructed across a multimedia landscape, reflecting the way grunge and Riot Grrrl artists built …

Extending Story Listening As A Practice Of Communal Formation At The Lake Orion Church Of Christ, Eric R. Magnusson

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the results of a project that explores the potential for extending a practice of story listening as a way of forming community across social circles at the Lake Orion Church of Christ in Lake Orion, Michigan. The intervention involved guiding a group of six participant-researchers, each of whom had previous experience in story listening, through six sessions in the fall of 2011. Each phase of the project was informed by a participatory social Trinitarian theology. The first three sessions were designed to empower participant-researcher pairs to facilitate story listening groups of four to five …

Camera Creatures: Rhetorics Of Light And Emerging Media, Anthony Collamati

All Dissertations

Camera Creatures addresses the new media landscape in which cameras, in most situations, outnumber pens. The dissertation argues that despite the accessibility and power of imagemaking devices, there persists in the humanities and social sciences a hesitation to engage the possibilities for composing with optical media. A number of factors contributing to this trend are addressed, including the preference for image analysis over imagemaking practices, persistent assumptions of the camera's mechanical objectivity, and a tendency to teach visual invention as collage. As a counter-measure, a proposal is made for investment in the mediation of light, or 'photonic rhetorics.' To explore …

Bad Rhetoric: Towards A Punk Rock Pedagogy, Michael Utley

All Theses

This research is an analysis of early 1980s American hardcore through the lens of rhetorical theory in an effort to learn lesson from punk rock that can be applied to composition pedagogy. It relies heavily on the Kenneth Burke's Language as Symbolic Action and A Rhetoric of Motives, Lloyd Bitzer's The Rhetorical Situation and Michel Foucault's Discourse on Language. The theories are applied the genre of punk rock in an effort to expose the rhetorical strategies employed by the movement to actively question and resist the dominant norms and values of the era. Two case studies are presented - an …

Lincoln Speeches, Allen C. Guelzo, Richard Beeman

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

As president, Abraham Lincoln endowed the American language with a vigor and moral energy that have all but disappeared from today’s public rhetoric. His words are testaments of our history, windows into his enigmatic personality, and resonant examples of the writer’s art. Renowned Lincoln and Civil War scholar Allen C. Guelzo brings together this volume of Lincoln Speeches that span the classic and obscure, the lyrical and historical, the inspirational and intellectual. The book contains everything from classic speeches that any citizen would recognize—the first debate with Stephen Douglas, the “House Divided” Speech, the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address—to …

"This Is Just, Like, A Random Article?": The Reading Resources Of Six First-Year College Composition Students, Alex Goochey

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

For students enrolled in First-Year Writing courses, reading is an important aspect of the writing process; for this reason, reading has been discussed and researched in a variety of ways by composition scholars. Departing from the long and ongoing debate about what types of texts should be read by composition students, this thesis explores both the ways that students read when they arrive at their first-year composition courses and how they make sense of the new, and often difficult, things they are asked to read there. Using verbal protocols, a research method developed by Michael Pressley and Peter Afflerbach, I …

"Epistolary Performances": Burns And The Arts Of The Letter, Kenneth G. Simpson

Studies in Scottish Literature

The letters written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-17960 show a self-conscious writer, who relished the craft of letter-writing and the role-playing that it allowed him. Examines letters that Burns wrote to Dr. John Moore, Margaret Chalmers, and others, and suggests a kinship between Burns as letter-writer and the letters and novels of Laurence Sterne.

Rhetoric And Composition Constructs “The Veteran”: An Examination Of The Student Veteran Identity As Found In Ccc And Tetyc Since September 11, 2001, Linda Gail Smith

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on David L. Wallace’s assertion that the field of rhetoric and composition needs to interpret and present our research into cultural communities in ways that no longer tacitly assume our rhetorical choices are neutral, I present a critique of 19 articles from College Composition and Communication and Teaching English in the Two-Year College that contained one or more instances of five keywords and direct references to student veterans. Using a theoretical framework built from theory by James Berlin, Thomas Huckin, and Marguerite Helmers, I expose various stereotypical and problematic tropes we rely on and re-create in our scholarly writing …

The Write Class: Student Self-Efficacy In A Pilot Placement Program At Boise State University, Samantha Sturman

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Placement into first-year college writing classes can have great impact on students, but student voices are rarely heard in the debate on which placement methods are best. In this thesis, I work to illuminate the student perspective on the placement process through an examination of a pilot guided self-placement program at Boise State University. Developed from existing directed self-placement models and scholarship on best practices for English placement, The Write Class placement program gives students a voice in how they are placed. With students taking a role as active agents in their English placement decisions, one of the main concepts …

Daniel Hannan, Thomas Paine, And The Rhetoric Of Outrage, Danae Brack

Masters Theses

The purpose of this rhetorical study is to examine the textual charisma of Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Daniel Hannan's speech "The Devalued Prime Minister of a Devalued Government" and how that charisma made these artifacts successful in spreading outrage surrounding the historical and political events of their respective eras. The author uses Weber's theory of charisma filtered through Rosenberg and Hirschberg's expanded theory identifying lexical charisma, or the charisma of messages. The author analyzes Paine's and Hannan's use of persuasiveness, believability, and powerfulness, translating each of these characteristics into specific cues that can be identified in the individual texts. …

Inventing Laughter: Comedic Writing Practices And The Limits Of Pedagogical Power, Daniel Liddle

All Theses

This thesis conducts an examination of the writing methods used by stand-up comedians using the lens of the rhetorical canon of invention. The study applies the theories of Thomas Rickert, Diane Davis, Ann Berthoff, and Janice Lauer in order to define the relationship between humor and epistemology, and to consider how this comedic-epistemic perspective can inform pedagogical practices in the composition classroom. This study relies mainly on the rhetorical analysis of 'How To' books on writing comedy, the methodologies of schools of comedy, as well as biographies by/about comedians in order to discuss the relationship between comedians and their 'material.' …

What I Mean When I Say Autism: Re-Thinking The Roles Of Language And Literacy In Autism Discourse, Bernice M. Olivas

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Literacy studies are deeply intertwined with issues of identity. Olivas explores the ways that public discourses of autism have constructed an autism “Identity kit,” as defined by James Paul Gee, which harms autistic students and communities more than it helps. This is particularly true for adult autistics. Considering the growing presence of the autistic learner in the composition classroom, it is important to understand how public discourse influences classroom dynamics. Drawing heavily on her own experience as the mother of autistic sons and on Melanie Yergeau’s “Circle Wars: Reshaping the Typical Autism Essay,” Olivas explores how her children have been …

Nonprofit Ethos And Identity: An Interdisciplinary Analysis Of People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals' Websites, Jessica Marie Kokinos-Havel

Theses and Dissertations

Research in the field of nonprofit studies tells us that nonprofit organizations have the inherent ability to provide communities with a distinctive kind of social capital in the form of collective identity and group participation. This identity function is one of the defining characteristics of the nonprofit sector. This study involves a rhetorical analysis of four websites maintained by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Each website (PETA.org, PETA Prime, peta2, and PETAKiDS) is aimed at reaching different age groups. This provides us with a unique rhetorical perspective into how the ethos of a nonprofit organization can …

The Police/Civilian Communication Dynamic: How To Not Create More Problems Than You Were Called To Handle, Sean M. Berryman

Theses and Dissertations

This project examines how police officers communicate with civilians they come into contact with on a routine basis. First is examined how young recruits are taught to take charge by using voice commands and command presence. The fact that this type of personal action overtakes one's character during this training is also discussed, as well as the fact that officers have a hard time "turning off" this command presence type of personality. The second section of the project is written directly to the officers on the street in an effort to teach them how to communicate effectively without talking to …

One Woman Writing: A Case Study, Linda Marie Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

After struggling to learn academic writing in college and taking a leave of absence because I could not learn it fast enough, after listening to other Black women who also struggled to learn academic writing in college and who also took a leave of absence because they could not learn it fast enough, and after watching Black female students in my college composition classes struggle to learn academic writing and the technology associated with it and dealing with their resistance and their literal or figurative withdrawal from my classes, I decided to talk to three Black women about their experience …

The Urban Garden Discourse Community: An Organic Form Of Technical Writing, Adrea Etta Coley

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to inform the audience about the methods used to process food in America and the importance of urban gardening. Technical writing skills were used to create a manual and a storyboard for a video game to teach novices how to create a home or community garden. The Basic Foundations for Organic Gardening is a manual produced from the journal notes during the author's first year of training in the garden. This project also explores the theory of video games as a tool for teaching. A storyboard was developed for a future interactive video game, …