Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Milton’S Exploration Of The Demonic Consciousness, Niall Mckenna

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

The Facade Of Names In Benjamin Clark’S “The Emigrant”, Brad Donegan

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

Language And The Lord Of The Rings: The Expansion Of A Universe, Thomas Beutz

The Criterion

Tommy Beutz’s essay, “Language and The Lord of the Rings: The Expansion of a Universe” explores J.R.R. Tolkien’s world-building through the lens of linguistics. Beutz argues that Tolkien’s creation of Middle-Earth, anchored in his invented languages, extends beyond the bounds of the text. Drawing on Tolkien’s background as a philologist, Beutz contends that the languages of Middle-Earth are not mere literary devices but rather the foundation of its entire mythology. By examining linguistic markers embedded in the primary text, Beutz reveals how Tolkien hints at a larger world outside the narrative. Through an analysis of historical accounts and characters’ …

The Search For Worth: How Relationship Conflicts Reveal The Universal Nature Of Insecurity, Grace C. Conroy

The Criterion

Since the beginning of time, romantic relationships and their dynamics have taken center stage in media--whether in books, plays, or other forms of literature. In this essay, a comparison of couples' relationships in James Joyce's "The Dead" and Marina Carr's play "The Mai" reveals the core human element of insecurity, prevalent in moments of marital conflict.

Narrative Activism: Strategic Storytelling For Women’S Advocacy, Lili G. Morgan

Masters Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically widened existing spheres of gender inequality, increasing disparities related to poverty, forced marriage, maternal mortality, gender-based violence, economic vulnerability, and illiteracy. For organizations aiming to rectify these areas of inequality, storytelling is a powerful tool for advocacy. This thesis investigates the intersection of storytelling and advocacy, focusing on the writing strategies utilized by leading gender-equality-oriented organizations. Utilizing Grounded Theory (GT) methodology, this thesis explores the emerging patterns and themes that arise in organizational storytelling strategies across differing contexts. An introduction chapter provides insights into the subject matter, highlighting existing knowledge gaps and rationalizing this study’s …

Locked-In Learning: Honorlock And Surveillance Capitalism In The First Year Writing Department, Tehyah Carver

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This paper explores the impact of implementing the proctoring software Honorlock in the collegiate writing classroom. Through a framework inspired by Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, the investigation analyzes the efficacy of Honorlock’s attempts to reduce plagiarism and student test-taking anxiety when applied to preliminary writing assessments in Seton Hall University’s First Year Writing program. With professor interviews, surveys, and observations, the paper exposes the flaws of Honorlock’s promise of student empowerment and honesty by dissecting the punitive language used in their marketing material to potential and current consumers, administrators and professors. …

What Counts As Legitimate College Writing? An Exploration Of Knowledge Structures In Written Feedback, Miriam Moore

Journal of Response to Writing

Research in feedback literacy (Carless & Boud, 2018; Molloy, Boud, & Henderson, 2020; Yu & Liu, 2021; Zhang & Mao, 2023) explores student use of written feedback and barriers to feedback uptake; the role of faculty in designing contextually appropriate feedback has been termed teacher feedback literacy (Carless & Winstone, 2023). When feedback does not achieve desired results, faculty must evaluate their feedback practices; they may be unaware of underlying features that hinder feedback effectiveness. In this paper, a long-time instructor of first-year college composition (FYC) interrogates her own feedback practices using tools from the specialization dimension of Legitimation Code …

Generous Audience, Activist, Evaluator: Tutor-Teachers’ Knowledge, Practices, And Values For Response To Writing, Carolyn Wisniewski

Journal of Response to Writing

The relationship between tutoring and teaching has been a recurrent topic of interest among writing center directors and writing program administrators. While scholarship agrees tutoring experience aids composition teachers with implementing process pedagogy and fostering a collaborative classroom, the relationship between tutoring and assessment of student writing is less clear. This qualitative study uses interviews with eight graduate teaching assistants with tutoring experience to examine how they transfer and juxtapose knowledge, practices, and values for response between the writing center and classroom. Like previous scholarship, this research finds writing center tutoring contributes to teachers’ enactment of constructivist, student-centered pedagogy and …

A Defense Of The Neronic Date Of The Book Of Revelation, Jason L. Quintern

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

There are two primary dates for Revelation that are generally accepted: the early or Neronic date (A.D. 64-68) and the late or Domitianic date (A.D. 95-96). In this dissertation, the early date of the book of Revelation is defended against the commonly accepted late date. The study engages with two major texts: Kenneth L. Gentry Jr.’s Before Jerusalem Fell, supporting the Neronic date, and Mark L. Hitchcock’s dissertation “A Defense of the Domitianic Date of the Book of Revelation,” defending the Domitianic date. This present study discusses the central arguments of both Gentry and Hitchcock as it defends the Neronic …

It’S Britney, Bitch, Mary Hyepock

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation engages public rhetorics surrounding pop princess Britney Spears as a case study for examining the rhetoricity of bodily autonomy. Bodily autonomy is commonly understood as the legal right to control what happens to one’s body without external influence or coercion. However, one’s legal access to bodily autonomy is produced, negotiated, and maintained through discourse. In other words, one’s access to so-called “ownership” over their body and agency to make decisions about it is deeply tied to the gendered and racialized symbolic production of citizenship in the United States. Utilizing a reproductive justice framework, I investigate how Britney Spears’ …

Evil We Desire: Akrasia And The Ethics Of Conspiracy Rhetoric, Andrew Ridgeway

Dissertations - ALL

My dissertation reimagines the work of four prominent rhetorical theorists—Aristotle, Plato, Augustine of Hippo, and Kenneth Burke—through the lens of psychoanalysis to develop a theory of rhetorical ethics that accounts for the subject’s relationship to libidinal satisfaction, or jouissance. In each chapter, I will examine a useful example of conspiracist rhetoric, which will double as both a case study and a point of departure for a Lacanian reimaging of a prominent rhetorical theory or concept. In the first chapter, I examine the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy and the January 6th insurrection to argue that Aristotle’s description of akrasia, or moral …

“We Are Men”: Constituting The Prisoners’ Rights Movement Through Prison Writing, Emily Kathryn Iknayan

Theses - ALL

In this thesis, I investigate how the discourse of incarcerated writers responds to the Attica Prison Uprising across time and geography in prison newspapers and poetry. I first argue that the rhetorical responses of incarcerated writers in the first six months after the uprising construct Attica as an Event, a moment characterized by intense difference where everything becomes possible. A scrutiny of the Event requires dwelling in the moment before clear meanings have been solidified, so conceptualizing Attica as an Event in the writings that are temporally and geographically close to Attica requires speculation. By the time the first-year anniversary …

We Are Performing Against Ourselves: The Relationship Between Respectability And Relatability, Asajahnique Collins

Theses - ALL

This thesis investigates the influence of digital platforms on Black women’s everyday performance of self. It places social media within a broader context in which Black women negotiate their embodied relationship to a wide variety of influences including but not limited to the church, popular culture, mass media, and Black feminist theories and cultures. In what follows, I provide a reflexive critique of the TikTok genre known as Black Girl Luxury (BGL) and explore audience responses to the content within this genre. Black Girl Luxury is a carefully manufactured aesthetic and appearance that is made to have the illusion of …

Indigenous Artistic Activism And The (Re)Envisioned Landscape: Decolonizing Settler Land Knowledge, Hannah Lorell Sparks

Theses - ALL

In this thesis I investigate mimetic Indigenous artwork as a productive site of settler colonial disruption. More specifically, I attend to the potential of these artworks to disorient romantic habits of viewing landscapes. Framed as a critique of settler logics, I argue that the underlying ideologies of Euro-American romantic landscape art have tracked from the 19th-century to today to produce an illusory, aestheticized view of nature as grand and empty, distancing settlers from the material realities of land use and the violence of settler colonialism. In a contributory attempt to decolonize settler understandings of and relations to land, I look …

More Than A Punchline: A Comparative Analysis Of Diversity In Dropout.Tv & Collegehumor, Alexander Gluchowski

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This paper examines the evolution of digital comedy through a comparative analysis of CollegeHumor and its offshoot, Dropout.tv, focusing on how each platform has approached the portrayal of diversity and inclusion. Utilizing a qualitative content analysis, the study contrasts selected episodes from both platforms to explore shifts in the representation of queer and POC comedians, and the thematic treatment of identity issues. The findings reveal that Dropout.tv significantly advances the inclusivity of comedic content, moving beyond CollegeHumor’s earlier reliance on stereotypical and controversial humor. This shift not only reflects changes in contemporary comedy but also highlights Dropout.tv's commitment to fostering …

Texas Gothic, Taryn Uribe Turner

Art Theses and Dissertations

The emotional and the ecological combine to create my body of work titled, “Texas Gothic.” My thesis tells the stories of my oil paintings created through personal connections to a variety of landscapes, animals and experiences that share the setting of Texas.

Desire and regret take shape as animals and figures not fully formed or real. Unreliable narratives of the past are entangled with present tensions to create a painting that haunts and stalks.

And yet, there is hope!

Through nostalgia and sweetness and burdens, my paintings confront a shrouded future. The contradictions of time passing are explored in my …

Finding Focus: Authentic Inquiry And Composition In The Third Space, Noah Brewer

Dissertations

This research seeks to better understand the attitudes and dispositions of advanced-level English Language Arts students toward the activities of academic research and writing, and to explore the ways that critical pedagogies focused on authentic inquiry and composition interact with these attitudes. The project draws upon research in student motivation, sociocultural definitions of literacy, and theories of hybrid identity in order to discover the potential impact of engaging students in critical reflection on their own meaning-making practices, and of curricular and pedagogical choices aimed at making the lessons of the classroom more relevant to the demands of real-world literacy practices …

"If You're Writing A Paper For Humans To Read, You Need A Human To Go Over It With You": Marketing Writing Centers In The Age Of Generative Ai, Adrianna Ladd

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Writing centers have been hindered by misconceptions for decades, and the recent onset of generative AI (genAI) technologies has the potential to exacerbate this issue. Now more than ever, effective marketing and outreach strategies are essential to combat misconceptions and articulate the value of writing centers. This thesis is made up of two articles. The first article considers first-year composition instructors’ and students’ perspectives on genAI to offer recommendations for writing centers’ responses to these technologies. The second article investigates a targeted approach to outreach in first-year composition courses, offering a simplified marketing approach for writing centers.

Fostering Ai Literacies In The Composition Classroom: A Mixed-Methods Study, James Blakely Ii

Master's Projects

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly prevalent in educational settings, its impact on notions of authorship, writing processes, and pedagogical practices remains largely unexplored. This study examines the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in composition studies, focusing on how these technologies influence writing pedagogy and student engagement. Through a mixed-methods approach engaging qualitative and quantitative data, widescale surveys, reflective practices, and piloted curricular implementations, this research assesses student and instructor experiences in first-year composition courses, exploring attitudes toward AI writing tools and their application in the classroom. In total, this research aims to offer insights into how AI can …

The Unseen Pen: The Hidden History Of Black Women Writers During The Civil Rights Movement, Serenity Hill

Master's Theses

As taught in standard high-school and general educational courses, integration was a primary goal of the Civil Rights Movement; however, when this era is discussed in classrooms, by historians, and in textbooks there are key perspectives and acknowledgements that are less recognized. The visibility of the Black women who pushed forward the movement is often reduced, overlooked, or overshadowed because of the more celebrated contributions of their male counterparts. Focusing on an era before the internet, with the eloquent writing of activists like Dr. King memorialized, this project aims to showcase how changes in course curriculum can shed light on …