Speech Acts As Contingent Encounters: Realizing Agency In Contaminated Worlds,
2022
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Speech Acts As Contingent Encounters: Realizing Agency In Contaminated Worlds, Zachary Cross
Honors Theses
Agency is realized in the act of speaking, an act which is always contingent on a collaborative process that transforms all parties involved. We think and act with one another and our concepts, there is no act of speech prior to encounter. In this paper I explore different ways which language shapes our thinking and play with those structures to use them as models for realizing agency. This exploration became personal insofar as exploring ways of thinking transformed my own sense of agency in the speech act. The completion of this paper is thus essential to its conclusion.
Fragmentation In The Dual Enrollment Experience: The Importance Of Students’ Self-Perceptions In Dual Enrollment First-Year Composition Students,
2022
Old Dominion University
Fragmentation In The Dual Enrollment Experience: The Importance Of Students’ Self-Perceptions In Dual Enrollment First-Year Composition Students, Sarah Crystal Johnson
English Theses & Dissertations
Dual enrollment has become an embedded aspect of our writing programs yet is still an under-researched area within rhetoric and composition. One reason for this research gap is that many DE students experience their FYC courses on secondary campuses, liminal spaces that are more difficult to access for research. DE students within these spaces experience daily tensions between the collegiate expectations of FYC curriculum and the secondary social contexts in which their DE FYC courses are taught. These unique contextual experiences impact their perceptions of themselves as writers. This research is an attempt to step into this DE research gap …
“Finding A Balance”: User, Reader, And Learner Functions In First-Year Composition Textbook Engagement,
2022
Old Dominion University
“Finding A Balance”: User, Reader, And Learner Functions In First-Year Composition Textbook Engagement, Travis Vincent Holt
English Theses & Dissertations
This qualitative, multiple participant case study investigates the phenomenon of student textbook engagement in a First-Year Composition course at a private, evangelical four-year university. Shifting away from a dominant history where textbooks served as the primary object of study (Besser et al., 1999; Carr, Carr, & Schultz, 2005; Colby, 2013; Connors, 1987; Edwards, 1984; Faigley, 1992; Gale & Gale, 1999; Hawhee, 1999; Issitt, 2004; Miles, 2000; Ohmann, 1979; Rendleman, 2009, 2011; Welch, 1987), I answered calls (Colby, 2013; Harris, 2012; Rendleman, 2009, 2011) to examine engagement with textbooks in context. Additionally, scholars have dominated discussions of textbooks; thus, the student …
Poetic Justice: Connecting The Modern American Prosecutor To Her Rhetorical Roots,
2022
Clemson University
Poetic Justice: Connecting The Modern American Prosecutor To Her Rhetorical Roots, Michael Caves
All Dissertations
Poetic Justice: Connecting the Modern American Prosecutor to her Rhetorical Roots explores the gap between rhetoric and the American prosecutor, to eventually advocate for a more creative, inventive trial practice for prosecutors that embraces the spirit and methods of narrative, poetics, and Ulmeric mystories, with the prosecutor’s unique ethical obligations forming the basis of a new prosecutor’s rhetoric. This research opens with an autoethnographic account of the author’s own path to criminal prosecution, to give the reader a sense of the author’s ethos, to identify the shortcomings of rhetorical training in law school pedagogy, and to outline the rhetorical …
Operatic Mysticisms: Mountains, Deserts, Waterscapes,
2022
East Tennessee State University
Operatic Mysticisms: Mountains, Deserts, Waterscapes, Andrew Demczuk
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Operatic Mysticisms: Mountains, Deserts, Waterscapes examines the ways we encounter environments as readers/viewers of operas, literature, film, and sound recordings, and how each medium requires different detail-gathering techniques. Respective to the previously mentioned mediums, Sun & Sea (2017), Mount Analogue (1952), El Mar La Mar (2017), and Energy Field (2010) are analyzed by engaging with environmental media studies and invention. Reflecting the nature of each landscape—summits of mountains, aporias of deserts, and mysteries of waterscapes—an elemental approach is taken in investigating how these spaces may be noticed, internalized, recorded, and traversed by both the artist and viewer. …
Zapatista Maya Literacies And Decolonial Civic Pedagogies,
2022
The University of Texas at El Paso
Zapatista Maya Literacies And Decolonial Civic Pedagogies, Juan Moisés García-Rentería
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Zapatista Maya Literacies and Decolonial Civic Pedagogies evaluates an educational outreach project led by an Indigenous grass roots mobilization in the high plateau of central México, the Zapatista movement. Using retrospective narrative inquiry and theoretically informed perspectives, this dissertation shows that the program of the Zapatista escuelita, Spanish for “little school,” is rooted in the Maya educational paradigm of nojptesel-p’ijubtasel, a cultural and political process of socialization at the heart of contemporary Maya peasant families. The research focus of this study offers rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies two interrelated points of insight tied to the overall Maya conception of the …
The Limits Of Critical Rhetoric: Towards A Postcritical Orientation,
2022
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
The Limits Of Critical Rhetoric: Towards A Postcritical Orientation, James Bezotte
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
In 1989, Raymie McKerrow’s essay “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis” served as a culmination for a new mode of rhetorical analysis that would reshape the field in the decades following. His essay combined the works of Michel Foucault and other rhetoric scholars such as Michael McGee, Maurice Charland, and Philip Wander to create the method of discourse critique called “critical rhetoric.” Essential to this practice are McKerrow’s equally important and interrelated “critique of domination,” “critique of freedom,” and “permanent criticism.” These components respectively help critics identify where social change should occur within discourses of power, motivate realignments of power for …
Walking Back The System Trope: Reimagining Incarceration And The State Through A Spatial Theory Approach,
2022
University of Nevada, Reno
Walking Back The System Trope: Reimagining Incarceration And The State Through A Spatial Theory Approach, Cody Hunter
All Dissertations
This dissertation critiques the systems theory approach to incarceration policy, practice, and research and proposes a rhetorically informed spatial theory approach as an alternative. Offering a non-hierarchical complexity theory as a bridge between systems and space, I then integrate rhetorical listening as a strategy for navigating and operationalizing our proposed spatial theory approach. I then apply our proposed methodology to archival research, focusing on the South Carolina Penitentiary as a case study, and offer two heuretic experiments to explore the range of this methodology for archival research. I also explore potential applications of this rhetorically informed spatial theory approach in …
Narrating Madness: Building Narratives Against Privileged Identity,
2022
Clemson University
Narrating Madness: Building Narratives Against Privileged Identity, Kristin Santa Maria
All Dissertations
This dissertation examines how competing narratives related to madness and mental health can provide insight into the inconsistencies of preconceived biases that tie into privilege and power. These biases relate to identities associated with race, gender, class, and embodiment. By exploring madness narratives, we can see how madness often becomes a quality used to isolate and “other” people that act against typical societal and cultural norms. Works of fiction and nonfiction that pertain to madness narratives can either be used to perpetuate stereotypes of normalcy or as a vehicle to allow for a more open and frank discussion of madness …
Coding Christianity: Negotiating Religious Dialogue In Online Participatory Spaces,
2022
Clemson University
Coding Christianity: Negotiating Religious Dialogue In Online Participatory Spaces, Shauna Chung
All Dissertations
This dissertation examines rhetorical conditions and internet-mediated communication strategies that open and close dialogue between individuals with diverse and conflicting worldviews. The author illustrates this tension through sacred-secular interactions in college composition classrooms and online environments, positing that navigating conflict between these discourses—namely those espoused by religiously committed students and public university instructors—often requires stepping outside of adversarial communication frameworks. This project makes a case for models of civic engagement that use more deliberative rhetorical approaches prioritizing empathy over defensiveness and understanding before persuasion. To develop these non-adversarial communication approaches for the composition classroom, the author looks to participatory media …
Addressing Public Perceptions About Cell-Based Meat And Cellular Agriculture Through Metaphors,
2022
Old Dominion University
Addressing Public Perceptions About Cell-Based Meat And Cellular Agriculture Through Metaphors, Yvette Emma Hubbard
English Theses & Dissertations
Today’s food movement places organic, holistic, and natural foods as priority. The idea aims for better human health, a farm-to-table community, and environmental sustainability. Soon a new meat alternative will become part of the ongoing food movement. What is it? Cell-based protein. It is a protein alternative to livestock protein. It is real protein from a real breathing animal. Cell-based beef for example is grown in a lab with cells from a living cow that does not have to die or be slaughtered. It is destined to become the new protein architecture on the horizon. Parts of this paper are …
Authorial Agency: Investigating Composition Pedagogies Under A New Lens,
2022
Utah State University
Authorial Agency: Investigating Composition Pedagogies Under A New Lens, Tyler Hurst
All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023
This essay considers the work of three prominent composition scholars through the lens of authorial agency, which I define as a form of agency that focuses on the individual voice and self-determination of students in the writing space. Though the concept of agency has been previously considered by composition scholars, this contribution might aid in understanding various pedagogical approaches by analyzing how authorial agency is already being engaged within composition pedagogies and investigating how authorial agency aids teachers in understanding their pedagogy so that students learn to take back control of their own authoritative voice and self-determination. By re-investigating …
Re-Localizing Writing Assessment: Sites Of Knowledge Mobilization.,
2022
University of Louisville
Re-Localizing Writing Assessment: Sites Of Knowledge Mobilization., Charlotte Asmuth
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
For decades, writing assessment theorists have subscribed to the principle of localism––the belief that assessments should be designed with local contexts in mind and administered by local actors. Although this belief has ensured the validity of assessments in writing programs, it has also led to a tendency to treat assessment as a stable practice that is bound to a particular location, thus ignoring what happens when assessment knowledge and methods developed in one location travel to another distant location (as they do for campus assessment initiatives). To that end, this project traces how assessment knowledge is transformed as it travels …
Definitions And Depictions Of Rhetorical Practice In Medieval English Fürstenspiegel.,
2022
University of Louisville
Definitions And Depictions Of Rhetorical Practice In Medieval English Fürstenspiegel., Joseph Ethan Blaine Sharp
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines how medieval authors defined rhetoric and depicted rhetorical practice in medieval English Fürstenspiegel. It begins by analyzing how the field of medieval rhetorical historiography has overlooked the Fürstenspiegel as a rhetorical genre due to its overt reliance on meta-rhetorical handbook genres as the objects of its analysis. This dissertation challenges traditional narratives that positions medieval rhetoric as a primarily academic discipline divorced from political practice by engaging in horizontal reading practices that examine the broader culture of medieval rhetorical practice alongside the definitions of rhetoric found in medieval English Fürstenspiegel. In so doing, this dissertation …
(De)Legitimizing Genres: Rhetoric And Tactical Institutional Critique.,
2022
University of Louisville
(De)Legitimizing Genres: Rhetoric And Tactical Institutional Critique., Walker Smith
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation forwards a rhetorical theory of institutions that centers their genre-based communications, redefines institutions in relation to organizations, and contributes to the field’s understanding of how communities collaboratively rewrite entrenched institutionalized practices from the outside, thus reducing the harm that institutions can enact. Using evangelical church policies on marriage as a case study, I answer the following questions: How do historically sedimented institutions, their genres, and their practices rhetorically impose, legitimize, and regulate certain patterns of social life? How does an evangelical Christian church manage to govern the gendered and sexual lives of their members and maintain their power …
It's All Fun And—: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Space In The Pandemic.,
2022
University of Louisville
It's All Fun And—: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Space In The Pandemic., Erica Von Proctor Lewis
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This exhibition and document explore spatial rhetoric during the pandemic, utilizing materiality and relational aesthetics to reflect on the different ways in which the public and private are made distinct from one another. In doing so, Lewis addresses new cultural navigations of shared spaces, both digital and corporeal, public and private. In addition, the artist also examines the faulty social and institutional systems that the pandemic brought to light, such as socioeconomic dynamics and voter suppression, while utilizing Kenneth Burke’s concept of the terministic screen. Games are a central theme throughout the exhibition, as they are often coded as “home” …
Reading With Social, Digital Annotation: Encouraging Engaged Critical Reading In A Challenging Age,
2022
Old Dominion University
Reading With Social, Digital Annotation: Encouraging Engaged Critical Reading In A Challenging Age, Miranda L. Egger
English Theses & Dissertations
This design-based research study examines the pedagogical role of social, digital annotation in teaching reading as rhetorical invention, particularly the kind of invention necessary for thoughtful democratic participation in the contemporary discursive era, often described as troubled. In this dissertation study, I deployed a classroom-based intervention meant to challenge how educators in rhetoric and composition/writing studies might directly address the acute and exigent discursive struggle in the first-year composition classroom. This study ultimately finds that social, digital annotation invites significant shifts in students’ reading habits, in that Hypothes.is-based annotations yielded a far more complex, multifaceted set of reading skills, behaviors, …
Digital Literacy Readiness Of First-Year Composition Students,
2022
The University of Texas at El Paso
Digital Literacy Readiness Of First-Year Composition Students, Stephen Jantuah Boakye
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
This is an inquiry into the digital literacy readiness of students of First-Year Composition (FYC). Using mixed methods, an online survey and interviews, the study maps out the digital literacy skills of FYC students and accounts for the people and places that contributed to the students' acquisition of those skills. As theoretical frameworks, the study used Eshet-Alkalai's (2002) digital literacy framework to account for the spectrum of students' functional digital literacy skills; Brandt's (1998) literacy sponsorship to scrutinize the persons who contributed to studentâ??s learning; and Hawisher and Selfe's (2004) technological gateways to make sense of the places that student …
Reference Management Software In The Classroom: Student Awareness, Knowledge, And Usage,
2022
The University of Texas at El Paso
Reference Management Software In The Classroom: Student Awareness, Knowledge, And Usage, Javier Cortez
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
This research project examines the University of Texas at El Paso undergraduate students' general awareness, knowledge, and usage of reference management software (RMS). Moreover, an important aim of the project is to compare incoming and first-year college students (freshmen and sophomores) relationship to RMS against upper-level undergraduates (juniors and seniors). The project consisted of three phases, with a lecture on RMS and a pre-and post-lecture survey bookending the project. The principal investigator recruited 150 students from two different courses within the Rhetoric and Writing Studies program at UTEP. Six classes were surveyed: four sections of RWS 1301 and two sections …
Implementing Mindfulness-Based Interventions In The First-Year Composition Classroom As An Embodied Multimodality,
2022
The University of Texas at El Paso
Implementing Mindfulness-Based Interventions In The First-Year Composition Classroom As An Embodied Multimodality, Patricia Flores Hutson
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
AbstractMindfulness is rapidly increasing its popularity amongst instructors and administrators in higher education (Bush, 2011; Egras, 2015; Egras and Hadars, 2019; Wenger, 2019). The simplicity of mindfulness makes it an inclusive practice that can be performed by every individual. Further, it is time and cost effective as it only requires a couple of minutes of class time. Studies focusing on implementing mindfulness specifically in writing and composition classes are scarce (Wenger, 2019; Consilio & Kennedy, 2019). This dissertation hopes to add to the growing research of mindfulness in higher education, specifically in writing classes, by exploring the ways in which …
