Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

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 …

Smartphones As The Tools For South Asian International Students To Navigate Academic And Non-Academic Sites In The U.S., Suresh Lohani

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

My dissertation is invested in investigating how south Asian students from a Hispanic serving institution situated on a U.S. Mexico border use smartphone technologies to enhance their navigation of everyday sites in the U.S. This would primarily look at how South Asian international students from Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and Bhutan make use of smartphones to navigate different physical and virtual spaces, both academic and non-academic, to grapple with various complexities of their U.S. lives. The dissertation examines their user experiences and localization practices as they strive to acclimate to the U.S. setting, which to them is both physically and culturally …

Constructing Meaning Through Textual And Visual Elements In The First-Year Composition Classroom, Sebastian Ezequiel Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Inspired by methods of meaning-making in comic books, this thesis answers the question of how First-Year Composition students make meaning out of textual and visual elements to understand the concepts of authorship and composition. The thesis begins with considering definitions of textual and visual elements in the context of how they are used as learning materials when paired together or when sharing characteristics. Following these definitions is a collection of scholarly examples about how visual elements have been used by students as rhetorical objects to aid in their understanding of course concepts. Teacher research was the chosen methodology for this …

Rethinking Metaphor In The Rhetoric Of Alzheimer's Disease, Evelyn Saru Jimmy

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the metaphors that early onset Alzheimer's blog authors use to make meaning of their experiences living with Alzheimer's disease (AD). To complicate the study, I also compare whether early onset Alzheimer's blog authors use the same metaphors with those who serve as caregiver to late-stage AD patients. This research project is situated within the overlap fields of Disability Studies (Dolmage, 2006; Lewiecki-Welson, 2003; Yergeau, 2014; Kerschbaum, 2014), Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (Segal, 1997: Price, 2011; Molloy, 2015) Rhetoric of Mental Health (Chrisman, 2008; Uttapha, 2017, Reynold, 2008), and Technical Communication (Meloncon, 2014). Following the principles of …

Centering Silence: Graduate Student Instructors Negotiating Quiet In The Writing Classroom, Natalie Elise Taylor

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This IRB-approved project is a feminist qualitative study in which I seek to understand graduate student instructors' past and present, student and teacher, experiences with classroom silence. This research builds on the work of Mary Reda (Between Speaking and Silence), who, in interviewing quiet students about their reasons for being silent, sought to disrupt the overwhelmingly negative stories about classroom silence and quiet students that circulate amongst instructors. By having conversations with graduate student instructors about their relationship to student silence and their own silences, I further Reda's disruption. I am also influenced by Cheryl Glenn's positioning of silence as …

Lesson Plan For Hyflex Introduction To College Writing Course, Maureen Haggerty

Open Educational Resources

This is a lesson plan specifically created for a HyFlex class: in-person, synchronous and asynchronous. It is geared for an introductory English composition course but can be modified for another as long as the licensing agreement for the included TED Talks are adhered to. This lesson plan uses two TED Talks as a springboard for students to discuss the topic of technology: technology and human connection. Rather than use text, students will unpack the videos through discussion and use the videos for exercises in summary and paraphrase. This was designed for a four-hour class but can be tailored according to …

An Action Research Study On Lms Assessment Tools And Faculty Practice In English Composition Courses Of A Community College, Sophia Mitra

Theses and Dissertations

This mixed methods action research study aimed to understand the use of LMS assessment tools by faculty teaching English Composition (Eng 101) at a New Jersey Community College in order to increase that use for assessment of outcomes. In spite of administrative push for faculty to use the LMS for data based decision-making, there is still limited use of LMS tools. In writing-intensive fields like Eng 101 grading and feedback could be accelerated along with monitoring student performance on outcomes using LMS assessment tools. Forming a virtual faculty learning committee that collaborated in the study's data collection and analysis, volunteers …

Twine 7: Immaculate, Ryenne Carroll

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

Need to Know

When writing the concept for the game, I wrote this with some form of an understanding of the Persona 5 universe, but I do hope that within the limited storytelling with the minimalistic format, I wrote the lore for this twine game in a way that needs minimal understanding of any other games.

Game Inspirations

The game was inspired by Persona 5, where I drew the inspiration of having a reflective world that ran on purifying hearts. I also drew inspiration from NieR: Automata, which lightly discussed the idea of what beauty actually means, and the lengths …

Twine 6: Deathly Afraid, Jahliem Brown

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

Deathly Afraid's key concept is to scare the player and make them question their choices. I thought of different ideas and scenarios on how my game will present itself to the players. A constant theme in horror games is to make players choose a path of light or dark. The light side is when the player decides to be a hero, risks their life to save others and becomes the one to solve the mysterious evil that hunts the town or kills everybody. The dark side allows the player to explore the evil side by being the main villain and …

Twine 5: 2099: Project Icarus, Nick Devitz

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

For my Choose Your Own Adventure project, I created a cyberpunk, action-oriented story called 2099: Project Icarus. In this story you play as an unnamed, ungendered character who I imagined players giving any identity to them that they wished. The protagonist is a quick-thinking problem solver, able to adapt to any situation they are facing. The story, is that you were fired from your job at a company called Xerxes Technologies, after digging into an incident you believe they were trying to cover up. The main objective of the story is to bring down Xerxes, with hard evidence of their …

Twine 4: The Cost, Nicole Williams

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

The Cost is an interactive fiction told through second person, following the character (“you”) as they wake up to discover themselves in a world they hardly remember. Outside there is an apocalypse, and a doctor has fixed the character to help rectify the world. While there are choices to make at the end, all of them are focused on “immortality” and what the cost of that is.

I came into the process of this game with the world already in my mind, knowing that I wanted it to be an apocalypse type of story. But besides that, I didn’t know …

Twine 3: We Must Be Killers, Oliver Mckeone

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

I’ve always been a fan of murder mysteries, that much is true, but “We Must Be Killers” is a murder mystery based on “Who Killed Markiplier?”, a video based murder mystery made by YouTuber Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach. After watching Mark make a murder mystery where all his friends played roles as various characters, I figured it’d be fun to make “We Must Be Killers” along a similar vein. Each character is based on one of my friends, with input from them about what they wanted their characters to be like. I’ve had this idea bouncing around in my head for …

Twine 2: A Western, Matthew Bandy

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

My game has changed a lot since I originally came up with the concept. Obviously, I took inspiration from western media such as deadwood, Clint Eastwood films, and Red Dead Redemption. The game ended up much more in-depth than I originally planned, but I don’t believe that to be a bad thing in of itself. I believe the biggest flaw of this game was my inexperience with coding. I had so many ideas to add – inventory lists, a map, special text effects – but I didn’t have the knowledge or time to implement these. I think, though, I still …

Twine 1: Shepherding, Alexander Rainer

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

Shepherding will technically be the second creation in a greater project of mine I’ve been calling Project Bleak. The first creation is unfinished and still a WIP, but is meant to be an anomalous NES-style game called Bleak. The story behind it is that evidence of an obscure game development team from the late era of NES games has resurfaced, and a community of lost media gurus, classic game experts, and similar people (plus anyone else who wants to help) has formed to hopefully unravel the mystery of who they were.

Bleak is really just meant to be an odd …

Conference Program 2022, Sandra M. Leonard

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

No abstract provided.

Misticismo Y Arcadismo En El Villancico Novohispano. Manuel De Sumaya Y Sus Contemporáneos, Luciana Kube Tamayo

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

El siglo XVIII trajo consigo una evolución estilística vertiginosa en todas las artes. La plástica, la literatura y la música confluyen y sirven de soporte a un arte nuevo, el Rococó. La floración churrigueresca está intensamente presente, además de en lienzos y biombos, en el vocabulario de la lírica de la Nueva España; a la vez que se afianzan los modelos religiosos, por un lado, se asientan los modelos pastoriles por otro. En cuanto a la espiritualidad, los modelos se encuentran encajados en la miniatura poética y el ingenio dieciochesco, desbordante de naturaleza y fantasía. En el presente trabajo me …

The Pedagogical Pitfalls Of Literature In College Composition And Teacher Education: A Foundational Analysis, Rinn Norman

Symposium of Student Scholars

Many of today’s college students struggle with college-level writing in Standard English, and during the last few decades, educators, parents, and experts in countless professional fields have begun to express a collective frustration over the quality of college graduates’ written English. However, this lack of quality in students’ and graduates’ writing is not due to laziness or generational differences, but rather a foundational shortcoming in the use of literary texts as the basis for instructional material in lower-level composition classes. This paper examines the traditional use of literature-based instruction in first-year composition (FYC) classes as well as undergraduate and graduate …

Whose Body Is Deserving: Discourse, Power, And Ideologies Concerning Non-Normative Bodies On Instagram, Misty Thomas

English Language and Literature ETDs

This dissertation uses FCDA to investigate the construction and control of the boundaries of normativity as they relate to the body. Data in the form of comments was collected from three different Instagram accounts run by individuals with non-normative bodies. From the data, I argue that not only are non-normative bodies controlled through the coded language of health, but through racialized dehumanization. Even alleged demonstrations of support are problematized through what is being supported. The Instagram comments left on the accounts of non-normative bodies demonstrates that these bodies are suppressed as a way to maintain normative ideologies.

English Is Not Dead! Long Live English: Teaching The Evolution Of English And Inclusive Communication Via Online, Face To Face Or Hybrid Instruction, Teresa Marie Kelly, Stephanie Thompson, Sheryl Bone

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

When popular media and many individuals discuss changes in English, some erroneously contend that the language has always been the same and changes amount to little more than “politically correct woke liberalism” desired by only certain people. The English language continually evolves as a natural process that nothing can force nor prevent. Field-specific language also changes with increased understanding and knowledge. The variety of English taught to most students also shifts as Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)/Writing Across Disciplines (WAD) initiatives increasingly focus on Global English rather than the standard of any one country or group. Even informal interactions with …

The Medium/Message Is The Message: Intersemiotic Complementarity In James Hogg's The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A (Justified) Sinner, Jaix Chaix

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This semiotic analysis identifies and characterizes how textual, compositional, and mathematical resources have been strategically articulated to project intersemiotic complementarity in the book The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner; Written by Himself: With A Detail of Curious Traditionary Facts, And Other Evidence, By The Editor attributed to Scottish author James Hogg. This qualitative study approaches the original 1824 edition as a literary work in its original compositional medium as a printed book—not as a text. A theoretical extension of philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s maxim The Medium Is The Message serves as a basis for the …