Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Letting The Cat Out Of The Wall: Irrepressible Perversity In Poe, Kelly Gallagher

The Criterion

This paper examines several short stories by Edgar Allan Poe that feature the motif of immurement, the practice of imprisoning a victim within walls. Poe uses immurement in “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” to suggest psychological suppression as the narrators physically hide their victims while simultaneously hiding their own self-destructive natures, which he refers to as “perversity.” His stories “The Imp of the Perverse” and “The Cask of Amontillado” convey that attempting to suppress one’s capacity for self-destruction only guarantees self-destruction. Poe’s motif of immurement demonstrates how human beings tend to ignore their inherent perversity, but his stories …

Injustice In Childhood: Jane Eyre And The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, Christian Barkman

The Criterion

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, are autobiographical novels narrated by the fictional Jane Eyre and the real Frederick Douglass. Both stories evoke an outpouring of pity for their respective narrator: Jane, for the unmerited abuses dealt against her by family and school administrators, but most of all Douglass, who reserves the greater portion of lament on account of his dreadful persecution under the evil of slavery. The environments Jane and Douglass inhabit throughout their childhood inflict an immense burden on their physical body and psyche. This essay specially examines the …

The Evolution Of Frederick Douglass’ Slavery Debate: An Examination Of His Rhetoric, Jacquelyn Torres

Political Science & International Studies | Senior Theses

From leading the Abolitionist movement to holding a lecture tour abroad, Frederick Douglass is well known for championing racial justice and leaving a legacy of exposing the evils of slavery. Scholars have primarily focused on Douglass’ actions as an abolitionist but not on the evolution of his thinking about slavery. While Douglass’ actions, such as in the Abolitionist movement, are discussed in-depth amongst academic circles, there is oversight regarding looking at his arguments about slavery. Douglass’ rhetoric was impacted by his experiences traveling abroad when he gave lectures in the British Isles between 1845-1847. This thesis examines speeches given by …

The Impact Of Freewriting On Writing Teachers' Self-Perceptions, Katherine A. Busch

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

I present a study of eight graduate assistants who teach introductory composition courses as part of their graduate assistantships. Each participant was asked to freewrite for ten minutes a day, five days a week, for ten weeks. Participants were interviewed about their teacher and writer identities prior to the freewriting, at week five, and at week ten. Graduate assistants offer a unique perspective, as many of them are neither professional writers nor trained teachers, yet they are hired to teach writing. Using Peter Elbow’s Embracing Contraries (1986) as a theoretical framework, I determine that freewriting offered the participants a space …

Generation(Al) Matters: Story, Lens, And Tone, Louise Weatherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

This essay tells a story of how “generation” came to matter in rhetoric and composition/writing studies; analyzes and advocates for “generation” as a lens through which to examine disciplinary studies and activities; and considers how we can productively engage in generational relations between individuals and groups. It adopts a framework of “hospitality” (adapted from Richard and Janis Haswell) to develop a concept of “cross-generational relations” as an aspirational category. An ethic of hospitality is proposed to facilitate respectful, productive relations among generational groups, which recognize and enact interdependence but allow for a wide range of stances and strategies of interaction …

Rethinking Data: Algorithms, Black Boxes, And Bias Through The Data Atm, Joshua Nieubuurt

English Faculty Publications

For nearly all of history things, creatures, and people came and went; leaving little, if anything, behind in their wake. Life in the 21st century has changed this natural pattern of existence, blurring the lines of what it is (and what it means) to dwell within the world. Physical things and people are now existing simultaneously in the digital realms as doppelgängers composed of coded data. Now, things and people are both embodied and disembodied: simultaneously. Data, individual and collective, pours into the digital oceans; a tumultuous sea of [dis]embodied-being translated into the language of electricity and silicon. The forms …

Place-Based Podcasting: From Orality To Electracy In Norfolk, Virginia, Daniel P. Richards, Michael J. Faris (Ed.), Courtney S. Danforth (Ed.), Kyle D. Stedman (Ed.)

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Disabling Citizenship: Rhetorical Practices Of Disabled World-Making At The 1977 504 Sit-In, Ruth Osario

Women's & Gender Studies Faculty Publications

The article analyzes the importance of a citizenship approach to disability rights. Integrating disabled world-making in the writing classroom can transform thinking of people about the teaching of public writing. It is noted that disabled world-making can help English studies ensure professional organizations go beyond the legal requirements and ensure the full participation of disabled scholar-teachers.

Femininity As Disability In Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar., Shae Kirkus, Monika Shehi Herr

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

Disability studies is often associated with the treatment of people with physical disabilities, which are defined as features of non-normative human bodies. However, analyzed through the lens of the classical idea of the ideal body, which was first and foremost male, femininity itself is also atypical and therefore confines women to the realm of being disabled.

Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical novel The Bell Jar shows how the feminine is a disability in and of itself. As Plath’s main character and narrator, Esther Greenwood, spirals into her own madness, her condition is only worsened by societal reactions to her declining mental health. …

The Boy From 6b: How Only Murders In The Building Created Groundbreaking Television, Lauren E. Reitz, Monika Shehi Herr

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

Non-disabled actors continue to be cast over disabled actors to portray disabled characters, and disabled storylines are told from an able-bodied perspective. This paper explores how Only Murders in the Building set an example for approaching projects featuring disabled actors and roles while maintaining a complex storyline in the episode titled "The Boy from 6B" (2021).

Analyzing this episode through the lens of the classical idea of anmut shows how it subverted the typical viewing experience of watching a storyline that features disabled characters from an able-bodied perspective. Anmut, as a rhetorical concept, recognizes that the value of physical …

Disablist Propaganda: Evil On One Hand, And A Hook For The Other, Lauren Reitz, Richard Murphy

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

Despite its publication by J.M. Barrie in 1904, Peter and Wendy has attracted very little critical attention. Perhaps the story is so beloved for its adventure-packed plot, and sweet message about a boy who never grows old, that even scholars have trouble criticizing it—despite its obvious calls for analysis as film and literary adaptations continue to appear.

However, most concerning is an apparent gap in the analysis of the story’s disabled villain, Captain Hook, through a modern Disability Studies lens. The following textual analysis of Captain Hook will serve to call attention to the way his disability plays into his …

Rhetoric Of Surrogacy: Re-Considering Agency Through Embodied Performance, Ann Kitalong-Will

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Surrogacy as a medical practice goes back, in a practical sense, to 1988, when the court case, “In the Matter of Baby M, A Pseudonym for an Actual Person,” was tried in the Supreme Court of New Jersey. At the heart of the issue, was the question of who Baby M’s legally-recognized mother was in the relationship between the contracting parents and the woman who gestated and gave birth to Baby M. Using this case as a jumping off point, this dissertation traces a history of surrogacy as a global industry. This project explores rhetorical agency in the embodied performance …

Discourse, Materiality, And The Users Of Mobile Health Technologies: A Nigerian Case Study, Modupe Omolara Yusuf

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

mHealth, which is the use of mobile phones and other handheld information and communication technologies (ICTs), has been increasingly advocated as the solution to the problems, primarily infrastructure and personnel, facing the healthcare sector of many low-to-lower-middle-income countries (LMICs). Following a series of United Nations Foundation research and advisory publications (in 2012, 2014 and 2016) arguing that mobile phones are approaching ubiquity in Nigeria and across the world, the UN strongly recommended that LMICs undertake mHealth initiatives. Subsequently, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) published a National Health ICT Strategic Framework (Strategic Framework), 2015-2020; the rallying call of …

The Ableist Gaze And Disability Trauma: How Onscreen Representation Erases The Truth, Emily Brown

Departmental Honors Projects

This project critically engages with disability representation in the media through an uncensored autoethnography of everyday ableism. In particular, it focuses on how the Netflix series Special reveals the duality of representation: being seen is validating yet (re)traumatizing. As a queer woman with Cerebral Palsy, I’ve spent my whole life trying to find myself in TV shows and movies, latching onto the few disabled and disabled-coded characters available. I never felt fully seen until I watched Special: a show about a gay man with Cerebral Palsy gaining independence through a writing internship and romantic prospects. Special allowed me to acknowledge …

Origin Of The Term 'Dude', Gerald Leonard Cohen, Barry A. Popik, Peter J. Reitan

Arts, Languages and Philosophy Faculty Research & Creative Works

The book (261 pages, soft-covered) is intended as a scholarly study and therefore contains more detail than would appear in a book intended for a broad readership.

Workin' Languages: Who We Are Matters In Our Writing, Sara P. Alvarez, Amy J. Wan, Eunjeong Lee

Publications and Research

The steady increase of movements of people around the world has transformed the face, potential, and expectations of the US writing classroom. These intersecting shifts have also contributed to critical discussions about how writing educators should integrate students’ linguistic diversity and ways of knowing into literacy instruction. This chapter’s central premise is to share with students how the work that they already do with languages has great value. Specifically, the chapter introduces terms, concepts, and strategies to support students in identifying how their own multilingual workin’ of languages contribute to the making of academic writing. Our goal is to support …

Labor Logs In A Multimodal Curriculum: Revealing Valuable Assessment Practices In Technical Communication And First-Year Writing Courses, Suzette Bristol

Wayne State University Dissertations

This project discusses the creation and implementation of labor logs in multimodal curricula in two levels of writing courses and how these labor logs support students’ development of meta-awareness through reflection-in-action (Yancey, 1998). Labor logs create a space for students to focus on in the moment recognition, or monitoring, of what takes place as they work through a project (VanKooten, 2016; Trimble and Jankens, 2019). By turning the focus of labor-based assessment (Inoue, 2019) to multimodal projects, this project clarifies the work that labor logs and multimodal pedagogies do in first-year writing and technical communication courses: indicating for students a …

Multimodality And The Sociality Of Literacies: Shaping First-Year Writing Students’ Literacies Through Multimodal Approaches, Jonathon Collins

Online Theses and Dissertations

The research presented here focuses on approaches to developing multimodal literacies through social semiotics, digital modes of communication, and multiliteracies. Intentionally developing these literacies opens the door for first-year writing students to build upon social discourses in which they already engage and develop new modes of meaning making outside of solely alphabetic literacy. Composition textbooks today, both traditional and Open Educational Resources (OER), become more effective in developing post-process and collaborative pedagogy writing standards when they focus on multimodal literacies and practices as outlined in this research. My research addresses both the historical precedent for multimodality in the Composition classroom …

Intercultural Communication, Anthony Naaeke

Open Educational Resources

I believe that learning is a life-long process, cumulative, reflective/critical, experiential, accessible to some people and not to others, and directed toward some action that benefits self, community, and the world. From this perspective, we will adopt the open pedagogy method of learning because it is most suitable and beneficial for the following reasons:

1. In open pedagogy the learning doesn’t end after the semester but what we learn in class should motivate all of us to continue to reflect on our lives and the circumstances of our times and neighborhoods and seek ways to address them.

2. Learning builds on learning. …

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The Undergraduate Spectrum 2022, Saint Mary's College Of California

The Undergraduate Spectrum

No abstract provided.