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Rhetoric and Composition

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Articles 31 - 60 of 197

Full-Text Articles in American Literature

Rotten Bananas, Hip Hop Heads, And The American Individual: Teaching Eddie Huang’S Memoir Fresh Off The Boat And Its Tropes Of Literacy, Wilson C. Chen Jan 2017

Rotten Bananas, Hip Hop Heads, And The American Individual: Teaching Eddie Huang’S Memoir Fresh Off The Boat And Its Tropes Of Literacy, Wilson C. Chen

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay focuses on Fresh Off the Boat as an eminently teachable coming-of-age story, provides critical contexts and directions for teaching this ideologically suggestive text, and sets forth the interpretive argument that the structures and themes of the memoir are fundamentally shaped by the literacy narrative at its core. As such, the text enters into conversation with other literacy narratives that have become so foundational in the teaching of multiethnic literature in the U.S. Moreover, Huang’s tropes of literacy draw from enduring, mythified Americanist discourses that are suggestive of a masculine individualism that, while not unique, is recognizable, instructive, and …


Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke Dec 2016

Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


"Out Of The Dark Confinement!" Physical Containment In Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Protest Literature, Allison Lane Tharp May 2016

"Out Of The Dark Confinement!" Physical Containment In Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Protest Literature, Allison Lane Tharp

Dissertations

Most scholarship on American protest literature tends to focus on the protest literature of specific, politically marginalized groups, such as black protest, women’s protest, or working class protest. My project redefines how we read nineteenth-century American protest literature by investigating the connections between the protest texts of these three marginalized groups. In particular, I argue that mid-nineteenth-century protest authors incorporate images of physical confinement and entrapment within their texts to expose to privileged readers the physical and ideological containment and control marginalized subjects encounter in their daily lives. Drawing from rhetorical theories of argumentation and audience engagement, and incorporating historical …


The Fictions Of Whiteness: Transatlantic Race Science, Gender, Nationalism, And The Construction Of Race In Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (1823-1867), Philip E. Kadish Feb 2016

The Fictions Of Whiteness: Transatlantic Race Science, Gender, Nationalism, And The Construction Of Race In Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (1823-1867), Philip E. Kadish

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Fictions of Whiteness argues that political beliefs preceded and determined the race science theories which nineteenth century American white novelists applied or invoked in their work, the inverse of the current critical consensus. For issues ranging from Indian removal to slavery and Reconstruction, and utilizing theories from of Condorcet, Buffon, Camper, Louis Agassiz, James Pritchard, Johannes Blumenbach, and George Borrow these authors shifted allegiances to divergent race theories between and within works, applied those theories selectively to white, black, and Indians characters, and applied the same scientific race theories to politically divergent rhetorical ends. By analyzing shifting application of different …


Perspectives Of Ethical Identity In Ng's Steer Toward Rock And Jen's Mona In The Promised Land, Hui Su Dec 2015

Perspectives Of Ethical Identity In Ng's Steer Toward Rock And Jen's Mona In The Promised Land, Hui Su

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Perspectives of Ethical Identity in Ng's Steer toward Rock and Jen's Mona in the Promised Land" Hui Su examines Fae Myenne Ng's and Gish Jen's novels. In the novels, the protagonists make different decisions: in Steer Toward Rock Jack after displacement in China adopts US-American identity and in Mona in the Promised Land Mona, a second generation Chinese American, selects Jewish identity. Owing to their different situations, the two protagonists reflect challenges of identity building in the case of the "Other" in US-American culture and society. Su argues that Ng and Jen, although varying in their …


Narrative Ethics And Alterity In Adichie's Novel Americanah, Nora Berning Dec 2015

Narrative Ethics And Alterity In Adichie's Novel Americanah, Nora Berning

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Narrative Ethics and Alterity in Adichie's Novel Americanah" Nora Berning analyses Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel through the lens of a narrative ethics of alterity. Focusing on the notion of alterity, Berning argues that a specific turn-of-the-century ethics emerges in contemporary fictions of migration in general and in intercultural novels in particular. An ethical genre in its own right, such twenty-first century fictions as Americanah generate a particular kind of ethical knowledge that revolves around questions of identity and alterity and around individual and collective perceptions of self and other. By addressing the interplay of "the ethics …


"Carried Away": Love, Bly, And Secrecy In Henry James' The Turn Of The Screw 2015, Natalie G. El-Eid Nov 2015

"Carried Away": Love, Bly, And Secrecy In Henry James' The Turn Of The Screw 2015, Natalie G. El-Eid

Master's Theses

The function of the prologue in Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is decidedly ambiguous, as the characters in the prologue, much like the uncle of the main text, are seemingly never seen again. For this reason, the purpose of this prologue is much debated.1 As Rolf Lundén states in his article “‘Not in any literal, vulgar way’: The Encoded Love Story of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw,” “The openness of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw has invited more analytical attempts, and more critical controversy, than most literary texts” (30). Lundén summarizes four schools of …


Revision In The Multiversity: What Composition Can Learn From The Superhero, David Hyman Sep 2015

Revision In The Multiversity: What Composition Can Learn From The Superhero, David Hyman

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Constant and ongoing revision is the compositional tactic through which many contemporary superhero narratives negotiate the powerful struggle between reiteration of the genre’s past, and creative expression of its future. Instead of a gradual succession of improved renditions of a text, each one effacing and superseding the imperfections of its predecessors, revision is revealed as the production of multiple versions whose differences and diversities are “capable of being in uncertainties”, as Keats describes the creative attitude which he terms Negative Capability: ontologically equal textual variations that wear their inconsistencies openly, and reject the pressure to resolve their multiplicities into the …


Pim Pedagogy: Toward A Loosely Unified Model For Teaching And Studying Comics And Graphic Novels, James B. Carter Sep 2015

Pim Pedagogy: Toward A Loosely Unified Model For Teaching And Studying Comics And Graphic Novels, James B. Carter

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The article debuts and explains "PIM" pedagogy, a construct for teaching comics at the secondary- and post-secondary levels and for deep reading/studying comics. The PIM model for considering comics is actually based in major precepts of education studies, namely constructivist foundations of learning, and loosely unifies constructs inherent therein with other available frames and frameworks for studying comics. As such, the article fills a dire need in the scholarly literature on comics pedagogy and paves a way for those who seek to teach comics courses in the future but who need direction and for those who seek to study/read comics …


Rotten Symbol Mongering: Scapegoating In Post-9/11 American War Literature, David Andrew Buchanan Jan 2015

Rotten Symbol Mongering: Scapegoating In Post-9/11 American War Literature, David Andrew Buchanan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A rhetorical approach to the fiction of war offers an appropriate vehicle by which one may encounter and interrogate such literature and the cultural metanarratives that exist therein. My project is a critical analysis—one that relies heavily upon Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic method and his concepts of scapegoating, the comic corrective, and hierarchical psychosis—of three war novels published in 2012 (The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, FOBBIT by David Abrams, and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain). This analysis assumes a rhetorical screen in order to subvert and redirect the grand narratives the United States perpetuates in art …


Attitudes Toward Mental Illness And Mental Health In The Literature Classroom, Melissa B. Guadron Jan 2015

Attitudes Toward Mental Illness And Mental Health In The Literature Classroom, Melissa B. Guadron

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of this study was to observe undergraduate students’ attitudes toward mental illness and mental health in the literature classroom. This was an observational, inductive study of Jeffrey Berman’s literature course, featuring books written by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This setting was chosen because of Berman’s unique pedagogy, which encourages self-disclosure and psychoanalytic readings. Three questionnaires and three introspective reader response diaries were collected from fifteen participants; text analyses were performed on diaries. Research inquiries questioned a participant’s interactions with the books: How did participants respond to the portrayals of characters with mental illness or mental health …


19th Century American Rhetoric: Figures, Techniques, And Informational Texts, Adam Kotlarczyk Apr 2013

19th Century American Rhetoric: Figures, Techniques, And Informational Texts, Adam Kotlarczyk

Rhetoric Unit

Ward Farnsworth writes in his 2011Classical English Rhetoric “figures sound splendid when used to say things worth saying,” and nineteenth century Americans, it seems, had many things worth saying. The nineteenth century was a high-water mark for oral and written rhetoric in English; this was especially true in America. Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison wrote eloquently and passionately on abolition, even as the nation plunged into Civil War. Abraham Lincoln articulated his vision for the reunification of a country shattered by that war, while Henry David Thoreau explained the ethical need for the occasional disobedience to civil law …


Review Of Digital Detroit: Rhetoric And Space In The Age Of The Network, Timothy Barney Jan 2013

Review Of Digital Detroit: Rhetoric And Space In The Age Of The Network, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In 1971, rogue Wayne State geographer William Bunge (placed on a federal list of dangerous intellectuals) published Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution, a radical polemic about how everyday citizens of a Detroit ghetto could challenge oppression and become geographers of their own neighborhoods. Forty years later, Jeff Rice (formerly a Wayne State professor himself) revisits Detroit geography, but this time largely from his laptop (and without, I hope, the same kind of federal harassment). For while Bunge’s Fitzgerald and Jeff Rice’s Digital Detroit share similar terrain, as well as a love for the city in all its contradictions, …


Anxiety And The Newly Returned Adult Student, Michelle Navarre Cleary May 2012

Anxiety And The Newly Returned Adult Student, Michelle Navarre Cleary

School of Continuing and Professional Studies Faculty and Staff Works

Based on interviews with students who had recently returned to school, this essay demonstrates the need for, challenges of, and ways to respond to the writing anxiety many adults bring with them back to school.


Woman At The Top: Rhetoric, Politics, And Feminism In The Texts And Life Of Annie Smith Peck, Hannah Scialdone-Kimberly Apr 2012

Woman At The Top: Rhetoric, Politics, And Feminism In The Texts And Life Of Annie Smith Peck, Hannah Scialdone-Kimberly

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this focuses on the autobiographical rhetoric and public identity of Annie Smith Peck, a scholar, mountain climber and woman rhetor from the turn of the century. My qualitative case study of Peck examines how she worked as a woman rhetor to create a popular identity for herself in both mountain climbing and scholarship. I also focus on how Peck worked to identify herself with her audience; here, I use Burke's concept of "identification," as a way of adding to (rather than substituting for) traditional rhetoric. My project brings new findings in that I examine data on Peck …


Silence And Self-Making: Black Lung Rhetoric And The Ken Hechler Letters, Jennifer De Pompei Jan 2012

Silence And Self-Making: Black Lung Rhetoric And The Ken Hechler Letters, Jennifer De Pompei

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis combines history, rhetoric, and feminist identity studies to discuss the subject of black lung disease and the Appalachian coal miner. The first chapter examines the "evolution of mentalities" in historical and popular discourse surrounding the miner, which reflects James V. Catano's subversive form of the self-making identity in Ragged Dicks. The second chapter uses the feminist theory of silence as a form of control and power to understand the absence of black lung disease from the literature of coal. The final chapter is a case study of the correspondence between Congressional Representative Ken Hechler of West Virginia and …


Keeping History Alive: David Mccullough And The Debate Between Popular And Academic History, James R. Allen May 2010

Keeping History Alive: David Mccullough And The Debate Between Popular And Academic History, James R. Allen

History

The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences between academic history and popular history through David McCullough, one of the most successful popular history writers. It attempts to reconcile the schism between the two schools of thought, and provide a middle ground where each can stand.


Rationale For Pride Of Baghdad, Crag Hill Ph.D. Jan 2010

Rationale For Pride Of Baghdad, Crag Hill Ph.D.

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

A rationale for teaching the graphic novel Pride of Baghdad at the secondary level.


Sequential Art, Graphic Novels, And Comics, Brian Kelley Jan 2010

Sequential Art, Graphic Novels, And Comics, Brian Kelley

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The first global distribution of a paper prepared for the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Graphic Novels Special Interest Group of the International Reading Association,the Executive Board of the New Jersey Reading Association, and the Legislative and Professional Standards Committee of the NJRA.


Review Of Teaching Graphic Novels, By Katie Monnin, Susan Spangler Jan 2010

Review Of Teaching Graphic Novels, By Katie Monnin, Susan Spangler

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

No abstract provided.


Rationale For Magneto: Testament, Brian Kelley Jan 2010

Rationale For Magneto: Testament, Brian Kelley

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

A rationale for teaching the graphic novel Magneto:Testament in secondary schools.


Comic Vision, Gale Acuff Jan 2010

Comic Vision, Gale Acuff

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

A narrative, rhetorical poem


Recovering Brande : Freewriting And Sustainable (Procedural) Expression, Richard Bower Jan 2010

Recovering Brande : Freewriting And Sustainable (Procedural) Expression, Richard Bower

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Dorothea Brande is rarely known in rhetoric and composition yet continues to hold popular influence over writers attracted to Cartesian beliefs. The aim of this project is to recover Brande's contributions in order to rethink composition's trajectories. Chiefly, Dorothea Brande's legacy has been in creative writing through Becoming a Writer. In this bestseller, she establishes a program for putting the Cartesian divide to work. "Writing with the unconscious mind in the ascent," as Brande explains about what Ken Macrorie and Peter Elbow later call freewriting, harnesses the bifurcated consciousness of writers and begins a journey of unification.


Handling And Preventing Journalistic Fraud: Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Kenneth Munson May 2006

Handling And Preventing Journalistic Fraud: Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Kenneth Munson

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Fraud is a growing concern in the news business, especially in recent years where numerous journalism scandals rock its foundation. This paper examines the most prominent cases: Stephen Glass, the reporter for The New Republic newsmagazine who completely or partially fabricated 27 stories in the late ‘90s; Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who was found to have plagiarized or made up his supposedly on-thescene reporting in 2003; and Janet Cooke, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for her Washington Post story about a child heroin addict who, in actuality, did not exist. This paper will examine flaws …


Alonzo "Old Block" Delano, Nicolas S. Witschi Jan 2006

Alonzo "Old Block" Delano, Nicolas S. Witschi

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

When Alonzo Delano died on 8 September 1874, newspapers throughout the Northern California region lamented the passing of a favorite local celebrity. A death notice issued by the Sacramento Union on 10 September (reprinted a day later by San Francisco’s Daily Alta California), observed that Delano “was known by reputation throughout the State as an author and a man of integrity. [. . .] He was a writer of much native humor and plainness of speech, abounding in facts, anxious to do justice to all and injury to none.” The San Francisco Chronicle echoed this sentiment, adding that he …


Reading Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, Karen E. Ramirez Jan 2006

Reading Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, Karen E. Ramirez

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Helen Hunt Jackson was one of America’s most renowned and prolific female writers of the 1870s and 1880s, best known during her lifetime (1830-1885) and into the early twentieth century for her poetry, domestic essays, travel sketches, and moralistic novels. However, as Jackson herself predicted, her most enduring legacy is her writing advocating American Indian rights (Higginson, “Helen” 151). Most significantly, her 1884 novel Ramona protests American Indian displacement in southern California and, more broadly, criticizes Anglo-American conquest through land acquisition. A bestseller when it appeared, Ramona has never gone out of print; has been translated into many languages; was …


Mary Clearman Blew, Evelyn I. Funda Jan 2006

Mary Clearman Blew, Evelyn I. Funda

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Defying the Welch family edict to “Never speak aloud of what you feel deeply,” Mary Clearman Blew has garnered national recognition as an eminent writer in the American west by choosing to write candidly about the riddle of her family, their deeply felt losses, and her sense of “the contradictions of double vision, of belonging in place and being out of place” (Balsamroot 4; Bone Deep 174). Unsparingly honest and accessible in eight books of fiction and nonfiction, in person Blew is, nevertheless, a quiet, dignified, and reserved woman who still thinks of herself as a bookworm, the girl …


Style: A New Perspective On Kate Chopin, Daniel Arredondo Jan 2005

Style: A New Perspective On Kate Chopin, Daniel Arredondo

Theses Digitization Project

Uses Edward Corbett's theory of style to help define Chopin's style and expose her rhetorical strategies (sentence and paragraph length, diction, tropes, scheme, etc.) in the short story "The Story of an Hour ." Examines the controversy over using literature to teach composition and provides an analysis of the reasons for and against using literature in composition classes. Finally, defends the use of literature in writing classrooms.


James Stevens, James H. Maguire Jan 2005

James Stevens, James H. Maguire

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

By 1930, James Stevens had gained a national reputation as one of the Northwest’s most promising and outspoken young writers. Seventy-five years later, he has slipped so far into obscurity that relatively few people know of his contributions not only to Northwest writing but also to American literature in general and to the literature of the American West in particular. His tall tales made Paul Bunyan one of the great heroes of American popular culture. The controversial literary manifesto he co-authored with Oregon author H. L. Davis led to a new era in the history of the Northwest’s literature. And …


Gary Paul Nabhan, Gioia Woods Jan 2005

Gary Paul Nabhan, Gioia Woods

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Between spoonfuls of posole at the Morning Glory Cafe in Flagstaff, Arizona, Gary Paul Nabhan mused about the distinctive character of western American literature. “What is western literature about?” I asked him. Without hesitation, he replied, “It is about a process of disorientation and reorientation.” The mountains, sand dunes, and canyons of the western landscape govern western imagination. That landscape, he believes, is responsible for the dis- and reorientation that characterizes the work of many western writers. Nabhan continued, “I should say that in an odd way, that’s even true of Native American literature [....] Leslie Silko writes about the …