Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

A Historiographical Look Into The Origins Of Jazz, Rachel G. Zinck

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

Historiography handles the way that historians' writings on a given topic has changed over time. My paper, on the origins of jazz music in the United States, takes a particular look at 8 historians, works ranging from 1946 to 2001, and evaluates their arguments. I ultimately make the case for one particular historian as having the best and most comprehensive discussion on the topic.

American Negro Minstrelsy: Good, Bad, Or Somewhere In-Between?, Emily R. Wellmann

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

I chose my topic for this project early in the semester and began researching it soon after that. I used eight sources for my research and wrote an annotated bibliography. This bibliography was a huge benefit to the first draft of my paper, which just included a description of the sources. That draft was peer reviewed and given notes by my professor. The final paper was turned in shortly after, including an additional introduction and conclusion. After receiving my grade from my professor I edited it before turning it in here.

The Weight Of Love, Garrett P. Steele

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This project examines the graphic novel Romeo and Juliet: The War and how it relates and connects to "The University of Dayton's Mission Statement on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition" (CIT). In order to get started on the project, I looked over my notes for the CIT as well as for Romeo and Juliet and made a list of themes that I thought were interesting and that connected nicely with both works. From there, I created an outline, preparing what I wanted to say in the essay and then wrote a first draft of the essay. The first draft was incomplete …

Frank Zhang: Hipster Extraordinaire, Myra C. Tumlos, Garrett P. Steele

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

After the delicate deliberation of the characters of the series Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan, it was decided by both writers that Frank Zhang, son of Mars, is the ultimate hipster demigod. The structure of this essay was based on a simple argument, and carefully dissects the full series in order to really convey who Frank Zhang really is. It was additionally concluded by both writers that as complicated and intricate a character as Frank Zhang is, we wanted the audience to be able to not only imagine the illustrations of the character, but to further empathize with the …

A Simple Syllable, Zach A. Snyder

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This assignment was a simple literacy narrative about some point in my life that helped develop my love for reading. I choose a point early in my life where I had a speech impediment and had trouble speaking words clearly. I got over this difficult time by reading. The only research I had to do for this paper was figure or some smaller details from my parents that I could not remember since I was so young. Other than that all the information came from the deep depths on my mind. There were 3 drafts to this paper, a rough …

The Struggle For Meaningful Education, Maura Cullen

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This assignment was to create an informational synthesis essay that compared two different sources that were discussed in class, and give an example on how the topic has affected my own life. I read Walker Percy's text, "The Loss of the Creature," and carefully analyzed the meanings behind the "preformed complexes" that society pushes on people. Then I looked into Paulo Freire and Donald Macedo's excerpt, Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. This reading emphasizes the implications of literacy, and I spent most of my time trying to figure out the complex ideas that these authors are portraying. …

And The Oscar Goes To, Jennifer M. Rondinelli

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

For my English 100 class, my professor required us to write a comparative rhetoric paper. We were given complete control over what kind of media we wanted to be the focus of our paper and what we topic we wanted to write about. I chose to write about the movie Spotlight, the recent Academy Award winning film that followed the investigative team that uncovered the priest pedophilia scandal in Boston in 2002. I had recently viewed the film and it had an enormous impact on me as a young Catholic attending a Catholic Marianist university. I chose for media …

What Do You Mean, "Practice"? Theorizing The Writing-Music Connection, Callie Elise Compton

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Researchers in the field of composition studies have frequently made allusions to musicians when they’ve discussed the role of practice in gaining skill. In doing so, however, they’ve risked making speculative rather than testable claims and separating composition studies from recent insights on practice from other disciplines such as education and music psychology. These fields, I argue, offer testable frameworks with which composition instructors and scholars can teach and study writing practice. Such frameworks are necessary because composition researchers need to supplement qualitative studies of writers and writing with quantitative data to generate replicable tests of teaching methods that may …

Yorba Times: Special Edition On Safety, Noah Asher Golden, Facundo Acevedo, Jesse Alonzo, Henessy Arana, Leslie Arriaga, Michelle Brait, Amy Chau, Ashley Diaz, Jeremiah Dille, Sierra Durand, Beberly Espinoza, Elora Estes, Lesley Fernandez, Darshan Gamma, Cassandra Garcia, Karla Garcia, Yasmin Garcia, Neko Gianquinto, Gisselle Gonzalez, Jacob Gonzales, Sakina Jaffery, Adrianna Herrera, Allie Hoch, Victoria Hulett, Anthony Jaimes, Leilani Lagunes, Sandra Loredo, Kate Markey, Joshua Marmolejo, Faith Martin, Melissa Medina, Layla Melendez, Dylan Moses, Michaela Moses, Brooklynn Payne, Michelle Perez, Brianna Quirarte, Ieleen Ramirez, Edwin Reyes, Jehu Sandoval, Jaqueline Ramirez, Jonathan Sanchez, Nathalie Sanchez, Christopher Santibanez, Kaylin Seeley, Genevieve Stothers, Miranda Valdez, Christopher Velasquez

Yorba-Chapman Writing Partnership Anthology of Journalistic Writing

During the Spring 2016 semester, Dr. Noah Asher Golden's Teaching of Writing K-12 students partnered with the Journalism class at Yorba Academy for the Arts. Through collaboration over a four-month period, Chapman's future teachers and Yorba's junior high journalists engaged a deep writing process to write a series of features, editorials, and news articles, all connected in some way to the overarching theme of safety. Thank you to Ms. Andrea Lopez, Ms. Tracy Knibb, and the Lloyd E. and Elisabeth H. Klein Family Foundation for supporting this project.

The Demons Of Coed Intramural Sports, Amanda M. Schleper

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

The purpose of this assignment was to select a topic within the realms of gender issues, complete research in the library, and conduct personal research in the form of a survey or an interview. I knew I wanted to select a topic that was relative to me and my community. After talking to several of my peers, I realized there was a large controversy over the topic of gender specific rules in coed intramural sports. Thus, I decided to delve into the issue by undertaking it as my essay topic. Researching in the library and finding many scholarly sources as …

'Let It Go': Disney's New Approach To Copyright Enforcement, Kathryn W. O'Rourke

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

After the research paper had been assigned, I began researching possible topics. Once I found an area that interested me, I narrowed down my research and formulated a working argument. There have been many writings about Disney's strict enforcement of copyright; I however took a different approach. I gathered scholarly and popular sources that ranged from background information, similar arguments, and counter points. For the rough draft, I first crafted an outline, then wrote the body paragraphs, and finally the introduction and conclusion. In class, we had a peer review session and my professor gave us constructive notes on our …

Black Widow: Avenger Of Feminism, Elizabeth G. Michalenko

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

The purpose of the assignment was to construct a well-researched argument regarding a socially different superhero and their role in society. The argument needed to address the super’s social difference, as well as how that social difference defines the super’s role. Through class brainstorming sessions and individual research, I determined that emerging gender issues in American society and culture would provide the impetus for my investigation. I searched for the quintessential female hero and found Black Widow from the Marvel universe. Black Widow defies the stereotypes of women and superheroes by living within the constraints of both worlds without succumbing …

Flawed Heroes, Flawless Villain, Lauren N. Geiser

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This assignment was a textual analysis of the graphic novel Watchmen. The two course objectives of ENG 200H were addressed: to “demonstrate abilities to read complicated and complex texts closely and critically” and to “explore the relevance of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (CIT) in reading, writing, and rhetoric.” Reading Watchmen, we aimed to demonstrate how the novel is related to the CIT, either through connections or disconnections. Because the assignment is a textual analysis, I had to pay close attention to the context of Watchmen and the CIT, include a summary of the text though a specific angle, narrow …

Copyright Laws In The Music Industry, Elise M. Erhart

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This assignment was to write an argumentative research paper on a topic related to the course theme, which was Remix Culture. After browsing through a list of suggested topics and reading about a number of famous copyright cases, I finally chose my topic. My biggest struggle during the composition of this paper was figuring out how to organize all of my thoughts and weave them into the research that I gathered. Having both a peer review day in class and a conference with my professor was very helpful and gave me a fresh perspective on my work, making it much …

Women In Engineering: Shifting The Balance, Samuel A. Barnhart

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This writing was submitted as the final research paper for my English class. The paper includes analysis of multiple sources and my original research done via survey of female engineering students at the University of Dayton. The paper underwent several peer reviews in class, assessed by the professor before submission, and was critiqued at the Write Place before submission.

Changing Princess Peach, Christian A. Matico

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

The main assignment for this paper was to gather sources from academia and various news sources and create a synthesis argument on a topic dealing with women in a certain field. All of the students chose a topic they felt strongly about and that showed how women have been encompassed in my field. Due to my admiration of video games, I decided to show how specifically female characters were being portrayed in popular titled games. A lot of research came from our presentations we had to do before hand on our topic and further research was done to gather statistics …

Fake Characters: Real Suffering, Brian P. Callahan

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

In this paper, I was asked to describe positive or negative literacy sponsors I have encountered in my life.

A Letter To A Struggling German Catholic During The Reformation, Rachel G. Zinck

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

The assignment presented was to write a position paper in the format of a letter to a German Catholic friend undergoing an existential crisis during the Reformation period. First, we needed to analyze Martin Luther's 3 Walls of the Romanists, and then take a stance either choosing to follow or ignore Luther. In writing this essay, I spent a lot of time reading over Luther's arguments and reflecting on my own personal views and compared them with careful consideration. I was aware that the situation at the time was a matter of life and death for many, and attempted to …

Imaginary Subjects: Fiction-Writing Instruction In America, 1826 - 1897, Paul Collins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Imaginary Subjects: Fiction Writing Instruction in America, 1826-1897 is a study of the confluence of commercial, educational, and aesthetic developments behind the rise of instruction in fiction-writing. Part I ("The Predicament of Fiction-Writing") traces fiction-writing instruction from its absence in Enlightenment-era rhetoric textbooks to its modest beginnings in magazine essays by Poe and Marryat, and in mid-century advice literature. Part II ("Fiction-Writing in the Classroom") notes the rise of fiction exercise from early Romantic-era primers upwards into mid-centuryhigh-school level textbooks, and from there into Harvard composition exercises; this coincided with an increasing emphasis by author advocacy groups on writing as …

The Bridge, Volume 13, 2016, Bridgewater State University

the bridge

Editor-in-Chief: Jill Boger
Managing Editor: Kelsey Leuenberger
Lead Designer: Ghada Masri
Photo Editor: David Hooker

Editors:
Hannah Green
Amanda Hankel
Kelci Sylvia
Caitlin Westgate

Faculty Advisor: John Mulrooney

Consultant: Cheryl Tullis

When Time Stops: A Loss Of Identity Or A Lack Of Responsibility?, Emma M. Kuper

The Criterion

Elizabeth Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room”, and Louis MacNeice’s “Sunday Morning” follow a similar temporal structure as they begin with a normal passing of time, feature a hiatus or stretch of time in the central part of the poem, and then end with a return to normalcy. In addition, both poems include a connection among strangers during this stretched time period. However, Bishop’s speaker finds this connection frightening, due to her resulting loss of identity. In contrast, MacNeice portrays this connection as positive, as all of humanity shares in a peaceful, joyous morning. This difference originates in the cause of …

Inviting Students To Determine For Themselves What It Means To Write Across The Disciplines, Brian Hendrickson, Genevieve Garcia De Mueller

Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications

Situated in the literature on threshold concepts and transfer of prior knowledge in WAC/WID and composition studies, with particular emphasis on the scholarship of writing across difference, our article explores the possibility of re-envisioning the role of the composition classroom within the broader literacy ecology of colleges and universities largely comprised of students from socioeconomically and ethno- linguistically underrepresented communities. We recount the pilot of a composi- tion course prompting students to examine their own prior and other literacy values and practices, then transfer that growing meta-awareness to the critical acquisition of academic discourse. Our analysis of students’ self-assessment memos …

Magic At The Crossroads: The Rise Of The Video Essay, Morganne Tinsley August

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the birth, rise in popularity, and evolution of the video essay, a subgenre of the essay found recently in online literary journals. Chapter one provides a brief history of the alphabetic essay as it expands to include photo essays, audio essays, and essay-films. The second chapter outlines the history of the online literary journal and John Bresland’s role in the introduction of the video essay as it appears in online journals. Chapter three contains an examination of the way image, text, and sound function in video essays and the tools and strategies essayists are using to create …

Para-Expertise, Tacit Knowledge, And Writing Problems, Jenny Rice

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Faculty Publications

My office is on the thirteenth floor of an eighteen-story concrete tower that sits in the heart of campus. The building is so massively disproportionate to other buildings that it looms over the entire campus. Inside, the hallways are long and narrow, with no windows or natural light. A bank of six large elevators takes up the center space of each floor. Perhaps it is not surprising that this office tower has become the source of campus lore and legends among students and faculty. During my first semester on campus, a student asked if I knew the history of my …

"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 …

A Better Question Would Be: Are We The Watchmen?, Alexander Lawriw

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

This assignment was meant to be a literary analysis of the famous graphic novel, Watchmen, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. In this analysis, we were supposed to look at some of the various writing/visual strategies of the novel and note how these strategies either related to or did not connect with various Catholic Intellectual Traditions. I, personally, decided to look at two of the main characters of the book, Rorschach and The Comedian, and examine how they related to the deeper Catholic and Philosophical understanding of what it means to be human. In particular, I …

Stereotypes Of Disabled In Society: A Call For Change, Emily Kimble

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

The purpose of this assignment was to research and write in an academic discipline. Students were asked to conduct academic research and to produce an argument about a “super.” The argument required that one joins an academic conversation, as he or she practiced the research and writing conventions expected of a member of an academic discipline or community. To get started, I began thinking about a topic—something that was not only important to me, but also important to society. I looked at the links provided to me by my professor that gave background information on numerous superheroes. After analyzing the …

Anti-Gay Legislation In Russia: Western Perspectives, Kelsey A. Clayback

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

My writing process first began when my English 200 professor, Dr. Kisel, assigned our final informative synthesis essay. We were given a list of topics to choose from, all of which addressed different aspects of censorship in Russia. I chose the topic of the controversial gay propaganda law enacted by President Vladimir Putin in modern-day Russia. As a class, we met in the library and learned how to find appropriate sources using UD’s online databases. We were given the assignment of finding and summarizing five credible sources for our essay. Next, we were to narrow the sources down to four …

Love Vs. Capitalism, Blake R. Coury

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

My purpose in writing this Summary and Response paper was to take a deep look at Norris’ essay, The Secret Ingredient, and focus on a main aspect that I found to be important to me. I am trying to show, using Norris’ essay as evidence, that I agree with Norris’ assertion that people are too materialistic today and that people should be focuses on love instead. The hardest challenge for me when I was working on this paper was trying to balance between using textual evidence and using my own words. I wanted to make sure that I provided …

Breaking Through The Veneer, Julia K. Hall

Line by Line: A Journal of Beginning Student Writing

I initially approached this paper merely as an assignment for my English 100 class, but I became increasingly enthusiastic as I continued to develop my thoughts. This ordinary assignment transformed into a fun, exciting process. I pondered my favorite books, my influential teachers, and my childhood before beginning to write. The conclusions regarding my personal identity as a reader and a writer that I make in this paper were revealed to me through my reflection. After a few drafts and a trip to the Write Place, I have produced an essay that mirrors my personal literacy journey.