Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

A Poetic Call For And A Reflection And Commentary On Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, And Compassion, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Finding a published poem I had written as a teenager, titled “The Heavens Weep.” this article uses that poem as the basis for a commentary that reflects on the state of the world today (2026),  As a commentary, the article uses the poetic and metaphoric words in the poem as a relevant "reality check" for what is still going on today.  In essence, the commentary is about a call for Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, and Compassion, or what I call Archetypal Energies, Higher Vibrational Energies that operate deep within our individual and collective psyches to creatively urge us to "see" …

Patriotism, Philia, And Stereotyping During World War Ii: Correspondence Between Black Composers, Selise Phillips, Joi Carr

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

The 20th century was a monumental time for Black composers, especially for those in the UK. Rudolph Dunbar was the first black musician to perform at Royal Albert Hall in London, England. During this time, correspondence between him and William Grant Still, a famous black composer based in America, exists. Still’s rhetorical choices in these letters demonstrate the attitudes of these composers, specifically Still, and how these choices reflect the success of Dunbar’s career. Still, whose compositions started gaining traction in the 1930s, often praised Dunbar for his achievements. These letters all take place during World War II and during …

The Sensationalizing Of Presidential Assassinations In Mass Media Throughout American History, Lindsay E. Smith

Undergraduate Theses

This project explores how mass media has shaped the public response to presidential assassinations across American history. By examining the deaths of Abraham Lincoln (1865), James A. Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963), we can trace how evolving media technologies – such as newspapers, yellow journalism, radio broadcasts, and live television coverage – have sensationalized violence, politicized tragedy, and transformed periods of national mourning into mass spectacles. The thesis analyzes reporting methods, narrative framing, and the news industry to show how each has influenced emotional response, political landscapes, and eventual presidential legacy. Ultimately, we find that …

The Archives Magazine, 2026, Katie Shank, Ronnie Cannon, Amadeus Cigan, Rebekah Ehrhart, Donato Fhunsu, Abby Hrichak, Elsa Last, Joseph Tyler Nadzady, Avery Reel, Noel White

Kutztown University Archives

No abstract provided.

Parallel Concepts Found In The Thousand And One Nights And Sufi Hagiography, Walaa Kamal Emam Kamel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that The Thousand and One Nights functions as more than mere populist entertainment; rather, it constitutes a literary corpus imbued with Sufi mystical epistemologies that reflect the spiritual quests and Sufi concepts evident in hagiographical traditions. Through discourse and intertextual analysis of two Nights stories, “The City of Brass” and “The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad,” alongside Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār’s Tadhkirat al-awliyāʾ, this study demonstrates how shared rhetorical strategies—specifically David Pinault’s Leitwörter analysis and L.A. Paul’s Transformative Experience concept—reveal a narrative and rhetorical emphasis on the metamorphosis of the self from worldly attachment toward …

Finding Luis: A Creative Nonfiction Account Of Law & Society, Jason M. Leggett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This essay explores the contradictions in legal theory and human experience through creative nonfiction. Its main purpose is to argue that a truly just society requires acknowledging the profound influence of individual narratives on the law. This is supported by blending personal narratives, critical analysis, and philosophical inquiry to reveal the gap between codified law and lived realities for marginalized individuals. This unique Legal Poetics methodology employs a series of six vignettes, such as the author's and Luis's shared experiences with traumatic brain injury and the denial of justice, as data. By integrating autoethnography, law as narrative, and performativity theories, …

George W. Bush’S Contemporary Crusade: Binary And Peace Rhetoric During The Global War On Terror, Justin Lotito

Cohort 2025-2026

Justin Lotito is a senior majoring in communication studies, with minors in business administration, and journalism. Lotito’s Time Machine research investigates President George W. Bush’s rhetoric following the attacks of September 11. He contends that Bush established a binary world through the application of Manichean and Crusader rhetoric. Following this contention, Lotito applies Bush’s binary world framework into an analysis of the Setonian’s March 20, 2003, edition covering the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Archival Collection Used: SHU 0054 The Setonian

Reawakening Waⁿdat: Community Research & Reclamation, Darcy Allred

Theses and Dissertations

The Wyandot(te) have undergone language dormancy due to settler colonial impacts of warfare, refugee relocation, forced removals, and U.S. assimilation projects. One of the most pressing priorities among our people today is reawakening our ancestral language, Waⁿdat. The common follow-up question is: how? Through the conduit of Waⁿdat language reclamation, this project grapples with the above question in collaboration with the Wyandot(te) community, and in adherence to the tribal sovereignty of the Wyandotte Nation. The project engages with diasporic perspectives, community-based pedagogy design, and tribally specific research protocols and policies. The living collective knowledgebase with which I engage in this …

Anti-Muslim Rhetoric In The Trial Of The Templars (1307-1312), Samantha J. Froemming

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis investigates the existence of anti-Muslim rhetoric within documents produced by the French monarchy and papacy during the Trial of the Templars (1307-1312). When French King Philip IV accused the Templars of heresy in 1307, he issued orders for their arrest in an unofficial document which employed anti-Muslim rhetoric against them, even though they were an order of Latin Christian warrior-monks who fought against Muslims in the Middle East. Pope Clement V later reflected this rhetoric in his papal bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae, an official order to arrest the Templars­— evidence of Philip IV’s influence over the papacy during …

Models Of Emulation: Representations Of Foreign, Indigenous, And Accented Speech In Early American Literature, Elaina A. Frulla

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

“Models of Emulation: Representations of Foreign, Indigenous, and Accented Speech in Early American Literature” explores how American writers used depictions of “nonstandard” English and accented English language speech, traditionally described as “literary dialect,” as a way to negotiate identity, power, and political belonging in the formative years of nation building after the American Revolution. Beginning with Noah Webster’s mission to establish a standardized pronunciation of the English language that would simplify and purify spoken American-English and definitively differentiate it from what he saw as the corrupted, cosmopolitan British-English model, each of the three chapters examines literary representations of nonstandard emulated …

A Voice To Remember: Recovering The Rhetoric Of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, Diana Lynne Nogay

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation will recover Mordecai Johnson's rhetoric to demonstrate how he addressed the political issues of his time, which were often related to race, and were frequently reduced or even forgotten. In this dissertation, titled “A Voice to Remember: Recovering the Rhetoric of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson,” I perform and analyze the rhetoric associated with him. Johnson was well known for being the president of Howard University; the goal of this project is to recover the rhetoric and identify the common themes. The two themes identified in Johnson’s rhetoric are religion and education. Personal traits and associations with religion are traced …

Critical Communication Pedagogy At The End Of The World, Tyler S. Rife

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

This essay draws upon my experiences teaching the undergraduate course, “Communication at the End of the World,” to argue for an approach to critical communication pedagogy (CCP) contextualized by and reflexively responsive to planetary-scale ecological crises. I outline how five commitments have come to guide my classroom’s explorations through our topic of “end-times” communication: (1) Anthropocentrism and speciesism participate in the maintenance of social hierarchy; (2) environmental justice and social justice are intimately entangled projects; (3) ecological crisis is (re)made concrete, embodied, proximal, and implicative; (4) critique of language involves critique of humanism and humanist historicization; and, (5) ecologically just …

Becoming A Beloved Community: A Restorative Reckoning For A Radical Conversion To Transform Discourse In Higher Education, Latasha Tomay Varlack-Butler

Dissertations

This dissertation critically examines the misappropriation of Restorative Justice Discourse (RJD) within three predominantly white institutions (PWIs), analyzing 59 institutional documents through Critical Discourse Analysis, Relational Critical Discourse Analysis, and Rhetorical Criticism (Fairclough, 1995; Vaandering, 2021; van Dijk, 2008). Tribal Colleges and Universities and South African institutions have emerged as exemplars of authentic RJD, countering co-optation within PWIs. The findings demonstrate that RJD as applied in PWIs is framed in ways that attenuate its transformative potential, perpetuating color-evasiveness (Bonilla-Silva, 2017) and obscuring the intersectional experiences of Black, Indigenous, and disabled communities (Crenshaw, 1991; Million, 2009).

Grounded in decolonial praxis (Smith, …

"Homesick For You:" An Archival Analysis Of Love Letters From World War Ii, Cambria B. Acheson

English (MA) Theses

In this project, I cherish and explore a collection of correspondence exchanged between a married couple during World War II. Applying an embodied research approach that incorporates archival, historical, and cultural studies, I analyze key elements of these letters with special attention for themes of love and family, valuing their insights to touching personal stories that nuance the dominant narratives of history. I contend for the preservation and discussion of these letters and similar artifacts, advocating for their lasting significance within both past and present contexts and their irreplaceable contributions to the cultivation of collective memory and empathy across generations.

The Sound Of Young America/The Soul Of Young America: A Sonic Rhetoric Inquiry Into 1965 And The Music Defining A Generation In Crisis, Jessica Dyche

All Dissertations

The Sound of Young America/The Soul of Young America: A Sonic Rhetoric Inquiry into 1965 and the Music Defining a Generation In Crisis builds a case for sonic rhetoric theory that sees sonic rhetoric move outside of pedagogy, becoming a valuable tool for rhetorical analysis outside the classroom. To this end, The Sound of Young America/The Soul of Young America employs sonic rhetoric concepts and methodology grounded in cultural rhetorics, social history, and sociomusicology to inquire into the cultural and social relevancy of rock music, specifically to this project, in 1965. Sonic rhetoric sees sound and music as underexplored, but …

“Re-Storying” Anne Shirley And The Adhd Child: A Crip Genealogy Of Anne Of Green Gables, Darian Aleyna Wilson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores the contested nature of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), focusing on its cultural and historical constructions. While ADHD has been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1980, its legitimacy remains a subject of debate across medical, disability studies, and historical scholarship. Using Eli Clare’s critique of diagnosis as a tool rather than a fact, this project examines how ADHD is both pathologized and re-storied within societal and medical discourses. It highlights the tension between medical classifications and lived experiences of those diagnosed with ADHD, particularly in the context of girlhood.

The central …

“If, In That Strife, ‘T Were Given To See / The Glory Of Thermopylae”: Connections To The Classics In The Alamo And The Texas Revolution, Austin M. Pritchett

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This historical research paper argues that connections to classical tradition were made in the rhetoric and symbolism of the Texas Revolution as a means of creating a national identity as Texans and as a way of garnering support from the Unites States for their cause.

Having established the background of the Texas Revolution of 1835-1836, the famous Battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836, and the Battle of Thermopylae in ancient Greece, I bring forth examples from primary sources of important figures using comparisons to classical history. The classical connections made in those writings were used to justify their …

Remembering Ancient Heroes: How Literary Devices Inbeowulf And Homer Assist In Poetic Recollection, Emily Davey

Posters - 2025

In both Ancient Greek and Old English traditions of poetry, memory is an essential part in the retention of the language and story in the culture’s history. Beowulf shares some poetic lyrical elements with Homer’s epithets. Though both poems have unique and different poetic meters, they possess similar tactics in the language to move the story along while providing poets “footholds” in the poem to remember the story.To deliver these stories of heroes to the public, the sophists of Greece and the scops of Celtic England had only one tool available for the record of these lengthy poems: their capacity …

Hijacking Frederick Douglass: How Conservatives Exploit His Legacy For Political And Ideological Gain, Kenneth B. Morris Jr

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Conservatives distort Frederick Douglass’s legacy to advance political and ideological narratives that contradict his advocacy for racial justice and civil rights. Among them, Black conservatives invoke Douglass to justify their opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts while appealing to reactionary audiences. By stripping his writings of historical context, they reshape his message in ways that obscure his calls for systemic change. Some exploit his name and image for financial gain. As Douglass’s great-great-great-grandson, the author directly confronts these distortions with historical evidence and personal insight. This work calls for an honest engagement with Douglass’s full legacy and challenges those …

Dog Whistles And Division: Evolution Of Covert Language In The 2024 Election Cycle, Julia Lavine

CAFE Symposium 2025

This project examines the existing roles of political dog whistles and compares them to how each candidate used them in the 2024 election cycle. It then examines how the candidates' different backgrounds influenced their rhetoric and use of dog whistles, especially through socioeconomic, racial, and gendered lenses.

Weeding Out Dishonesty: Rhetoric And Information Literacy For The Age Of Disinformation, Victoria M. Tischio

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

We live in what some call a post-fact world where what is presented as true becomes true and circulates widely. Politicians lie because they have calculated that they gain more than they lose, and media outlets repeat those lies because they profit from them (Adair 2024). Fear and suspicion make individuals vulnerable to these lies (Young 2017). Like an invasive species, it is nearly impossible to eradicate these lies once released into the media ecosystem. While fake news is not new (think P.T. Barnum and 17th-century canards), its virulence has reached epidemic proportions, infiltrating all aspects of society. This constitutes …

Duae Cypriani Soarez Praefationes Ad Opus De Arte Rhetorica Libri Tres Commentariis Rhetoricis Instructae, Marcus Porto

Theses and Dissertations--Modern and Classical Languages, Literature and Cultures

De Arte Rhetorica Libri Tres (1562) written by Cyprian Soarez (1524-1593), priest and teacher of the Society of Jesus, was the standard rhetorical manual in the Ratio Studiorum and thus was used for over two centuries in Jesuit colleges throughout the world. Concerned that young students of Latin were not yet ready for the major rhetorical texts of antiquity, such as Cicero’s and Quintilian’s, Soarez wrote this manual as a digest of ancient rhetoric to the beginner. This thesis uses the rhetorical precepts found in Cyprian’s work to analyze the work’s own two prefaces. Thus, it aims at providing …

The Negative Impact Of Book Banning On American Students, Andrew Carruthers

Emerging Writers

The purpose of this research article is to analyze the impact of book banning on American K-12 students in the United States of America and to convey the negative effects of that impact. Book banning is a form of censorship that involves the restriction and/or prohibition of a book, typically by removing it from a library, bookstore, or school reading list. American book banning in the modern era is typically carried out with the intent of shielding the American youth from content considered to be inflammatory, controversial, and/or inflammatory. This article argues that this method is counterintuitive and also serves …

Sojourner Truth’S Vision: A Life Dedicated To Ending Injustice, Nyla R. Stokes

Emerging Writers

This essay explores the profound legacy of Sojourner Truth, a pivotal figure in the fight against injustice. Through a personal narrative interwoven with historical analysis, the author reflects on their initial ignorance of Truth's significance and how a school project transformed their understanding. The paper delves into Truth's life, including her experiences as a formerly enslaved woman, her impactful speeches and her collaboration with other notable activists. It examines the complexities of her identity as a Black woman in the 19th century, the societal perceptions of femininity, and the challenges she faced within the feminist movement. The author also draws …

Mapping Rhetoric: Cross-Analyzing Protest Movements, Eva Dunsky

Open Educational Resources

This teaching material was developed as a result of the CUNY 1969 Teach-in that took place in Summer 2025. The assignment prompts students to consider how the history of past college protests affects us now and will continue to have an impact in the future by playing the role of figures within these movements, close reading primary texts, and eventually researching a campus protest of their own.

Enfilade And Variations: Interpreting Salon Music Through Residential Architecture In Eighteenth-Century Paris, Nicole Vilkner

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In eighteenth-century Parisian salons, theme and variations on popular melodies proliferated. Elaine Sisman’s seminal study of variation form provides a foundational approach for understanding variations as rhetorical exercises that persuade through differences in syntax and expression. In this vein, scholars have comprehensively affirmed the ways that salon music reflects the dialogic and sociable practices of Enlightenment receptions (Hanning, Sutcliffe, and Zohn). I suggest that theme and variation form is not only connected to the rhetoric of the salon, but that the concept of sequential elaboration is a principle that was also prized in residential architecture.

Drawing from theoretical writings of …

Chasing The Albino Pygmy Giraffe, Charles H. Haddad

School of Communication and Journalism Faculty Publications

It's never a good sign when someone is knocking on the door of your hotel room at seven in the morning. That's especially true if you have been schlepping eight college students across Western China, as I had been for the past week. I now heard in this soft rapping the death knell of my fledgling professorial career. Wrapping a ratty, threadbare pillow around my head, I tried to shut out the insistent rapping. Of course, that didn't work. Bad news has a way of butting in.

So begins my novel “Chasing the Albino Pygmy Giraffe.” It is a laugh-aloud …

The Use Of Space And Place In The Civil Rights Discourse Of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Pamelia Adams

Communication Theses

This thesis, The Use of Space and Place in the Civil Rights Discourse of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., analyzes the academic literature on the social change agent. The study provides a deeper understanding of the relevance of place/location, where Dr. King delivered his civil rights message nationally and internationally. Three historically significant sites and the events impacting the civil rights movement, in the cities of Washington, D.C. and Birmingham, Alabama, are examined. The three sites included in Chapter 2: The Jail Site, Chapter 3: The Bombing Site, and Chapter 4: The March Sites as examples. The main findings of …

Looking To The Past And Abroad To Enhance U.S. Presidential Debates, Jacob W. Justice, Talya P. Slaw, John Koch

Studies in Debate and Oratory

Presidential debates are a valuable, but flawed, method of educating voters about policy issues and candidates. Growing dissatisfaction with presidential debates, and polling evidence suggesting they are failing to inform audiences, creates exigence to reconsider the format of future debates. In this essay, we propose modifications to the format of United States presidential debates, in the interest of facilitating greater clash and audience education. To improve U.S. presidential debates, we draw upon two sources of inspiration: the history of U.S. presidential debates and international experiences with political debates. We recommend exploration of new debate formats that include (1) a narrow …

Inciting Peace From The Inside Out, Stephen G. Adubato, Ebere Bosco Amakwe, Katherine Hinic, Sarita Maldjian, Forrest Pritchett, Jon Radwan, Nicholas Sooy, Chad Thralls

Conferences

Violence and war can be incited, and so can peace. This volume shares select addresses and responses from Seton Hall University’s 2/7/23 conference “Inciting Peace From The Inside Out.” A multi-disciplinary range of scholars each addresses how reconciliation processes grow from spiritual dynamics. Multiple religious traditions teach contemplative praxes that prioritize and nurture personal reflection oriented toward peace. Social conflicts divide, so engaging them with a partisan orientation only serves to escalate harmful rifts. In contrast, bringing personal awareness and sensitivity, spiritual balance, and holistic integral perspective to conflict can transcend divisions and work toward unity. This volume is supported …