Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

To Thine Own Self Be Cruel: An Analysis Of The Use Of Self-Deprecating Humor As A Rhetorical Strategy By Figures In Positions Of Authority, Brian Sorenson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the use of self-deprecating humor as a rhetorical strategy by figures in positions of authority. A close textual analysis is performed on eight White House Correspondents' Dinner speeches by U.S. presidents. Two speeches are analyzed from each of the four chosen presidents. The presidents whose respective uses of self-deprecating humor will be analyzed are Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Crime And Poverty In Detroit: A Cross-Referential Critical Analysis Of Ideographs And Framing, Jacob Jerome Nickell

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the relationship between crime and poverty is rhetorically constructed within the news media. To this end, I investigate the content of twelve news articles, published online, that offered coverage of crime in the city of Detroit, Michigan. I employ three methods in my criticism of these texts: ideographic analysis, critical framing analysis, and an approach that considers ideographs and framings elements to be rhetorical constructions that function together. In each phase of my analysis, I developed ideological themes from concepts emerging from the texts. I then approached my discussion of these findings from a perspective of …

Fashioning A Rhetoric Of Style: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Urban Street Style Representations In New York City, Amber Pineda

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how urban street styles are used rhetorically within local boroughs in New York City as a form of resistance to the dominant fashion industry that dictates what is "in fashion" through media. A total of fifteen video blogs developed by The New York Times were analyzed, each containing a representation of one of the five boroughs of New York City: Staten Island, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens. The analysis identified themes of a rhetoric of style, consisting of primacy of text, imaginary communities, aesthetic rationales, market contexts, and stylistic homologies. These themes were then analyzed by drawing …

The Lifestyle Of The "Urban Tribe", Nichelle D. Mcnabb, Rachel Friedman

Communications Faculty Scholarship

It was once the norm for people to get married in their early twenties,

perhaps right after college or maybe during college. Once married, there was

the need to start a family as soon as possible. However, nowadays, people

appear to be substituting (at least for this period of time after college) the

traditional family structure with a new one – the “urban tribe.” This paper

takes a critical approach to examining portrayals of rituals in “urban tribes”

in two television shows – Will & Grace and Friends in which we argue that

the progressive elements of these shows counter …

The Peters Projection And The Latitude And Longitude Of Recolonization, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In 1973, German historian Arno Peters unveiled the “Peters projection,” a map that challenged the Eurocentric Mercator style by redrawing the so-called “Third World” to appear more prominent on the global landscape. The projection sparked intense debate among cartographers about the overt use of ideology in mapping, while simultaneously championed by international groups (from the UN to church organizations) as a corrective against the marginalization of developing nations. This essay addresses how the Peters map became a rhetorical emblem for an internationalist identity within the contentious spatial conceptions constraining the Cold War. Ultimately, the Peters projection, despite its radicalism, constituted …

Course Syllabus (Sp14) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "The Sublime, The Uncanny, And The Imagination", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

In a world in which what counts as knowledge is predominantly restricted to the measurable and the calculable, those elements of human experience which elude and exceed these parameters are often ignored and discounted. In this course, we will examine questions of the sublime, the uncanny, and the speculative as treated in literature, psychoanalysis, and philosophy in order to think and write critically about them. Here, we will consider the possible extent to which an openness to such experiences can enrich our lives.

Ritualized Rhetoric And Historical Memory In German Foreign And Security Policy, Sara A. Hoff

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Recent changes in German foreign policy behavior have led to questions about Germany's European vocation. At the center of this inquiry is Germany's struggle to resolve the intersection between historical memory and present day international responsibility, especially in cases involving the use of force. This dissertation examines how and when historical memory has influenced, shaped, and informed contemporary German foreign and security policy and rhetoric by examining cases within two policy areas: out of area operations and nuclear nonproliferation. Focusing on the case of Libya, this dissertation also considers the cases of Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Nuclear nonproliferation, a global …

Researching The Avant-Garde: A Book Review Article Of New Work By Bohn And Sell, Blaž Zabel

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Expanding Audiences For Online Writing Labs: Owls In The English As A Foreign Language Context, Joshua Paiz

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Graduate Student Presentations

This presentation from the 2014 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) discusses online writing labs (OWLs), specifically the Purdue OWL, in the traditionally-defined English as a foreign language (EFL) context. The ELF context often presents unique challenges for the teaching of English writing, including challenges of finding appropriate resources. This may lead EFL writing practitioners to rely on the information presented by OWLs to supplement their teaching. However, many OWLs were originally designed for the so-called native speaker (North American, UK, Australian, New Zealand) audience. This raises the question of whether or not OWLs are meeting the needs of …

Subjectivity In 'Attār's Shaykh Of San'Ān Story In The Conference Of The Birds, Claudia Yaghoobi

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Subjectivity in 'Attār’s Shaykh of San'ān Story in The Conference of the Birds" Claudia Yaghoobi discusses intersections of transgression, law, inclusion and exclusion, self and Other in Farīd al-Dīn 'Attār's (1142?-ca.1220) treatment of religion with regard to Shaykh San'ān and the Christian girl's love story in The Conference of the Birds. San'ān is an ascetic master who has never transgressed any of the Islamic laws until he embarks on a journey from Mecca to Rome after a dream only to fall in love with a Christian girl, convert to Christianity, and begin drinking wine and …

Art And Politics In Latin America: A Book Review Article Of New Work By Van Delden And Grenier, Sánchez, And Cohn, Nicole L. Sparling

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Intertextuality In Beckett's And Ağaoğlu's Work, Elmas Şahín

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Intertextuality in Beckett's and Ağaoğlu's Work" Elmas Şahín discusses Adalet Ağaoğlu's 1973 novel Ölmeye Yatmak (Lying Down to Die) and Samuel Beckett's 1950 Malone Dies in terms of intertextuality. Şahín employs tenets of comparative literature in order to analyze the two texts with regard to form and content and focuses on the on protagonists' worlds. In Şahín's interpretation, Ağaoğlu's protagonist Aysel is narrated in postmodern intertextuality as an individual of our days alienated from society, searching for her self/selves as she cannot succeed in dying. Both Beckett's and Ağaoğlu's protagonists attempt to "escape" from their selves and …

Moore Of Feminine Style: A Rhetorical Examination Of "Wednesdays With Beth", Terrie Meeks

Masters Theses

Beth Moore is a best-selling author of books and Bible studies, a speaker to crowds that fill places like the Georgia Super Dome, as well as an international speaker, a radio and television personality, and she is achieving this milestone as a woman, in a world lit with male stars. Through all of these venues it is estimated that Moore speaks to hundreds of thousands of people each year. One of Moore's most recent ventures is speaking on Life Today with James and Betty Robison. Each week features an episode of "Wednesdays with Beth." Using Karlyn Kohrs Campbell's theory of …

History And Identity In Post-Totalitarian Memoir Writing In Romanian, Nicoleta D. Ifrim

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "History and Identity in Post-Totalitarian Memoir Writing in Romanian" Nicoleta D. Ifrim analyzes Virgil Tănase's confessional and ego-graphic writing in his 2011 Leapșa pe murite (Playing Fetch with Death). Tănase's text is about the individual caught in history and re-writes it post-traumatically from a double perspective: that of the collective memory of totalitarianism and the personal thus functioning as a filtering mechanism for the creation of meta-historical identity. For Tănase, the experience of exile and post-exile, as well as the confrontation with the West legitimizes identity dilemmas and the construction of the individual. The book is representative …

Electronic Journals, Prestige, And The Economics Of Academic Journal Publishing, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek, Joshua Jia

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Electronic Journals, Prestige, and the Economics of Academic Journal Publishing" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Joshua Jia discuss the current state of the academic journal publishing industry. The current state of the industry is an oligopoly based on a double appropriation model where academics produce work for at no cost only to have publishers earn significant profit margins by selling the work back to academics. Publishers are able to do this given the price inelasticity and weak bargaining power of its main consumer, university libraries. Publishers' ability to increase prices is also supported by what the authors …

Writers Who Care: Advocacy Blogging As Teachers - Professors - Parents, Leah A. Zuidema, Sarah Hochstetler, Mark Letcher, Kristen Hawley Turner

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Because we believe strongly that writers develop through authentic writing instruction - and because we see policies that drive practices away from these goals - we have decided to speak up and to speak out through advocacy blogging. Teachers, Profs, Parents: Writers Who Care (writerswhocare.wordpress.com) was born from our frustration with current mandates that limit teachers and students to reductive writing. We know what good writing instruction looks like, and we want to share that knowledge with an audience beyond academia. In doing so, we hope to redefine what it means to be an academic writer and to encourage others …

Engaging Engagement: Framing The Civic Education Movement In Higher Education, Chad Woolard

Theses and Dissertations

Civic education in higher education is housed in various types of institutions (i.e. community colleges, four year universities, public and private institutions), institutional offices, academic departments, and larger, cross-campus initiatives and organizations. Civic education programs promote numerous activities to foster student engagement both inside and outside the classroom. Many in higher education have embraced the civic education movement; however, as with other social movements, the civic education movement is still a contested area. Defining civic education (i.e. civic engagement, service learning, political engagement, community engagement, etc.) becomes problematic because there seems to be as many terms for civic education as …

Tractors And Genres: Knowledge-Making And Identity Formation In An Agricultural Community, Marcy Galbreath

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the history of a small Florida agricultural community over the course of the twentieth century from a rhetorical perspective in order to understand the technological and communicative transitions that governed the development of American agricultural production. By examining archival and oral histories, this research will add to our understandings of how written and oral communications temper the relationships and social situations of an agricultural community, including the knowledge-making and technological adaptation resulting from communications within the community and with outside institutions and entities. Agricultural villages are not isolated entities, but rather sites of multiple rhetorical situations, and …

Gauging The Alignment Between School And Work: An Activity Theory Analysis Of Police Report Writing Instruction, Marianna R. Hendricks

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation is based on a fifteen-month study of police report writing instruction at one agency, connecting the curriculum at the training academy, field training, and the needs and expectations of multiple report audiences and users. It draws from Rhetorical Genre Studies (Miller, 1984; Russell, 2009), Activity Theory (Engeström, 2008), and Situated Learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Dias, Freedman, Medway, and Paré, 1999) to explore how novices learn a new genre through activity, and how this is complicated by a transition between school and work outside of a university context. Specifically, it focuses on the role of andragogical (rather than …

The Notion Of Cultural Assimilation Into An American Identity: Abstract Or Concrete?, Julie A. Rivera

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Assimilation is believed to be the process immigrants follow to become "American." To be American is to be equal to other Americans in societal, employment, and educational opportunities. But this is not and cannot be an outcome of the assimilation process in the United States. There are multiple definitions and expectations of assimilation; too many to allow a clear outcome. This project addresses the complexity associated with all versions of assimilate, the multiple definitions, processes, and outcomes associated with this term, and demonstrates that there is no concrete resolution to an assimilation process due to the multitude of definitions attached …

Inviting Citizen Designers To Design Learning Management System (Lms) Interfaces For Student Agency In A Cross-Cultural Digital Contact Zone, Rajendra Kumar Panthee

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Inviting Citizen Designers to Design Learning Management System (LMS) Interfaces for Student Agency in a Digital Cross-Cultural Contact Zone assesses how FYC students from periphery cultural and linguistic backgrounds perceive Blackboard Learn and other learning management system (LMS) interfaces. The report of an empirical study shows that the current LMS design does not provide writing students in general and writing students from periphery cultural and linguistic backgrounds in particular an opportunity of a higher-level interactivity with the LMS. The current design neither includes periphery students' cultural and linguistic norms and values, nor does it allow them to affect the existing …

Shots, Everybody? : British Anti-Smallpox Vaccination And The Development Of Multifaceted Anti-Vaccine Rhetoric On Internet Parenting Forums, Marta B. Bean

Scripps Senior Theses

Vaccination is an important public health measure that can help reduce disease at the population level. Substantial evidence exists that vaccines are safe and effective at reducing the incidence of diseases like pertussis, measles and cervical cancer. However, on Internet parenting forums, parents discuss whether or not vaccination is the right choice for their children. In this thesis, I highlight the historical context of the anti-vaccine movement in mid 19^th century to early 20^th century Victorian Britain in the era of compulsory smallpox vaccination. Vaccination in this time was a very different and more overtly dangerous process, and …

Preaching That Leads To Transformation At The North Street Church Of Christ In Nacogdoches, Texas, Curtis Barbarick

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the results of a project to develop a process whereby the sermon would be enhanced for listeners at the North Street Church of Christ in Nacogdoches, Texas, so that preaching would be more effective in leading to transformation. The theology and methodology of John Wesley were utilized as a lens by which to think about and implement this practice.

The intervention involved a six-week session with a focus group that represented a cross-section of the congregation. Participants in this group were asked to engage in a lectio divina exercise on a particular text daily, …

Presidential Rhetoric: From The War On Drugs To The Battle Over Legalization, Manuel Antonio Gutierrez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis analyzes the rhetoric executed by different presidents in order to sustain the battle against drugs. The war on drugs is one of the longest battles the United States has fought. From its inception under President Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, the war on drugs has become an institutionalized presidential program responsive to public demands for action against the spread of illegal drugs. Over the airwaves, presidential rhetorical overtures on the matter go hand in hand with the drug war on the streets. However, although presidential rhetoric remained largely consistent on combating and criminalizing drugs over much of the …

Students’ Rhetorical Strategies In Translingual Encounters On Campus, Laura Moeller

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

This thesis examines the ways in which linguistic minority students assert themselves as rhetorical agents when faced with the expectation of impromptu verbal responses. Based on a study that aims at identifying specific rhetorical strategies these students employ, the goal of this thesis is to theorize ways in which linguistic minorities deal with the challenges of fast-paced, high-stakes interactions. The practices that emerge from data analysis suggest that such strategies tend to be reactive rather than proactive and highly dependent on context. While they are valuable ways for linguistic minorities to navigate their ways in specific moments, the thesis argues …

Toward A Theory Of Productivity Problems In Graduate Student Writing, Craig Wynne

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This case study focuses on the productivity problems that faced the dissertation/thesis writing practices of fourteen graduate students at a public university on the U.S./Mexico border. The author facilitated a series of group sessions designed to help graduate students in various disciplines cultivate awareness of Donald Murray's notion of "writing as process," as well as knowledge of writer's block and writing anxiety. Sessions also served to cultivate positive self-talk with relation to the writing process, an introduction to mindfulness meditation, and basic time management skills. Four types of data were collected: 1. field notes from participant discussion during workshop sessions; …

Online Writing Labs: Resources For Second Language Writers, Joshua Paiz, Ghada Gherwash

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Graduate Student Presentations

This presentation at the 2014 TESOL Developer's Showcase discusses best practices and special considerations for using Online Writing Labs as L2 writing support tools. This discussion is grounded both in recent OWL/Writing Center theory, as well as from the presenter's experiences working on a large­scale OWL in a variety of capacities. To add to the discussion on special considerations when using OWLs, this presentation also provides a discussion of a recently completed research project involving the Purdue OWL and how it is used to support EFL writing. It will highlight how, even in resources labeled as "ESL," can be overly …

Encouraging The Growth Of Owls Worldwide: Utilizing Intercultural Rhetoric To Inform Best Practices, Joshua Paiz

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Graduate Student Presentations

This presentation for the 8th Intercultural Rhetoric and Discourse Conference discusses work on the Purdue OWL, focusing on the resources targeting L2 writers writing for particular contexts (e.g., Writing for the Chinese Business Context), as these resource-types tend to be some of the early Purdue OWL spaces where the findings of intercultural rhetoric maybe more readily applied. This discussion will also provide an overview of recent research looking at the place of and practitioner attitudes towards OWLs in general and, more specifically, the Purdue OWL. The presenter will conclude by discussing new content development initiatives at the Purdue OWL and …

Commedia: Rhetoric And Technology In The Media Commons, Conor James Shaw-Draves

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the organization of individuals through online social media applications and other community-building websites, such as Facebook, Wikipedia, Google Maps, and online classrooms, using the Aristotelian rhetorical concept of the commonplaces as well as political, critical, and legal theory. Based on these analyses, this dissertation also provides pedagogical recommendations for the teaching of writing with technology in both online and physical classrooms.

Critical Experiential Learning And Rhetorical Interventions In New Media Ecologies, Jennifer Niester-Mika

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation puts into conversation new media and network theories with the philosophical writings of John Dewey to reconstruct a more relevant and current approach to critical pedagogy that takes into account the shift in socioeconomic power as we move into a control society comprised of immaterial labor. My chapters tackle three different critical pedagogy dilemmas: the neglect of affect, agency in late-capitalism, and critical literacy in new media ecologies. Each chapter defines the dilemma, offers a theoretical response, and details a possible pedagogical application for the composition classroom.