Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Decolonizing American Democracy And The Problem Of Gerrymandering: Implications Of Border Designs From A Communication Ethics Perspective, Mark Gardner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project attempts to understand the powerful force of political borders from a historical and communicative perspective. Of particular importance to this research is the role that political borders play in shaping individuals’ relationship to structures and practices of democracy. Following insights of decolonial and communication ethics scholars, this work understands the importance of ethically framing deliberations surrounding physical, metaphorical, and categorical political borders. Five chapters make up this work in the culmination of analyzing political gerrymandering as a form of democratic competition grounded in the rhetoric of colonialism. Tracing the colonial history of borders throughout American democracy provides this …

Bureaucratic Modernity And The Erosion Of Practical Reason: A Rhetorical Education As An Antidote, David Impellizzeri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To what extent and in what ways does modernity reveal itself through the bureaucratic? This project aims at an interpretive understanding of bureaucratic modernity. The rationalization of society and action in the (late) modern world requires that an increasing number of human activities and domains be explained in allegedly neutral, ‘rational’ terms and without reference to morally substantive ends. Ultimately, this entails a form of epistemic reductionism that elevates instrumental rationality to the exclusion of practical reason and probabilistic ways of knowing. Bureaucratic modernity signifies a decrease in choices that can be legitimized in public on some basis other …

An Exploration Of Communication Ethics Scholarship And Economic Spheres, Andrew Tinker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project examines communication ethics scholarship to understand how economics is understood within the field and to establish coordinates for scholars to discuss economic spheres as phenomena that affect communication ethics. Scholars draw from the tradition of virtue ethics to mark communication ethics inquiry as that which explores the practices that protect and promote the “good.” Philosophers of communication and communication ethicists have developed paradigmatic metaphors for the field that allow us to understand the formation of ethical guidelines within communities both familial, corporate, and national, that promote and protect various goods. These metaphors include “hierarchy” and “sameness” from Charles …

Do Lgbtq-Identified, Postsecondary Writing Instructors Come Out In Their Classrooms?, Michael Baumann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation investigates how and why LGBTQ-identified, postsecondary writing instructors perform intersectional identities in their classrooms. Scholars in the field of rhetoric and composition have examined these critical questions as early as 1974 and several times since. However, oppressive, regressive sexual politics; a maelstrom of contemporary public confessions made possible and prolific through new media; and an increasingly intersectional landscape of queer people all provide exigency to update our coming out conversation. This dissertation is the analytical writeup of a national study that I conducted in 2018. I surveyed approximately 100 LGBTQ-identified postsecondary writing instructors in the United States and …

Brokering Words And Work: Complexities Of Literacy Sponsorship In The Oilfields Of South Texas., Jennifer L. Marciniak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research is an investigation of workforce recruitment language as the “leading edge” of literacy sponsorship as it pertains to blue-collar rig and service workers in the South Texas oilfields. Using Deborah Brandt’s Literacy in American Lives as a framework for this study, I conducted interviews with 10 rig and service workers and labor market intermediary administrators about the perceptions and expectations of literacy use in oilfield work. My inquiry begins by first learning about workers’ experiences with recruitment into the industry. Then, to understand more about how the industry communicates literacy expectations to these workers, I look at recruitment …

Conspiracy Theories And The Quest For Truth, Rachel Runnels

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Conspiracy theories are deeply embedded in American culture, especially in current American society. The popularity of conspiracy theories in general reveals that society is becoming increasingly skeptical of authoritative organizations. Because of “fake news” and the availability of information and connection on the internet, people feel as though they must question everything, even sources they previously viewed as unquestionable authorities.

My analysis looks at how online conspiracy organizations create and defend their arguments in an attempt to understand why conspiracy theories are so persuasive. I analyze the rhetoric of three online conspiracy theory organizations: the Flat Earth Society, the Mutual …

A Power Man’S Theology: Marvel’S Luke Cage And Black Liberation Theology, Diarron B. Morrison

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Netflix released Marvel’s Luke Cage in 2016 to critical acclaim. Born from a 1970s comic book, the series features Luke Cage, an African-American superhero. Cage is a big, bald, bulletproof black man. Instead of tights and a cape, Cage wears a hoodie calling the audience to remember Trayvon Martin and other victims of white racism. Theologian James Cone created Black Liberation Theology in the 1970s. As a result of Cone’s work, Black Liberation Theology addresses the issue of white racism from a theological standpoint. In this thesis I present a close reading of Marvel’s Luke Cage using Black Liberation Theology …

Mapping Rural Literacy Sponsorship Networks : Literacy Infrastructures And Perceptions In Abbyville., Amy Mccleese Nichols

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recently, the academy has become aware that rural students are choosing to attend institutions of higher education less often than their urban counterparts. Rationalizing why this particular population remains underserved by institutions of higher learning is a new conversation for higher education. And yet, in literacy studies, the perceived urban/rural divide in terms of national politics sometimes seeps into conversations about the perceived “literacy” or culture of rural peoples. This polarization, unaccompanied by detailed portraits of rural community literacy sponsorship, means that rural areas do not benefit from the consistent attention paid to their urban counterparts in New Literacy Studies. …

Subversive Sponsorship : Organized Literacy Education And The Long Civil Rights Movement., Jaclyn Hilberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents literacy sponsorship as a narrative framework that complicates the history of black struggles surrounding educational equity as a civil rights issue. While that history has traditionally been framed as a fight for black access to and participation in white-sponsored institutions, this dissertation demonstrates that a number of prominent black intellectuals and activists instead argued for black sponsorship of black literacy and pursued such sponsorship as a political strategy to advance the goals of the civil rights movement. As such, this project contributes to the body of alternative historiography in rhetoric and composition that examines sites of literacy …

Character Arcs: Mapping Creative Writers' Trajectories Into The Composition Classroom., Jon Udelson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation develops a theoretical and empirical approach to the study of professional creative writers and teachers. Specifically, it examines how these writers developed their knowledge of creative writing and writing pedagogy and how that knowledge informs their work as instructors of composition. Despite the common practice across writing programs of hiring formally-trained creative writers (M.A., M.F.A, Ph.D.) to teach first-year composition and related courses, little scholarship in the field of rhetoric and composition or writing studies more broadly specifically focuses on the disciplinary and professional development of these writer-teachers. Through case studies of graduate students, contingent faculty, lecturers, and …

A Praxis Of Oral Homiletics: Preaching From The Heart, Weiwen Tu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Christian preaching has been a central and significant custom to the practitioners of biblically confessional and creedal communities in worship, evangelization, and discipleship. Yet modern preachers confront two challenges presented by the New Homiletic and the media environment. Undue favor toward narrative-based form, audience-oriented eventfulness at the expense of biblical authority, and shifting media that alter the preacher’s identity and incapacitate the preacher’s orality have led to a dissonant handling of form and content and thus a profound decline in the quality of the Christian pulpit.

This project grows out of an attempt to integrate an Augustinian hermeneutic and homiletic, …

A Rhetoric And Philosophy Of Interprofessional Healthcare Education: Communication Ethics In Action, Matthew Corr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Healthcare professionals belong to a moral community. Caring for patients is a community act carried out by healthcare professionals working in teams within complex political and organizational systems. This teamwork is crucial to quality patient outcomes; however, incivility threatens to derail necessary and effective collaboration towards the common organizational good. Necessarily, interprofessional healthcare education is becoming a required element for pre-health professionals. Currently, schools are using competency-based approaches to interprofessional education to teach ethics/values, roles/responsibilities. communication, and teamwork. For reasons explicated throughout this dissertation, the categorizing of these particular elements as competencies is problematic and cultivated within a positivistic and …

The Ethics Of Occultic Communication: An Invocation Of Joshua Gunn And Sissela Bok, James Thomas Begley Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Occultic rhetoric, according to Joshua Gunn, is a genre of discourse concerned with the study and practice of secret communications. The strategic sharing of secret messages involves a host of methods and conventions designed for the selective disclosure of hidden knowledge, thus controlling the boundaries of (and accessibility to power between) insider and outsider groups. Occultic rhetoric has its uses in everyday encounters, but the abuse of such manipulative strategies, especially by those in the academy and other positions of power and trust, calls for an ethical response. This dissertation submits occultic rhetoric to moral investigation by incorporating the works …

Black Body Memory: A Philosophy Of The Talk, Autumn Redcross

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project offers the term Black body memory to point toward the threatened existential disposition of Black people in society today. Moreover, Black body memory points to the narrative paradigm of a shared experience. While popular conceptions theorize race as a social construction, the lived reality of Black people is frequently imbued by racialization and racism. Black body memory emerges from the intersection of the Black body articulated by Franz Fanon, Charles Johnson, and George Yancy, among others, and body memory, as described by Edward Casey and Thomas Fuchs. Black body memory is a culturally-laden and sedimented lived reality. The …

When Humanity Meets Technology: Contemplating Neil Postman's Critique Of Advertising, Yingwen Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project aims to contemplate Postman’s critique of advertising and offer insights to understand Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) in today’s mediated environment. As an essential component of IMC, the history of advertising demonstrates and documents that the medium of communication has an extensive influence on IMC practices. The concern about how communication media affect human perception, understanding, and behavior, resides within the central claim of the study of media ecology. Thus, this project investigates IMC through the lens of Postman’s media ecology perspectives, and argues that Postman’s prescient ideas provide both hope and constructive insights. Moreover, Postman’s thermostatic perspective, rooted …

The Postman Always Rings Twice: Neil Postman's Views On Education Are Relevant Again In The 21st Century Classroom, Jennifer Spiegel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The public education system in America has long been criticized for its inability to prepare students for success as adults. While some engage in a narrative of blame, others ask what can be done to solve this problem. This dissertation examines a narrative crisis in the 21^stcentury classroom through the lens of Neil Postman, a 20^thcentury media ecologist whose fears about television may finally be realized with the advent of the personal digital device and its impact on the educational sphere. First the past narratives that guided the American school system will be traced from colonial …

Fanfiction Reviews And Academic Literacy: Potential Impacts And Implications, Regina Weiler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study is meant to elucidate how fanfiction-related activities can incorporate many types of critical review, to call attention to what has been overlooked as significant forms of learning, and to understand and take advantage of the opportunities fanfiction's unconventional writing affords in lieu of more deliberate learning environments. This thesis was undertaken due to the significant gap in work done by aca-fan — a portmanteau of academic and fan— scholars who have strong links to the fanfiction community and culture. The aspects explored are the technical writing skills and techniques demonstrated in fanfiction reviews, the influence of the nontraditional …

Remaking Identities, Reworking Graduate Study : Stories From First-Generation-To-College Rhetoric And Composition Phd Students On Navigating The Doctorate., Ashanka Kumari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation responds to the decreasing number of first-generation-to-college doctorates in the humanities and the limited scholarship on graduate students in Rhetoric and Composition. Scholars in Rhetoric and Composition have long been invested in discussions of academic and/or disciplinary enculturation, yet these discussions primarily focus on undergraduate students, with few studies on graduate students and far fewer on the doctoral students training to become the next wave of a profession. In this dissertation, I argue that if we engage intersectional identities as assets in the design of doctoral programs, access to higher education and academic enculturation can become more manageable …

Learning And Laboring : Student-Workers’ Networked Experiences Of Literacy, Agency, And Mobility In The Neoliberal University., Layne Porta Gordon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rhetoric and composition has a well-established tradition of considering the connections between literacy education and the discourses and structures of political-economic institutions. This dissertation builds from this work and foregrounds the experiences of student-workers in the UPS Metropolitan College program through a qualitative study that is informed by institutional ethnography (Smith, 1987, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006). Institutional ethnography examines institutional texts and text-mediated discourses as coordinators of individual action. Therefore, I draw on primary data gathered from individual interviews with nine student-workers and one Metropolitan College administrator as well as supplemental data gathered from a survey administered to composition instructors, …

The Emergent Matter Of Archives : A Rhetorical Investigation Of The Queer Formation Of The Williams-Nichols Archive., Richard Wysocki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Scholarly conversations across disciplines have asked researchers to consider archive as a site of power—often framed in terms of archives’ potential impact on history and practices of knowledge making more generally. This dissertation contributes to such conversations as they relate to queer archives and material rhetoric, exploring the Williams-Nichols Archive, an LGBTQ archive housed at the University of Louisville. I extend interdisciplinary scholarship to argue for approaching archives as rhetorical emergences rather than as containers or locations for discovery, a perspective that foregrounds the archive and archival practices as the subject of research. Drawing on archival research and oral history …

When Process Becomes Processing: Managing Instructor Response To Student Disclosure Of Trauma In The Composition Classroom, Kelci Barton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In first-year composition courses, there are three aspects of teaching that are researched well so far: disclosure of trauma in student writing, instructor feedback, and emotional labor. The disclosure of trauma is almost completely unavoidable in first-year composition. We encounter an issue with instructor feedback; how do we provide feedback to student writing, like grammar and mechanics, when the student has disclosed trauma in the writing? Additionally, we can build off this with emotional labor, which already occurs consistently in teaching but is heightened in this instance. When providing feedback to a student who has disclosed trauma, this can be …

The Rhetoric Of Camp: Adam Lambert's Identification And Division Strategies In His American Idol Performances, Isabelle Lanthier

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes camp style as a rhetorical strategy for Burkean rhetorical identification. Through a case study of Adam Lambert's use of this style on American Idol in 2009, this study produced a rhetorical theory of camp that challenges the typically dialectical relationship between identification and its opposite: division. This study responds both to Susan Sontag's seminal essay on camp style and to other conversations surrounding identification, which revolve around how rhetors avoid division (Borrowman and Kmetz; Jones and Rowland), how rhetors appeal to conflicting audiences (DeGenaro; Helmbrecht and Love), how rhetors create new narratives as a means of identification …

Standing Up Comedy: Analyzing Rhetorical Approaches To Identity In Stand-Up Comedy, Christopher Grabert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis addresses contemporary conversations about stand-up comedy and the art-form's capacity for facilitating complex rhetorical decision-making. I examine how stand-up comedians have positioned themselves on-stage through choices pertaining revealing personal behaviors, personas, and beliefs in public settings. Ultimately, I argue that the art of stand-up does not require truth-telling on-stage, and that there exists an implicit contract between performers and audiences which details comedians' license to share falsehoods, exaggerations, and embellishments on-stage without the repercussions that accompany these actions in other discourse settings. Finally, I evaluate how comics have handled this rhetorical "license," with some performers delivering easily identifiable …

The Feminine Margin: The Re-Imagining Of One Professor's Rhetorical Pedagogy--A Curriculum Project, Camila Alvarez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Writing pedagogy uses techniques that institutionalize dichotomous thinking rather than work against it. Cartesian duality has helped to create the marginalization of people, environments, and animals inherent in Western thought. Writing pedagogy based in current-traditional rhetoric uses a writing process that reinforces the hierarchical structure of Self/Other, Author/Reader, and Teacher/Student. This structure, in conjunction with capitalism, prioritizes the self and financial gain while diminishing and objectifying the other. The thought process behind the objectification and monetization of the other created the unsustainable business and life practices behind global warming, racism, sexism, and environmental destruction. A reframing of pedagogical writing practices …

'Let Me Lock It Up': A Rhetorical Exploration Of Identity And An Emergent Counterpublic Within The Youtube Beauty Community, Rachel Street

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In light of calls to study digital composition outside of school-based domains (e.g. Yancey), this project specifically explores a counterpublic in the YouTube beauty community that has arisen in response to the encroachment of and attempts to institutionalize the space. Utilizing iconographic tracking and rhetorical analysis, this study illuminates a network of discourse geared toward a more responsible and educated consumption of makeup and participation within the beauty community. This study found that within the beauty community, a counterpublic has formed in response to a more commodified, product-centered public sphere that has dominated the space and is most associated with …

St. Augustine And The Rhetoric Of De Ordine, Natalie Gigliotti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study contributes to scholarship on the question of Augustine and rhetoric by considering Augustine’s use and understanding of rhetoric in De ordine, one of his early philosophical dialogues composed during his transition from a life in rhetoric to a life in philosophy. The author studies the text through consideration of Augustine’s rhetoric in relationship to three major rhetorical authorities of the time, particularly their cultural applications: sophistic rhetoric, Ciceronian rhetoric, and Christian rhetoric. Through study of these relationships, one perceives Augustine’s ingenuity at work as he integrates diverse authorities into his rhetoric of order (ordo) and …

Discarnation: Expounding On Marshall Mcluhan's Critique Of Modern Subjectivity, Amanda Sevilla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project presents Marshall McLuhan’s work as an explication of discarnate subjectivity in mediated environments, with special focus on the consequences of technological environments in society. The first and second chapters focus on McLuhan’s ground, sensibilities, and practice to shed light on his intricate discussions of social perceptions emerging in modern times—i.e., communal awareness propels perceptual and cultural shifts. The third chapter attends to people’s perceptual compass, or their ability to interpret the world around them. Chapter four considers some of the phenomenological aspects of McLuhan’s probes. The ideas show disconnects between time and space that contribute to discarnation in …

Identity Negotiation, Saudi Women, And The Impact Of The 2011 Royal Decree: An Investigation Of The Cultural, Religious, And Societal Shifts Among Women In The Saudi Arabian Public Sphere, Maha Alshoaibi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Historically, Saudi Arabian culture has been deeply rooted in tradition, religious customs, family-oriented structures, and gender derived expectations for men and women alike. Saudi Arabian culture emphasizes a patriarchal family structure where men financially provide for their family whereas women are expected to manage internal household duties such as raising children, upholding household affairs, and working within a limited scope of employment. The concept of Saudi Arabian women integrating into the public workforce has been a source of contention and debate for the last several hundred years. Due to recent changes in political and economic events, a royal decree issued …

Four Phases Of Subjectivity: A Rhetorical And Phenomenological Analysis Of Aimé Césaire And Cahier D’Un Retour Au Pays Natal, Chelsea Binnie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation project sets out to perform a rhetorical and phenomenological analysis of the subjectivity that Césaire portrays in his epic poem Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, or Notebook of a Return to My Native Land. Césaire published and republished Cahier four times in a 17-year period and the modified accounts of subjectivity presented in the lines of the poem mirrors that of Césaire’s own human subjectivity. Césaire poetically unleashes Cahier and his Négritude project in an effort to shift the geography of reason from its self-appointed European center, to create a liminal space for the totalized …

Corporate Social Responsibility To-Come: A Derridean Interruption Of Transparency, Robert Foschia

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the relation between rhetorics of transparency and organizational action. Digging into CSR literature from a philosophy of communication perspective, this project seeks to determine if corporate social responsibility delivers on the promises it makes of a better world.

Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, the research first lays out his often overlooked contribution to the philosophy of communication, and then moves towards possible applications in deconstructing the perceived benefits of CSR, particularly in its transparent nature. By looking at organizational life from the Triple Bottom Line, this dissertation peels back the underlying rhetoric of planet, people, …