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Articles 1 - 30 of 46
Full-Text Articles in Rhetoric and Composition
On A First Name Bias: A Bibliometric Study Of Six Writing Studies Journals, Joe Torok
On A First Name Bias: A Bibliometric Study Of Six Writing Studies Journals, Joe Torok
Wayne State University Dissertations
On a First Name Bias: A Bibliometric Study of Six Writing Studies Journals analyzes citation, authorship, source use, and other bibliometric patterns across a small collection of peer-reviewed journals featuring research from the academic field of writing studies (also known as rhetoric and composition). The study is grounded in a small but established tradition of RAD (replicable, aggregable, data-supported) scholarship in the field and uses bibliometric methods inspired by similar, primarily historiographic research studies within the field of writing studies and by critical inquiry from scholars across disciplines who have used bibliometric analysis to interrogate troubling patterns of publishing and …
African Restorative Justice Philosophy: Practicing The Ubuntu Paradigm In The Composition Classroom, Francis Hamza Issah
African Restorative Justice Philosophy: Practicing The Ubuntu Paradigm In The Composition Classroom, Francis Hamza Issah
Wayne State University Dissertations
As the field of rhetoric and composition studies grapples with problematic institutional paradigms militating against its growth, changes taking place in the field mean that opportunity is created for a more equitable, inclusive, and diversified composition classroom. Questions of diversity, equity and inclusion have led me to investigate the composition classroom to identify and decenter structural systems of white mainstream literacy and language practices as a way of encouraging and building on the prior literacy practices of not just minority students, but all categories of students. In my dissertation research, I propose the practice of ubuntu as a way of …
Remixing Community Cartographies: Mapping Community Engagement, New Media, And The Composition Classroom, Christopher W. Susak
Remixing Community Cartographies: Mapping Community Engagement, New Media, And The Composition Classroom, Christopher W. Susak
Wayne State University Dissertations
Community Writing has emerged as a relatively new subdiscipline that spans elements of larger fields such as Rhetoric and Writing Studies, Technical and Professional Communication, and Composition Pedagogy. Despite this recent emergence, teacher-scholars are still grappling with three major problematics traditionally associated with Community Engaged Learning (CEL) writ large: (1) this work frequently fails to address the real needs and basic material realities of community partners in favor of (2) a repetitive cycle of short-lived educational “experiences” for students, often without tangible and/or sustainable results, which is further exacerbated by (3) a shortage of useful data-driven assessment conducted on curriculum, …
Severe Constraints, Radical Possibilities: Reimagining Critical Pedagogy In The First-Year Writing Class, Elia Benjamin Newsom
Severe Constraints, Radical Possibilities: Reimagining Critical Pedagogy In The First-Year Writing Class, Elia Benjamin Newsom
Wayne State University Dissertations
Critical pedagogues often bring political questions into the classroom and seek to disassemble the very paternalistic, repressive nature of education itself. However, while these scholars and the texts they write are well-intentioned, the possibility of achieving political goals in a first-year writing class are severely constrained by forces within and outside an instructor's control: committees, composition directors, university administration, state & federal governments, economic & social conditions, etc. That said, looking at the material history of writing studies, there have been moments of radical possibility, opportunities to fundamentally change the status quo for the better. In this dissertation, I argue …
Labor Logs In A Multimodal Curriculum: Revealing Valuable Assessment Practices In Technical Communication And First-Year Writing Courses, Suzette Bristol
Labor Logs In A Multimodal Curriculum: Revealing Valuable Assessment Practices In Technical Communication And First-Year Writing Courses, Suzette Bristol
Wayne State University Dissertations
This project discusses the creation and implementation of labor logs in multimodal curricula in two levels of writing courses and how these labor logs support students’ development of meta-awareness through reflection-in-action (Yancey, 1998). Labor logs create a space for students to focus on in the moment recognition, or monitoring, of what takes place as they work through a project (VanKooten, 2016; Trimble and Jankens, 2019). By turning the focus of labor-based assessment (Inoue, 2019) to multimodal projects, this project clarifies the work that labor logs and multimodal pedagogies do in first-year writing and technical communication courses: indicating for students a …
Toward An Ecofeminist Embodied Pedagogy: A Study Of Difference In Online And Offline Community Writing Courses, Rachel Dortin
Toward An Ecofeminist Embodied Pedagogy: A Study Of Difference In Online And Offline Community Writing Courses, Rachel Dortin
Wayne State University Dissertations
Toward an Ecofeminist Embodied Pedagogy: A Study of Difference in Online and Offline Community Writing Courses argues that service-learning and community-engaged learning (SCEL) often fail to present community partners as real, embodied beings. Rather, students often believe that there is an “us” (the university) and a “them” (the community). Entering community partnerships with this perspective can be damaging, for both students and community partners, and result in unsuccessful collaborations. My dissertation responds to this problem by offering an ecofeminist, embodied pedagogy (EEP) as a solution. I argue that students are eager to learn about difference and that instructors need to …
Curricular Inquiry: A Survey Of Writing Pedagogy Practicum Instructors, Clare Jennifer Russell
Curricular Inquiry: A Survey Of Writing Pedagogy Practicum Instructors, Clare Jennifer Russell
Wayne State University Dissertations
The practicum course, a required course for many new college writing instructors, is a vital site for identifying what are considered best practices in the teaching of college composition, but also for critiquing, revising, and reevaluating those practices. My dissertation contributes to the conversation about how Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) learn to teach college composition, and how what they learn in teaching practicum courses impacts graduate education in Rhetoric and Composition. My dissertation study focuses on the perspectives of instructors who design practica courses that prepare college writing instructors to teach first-year composition at their institutions. GTAs in Writing Studies, …
Named But Not Known: Teaching And Assessing The Research-Writing Process, Ruth Boeder
Named But Not Known: Teaching And Assessing The Research-Writing Process, Ruth Boeder
Wayne State University Dissertations
In lived experience, the two processes of secondary research and writing overlap and intertwine interminably, creating an overarching complex system as research becomes expressed in writing and writing generates new research. This classroom study explores the two processes as one—the research-writing process—through coding of student journal responses and assessment of student research papers. Analysis reveals students to be thoughtful but not yet as nuanced in their descriptions of their research process as much be desired. They more frequently discuss writing with weaknesses in their research process than with research strengths. Further findings indicate that although it is difficult to assess …
Coming Out As Complex: Understanding Lgbtq+ Community Writing Groups, Hillary E. Weiss
Coming Out As Complex: Understanding Lgbtq+ Community Writing Groups, Hillary E. Weiss
Wayne State University Dissertations
Though composition studies has increasingly studied writing spaces outside of the classroom and workplace, LGBTQ+ community writing groups have received little focus in composition research. This dissertation studies four LGBTQ+ community writing groups across North America to find why people choose to join these groups and how power and conflict function in these spaces. I argue that LGBTQ+ writing groups improve writing and offer emotional support, friendship, and community, as other writing groups do, but these particular spaces also provide group members with opportunities to improve one’s self, publish, and educate the community about LGBTQ+ issues. I also find that …
A Rhetoric Of Zaniness: The Case Of Pepe The Frog, Sean Milligan
A Rhetoric Of Zaniness: The Case Of Pepe The Frog, Sean Milligan
Wayne State University Dissertations
A Rhetoric of Zaniness: The Case of Pepe the Frog argues that Sianne Ngai’s aesthetic category of zaniness is an essential concept for understanding and studying digital rhetoric in the post-truth era. To illustrate how zaniness has come to define online discourse, the dissertation traces the character of Pepe the Frog through various moments of, what Laurie Gries calls, “rhetorical transformation.” Specifically, the dissertation focuses on his initial appearance in Matt Furie’s Boy’s Club comics and transformation into a meme, his appropriation by the alt-right, and his adoption as propaganda for the Trump presidential campaign.
Constitutive Memories Of City Space: Rhetorics Of Civil Rights Memory In Detroit’S Urban Landscape, Scott Mitchell
Constitutive Memories Of City Space: Rhetorics Of Civil Rights Memory In Detroit’S Urban Landscape, Scott Mitchell
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation examines public memories of civil rights injustice and resistance as constitutive rhetorics of urban culture and spatiality for the city of Detroit. By studying the city of Detroit as it navigates an ongoing period of dramatic change and redevelopment, this study demonstrates how material manifestations of memory become the constitutive forces that define what many describe as “Detroit’s heart and soul.” This project illustrates the embedded cultural logics produced from sites of public memory, thereby arguing city spaces as locations bound to their legacies and beholden to material and symbolic consequences of their past. This dissertation proceeds through …
Snowden Is (Not) A Whistleblower: An Analysis Of Ideographs And Anti-Democratic Rhetorical Strategies Within The U.S. Government’S Response To Edward Snowden, Joshua Guitar
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation is a rhetorical criticism of the U.S. government’s response to Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who exposed illegal and unethical surveillance tactics of the National Security Agency and U.S. government. Informed by contemporary theories of democracy, this synchronic ideographic analysis examines the rhetorical strategies of U.S. government officials following Snowden’s disclosures. This dissertation contends that in laboring to absolve themselves of culpability, U.S. officials obfuscated Snowden and operationalized as an ideograph. This reification provides methodological development to ideographic analysis as it demonstrates how a political figure can become a rhetorical abstraction used for ideological purposes. The rhetorical interplay between …
Democratic Communication: Lessons From The Flint Water Crisis, Mindy Myers
Democratic Communication: Lessons From The Flint Water Crisis, Mindy Myers
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation develops an approach to institutional critique that re-works Porter, Sullivan, Blythe, Grabill, and Miles’ foundational configuration. This project argues that John Dewey’s concept of democratic communication articulated in his debate with Walter Lippmann provides a useful heuristic for developing democratic communicative practices that allow citizens and experts to communicate with one another about technical issues such as water quality and safety. Through an analysis of Michigan’s emergency manager law, the relationship between citizens and experts that exposed the crisis, and the Flint Water Advisory Task Force’s Final Report, this dissertation establishes that citizens must participate in technical decision-making …
Attention Deficit Identity Discourse: Exploring The Ableist Limitations And The Liberative Potential Of The Contested Adhd Self, Nathan T. Stewart
Attention Deficit Identity Discourse: Exploring The Ableist Limitations And The Liberative Potential Of The Contested Adhd Self, Nathan T. Stewart
Wayne State University Dissertations
The specific objective of this project is to elaborate general rhetorical resources and strategies that can allow for ADHDers to both cultivate/reclaim a positive sense of self in the face of multiple forms of stigmatizing discourse and begin the process of challenging that discourse. Working from a disability studies perspective, I identify both challenges and opportunities to develop a positive sense of self through the examination of nostalgia in ADHD discourse, polysemic ADHD medical discourse, and the use of counternarratives as a resource to reframe stigmatizing master narratives. This project concludes by emphasizing that those with what I identify as …
This Is Us Saying Who We Are: Speaking The Rhetoric Of Mental Disability, Renuka Uthappa
This Is Us Saying Who We Are: Speaking The Rhetoric Of Mental Disability, Renuka Uthappa
Wayne State University Dissertations
People with mental disabilities, or what are sometimes referred to as “mental illnesses,” face stigma when they interact with the public. To fight this stigma, the members of a small, grassroots, advocacy organization known as the Speakers Bureau travel to high school and college classrooms narrating their experiences with mental disability. They do so to replace culturally circulating stereotypes regarding such disability with more accurate and positive images. This dissertation is an auto-ethnographic exploration of the rhetoric of the Speakers Bureau. Through rhetorical analysis of members’ classroom speeches, of interviews with each speaker, and of the speaker’s self- assessment of …
Reconceptualizing The Construct Of The Individual Writer In Composition Studies: A Felt Life Model Of Writing, Wendy Duprey
Reconceptualizing The Construct Of The Individual Writer In Composition Studies: A Felt Life Model Of Writing, Wendy Duprey
Wayne State University Dissertations
Current scholars in composition and rhetoric emphasize how our worldview perspectives and intellectual positions are animated by our emotional investments, attachments, and commitments. However, despite disciplinary efforts to theorize “the writing subject” in Composition Studies from the 1960s on, I argue the field has yet to develop an integrated cognitive-emotional-motivational construct of the individual writer that comprehensively investigates how an individual’s cognition, emotion, and motivation shapes, and is influenced by, one’s writing process. In my dissertation project, I draw on a range of perspectives from composition studies, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy to develop a model of the individual writer as …
Pathetic Politics: An Analysis Of Emotion And Embodiment In First Lady Rhetoric, Stephanie Lynn Wideman
Pathetic Politics: An Analysis Of Emotion And Embodiment In First Lady Rhetoric, Stephanie Lynn Wideman
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation explores the theoretical and practical relationship between our understandings of emotion’s role in political decision-making. In this pursuit I seek a resurrection for pathos’s legitimacy in persuasive studies through the pursuit of the pathetic political realm. This work has three primary concerns: how may pathetic power be accessed, from where does this power originate, and how might political actors enact this power for their own political goals. I draw primarily from theories related to visual rhetoric and the body in order to provide perspective on how the body is politicized through the pathetic realm. Theoretical perspectives are drawn …
Developing University Students’ Argumentative Discourse: An Ill-Structured Issue Pertaining To Black African Immigrants And African Americans, Olubusayo Olojo-Adeoye
Developing University Students’ Argumentative Discourse: An Ill-Structured Issue Pertaining To Black African Immigrants And African Americans, Olubusayo Olojo-Adeoye
Wayne State University Dissertations
The overarching goal of this three-article five-chapter dissertation was to develop university students’ argument-counterargument integration abilities in persuasive essay writing on an ill-structured issue pertaining to black African immigrants and African Americans. Article One consisted of using phenomenography as a research approach to identify the qualitatively different ways university students perceive black African immigrants and African Americans. The university participants had 24 perceptions in which 10 pertained to black African immigrants and 14 to African Americans. The perceptions were grouped into six descriptive categories. The variations in perceptions were then used as statements for argumentation. The study implies that university …
Public Subjects: Wayne State, Institutional Texts, And Public Rhetoric, Michael Mcginnis
Public Subjects: Wayne State, Institutional Texts, And Public Rhetoric, Michael Mcginnis
Wayne State University Dissertations
Applying a public sphere approach to Wayne State, I argue that the university has defined itself as a public subject within public debates about race, educational access, and economic development in the city of Detroit, even when such commitments to its local urban public sphere have existed uneasily alongside its ambition to function as a research university with a primary research mission within a wider public sphere of peer research universities. I focus on Wayne State University’s urban mission and open for consideration the ways the university has both expanded and contracted its relationships to its local and academic public …
Interactive Security: The Rhetorical Constitution Of Algorithmic Citizenship In War On Terror Discourse, Avery Henry
Interactive Security: The Rhetorical Constitution Of Algorithmic Citizenship In War On Terror Discourse, Avery Henry
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation traces algorithmic citizenship as it is constituted through war on terror discourse. Utilizing Ron Greene’s rhetorical materialism, this project analyzes corporate discourse along with presidential address and policy to map how they interpellate citizens’ subjectivity. Specifically, the dissertation follows George Bush’s presidential rhetoric as he defines the war on terror and invites the public to participate. Then the dissertation examines how the political discourse associated with government 2.0 is also an economic discourse that works to articulate citizenship alongside consumerism. The next chapter follows the presidential rhetoric of Barack Obama as he intensifies the surveillance and war fighting …
The Role Of Enculturation In Student Writing-Related Beliefs, Values, And The Potential For Transfer, Joseph Paszek
The Role Of Enculturation In Student Writing-Related Beliefs, Values, And The Potential For Transfer, Joseph Paszek
Wayne State University Dissertations
This qualitative research project examines the relationship between students’ perception of their disciplinary identities, epistemologies, and writing and learning to write in an Intermediate Composition course. More specifically, this study investigates the impact of these “enculturative influences” on students’ perception of the writing classroom, uptake of writing studies skills and strategies, and eventual transfer of these skills and strategies to future writing contexts.
Politics And Pedagogy: Recuperating Rhetoric And Composition's Native Ethical Tradition, Derek Risse
Politics And Pedagogy: Recuperating Rhetoric And Composition's Native Ethical Tradition, Derek Risse
Wayne State University Dissertations
Over the past decade, scholars in Rhetoric and Composition have shown renewed interest in the topic of ethics, prompting what some have described as an ethical turn in the discipline. Spurred by a deep-seated concern for the legacies of humanism, scholars have turned increasingly to extra-disciplinary referents in continental philosophy. This dissertation works to recuperate the discipline’s native ethical tradition via a critical rereading of the often-implicit treatment of ethics in Composition scholarship of the 1980s and 1990s. Returning to this “critical” moment and emphasizing the rich thinking around the question of ethics provides fuller and more disciplinary-specific resources for …
Emerging Genres Of Online Technical Communciation, Luke Anthony Thominet
Emerging Genres Of Online Technical Communciation, Luke Anthony Thominet
Wayne State University Dissertations
Emerging Genres of Online Technical Communication is a study of how the proliferation of non-professional participation has the potential to significantly change the shape of technical communication. More specifically, I use a genre analysis methodology to investigate three forms of user-generated content: crowdsourced documentation wikis, video games user reviews, and video game open development. In the first study, I analyze five crowdsourced documentation wikis and find systemic inconsistency in the workflow and content quality of the documentation. Subsequently, I argue that practitioners should use minimalist documentation theory to design more effective user-centered author support for the wikis. My second chapter …
Memes, Args And Viral Videos: Spreadable Media, Participatory Culture, And Composition Pedagogy, Mary Karcher
Memes, Args And Viral Videos: Spreadable Media, Participatory Culture, And Composition Pedagogy, Mary Karcher
Wayne State University Dissertations
This project argues that spreadable media texts motivate people to engage in compositional activities advocated in First Year Composition (FYC). Drawing on Henry Jenkins’ assertion that participatory culture offers potential for learning, I use his list of eleven participatory culture skills that he believed necessary for all students. After showing how well the Participatory Culture Abilities (PCAs) align with the WPA Outcomes Statement (WPA OS), I put forth the WPA OS and the PCAs combined as a lens through which to view three spreadable media case studies: Spreadable Media Events, Fan Labor, and Alternate Reality Games. Based on my findings, …
The Affective Presidency, John Patrick Koch
The Affective Presidency, John Patrick Koch
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation explores the relationship between affect, political emotions, and presidential rhetoric. In examining the political philosophy and presidency of Woodrow Wilson, this dissertation explores how presidential rhetoric captures, channels, and/or directs the passions of the people. Drawing on research by Sarah Ahmed and Brian Masummi, this dissertation argues that presidential rhetoric intervenes into the affective process by directing the passions of citizens towards promises of happiness and investment in presidential power. Two case studies, one focusing on Wilson’s tour in support of the League of Nations and the other on presidential museums, highlight the affective function of presidential rhetoric. …
A Recursive Service Learning Program: Empowering Students Of Color Traveling Within Community Borders, Cindy Lynn Mooty-Hoffmann
A Recursive Service Learning Program: Empowering Students Of Color Traveling Within Community Borders, Cindy Lynn Mooty-Hoffmann
Wayne State University Dissertations
tbd
Detroit's Sport Spaces And The Rhetoric Of Consumption, Anthony C. Cavaiani
Detroit's Sport Spaces And The Rhetoric Of Consumption, Anthony C. Cavaiani
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation argues how Detroit’s spaces of sport consumption rhetorically configure the city’s identity. Specifically, this project interrogates the city’s sports spaces and argues how they anchor identity in the following ways: through the production of accessible discourses, through the emphasis on certain discourses and the de-emphasis of other discourses, through the regulation, control and biopower of the city’s sports spaces and their rhetorical effect on Detroit’s identity, and through the creation of distinct public memories produced from these discourses.
Rhetoric Of Young Non-Regular Workers In Post-Bubble Japan: A Genealogical Analysis, Noriaki Tajima
Rhetoric Of Young Non-Regular Workers In Post-Bubble Japan: A Genealogical Analysis, Noriaki Tajima
Wayne State University Dissertations
This work explores the development and struggle of a rhetorical subject of Japanese young non-regular workers against the recent slow economic trend. In Japan, the bubble-burst in 1991 invited a long economic recession, and companies started to adopt non-regular—low-wage, short-term and insecure—contracts from quintessential Fordist full-time seishain regular contract; yet, a large body of older seishain workers has retained this stable and affordable status. As a result, the vast majority of working forces enrolled in the job market since then has suffered from a low living standard, many on the verge of survival, while domestic mass media discourses have legitimated …
Commedia: Rhetoric And Technology In The Media Commons, Conor James Shaw-Draves
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.
Acting Out Citizenship In Global And Local Contexts, Whitney Nicole Hardin
Acting Out Citizenship In Global And Local Contexts, Whitney Nicole Hardin
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation argues for a more inclusive definition of citizenship by suggesting that it is best understood as the ability and desire to work on public problems with others. In the Westphalian nation-state, citizenship is often understood to be a collection of legal and political rights determined and administered through institutions. These institutions fail to account for the desire of individuals to express convictions and work on problems that they experience locally. Our lived experience of citizenship exceeds the boundaries of institutions, but these actions are often dismissed as a result of the rhetoric used to talk about citizenship and …