Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Gary Paul Nabhan, Gioia Woods

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Between spoonfuls of posole at the Morning Glory Cafe in Flagstaff, Arizona, Gary Paul Nabhan mused about the distinctive character of western American literature. “What is western literature about?” I asked him. Without hesitation, he replied, “It is about a process of disorientation and reorientation.” The mountains, sand dunes, and canyons of the western landscape govern western imagination. That landscape, he believes, is responsible for the dis- and reorientation that characterizes the work of many western writers. Nabhan continued, “I should say that in an odd way, that’s even true of Native American literature [....] Leslie Silko writes about the …

Josephine Miles, Erik Muller

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

“You could say I saw California grow up. Right along with me!” So Josephine Miles linked her life and region (Childress 40). The link between her poetry and California has not always been declared by the poet or detected by her readers. Miles mused upon the problem: “Sometimes there’s a certain kind of critic that says I’m a California poet [. . .] he says I have a lot of loose lines and a lot of locale. But then another critic will say, ‘She’s not to be identified as anything but English because her poetry is rather neat and universal’” …

Louis Owens, Linda Lizut Helstern

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

“'I prefer infinitions to definitions,’” Alex Yazzie, the cross-dressing Navajo anthropologist in Louis Owens’ Bone Game, declares (46). So did Louis Owens. In his life, in his death, and above all in his writing, Louis Owens (1948-2002), novelist, essayist, literary and cultural critic, crossed boundaries and refused definitions. Born in Lompoc, California, Owens came to understand the arid landscape of the west through the lens of his early childhood in the Yazoo bottoms of Mississippi. He was a Native mixedblood who acknowledged not only his multi-tribal heritage, Choctaw on his father's side and Cherokee on his mother’s, but the …

Living Waters: An Invitation To Contemplative Spirituality For The Quail Springs Church Of Christ, Wyatt E. Fenno

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This project addressed an acknowledged need for ministry action to promote and facilitate communal spiritual formation in the present and future life of the Quail Springs Church of Christ. The focus of the project was to present a model of contemplative spirituality determined to be accessible to the ministry context at Quail Springs. In addressing the problem of community fragmentation at Quail Springs, this model was offered as a means of grace to deepen faith and strengthen relationships in church life at Quail Springs. A pilot group of six women and six men served as the working group for this …

The Bridge, Volume 2, 2005, Bridgewater State College

the bridge

Volume 2 Staff

Stacy Cohen
David George
Beth Horka
David Mitchell
Elizabeth Redmond
Nicole Roy
Kimberly Silva
Cheryllynn Silvia
Janine Woodward

Mary Dondero, Faculty Advisor
Jerald Walker, Faculty Advisor
Linda Hall, Alumni Consultant
Rosann Kozlowski, Alumni Consultant

But Who Is Any Longer Interested In The Possible?: Kathy Acker In Hell Failing Fuck You, Jake Kennedy

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In 'But who is any longer interested in the possible?': Kathy Acker in Hell Failing Fuck You I explore and celebrate Acker's use of a tropics of failure (plagiarism, pain, terror, gender-play, bad jokes, dumbness) as an inimitable strategy for achieving counter-cultural art and community. The prose style and scholarly apparatus of my article reflect not only my position as a poet/academic but also attempt to model an ethical, non-authoritative, Acker-informed critical language.

Beyond 'Hot Lips' And 'Big Nurse': Creative Writing And Nursing, Sandra Young

English Faculty Publications

This essay describes a special topics creative writing course designed for nursing students, and argues that creative writing strategies work to improve nurses' compositional skills. Also discussed are other potential benefits from creatively writing patients' lives, notably, the blending of arts and sciences, and the ways in which medical schools are encouraging their students to study the humanities, especially literature and creative writing. The essay includes student creative writing samples.

The essay also discusses the depiction of nurses in popular culture. M*A*S*H*, Richard Hooker’s black comedy about the antics of doctors and nurses during the Korean War, gave us “Hot …

The Graveyard Of Genre: David Markson's Postmodern Epitaphs, Camelia Elias

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

David Markson is a writer who in a series of novels entitled Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988), Reader's Block (1996), and This is not a Novel (2001) explores some of our basic conceptions of genre. Can we call a book of fragments a novel? Is a novel still a novel when the characters are given names such as Author, Protagonist, Reader? What are we left with, when critics resort to labels such as novel of intellectual reference and allusion . . . minus the novel, or seminonfictional semifiction to categorise his texts? Through an apparently endless list of anecdotes and facts regarding …

Messianic-City: Ruins, Refuge And Hospitality In Derrida, Puspa Damai

English Faculty Research

‘‘Listen first to those who, like myself, did not have to watch TV to know that SOME of L.A. was burning,’’ Derrida wrote to a newsletter in response to the riots triggered by the Rodney King events in 1992, adding, ‘‘L.A. is not anywhere, but it is a singular organization of the experience of ‘anywhere’’’ (‘‘Faxitexture’’ 28). At a time when one hardly needs to watch TV to know that many cities around the world are burning, or are targeted and wounded, bombed and invaded—as if the Biblical injunction, ‘‘Then ye shall appoint you cities to be cities of refuge …

In Praise Of Carbon: Genre And The 1996 Nobel Lectures In Chemistry By Christian Fredrick Casper, Christian Fredrick Casper

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Using genre theory along with the hierarchy of scientific statement types of Latour and Woolgar (1979) and the scientific stases and scientific topoi of Prelli (1989), this thesis analyzes the three Nobel lectures in chemistry from 1996 to discern the characteristics of ceremonial discourse in science and its relation to scientific ethos. Throughout, the Nobel lectures are analyzed in reference to the original research reports published in the scientific literature. The unique social context of the Nobel lectures results in a distinct genre with textual characteristics that include statements with little moderation or hedging, arguments for the long-term significance of …

An Inquiry Into Discourse Choices As Indicators Of Gender Attitudes In A Non-Profit Conservative Christian Business, Dawn Marie Kruger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is an inquiry into the discourse styles of men and women who work together in a conservative Protestant Christian business. Many conservative Protestant Christian churches teach that the Bible forbids women from holding positions of authority over men. Yet in the communications department of this particular business, women fill the top three management positions, supervising a mixed-gender staff of 15. Research has shown that men and women subconsciously use language markers that indicate personal attitudes toward the same and the opposite genders. This research project draws on that information while it analyzes the oral and electronic discourse of …

Literacyscape: The History, Politics And Practice Of Basic Writing, Tim Mccormack

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Perhaps nowhere else in American society is the ideology, theory and politics of language literacy so emphatically revealed than in the hopeful and daunting attempt by Basic Writing students to leap-frog their way over the real socio-cultural, linguistic and/or politically constructed remedial barriers and into the mainstream of college life. This dissertation documents and analyzes a Basic Writing classroom at the City College of the City University of New York in the final year that the college offered Basic Writing to matriculated students. This project details the lived experience of a single Basic Writing course and the lives of the …

Technical Risk Information: Decision Tool Or Rhetorical Ammunition? Undisputed Facts In The Yucca Mountain Debate, David M. Hassenzahl, Denise Tillery, Paulette Laidler

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Research

This paper examines how both opponents and proponents of the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca mountain Nevada claim that uncontroversial information supports their conflicting positions. Four pieces of information in particular are claimed by both sides: the distance of the proposed site from Las Vegas, the volume of waste that has been produced, the threat of terrorism since 9/11/01, and the occurrence of an earthquake in early 2002. Possible explanations for the difference include naive positivism, social constructionism, persistent beliefs and implicit warrants. The latter two models better explain observed knowledge/preference states. If so, more or better information …

New Media Reading Strategy, Cheryl E. Ball

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

This dissertation addresses the need for a strategy that will help readers new to new media texts interpret such texts. While scholars in multimodal and new media theory posit rubrics that offer ways to understand how designers use the materialities and media found in overtly designed, new media texts (see, e.g,, Wysocki, 2004a), these strategies do not account for how readers have to make meaning from those texts. In this dissertation, I discuss how these theories, such as Lev Manovich’s (2001) five principles for determining the new media potential of texts and Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s (2001) four …

Through The Back Door : Melungeon Literacies And 21st Century Technologies, Katherine G. Vande Brake

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

The Melungeons, a minority recognized in Southern Appalachia where they settled in the early 1800s, have mixed heritage—European, Mediterranean, Native American, and Sub-Saharan African. Their dark skin and distinctive features have marked them and been the cause of racial persecution both by custom and by law in Appalachia for two centuries. Their marginalization has led to an insider mentality, which I call a “literacy” of Melungeon-ness that affects every facet of their lives.

Just a century ago, while specialized practices such as farming, preserving food, hunting, gathering, and distilling insured survival in the unforgiving mountain environment, few Melungeons could read …

Only Screen Deep? Evaluating Aesthetics, Usability, And Satisfaction In Informational Websites, Carrie Avery

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the role aesthetics plays in informational websites. In commercial interfaces, aesthetics (the perceived visual appeal and appropriateness of an object) has shown to correlate positively with many aspects of usability and emotional satisfaction. This thesis examines whether aesthetics has similar positive correlations in informational websites. Heuristics or guidelines for evaluating informational websites are developed based on empirical research and practitioner expertise. Categories for heuristic evaluation include usability, credibility, visual clarity, visual richness, and emotional satisfaction. A class of graduate students browsed three academic websites, evaluated them, and critiqued the heuristics. Results indicate that aesthetics does correlate with …

The Long And Winding Mode(S), Ivan Davis

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.