Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Irony, Rhetoric, And The Portrayal Of "No Place": Construing The Elaborate Discourse Of Thomas More's Utopia, Davina Sun Padgett

Theses Digitization Project

While traditional readings of Thomas More's Utopia have largely relied upon literal interpretations, and accordingly have emphasized the significance of Utopia as a model of the ideal society, this thesis endeavors to explore beyond the conventional or literal appearance of More's language to consider the possible meanings, intentions, and strategies underlying Utopia's elaborate discourse, concentrating specifically on the significance of More's use of humor and irony and his familiarity with the conventions of satiric fiction.

Black And White And Read All Over: An Analysis Of Narratives In The O.J. Simpson Murder Trial, Martin Larry Lastrapes

Theses Digitization Project

The thesis examines the O.J. Simpson murder trial and analyzes the racial narratives that affected its outcome and the way it is perceived by the American public. By examining four books about the trial written by lawyers who served on the case, the analysis focuses on how race functions within each of the reconstructed narratives, as well as within the framework of the U.S. criminal justice system. The author argues that racial narratives affect how and why people can see the same event differently, a prime example of which is the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Representations of Mark Fuhrman, his …

The Function Of Pronouns Lacking References In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Brian Michael Sherman

Theses Digitization Project

Examines the stylistic functions of pronoun use in William Faulkner's As I lay dying. The quantitative portion establishes the numerical differences in pronoun use between the characters Darl, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman. The interpretive section examines Faulkner's use of pronouns without references and how they affect his characters.

Anti-Ethnography?, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

"Many of the ongoing difficulties teachers face revolve around the 'translation' of disciplinary knowledge—especially critical theory—into pedagogical praxis. It often seems that our teaching lags behind our theoretical knowledge by about two decades, and sometimes we wonder if it will ever catch up. This sense of disjunction has been compounded by the difficulty of teaching postmodern understandings of subjectivity, truth, and epistemology in an increasingly commodified teaching context, where consumers expect to purchase a clear, identifiable, and literally usable product, and where 'knowledge' often means easily digestible and repeatable content rather than analytic skills, critical understandings, or complex world views. …

Machine Scoring Of Student Essays: Truth And Consequences, Patricia Freitag Ericsson, Richard H. Haswell

All USU Press Publications

The current trend toward machine-scoring of student work, Ericsson and Haswell argue, has created an emerging issue with implications for higher education across the disciplines, but with particular importance for those in English departments and in administration. The academic community has been silent on the issue—some would say excluded from it—while the commercial entities who develop essay-scoring software have been very active. Machine Scoring of Student Essays is the first volume to seriously consider the educational mechanisms and consequences of this trend, and it offers important discussions from some of the leading scholars in writing assessment.

Reading Chinese Fortune Cookie: The Making Of Chinese American Rhetoric, Luming Mao

All USU Press Publications

LuMing Mao offers an important discussion of the rhetoric of Chinese American speakers, which has wide implications for the teaching of writing in English and for our understanding of cross-cultural influences in discourse. Recent scholarship tends to explain such influences as contributing to language hybridity—an advance over the traditional "deficit model." But Mao suggests that the "hybridity" approach is perhaps too arid or sanitized, missing rich nuances of mutual exchange, resistance, or even subversion. Through his concept of "togetherness in difference, Mao suggests that speakers of hybrid discourse may not be attempting the standard (and failing), but instead may be …

Keywords In Creative Writing, Wendy Bishop, David Starkey

All USU Press Publications

Wendy Bishop and David Starkey have created a remarkable resource volume for creative writing students and other writers just getting started. In two- to ten-page discussions, these authors introduce forty-one central concepts in the fields of creative writing and writing instruction, with discussions that are accessible yet grounded in scholarship and years of experience. Keywords in Creative Writing provides a brief but comprehensive introduction to the field of creative writing through its landmark terms, exploring concerns as abstract as postmodernism and identity politics alongside very practical interests of beginning writers, like contests, agents, and royalties. This approach makes the book …

Identity Papers: Literacy And Power In Higher Education, Bronwyn T. Williams

All USU Press Publications

How do definitions of literacy in the academy, and the pedagogies that reinforce such definitions, influence and shape our identities as teachers, scholars, and students? The contributors gathered here reflect on those moments when the dominant cultural and institutional definitions of our identities conflict with our other identities, shaped by class, race, gender, sexual orientation, location, or other cultural factors. These writers explore the struggle, identify the sources of conflict, and discuss how they respond personally to such tensions in their scholarship, teaching, and administration. They also illustrate how writing helps them and their students compose alternative identities that may …

Alonzo "Old Block" Delano, Nicolas S. Witschi

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

When Alonzo Delano died on 8 September 1874, newspapers throughout the Northern California region lamented the passing of a favorite local celebrity. A death notice issued by the Sacramento Union on 10 September (reprinted a day later by San Francisco’s Daily Alta California), observed that Delano “was known by reputation throughout the State as an author and a man of integrity. [. . .] He was a writer of much native humor and plainness of speech, abounding in facts, anxious to do justice to all and injury to none.” The San Francisco Chronicle echoed this sentiment, adding that he …

Reading Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona, Karen E. Ramirez

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Helen Hunt Jackson was one of America’s most renowned and prolific female writers of the 1870s and 1880s, best known during her lifetime (1830-1885) and into the early twentieth century for her poetry, domestic essays, travel sketches, and moralistic novels. However, as Jackson herself predicted, her most enduring legacy is her writing advocating American Indian rights (Higginson, “Helen” 151). Most significantly, her 1884 novel Ramona protests American Indian displacement in southern California and, more broadly, criticizes Anglo-American conquest through land acquisition. A bestseller when it appeared, Ramona has never gone out of print; has been translated into many languages; was …

Mary Clearman Blew, Evelyn I. Funda

Western Writers Series Digital Editions

Defying the Welch family edict to “Never speak aloud of what you feel deeply,” Mary Clearman Blew has garnered national recognition as an eminent writer in the American west by choosing to write candidly about the riddle of her family, their deeply felt losses, and her sense of “the contradictions of double vision, of belonging in place and being out of place” (Balsamroot 4; Bone Deep 174). Unsparingly honest and accessible in eight books of fiction and nonfiction, in person Blew is, nevertheless, a quiet, dignified, and reserved woman who still thinks of herself as a bookworm, the girl …

The Bridge, Volume 3, 2006, Bridgewater State College

the bridge

Volume 3 Staff

Cheryl Tullis, Editor-in-Chief
Victoria Large, Editor-in-Chief
David Bevans
Christelle L. Del Prete
Derek T. Hambly
Joseph Kolczewski, Jr.
Angelique Paparella
Ryan Perry
Patricia Portanova
Christopher Rego
Georgia Savory
Shaylin Walsh

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

'Olah: The Rhetoric Of Burnt Offerings, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

The ‘olah offering receives pride of place in most lists of sacrifices in the Hebrew Bible, including the ritual rules of Leviticus. Its prominence in these texts suggests that the writers expected its mention to have an effect on their audience. This rhetorical effect must be evaluated and understood before the references to the `olah can be used to reconstruct ancient religious practices reliably. A comparative analysis of the rhetoric about the `olah suggests that its priority burnished the image of priests as devoted selflessly to divine worship and drew attention away from their economic interests in the sacrificial system …

Argument, Political Friendship And Rhetorical Knowledge: A Review Of Garver's "For The Sake Of Argument", Francis J. Mootz Iii

Scholarly Works

Gene Garver's recent book, "For the Sake of Argument: Practical Reasoning, Character and the Ethics of Belief" (U. Chicago Press, 2004), responds to the dilemma at the core of contemporary legal theory. Garver incisively describes why legal reasoning is viewed either as impotent or dangerous. Reason appears impotent in the legal context to the extent that we maintain its rigor by limiting its scope to dialectical demonstration; it appears dangerous to the extent that we free reason from having to provide definitive answers. Garver looks to Aristotle for a solution. To deal with the inadequacies of the accounts of practical …

Owl Usability Report: Appendices, Michael Salvo, H. Allen Brizee, Dana Lynn Driscoll, Morgan Sousa

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Research Reports

This document includes appendices to the OWL Usability Report and contains survey and testing instruments, testing scripts, and testing data. It also includes information about the Creative Commons licensing associated with the OWL Usability documents produced in 2006.

Purdue Online Writing Lab (Owl) Research Report, Michael Salvo, H. Allen Brizee, Dana Lynn Driscoll, Morgan Sousa

Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Research Reports

This report outlines the history of the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) and details the OWL Usability Project through the summer of 2006. The paper also discusses test methodologies, describes test methods, provides participant demographics, and presents findings and recommendations of the tests. The purpose of this report is to provide researchers, administrators, and pedagogues interested in usability and Writing Labs access to information on the Purdue OWL Usability Project. We hope our findings—and this open source approach to our research—will contribute positively to the corpus on usability and Writing Lab studies.

Visions Of Guadalupe: Traces Of The Ghost Panel, Gerald Torres

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Spectrum 2006, Saint Mary's College Of California

The Undergraduate Spectrum

No abstract provided.

The Undergraduate 2006, Saint Mary's College Of California

The Undergraduate Spectrum

No abstract provided.