Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Evoking A Memory Of The Future In Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, Doro Wiese

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Evoking a Memory of the Future in Foer's Everything is Illuminated" Doro Wiese discusses Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. In the text a photograph plays a decisive role: the image of two young people drives the Jewish American Jonathan to visit the Ukraine. The photograph is presumably of Jonathan's grandfather Safran and a woman named Augustine who saved Safran's life during a nazi raid of his village: the photograph becomes an ekphrasis, a description of a visual work of art in another medium which transforms the generic characteristics of written and photographic representations. According to Anselm …

Egypt's Police State In The Work Of Idris And Mahfouz, David F. Dimeo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Egypt's Police State in the Work of Idris and Mahfouz" David F. DiMeo examines how two leading twentieth-century authors of politically committed fiction addressed an angry generation's confrontations with former members of the oppressive state police apparatus. Yusuf Idris's The Black Policeman (1962) and Najib Mahfouz's al-Karnak (1974) remain particularly relevant as today's Egyptian activists confront the vestiges of the former regime's security forces. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnival as a paradigm for analysis, DiMeo examines how both texts present sharp contrasts between hollow quests for public revenge through purges and a genuine overturning of …

Metaphor Translation As A Tool Of Intercultural Understanding, Ipshita Chanda

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Metaphor Translation as a Tool of Intercultural Understanding" Ipshita Chanda takes up specific cases of metaphor translation as a methodological exercise towards understanding intercultural exchange. Chanda's study is based on a semiotic and linguistic understanding of metaphor as a signifying and cognitive device. When a metaphor is translated from one linguistic-literary field into another, the process of translation itself yields some specific operational steps for studying inter- and cross-cultural relations. Here, translation is not proposed as a framework but as practical method: the translation of metaphor becomes an exercise in strategy for the pedagogy of …

Aesthetics In Gao's Soul Mountain, Mabel Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Aesthetics in Gao's Soul Mountain" Mabel Lee analyses Nobel Laureate 2000 Xingjian Gao's aesthetics. Transnational conglomerates today control the book industry from publishing house to bookshop and through aggressive market strategies they exert considerable influence on readers. Nonetheless, there are writers who refuse to capitulate to market demands and seek only to actualize their aesthetic ideas in the creation of literary texts. One such writer is Gao, author of the novel Soul Mountain. Lee posits that Gao's aesthetics is founded on the close interrogation of both Chinese and European models and practices and explores specific …

Nostalgia In Oral Histories Of Israeli Women, Yael Zilberman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Nostalgia in Oral Histories of Israeli Women" Yael Zilberman explores the narration of nostalgia of elderly women about the city of Be'er Sheva. In their narration, the subjects of the study create textual and spatial practices which are engendered and create analogies between the city, their maturing/ed bodies, and by-gone youth. Further, the grief owing to the perceived condition of the city intensifies the idealized description of the city and the longing for its past. Zilberman's study brakes new ground in that the study of urban experience within folklore is a lesser explored field as the urban …

Victims Of The City In Novels Of Zola And Dostoevsky, Marta L. Wilkinson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Victims of the City in Novels of Zola and Dostoevsky" Marta Wilkinson argues that urbanity in its nineteenth-century setting functioned as the culpable agent in criminal behavior found in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and in several of Zola's Rougon-Macquart novels. Wilkinson an analysis of the novels based on Merlin Coverly's concept of psychogeography which supports the extension of the cityscape as an integral part of the novels' characters. Further, Wilkinson illustrates how in Zola's and Dostoevsky's novels the city reigns triumphant as characters fall victim to disease, drink, or are left with desperate choices: in Dostoevsky's novel …

Contemporary Us-American Satire And Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk), J.C. Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Contemporary US-American Satire and Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk)" J.C. Lee focuses on contemporary satire's potential (or lack thereof) for change, reform, or rebellion through an investigation of works by Harry Crews, Douglas Coupland, and Chuck Palahniuk, all of which target consumerism. The said writers employ satire not to initiate rebellion or cultural change, but to reflect the problematic role of institutions in modern life and, in turn, the potential, even hope, for personal growth. Lee's analysis of texts by Crews, Coupland, and Palahniuk is intended to question satire's potential as a form of cultural critique and institutional …

Memory, Identity, And Narration: A Book Review Of New Work By Assmann And Conrad And Tilmans, Vree, And Winter, Simona Mitroiu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

"Carefull" Ethos: The Construction Of Ethos In Dorothy Leigh's The Mothers Blessing, Julia D. Combs

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As one of the most popular conduct manuals in the early seventeenth century, Dorothy Leigh's The Mothers Blessing is often categorized as private, domestic literature. In this dissertation, I examine the strategies Leigh employed to create ethos, and I argue that her strategic depiction of herself as a "fearefull, faithfull, carefull" mother helped her authorize herself as a public figure. Specifically, I investigate the strategies Leigh employed to create a persuasive ethos within the genre of the conduct manual. Through mother-based ethos strategies, Leigh presented herself deliberately, augmenting her authority as Mother and positioning her work within a male-dominated print …

When The Virtual Meets The Real: An Assessment Of The Benefits And "Costs" Of Open Access Texts For First Year Writing Courses At Cuny, Johannah Rodgers

Publications and Research

An assessment of the advantages, drawbacks, and costs of Open Access / OER texts for First Year Writing courses at CUNY.

Professional Writing In The English Classroom: Let's Get Real: Using Usability To Connect Writers, Readers, And Texts, Jonathan Bush, Leah A. Zuidema

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The article discusses the application of the concept of usability and user-centered design in the interaction between the writers and the readers in the English classroom. It is inferred that the interaction with readers is essential during the process of writing. The elements of effective lessons on usability and user-centered design are highlighted.

Interpretation And Construction In Altering Rules, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay is a response to Ian Ayres's, "Regulating Opt-Out: An Economic Theory of Altering Rules," 121 Yale L.J. 2032 (2012). Ayres identifies an important question: How does the law decide when parties have opted-out of a contractual default? Unfortunately, his article tells only half of the story about such altering rules. Ayres cares about rules designed to instruct parties on how to get the terms that they want. By focusing on such rules he ignores altering rules designed instead to interpret the nonlegal meaning of the parties' acts or agreement. This limited vision is characteristic of economic approaches to …

On Silence, Daisy Levy

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

I wrote this piece as a way to try to reconcile some difficult events in my life as a teacher, a scholar, and a person living in a complicated world. I wanted to make visible the collage effect of all these things, and so a collage essay was the most interesting form for me. I examine the politics surrounding subjectivity, authority, and the role of voice, in and out of the classroom, in daily life.The events I am drawing on are related: comments from a student on institutional course evaluations, rejection letters from a prominent university's graduate writing program, reflection …

Like Me, Like Me Not, Paul Muhlhauser, Andrea Campbell

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

For us the lack of a "Dislike" button on Fb creates an important asymmetry in communication and promotes a particular Fb worldview. As you pluck our petals, you'll get to see the ways we interpret the presence of "Like" and the absence of "Dislike" buttons.

Comedy As A Feminist Rhetoric, Liz Lemon Style, Risa Polansky Shiman

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Given the stereotypes that come along with traditional feminist activism – She's a feminist. She looks angry, and I can see from here she's not wearing a bra – and the frustration feminists often face as a result, comedy is an entertaining, and therefore presumably palatable, way to expose contemporary feminist issues to broad audiences. But is it effective? A fan of ironic, silly, and sometimes (shhh, don't tell) lewd humor, I'm no stranger to The Looks, which range from “I don't get it" to “You're not as funny as you think you are" to “I am both disgusted and …

Things Are Happening!, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

No abstract provided.

#Definerhetoric, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

No abstract provided.

"I Had An Abortion": A Feminist Analysis Of The Abortion Debate, Elizabeth Fleitz Kuechenmeister

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This article explores the rhetoric surrounding the controversial “I Had an Abortion" t-shirt, sold by Planned Parenthood in 2005-2006. In order to understand the rhetorical impact of the t-shirt, Burkean dramatism is used to identify what terms are added and what terms are overlooked. A dramatism analysis of both pro-choice and pro-life rhetoric is included to position the t-shirt in the abortion debate.

Call For Submissions: Sonic Rhetorics, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

No abstract provided.

Scully And Me: Or, The X-Files, Revisited, Rita Malenczyk

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This essay reflects on the longevity of The X-Files phenomenon through the lens, primarily, of gender. The common interpretation of the two agents' roles as reversing traditional male/female stereotypes--Scully, the female, is rational, while the male Mulder is imaginative--has never seemed particularly right to me, especially when one throws Scully's Catholicism into the mix. Rather, it seems that, throughout the series, two belief systems come into conflict; while Mulder's appears privileged because of his gender, the show subtly critiques that privilege through its portrayal of Scully's Catholicism.(I suppose this essay is, in a way, an attempt to figure out what's …

Intermodality In Teaching Writing, Margarette Christensen

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation articulates a writing pedagogy based on a theory of intermodality to help writing instructors navigate the affordances and challenges of multimodal composition. Drawing from recent discoveries in neuroscience about how the brain makes meaning, I situate this pedagogy of intermodality – literally, “between the modes” – within the Rhetoric and Composition traditions of embodied rhetoric and visual/multi-sensory rhetoric. A pedagogy attuned to intermodality capitalizes on how the senses (“modes”) work together to create meaning when composing with sound, image, movement, and text. In addition to the five senses, intermodality also incorporates the cultural, social, and material aspects of …

Design & Communication: The Future Of Service-Learning, Ulrike Gencarelle M.A., Laura Gabiger Phd, Deana Marzocchi

Computer Graphics Department Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Poster for a presentation at the Eastern Region Campus Compact Conference 2012.

Depicted are online writing class projects, as well as web and print design examples created by Johnson & Wales (Providence Campus) Digital Media department design students for non-profit organizations in Rhode Island communities.

Come As You Are, As I Want You To Be: Grunge/Riot Grrrl Pedagogy And Identity Construction In The Second Year Writing Program, Rory J. Callais

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A look at how artists in the grunge and Riot Grrrl movements constructed public identities that typically appealed to the economic, cultural, and social conditions of the early 1990s. These public personas -- perceived as “honest” -- were defined by negotiation with mainstream culture, the notion of the “confessional,” and gender construction. By examining how these identities were constructed, composition students can see how cultural influences mediate their own identity construction. A “grunge/Riot Grrrl” pedagogy is proposed that encourages students to look at how identities are constructed across a multimedia landscape, reflecting the way grunge and Riot Grrrl artists built …

Extending Story Listening As A Practice Of Communal Formation At The Lake Orion Church Of Christ, Eric R. Magnusson

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

This doctor of ministry thesis presents the results of a project that explores the potential for extending a practice of story listening as a way of forming community across social circles at the Lake Orion Church of Christ in Lake Orion, Michigan. The intervention involved guiding a group of six participant-researchers, each of whom had previous experience in story listening, through six sessions in the fall of 2011. Each phase of the project was informed by a participatory social Trinitarian theology. The first three sessions were designed to empower participant-researcher pairs to facilitate story listening groups of four to five …

Camera Creatures: Rhetorics Of Light And Emerging Media, Anthony Collamati

All Dissertations

Camera Creatures addresses the new media landscape in which cameras, in most situations, outnumber pens. The dissertation argues that despite the accessibility and power of imagemaking devices, there persists in the humanities and social sciences a hesitation to engage the possibilities for composing with optical media. A number of factors contributing to this trend are addressed, including the preference for image analysis over imagemaking practices, persistent assumptions of the camera's mechanical objectivity, and a tendency to teach visual invention as collage. As a counter-measure, a proposal is made for investment in the mediation of light, or 'photonic rhetorics.' To explore …

Lincoln Speeches, Allen C. Guelzo, Richard Beeman

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

As president, Abraham Lincoln endowed the American language with a vigor and moral energy that have all but disappeared from today’s public rhetoric. His words are testaments of our history, windows into his enigmatic personality, and resonant examples of the writer’s art. Renowned Lincoln and Civil War scholar Allen C. Guelzo brings together this volume of Lincoln Speeches that span the classic and obscure, the lyrical and historical, the inspirational and intellectual. The book contains everything from classic speeches that any citizen would recognize—the first debate with Stephen Douglas, the “House Divided” Speech, the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address—to …

"Epistolary Performances": Burns And The Arts Of The Letter, Kenneth G. Simpson

Studies in Scottish Literature

The letters written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-17960 show a self-conscious writer, who relished the craft of letter-writing and the role-playing that it allowed him. Examines letters that Burns wrote to Dr. John Moore, Margaret Chalmers, and others, and suggests a kinship between Burns as letter-writer and the letters and novels of Laurence Sterne.

Daniel Hannan, Thomas Paine, And The Rhetoric Of Outrage, Danae Brack

Masters Theses

The purpose of this rhetorical study is to examine the textual charisma of Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Daniel Hannan's speech "The Devalued Prime Minister of a Devalued Government" and how that charisma made these artifacts successful in spreading outrage surrounding the historical and political events of their respective eras. The author uses Weber's theory of charisma filtered through Rosenberg and Hirschberg's expanded theory identifying lexical charisma, or the charisma of messages. The author analyzes Paine's and Hannan's use of persuasiveness, believability, and powerfulness, translating each of these characteristics into specific cues that can be identified in the individual texts. …

The Write Class: Student Self-Efficacy In A Pilot Placement Program At Boise State University, Samantha Sturman

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Placement into first-year college writing classes can have great impact on students, but student voices are rarely heard in the debate on which placement methods are best. In this thesis, I work to illuminate the student perspective on the placement process through an examination of a pilot guided self-placement program at Boise State University. Developed from existing directed self-placement models and scholarship on best practices for English placement, The Write Class placement program gives students a voice in how they are placed. With students taking a role as active agents in their English placement decisions, one of the main concepts …

Inventing Laughter: Comedic Writing Practices And The Limits Of Pedagogical Power, Daniel Liddle

All Theses

This thesis conducts an examination of the writing methods used by stand-up comedians using the lens of the rhetorical canon of invention. The study applies the theories of Thomas Rickert, Diane Davis, Ann Berthoff, and Janice Lauer in order to define the relationship between humor and epistemology, and to consider how this comedic-epistemic perspective can inform pedagogical practices in the composition classroom. This study relies mainly on the rhetorical analysis of 'How To' books on writing comedy, the methodologies of schools of comedy, as well as biographies by/about comedians in order to discuss the relationship between comedians and their 'material.' …