Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Identity Performance In Roleplaying Games, Danielle Nielsen

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

This article argues that roleplaying games have the potential to challenge, encourage, and subsume the privilege of the stereotypical gamer, one who is white, male, and heterosexual. Though roleplaying games as they are currently designed are neither ideal nor perfect, the article contends they embrace feminist programming strategies and offer those who do not want to play a straight male avatar the opportunity to develop and explore identities through characters in ways that other genres do not. Roleplaying games extend the privilege of representation to other gaming demographics, giving players the opportunity to “play who they are” in the digital …

What Presidential Speeches Can Teach Us About Audience Analysis, Kevin Jones

Faculty Publications - Department of Communication and Cinematic Arts

No abstract provided.

Investigating Place In The Writing Classroom: Designing A Place-Based Course With A Local Service-Learning Component, Melissa Pompos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on literature about place-based education and service-learning, as well as three groups* perspectives about their service-learning experiences, this research describes how place (understood simultaneously as a material agent, a setting for human activity, and a factor in an individual*s situatedness) and identity (understood in terms of one*s social position) are socially- constructed concepts that impact students* writing and learning experiences. More specifically, this project presents place-based education as a teaching method that can focus and reinvigorate service-learning in a writing course. Including place-based content and service-learning projects in a writing course requires careful design and reflection. However, course design …

Rotten Symbol Mongering: Scapegoating In Post-9/11 American War Literature, David Andrew Buchanan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A rhetorical approach to the fiction of war offers an appropriate vehicle by which one may encounter and interrogate such literature and the cultural metanarratives that exist therein. My project is a critical analysis—one that relies heavily upon Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic method and his concepts of scapegoating, the comic corrective, and hierarchical psychosis—of three war novels published in 2012 (The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, FOBBIT by David Abrams, and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain). This analysis assumes a rhetorical screen in order to subvert and redirect the grand narratives the United States perpetuates in art …

Academic Ghostwriting And International Students, Shulun Zheng, Jie Cheng

Rhetoric and Language Student Publications and Research

Ghostwriting is a common practice in a variety of professional and artistic endeavors but is only acceptable when the audience expects it. In academia, ghostwriting student essays is considered dishonest among faculty, but not all students agree since some of them do employ ghostwriters. In this article, we examine how international students perceive ghostwriting by interviewing ghostwriters and students who have used those services. We ultimately argue that a liberal arts education requires that students behave ethically, which excludes ghostwriters.

Exploring The Contexts Of U.S.-Mexican Border Writing Programs, Beth Brunk-Chavez, Kate Mangelsdorf, Patricia Wojahn, Alfredo Urzua-Beltran, Omar Montoya, Barry Thatcher, Kathryn Valentine

Selected Works Temporary Series

This chapter reports on the results of a study on the writing programs at New Mexico State University and the University of Texas at El Paso, with particular emphasis on administrative structures for multilingual students. The concept of a transnational writing program is developed and refined. This book won the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

A Recursive Service Learning Program: Empowering Students Of Color Traveling Within Community Borders, Cindy Lynn Mooty-Hoffmann

Wayne State University Dissertations

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Exploring The Contexts Of U.S.-Mexican Border Writing Programs, Beth Brunk-Chavez, Kate Mangelsdorf, Patricia Wojahn, Alfredo Urzua-Beltran, Omar Montoya, Barry Thatcher, Kathryn Valentine

Departmental Papers (English)

This chapter reports on the results of a study on the writing programs at New Mexico State University and the University of Texas at El Paso, with particular emphasis on administrative structures for multilingual students. The concept of a transnational writing program is developed and refined. This book won the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Disciplinary Mythologies: A Rhetorical-Cultural Analysis Of Performance Enhancement Technologies In Sports, John Lamothe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In sports discourse, the relationship between athletics and technology is often paradoxical. On the one hand, modern sports rely on technology at every level, from training and tracking of players to the equipment and apparel used by athletes to the game strategies and playing fields themselves. Nearly all of these technologies are intended to increase athletic performance on some level. And yet, certain performance enhancement technologies can be criticized for being antithetical to the spirit of sports, which is framed as being a strictly natural and pure human endeavor. Using a rhetorical-cultural methodological approach, popular sports discourse is analyzed to …

Of Frogs & Rhetoric: The Atrazine Wars, Carol Reeves

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In a scientific dispute over the effects of atrazine on amphibians, chemical industry–funded and publically funded scientists present stunningly contrasting constructions of atrazine's environmental concentrations, persistence, and potential to harm. Considerable scientific uncertainties and variable ranges allow authors to construct preferred versions of the story of atrazine. These incommensurate rhetorical constructions, more the result of competing economic and environmental interests than of any paradigmatic misalignments, have prolonged the dispute not only over atrazine's effects but also over whether its sales should be banned.

Origin Of The Term "Jazz", Gerald Leonard Cohen

Arts, Languages and Philosophy Faculty Research & Creative Works

The book (193 pages, soft-covered) is intended as a scholarly study and therefore contains more detail than would appear in a book intended for a broad readership.

The Negotiation And Development Of Writing Teacher Identities In Elementary Education, Shartriya M. Collier, Suzanne Scheld, Ian Barnard, Jackie Stallcup, Jackie Stallcup, Jackie Stallcup, Jackie Stallcup, Jackie Stallcup

English Faculty Articles and Research

Identity development in writing is a unique process. While many studies have explored the process of developing a professional identity among future teachers, few studies have investigated how teacher candidates develop a writing teacher’s identity. This study explores the development and negotiation of writing teacher identity among 21 pre-service multiple-subject teacher candidates at a large public institution in California. More specifically, the study examines the students’ journeys as they transformed from students of writing in a university methods course to student teachers of writing in a local school district. Our findings indicate that the use of a sociocultural-based approach to …

Basic Writers As Critical Readers: The Art Of Online Peer Review, Cheryl Hogue Smith

Publications and Research

This article encourages teachers to conduct peer review assignments online so students can have the luxury of time and the benefit of anonymity as they read their peers' work.

The Rhetorical Roots Of Communication Centers, Linda B. Hobgood

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This chapter traces the rich rhetorical roots of the creation of the modern communication center, following the lead of Sproule and Farrell as well as the postcard author. Placing this contemporary learning enhancement in the context of that abundant history reminds us that the precepts associated with the discipline of rhetoric and shared in communication center consultations are as classic as they are classical, and the questions deliberated by scholars and practitioners of this ancient art are timeless. The postcard's photo of the venerated Athenian ruins offers both a symbolic and explicit link between the legacy of the paideia of …

Beyond Syntax And Cities At War: Doing Rhetoric's History And Theory Alloiostrophically, Mari Lee Mifsud

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

How does one make contact with difference when doing rhetoric's history and theory? Rather than being afflicted with an anxiety that John Schilb once termed heterophobia, what if doing the history and theory of rhetoric were healthy about heteros? Heteros means "difference" but visually the word shows more than this, namely "eros" in "heteros" - love in difference.

In this chapter, I explore a love of difference in the history and theory of rhetoric. Starting from my own love of Homer that I dare express, I tum to a peculiar text about Homeric rhetoric, …

Introduction: A Revolution In Tropes, Jane S. Sutton, Mari Lee Mifsud

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Our view of tropes is that they are rhetoric's own unique resources, but for ineluctable historiographical reasons have been more or less closed off from the production of theory. Our "trope project" began simply enough. If the workings of tropes could be identified in a new way, then the aim and purpose of rhetoric could be retheorized in terms new to democratic deliberation. Working under the slogan "Yes, tropes-but all of them," we attempted a new classification system based on the Greek roots of hundreds of tropes listed in various old and new sources such as Bernard Dupriez's A Dictionary …

Figuring Out/In Rhetoric: From Antistrophē To Alloiostrophē, Jane S. Sutton, Mari Lee Mifsud

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

We begin with critical reflections on rhetoric as the antistrophē of dialectic. Here is the first line of Aristotle's Rhetoric: "Rhetoric is the counterpart [antistrophos] to dialectic." What this means exactly has been a point of some controversy over centuries of study in the rhetorical tradition. As John Rainolds said, "There are as many interpretations of this little word . . . as there are interpreters." However, we see something other, namely that these "many interpretations" of rhetoric as antistrophē are actually "one." The result is an amplification of the face of rhetoric to look, act, perform, …

Creative Writing Pedagogy: The Autobiographical Narrative In Hybrid Projects As A Means To Explore Intersectionality, Tana G. Young

Masters Theses

My thesis addresses the role of creative writing methods in fostering close observation, attention to detail, critical thinking and a keener awareness of intersectionalities in writing classrooms across disciplines, but most especially the humanities and social sciences. I contend that the "real work" of the academy is critical thinking. Further, using creative writing, specifically autobiographical narrative in FYC, anticipates multimodal projects and digital storytelling, all of which fosters creative and critical thinking.

Ua12/2/38 Congress Debating Club, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about the Congress Debating Club including minute books, programs, club constitution, and more.

Characterization Of Prose By Rhetorical Structure For Machine Learning Classification, James Java

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Measures of classical rhetorical structure in text can improve accuracy in certain types of stylistic classification tasks such as authorship attribution. This research augments the relatively scarce work in the automated identification of rhetorical figures and uses the resulting statistics to characterize an author's rhetorical style. These characterizations of style can then become part of the feature set of various classification models.

Our Rhetorica software identifies 14 classical rhetorical figures in free English text, with generally good precision and recall, and provides summary measures to use in descriptive or classification tasks. Classification models trained on Rhetorica's rhetorical measures paired with …

Attitudes Toward Mental Illness And Mental Health In The Literature Classroom, Melissa B. Guadron

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of this study was to observe undergraduate students’ attitudes toward mental illness and mental health in the literature classroom. This was an observational, inductive study of Jeffrey Berman’s literature course, featuring books written by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This setting was chosen because of Berman’s unique pedagogy, which encourages self-disclosure and psychoanalytic readings. Three questionnaires and three introspective reader response diaries were collected from fifteen participants; text analyses were performed on diaries. Research inquiries questioned a participant’s interactions with the books: How did participants respond to the portrayals of characters with mental illness or mental health …

Sit, Stand, Speak: Examining The Perceptions Of The Basic Public Speaking Student On Normative Forensic Practices And Their Effect On Competitor Credibility In Oratory, Katie Marie Brunner

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This paper examines basic public speaking students' perceptions forensic competitor credibility based on normative factors present within the forensic community. Anecdotal and experiential evidence provided this researcher with reason to believe that the unwritten rules and normative expectations of forensics were so far-removed from what students were used to seeing in their classrooms and in the media, that they could have a negative impact on a competitor's ethos, from the basic public speaking students' perspective. This research was performed in an attempt to determine whether these anecdotal and experiential assumptions were accurate and also to gain insight into the how …

The Bridge, Volume 12, 2015, Bridgewater State University

the bridge

Art Editor-in-Chief: Ghada Masri
Literature Editor-in-Chief: Briana McDonald
Managing Editor: Elizabeth Tobin
Senior Photography Editor: Sara Kelley

Art Editors
Kerrin Flynn
Shannon Stivaletta

Literature Editors
Jillian Boger
James Holbert
Anthony Holland
Jenna Lopes
Kate Pallis
James Stewart
Carley Taylor
Abigail Wotton

Student Consultant: Meaghan Casey

The False Idea Of Human Nature’S Duality In Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, Megan Sperger '18

Outstanding Gateway Papers

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The mention of these two people will evoke a specific thought in most people’s minds: good and evil; light and dark; normal and deformed. However, the truth isn’t nearly so simple. Humans are free, and therefore a mixture of good and evil; accordingly, both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are neither solely good nor evil. Due to the stifling sexual and social repression in Victorian society, Jekyll became convinced that he could somehow purge himself of the evil inside him by splitting his soul; this, however, had far graver consequences than he suspected. Due to …

The Rise Of Boko Haram: An Analysis Of Failed Governance, Andrew Pichette '18

Outstanding Gateway Papers

The Boko Haram threat in Nigeria has been the subject of constant review as of the last few years. Underlying causes as well as the organizational ideology have consistently been the subject of investigation. While popularly considered to be an Islamic extremist group, academic thought has proposed that Islam is used as a means of legitimization rather than motivation, and that socio-economic and political realities are far more relevant to explaining the activities of Boko Haram. The purpose of this essay is to examine the origins of Boko Haram, how the government has reacted, and propose solutions to the deeply …

Developing Moocs To Narrow The College Readiness Gap: Challenges And Recommendations For A Writing Course, Shoba Bandi-Rao, Christopher Devers

Publications and Research

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have demonstrated the potential to deliver quality and cost effective course materials to large numbers of students. Approximately 60% of first-year students at community colleges are underprepared for college-level coursework. One reason for low graduation rates is the lack of the overall college readiness. MOOCs offering "remedial" writing have the potential to better prepare high school graduates for college, thereby increasing their chances of completing a degree and reducing the cost of education for students, families, institutions, and taxpayers. However, MOOCs are typically more suitable for motivated and prepared students. Designing a MOOC on writing …

Critical Discourse Analysis: Definition, Approaches, Relation To Pragmatics, Critique, And Trends, Linda R. Waugh, Theresa Catalano, Khaled Al Masaeed, Tom Hong Do, Paul G. Renigar

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This chapter introduces the transdisciplinary research movement of critical discourse analysis (CDA) beginning with its definition and recent examples of CDA work. In addition, approaches to CDA such as the dialectical relational (Fairclough), sociocognitive (van Dijk), discourse historical (Wodak), social actors (van Leeuwen), and the Foucauldian dispositive analysis (Jager and Maier) are outlined, as well as the complex relation of CDA to pragmatics. Next, the chapter provides a brief mention of the extensive critique of CDA, the creation of critical discourse studies (CDS), and new trends in CDA, including positive discourse analysis (PDA), CDA with multimodality, CDA and cognitive linguistics, …

Constructing Negotiated Meaning And Knowledge For The Sol Y Agua Project's Role-Playing Adventure Game Focused On Sustainability Problems In The El Paso-Rio Grande Area, Claudia Chihiro Santiago

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Video games that address environmental sustainability issues could engage students. However, video games make simplifications and establish idealistic expectations that do not resemble real life sustainability challenges and settings. Game developers and scholars believe that depicting the complexity of the real world could help video games become effective educational tools. They call for additional procedures that incorporate information from actual settings and real life situations. Furthermore, scholars have argued that video games addressing sustainability issues can be improved or made more meaningful with the participation of youth from underrepresented populations, e.g., Latinos. The Sol y Agua project at The University …

Expansive Learning In Fyc: Using Linguistic Discourse Analysis To Measure The Effects Of Threshold Concepts In Facilitating Generalization, Allison Morrow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how and if threshold concepts enable expansive learning and generalization. Expansive learning and generalization are part of the highly contested conceptions of transfer, and these specific conceptions offer a more complex conception of transfer that deals with knowledge transformation (Tuomi-Gr?hn and Engestr?m, Beach). One way that we can see expansive learning and generalization transform knowledge is through the teaching of threshold concepts. In the last decade, there has been a movement toward using threshold concepts in FYC*s that take up writing studies as their curricula (Wardle and Downs, Dew). Even though using threshold concepts seems to be …

"A Memorial And A Name": Construction Of Public Memory Through Chronotopic Arrangement Of Antecedent Genre At Yad Vashem, Emily Brennan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This spring marked the 70th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis and the end of the Holocaust in Europe. Memory of this genocide has occupied a central place in Israeli identity since the establishment of the state. This thesis explores the history of Holocaust memory in Israel and examines how public memory is constructed in the present, as the era of the survivor draws to a close and commemorative efforts linked to survivors take on a sense of urgency. The contemporary memorial places examined in this study are part of Yad Vashem, Israel*s premier institution for Holocaust commemoration. The …