Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

A Rhetoric Of Coupons: Analyzing Fsis And Fsi Coupons Through Rhetorical Lenses, Blake Lubinski

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis consists of two journal articles that examine newspaper coupon booklets called free-standing inserts (FSIs) through feminist and visual rhetoric lenses. The first article attempts to identify the “ideal couponer,” or the audience suggested by the product categories, visuals, and language appearing in FSIs. Through content and textual analyses using a feminist rhetoric lens, the article argues that FSIs evoke the idea of an audience of mothers who conform to gendered cultural assumptions about womanhood and parenthood. The article concludes with theoretical and business implications of these findings, contending that more rhetorical research is necessary to understand how FSIs …

Remaking Identities, Reworking Graduate Study : Stories From First-Generation-To-College Rhetoric And Composition Phd Students On Navigating The Doctorate., Ashanka Kumari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation responds to the decreasing number of first-generation-to-college doctorates in the humanities and the limited scholarship on graduate students in Rhetoric and Composition. Scholars in Rhetoric and Composition have long been invested in discussions of academic and/or disciplinary enculturation, yet these discussions primarily focus on undergraduate students, with few studies on graduate students and far fewer on the doctoral students training to become the next wave of a profession. In this dissertation, I argue that if we engage intersectional identities as assets in the design of doctoral programs, access to higher education and academic enculturation can become more manageable …

The Emergent Matter Of Archives : A Rhetorical Investigation Of The Queer Formation Of The Williams-Nichols Archive., Richard Wysocki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Scholarly conversations across disciplines have asked researchers to consider archive as a site of power—often framed in terms of archives’ potential impact on history and practices of knowledge making more generally. This dissertation contributes to such conversations as they relate to queer archives and material rhetoric, exploring the Williams-Nichols Archive, an LGBTQ archive housed at the University of Louisville. I extend interdisciplinary scholarship to argue for approaching archives as rhetorical emergences rather than as containers or locations for discovery, a perspective that foregrounds the archive and archival practices as the subject of research. Drawing on archival research and oral history …

When Process Becomes Processing: Managing Instructor Response To Student Disclosure Of Trauma In The Composition Classroom, Kelci Barton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In first-year composition courses, there are three aspects of teaching that are researched well so far: disclosure of trauma in student writing, instructor feedback, and emotional labor. The disclosure of trauma is almost completely unavoidable in first-year composition. We encounter an issue with instructor feedback; how do we provide feedback to student writing, like grammar and mechanics, when the student has disclosed trauma in the writing? Additionally, we can build off this with emotional labor, which already occurs consistently in teaching but is heightened in this instance. When providing feedback to a student who has disclosed trauma, this can be …

On The Variations Of 'Occupatio' In "Richard Ii", William Kelly Reeder

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent scholarship of Shakespeare’s Richard II has been interested in or preoccupied with its historical relations. Particularly the plays association with the Essex Rising of 1601, and the censorship of the deposition scene, both of which seem to resonate for history with Elizabeth’s enigmatic comment expressing her identification with Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard II.

This paper proposes to resolve the question of the play’s censorship by interpreting the deposition scene as a dramatization of transubstantiation, perhaps triggering Elizabethan censors.

Transubstantiation is the doctrine by which the Catholic Church interprets the Eucharist using the distinction between substance and accidens (eternal and …

Becoming A Fan: Reinventing, Repurposing, And Resisting In First-Year Composition, Keshia Mcclantoc

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores the cultural and pedagogical potential of the fanfiction community. The practices of recursive peer feedback, reinvention as invention, and production of subversive narratives via repurposing posits the fanfiction community a democratic space where a myriad of identities can react to, interact with, and disseminate information in a productive learning community. During a time when socio-political interactions are so intense, it is necessary that teachers of composition and rhetoric pay attention to learning communities where democratic deliberation is promoted through the production and sharing of writing. Ultimately, this thesis argues that reinvention and repurposing within the fanfiction community …

The Rhetoric Of Sickle Cell Anemia, Raquel Mcfarland Robvais

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation examines the rhetorical treatment of sickle cell anemia as synecdoche, representing a preoccupation with racialized discourses of disease and the affective registers manifested in public life. From its inception SCA has taken on cultural meanings to satisfy ideological arguments about the nature of black bodies.

It has been appropriated to create “categories of difference and belonging” (Schramm et al). I examine how SCA is gathered by rhetors to serve varying ideological purposes and cultural communities. It is utilized to invite different readings that conceptualize the black body as an object of scientific experimentation, as an agent for resistance …

Argumentative Rhetoric And Logical Reasoning As Engagement With Being, Jeremy Barris

Humanities Faculty Research

The paper tries to show that when the deepest or foundational aspects of truth are at issue, both consequentially logical argument and rhetoric that aims to establish truth or justified conviction must engage with the being, or the irreplaceable particularity, of its audience’s members and also that of the arguer, what we refer to in ordinary language as who the person is. Beyond the existing discussion of existential rhetoric, the paper argues that this engagement with being is necessary to establish not only truth that directly concerns or turns on the arguer’s and audience’s being, but also truth or justification …

Writing For Nonprofits In A Professionally-Oriented Institution: Using Rhetorical Genre Studies To Teach Flexibility, Kathryn J. Gindlesparger

College of Humanities and Sciences Faculty Papers

Teaching rhetorical flexibility within a nonprofit environment to professionally-oriented students can be challenging because the seemingly transactional genres of nonprofit communication, such as grant applications,do not appear to invite improvisation. This genre analysis assignment from a Writing for Nonprofits course asks students to reflect on the intersections oftheir own values as emerging communications professionals and the rhetoricalchoices they made while writing in a nonprofit genre of their choice. To complete the assignment described here, students created a “personal code”that describes their professional values and used the code to write a genreanalysis that examines the rhetorical choices made in a nonprofit …

Epideictic Rhetoric And British Citizenship Practices Remembering British Heroes From The 1857 Indian Uprising At Civic Celebrations, Danielle Nielsen

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Epideixis is generally understood as ceremonial rhetoric that praises or blames. When examined through the lens of civic celebrations such as the Coronation Durbars in fin de siècle colonial India or the protection of Confederate monuments, epideictic rhetoric instructs the audience to uphold what are purported to be the community’s common values.This educational epideixis, however, also exposes veiled anxieties not commonly associated with a seemingly ceremonial speech act. This new understanding of epideictic should encourage rhetoricians to further question rhetors’ use of epideixis and interrogate other aims in those speech acts.

Writing For The Humanities And Arts, Shamecca A. Harris

Open Educational Resources

This dynamic English Composition course asks students to both create and engage with texts, in a variety of forms, that demonstrate how culture and personal experience inform a writer’s work. In this class, students will read and write voraciously about social, political, economic and cultural issues that influence their lived experiences and use the conventions of multiple genres to both reflect and respond to the times in which they live. Moreover, they will also consciously consider what it means to write academically at the college level through regular self-reflection and revision. In doing so, students will strengthen their rhetorical knowledge …

Václav Havel At The End Of The Cold War: The Invention Of Post-Communist Transition In The Address To U.S. Congress, February 21, 1990, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

A mere three months after the peaceful Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and less than a year after his last imprisonment under the communist regime, playwright-turned-president Václav Havel stood before a joint session of U.S. Congress in February of 1990. In his address, Havel marked, for his American audience, the new freedoms being established at home. More than just a victory lap, however, Havel’s visit articulated the importance of the invention of post-communism, as the end of the Cold War had to be constructed for his global audience. Havel’s version of invention in the speech used temporality and embodiment as key …

Frameworks For Collaboration: Articulating Information Literacy, And Rhetoric And Writing Goals In The Archives, Amy J. Lueck, Nadia Nasr

Staff publications, research, and presentations

Rhetoric and composition scholars have recently called our attention to the value of archival research in the undergraduate classroom, leading to rich collaborations with archivists and librarians at many institutions. As we engaged our own pedagogical collaboration as a university archivist and English faculty member, we realized that, though we might use slightly different language to articulate them or cite different sources in support of them, many of our learning goals overlapped. As we explored these goals together, we realized that they evidenced a correspondence in our disciplines that we had not explored—one that is reflected in our fields’ recent …

To The Humanities: What Does Communication Studies Give?, Mari Lee Mifsud

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This special issue of Review of Communication presents new offerings of the study of communication, forging present and future humanities. This Introduction engages the six essays in this special issue—which extend and intersect across categories of the humanistic study of communication: communication philosophy and ethics, rhetorical theory, history, pedagogy, criticism, and digital humanities—to explore their contributions in defense of the humanities. Taken together, these essays explore the study of communication as 1) a resource for inquiring and exchanging with concepts, practices, and embodiments of difference, the other, and the posthuman; 2) a means of examining the ontological, epistemological, technological, existential, …

Disruption, Remix, And Mediation: Analyzing "Bot" Algorithm Case Studies To Better Understand Rhetorical Agency In The Digital Age, Aaron Geiger

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Algorithms are ubiquitous components of digital age rhetoric and communication. Although they are integrated within our daily online functions, shaping our discourse and interactions with one another and with other algorithms, little is known how they shape rhetorical agency. Most of our online communication occurs through social media on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and we rely on social spaces like Wikipedia for updated information that is shaped by social constructs. We presume that since we program algorithms, their communicating functions mimic human discourse and can be shaped similarly.

However, a rich text analysis of three different case studies …

From Tony Soprano To Donald Trump: Situating The Rhetoric Of The 2016 Trump Presidential Campaign In The Antihero Genre, Harry Bodell

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In the wake of Donald Trump’s stunning victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, scholars and political pundits alike were left scrambling to understand what had occurred. While there is no single explanation for this unexpected turn of events, the present study argues that an overlooked and central aspect of Trump’s appeal was foreshadowed by the increased prominence of antihero protagonists in American media, particularly exemplified by the recent “Golden Age” of television wherein television series like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men and Dexter found critical and popular success by building compelling narratives around morally flawed …

Visual Rhetoric In Comics: The Rhetoric Of Sexual Assault In The Wake Of Mattress Girl, Brianna Marie Burke

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the visual rhetoric of sexual assault through the unique medium of web-based comics composed by noncommercial artists. The focus was on features compiled from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, as well as one related to representation of those involved in sexual assault: abusers and survivors, art style, act and gaze, size of frame and social distance, horizontal angle, and vertical angle.

This examination reveals four things about the rhetoric of sexual assault and consent in these comics. First, the comics are used as documentary-like, …

Delivery, Facilitas, And Copia : Job Market Preparation And The Revival Of The Fifth Canon., Joseph Turner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This essay argues that English Studies departments should implement training programs in oral delivery strategies for graduate students seeking tenure track employment. A sample a 13-week training program, modeled on elements of classical rhetorical pedagogy, can help students develop and refine stills in oral delivery necessary for academic job interviews.

“Because We Have Chosen A Life Of Peace”: A Quantitative And Qualitative Study Of Vegan Food Narratives, Silke H. Feltz

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Restaurants, grocery stores, fast food chains, and companies all over the United States introduce the consumer to more vegan products, dishes, and services than ever before. The rise of veganism therefore offers a rhetorical platform that should be studied. This dissertation discusses the rhetoric of veganism by analyzing food narratives of vegans through a critical intersectional lens and consists of three research stages. The first research stage investigates the narratology of Glenn Scott Lacey’s documentary, Vegan: Everyday Stories(2016). In particular, this rhetorical analysis focuses on the evaluative belief system of vegan storytelling by applying narrative and ideological criticism. The …

St. Augustine And The Rhetoric Of De Ordine, Natalie Gigliotti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study contributes to scholarship on the question of Augustine and rhetoric by considering Augustine’s use and understanding of rhetoric in De ordine, one of his early philosophical dialogues composed during his transition from a life in rhetoric to a life in philosophy. The author studies the text through consideration of Augustine’s rhetoric in relationship to three major rhetorical authorities of the time, particularly their cultural applications: sophistic rhetoric, Ciceronian rhetoric, and Christian rhetoric. Through study of these relationships, one perceives Augustine’s ingenuity at work as he integrates diverse authorities into his rhetoric of order (ordo) and …

Four Phases Of Subjectivity: A Rhetorical And Phenomenological Analysis Of Aimé Césaire And Cahier D’Un Retour Au Pays Natal, Chelsea Binnie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation project sets out to perform a rhetorical and phenomenological analysis of the subjectivity that Césaire portrays in his epic poem Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, or Notebook of a Return to My Native Land. Césaire published and republished Cahier four times in a 17-year period and the modified accounts of subjectivity presented in the lines of the poem mirrors that of Césaire’s own human subjectivity. Césaire poetically unleashes Cahier and his Négritude project in an effort to shift the geography of reason from its self-appointed European center, to create a liminal space for the totalized …

Literature In The World: A Critical Discourse Study Of World Literature Pedagogy, Elisa Cogbill-Seiders

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

“Literature in the World” is a critical discourse analysis of world literature pedagogy in U.S. higher education. It investigates the ways discourse communities in higher education produce and shape the field of world literature. The dissertation begins by establishing and analyzing the generic conventions of university mission statements, finding they are primarily dominated by discourse on global learning. It follows with an analysis of world literature course descriptions from the same schools. World literature course descriptions alternatively replicate, resist, or subvert global learning discourses. The last chapter uses findings from the first two chapters to trace how university and instructor …

Rhetoric In Film: Three Explorations Of Influence In Documentaries And Digital Stories, Emily Knapp

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis is made up of three distinct articles, two written with the intention of publication while the third consists of a digital story and subsequent reflection on the process of creation. The first article serves to answer the question “Do documentary films inspire activism?” by analyzing data gained after surveying 266 members of the James Madison University community. The results suggest that viewers are moved to emotion when witnessing struggle but that they are moved to action when said action directly impacts their own life. The second article is a rhetorical analysis of the 2013 documentary film Blackfish. …

Thoughts And Prayers, Chloe Kardasopoulos

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Examining the symbolic Gun against its tangible counterpart illuminates abstract attachments of power and superiority this nation associates with the weapon. These elements loaded in the Gun transform the weapon into an object representative of American identity. Analyzing ideological commitments within the Gun guides a critical response to examine disproportionately increasing national gun violence against stagnant federal gun control. The ongoing gun debate must be analyzed in its entirety, beginning at its source - the Second Amendment. Scholars such as Gary Wills dissect the Second Amendment to extract its contextualized intent from modern writers’ manipulated interpretations. It is not the …

Yellow Fever: Asian Representation In Western Pornography, Chye Shoong Chin

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research project seeks to explore the various implications porn films make on Asians Orientalism. Generally, Asians in pornography are composed of multiple negative archetypes, all based on the underlining purpose of servitude. Characters are portrayed through stereotypes including the use of colonial language to misrepresent Asian men and women in both straight and gay porn videos. Referred to as Orientalism, this ideology exploits Asian characters to privilege the White, male viewer. My research project investigates the following question: How are Asians represented in gay and straight pornographic films and pornographic scenes?

I will be applying scholarly arguments to various …

Unraveling Identity Signifier Literacy: A Case Study Of First-Year Composition Students' Communication Practices, Bailey Mcalister

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Identity signifier literacy is defined as one’s ability to accurately read – via personal interactions or via visual, verbal, written, or digital communication – the signifiers others display in direct and indirect ways and interpret these signifiers to gain understanding of others’ identities. In this study, 22 first-year composition students were surveyed about their communication practices in order to see how their identity signifier literacies influence and are influenced by digital environments and composition. These results are meant to improve first-year composition pedagogy by making connections between students’ informal composition practices and their academic composition courses.

Empoword: A Student-Centered Anthology & Handbook For College Writers, Shane Abrams

PDXOpen: Open Educational Resources

EmpoWord is a reader and rhetoric that champions the possibilities of student writing. The textbook uses actual student writing to exemplify effective writing strategies, celebrating dedicated college writing students to encourage and instruct their successors: the students in your class.

Through both creative and traditional activities, readers are encouraged to explore a variety of rhetorical situations to become more critical agents of reading, writing, speaking, and listening in all facets of their lives. Straightforward and readable instruction sections introduce key vocabulary, concepts, and strategies. Three culminating assignments (Descriptive Personal Narrative; Text-Wrestling Analysis; Persuasive Research Essay) give students a chance to …

Constructing An Early Modern Queen: Posturing, Mimicry, And The Rhetoric Of Authority, Megan K. Mize

English Theses & Dissertations

As the illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, a woman executed for treason, Elizabeth Tudor stood at the center of discourses that often sought to contain or even destroy her. Early on, Elizabeth understood that constant re-invention, performance, and mimicry were key strategies for survival. When she finally ascended the throne in 1558, Elizabeth continued to use these rhetorical methods to retain her autonomy, as far as possible, garnering public support and the loyalty of her court. Although Elizabeth has long been acknowledged as a historical icon and has received considerable scholarly attention, particularly from feminist and feminist-leaning …

Trauma And The Credibility Economy: An Analysis Of Epistemic Violence And Its Traumatic Functions, Gina Stinnett

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I argue that the work done in philosophy on epistemic injustice can put pressure on the assumptions driving the work of both trauma theory and rhetorical theory. In addition to arguing how epistemic injustice can reinforce trauma, I argue that epistemic injustice has its own power to traumatize. I refer to this as “epistemic trauma,” or a trauma to one’s ability to know their experience and to make a claim based on this knowledge. Research on epistemic injustice states that when one encounters repeated epistemic injustice, they become less likely to share their experiences at all—they fall …

Fiqws Fall 2018: Phase 2 Assignment Prompt The Exploratory Essay, Sabina Pringle, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

This phase two writing assignment prompt for FIQWS 10003 - HA1 WCGI History & Culture and FIQWS 10103 - HA1 Composition for WCGI History & Culture (fall 2018) provides guidelines for writing an Exploratory Essay in which students will consider the ideas of course readings and compose an essay that demonstrates their engagement with those ideas. The rhetorical purpose of this assignment is for students to demonstrate the ways in which their thinking about language and literacy has developed so far in the course, using evidence based on interpretations, ideas, and examples as well as passages from four or five …