Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Goostly Coumforte In God: The Rhetoric Of Mysticism In The Cloud Of Unknowing, Clinton M. Sensat

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In this paper I analyze the rhetoric of the Cloud of Unknowing by an anonymous fourteenth-century English Catholic mystic. First, I situate the Cloud in its tradition, both spiritual and rhetorical. Then, after analyzing the linguistic arts employed, I engage in a sustained examination of the Cloud’s rhetorical technique. Ultimately, I conclude that the author of the Cloud succeeds in his rhetorical goals, even if some of his strategies are less successful than he perhaps believes, and that he does so through the use of concrete language and an appeal to the ethos of Christian monastic friendship.

From "Smart Talk" To "Living Well": Commonplaces And Their Role In Narratives Of Rare Disease., Caitlin E. Ray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As healthcare becomes more complex, automated, and bureaucratic, patients often suffer from a lack of resources, agency, and visibility when seeking medical care. Rhetoric and Composition, specifically the subfield of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM), is interested in studying and intervening into such issues. One way to challenge our current understanding of healthcare is to consider how the rare disease patient experience reveals the gaps, limitations, and assumptions of illness and health. I argue here that through rare diseases, rhetoricians of health and medicine can better understand the representation, advocacy, and patient experience within healthcare, and potentially lead to …

Trash, Fragments, And Breaking Things: Toward A Grotesque Cripistemology For Disabled Life Writing, Michelle Anne Lloyd

All Dissertations

Despite the boom of memoirs of mental health post-1997 and the first advertisements for Prozac, most of them follow the same formula and come from the same places of privilege. This privilege is evident in the author bios on the books themselves and the careers of the writers. The popularity of these books within both abled and disabled realms has therefore created a script that those with mental illnesses are expected to abide by. Following in the example of Margaret Price, Katie Rose Guest Pryal, Merri Lisa Johnson, and others, I resituate mental illness as mental disability and place it …

Force Displacement, Forced Perspective: The Rhetorics Of Refugee Experience, Jonathan Burgess

All Dissertations

This dissertation interrogates the intersection of digital media, displacement, and human rights within the contemporary geopolitical landscape, with a specific focus on the MENA region. From a perspective firmly rooted rhetoric, it dissects the complex relationship between technology and displaced populations, emphasizing the role of transmedia storytelling in shaping refugee experiences and narratives and the potential for transmedia storytelling to facilitate greater insights into needs and gaps for displaced people. Central to the analysis is the paradox of digital tools both as emancipatory devices and tools of surveillance and control, which are further elucidated through case studies.

Engaging with thinkers …

Development, Voice, And Vulnerability: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Policy-Making Discourse Regarding The Paris Agreement As An Organizational Response To Climate Change, David Almanza-Canas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

On December 12, 2015, the Paris Agreement was officially ratified by 196 sovereign entities. This treaty represents a global call to action to ameliorate the impact of human activities on our environment, and it creates a means of cooperation through financial support and transparent industrial practices with the goal of promoting accountability across the world. This treaty and the discourse surrounding it present fertile ground for the academic understanding of persuasive practices in policy-making. By examining the rhetorical implications of the Paris Agreement as a global policy, scholars can gain new insight about the communities represented in the conversation as …

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Com 3064 (Classical Rhetoric), Jamel Coy Hudson

Open Educational Resources

Rhetoric has fallen on hard times today. When it isn't disparaged as "empty," it is dismissed as "mere." And so, we have empty rhetoric and mere rhetoric. We have politicians accused by their opponents of delivering campaign speeches full of … rhetoric. The accusation, if it sticks, is usually devastating to the accused. No one, least of all our politicians, appears capable of defending that rhetoric is a prerequisite for democratic government.

But it wasn't always so. This is a class about better times for rhetoric. Times when the greatest heroes of the day—like the fictional Achilles and the very …

Educator Professional Development As Rhetorical Situation, Bethany Leigh Creswell Wilson

English Theses & Dissertations

Teacher effectiveness is recognized as the most prominent in-school influencer of student learning, and professional development (PD) of in-service educators is seen as vital to improving teachers’ effectiveness throughout their careers. Professional development is often studied atheoretically and with a linear view in which PD providers deliver instruction and teachers receive and apply that instruction as it was delivered to them. By casting them as passive, blank-slate receivers and automatic appliers of the PD, this view obscures the complexities of teachers’ role in PD. Examining educator PD through the lens of rhetoric, and viewing the PD experience as a rhetorical …

Buried Forensics: A Rhetorical/Material Analysis Of Gendered Death, Sarah Richardson

All Dissertations

My dissertation, titled Buried Forensics: A Rhetorical/Material Analysis of Gendered Death, illustrates how othered women who did not adhere to societal norms have been silenced, excluded, forgotten, and erased in public memory. I examine the rhetorical means through which historical women have been gendered in death. Death rhetorics, I argue, illuminate the relationship between past and present violence in conjunction with memory practices. Depending on the reasons specific women were othered, death rhetorics elucidates how these women became, and continue to be, marginalized. Specifically, my three body chapters examine the lives and deaths of women who participated in sex …

Hierarchy Of Life: Whose Lives Do We Value?, Jessica Wiggins

International Journal on Responsibility

COVID-19 has heightened already existing health disparities amongst marginalized communities within the United States. In crisis, whose lives do healthcare systems value most and how are these decisions rooted in ableism and racism? Who is responsible for these inequities and in what ways? This multimedia presentation and companion paper explore these important questions.

Failure Facing Pedagogy In First-Year Rhetoric And Composition Classrooms, Karuna Minh Hin

English (MA) Theses

Failure in academia is commonly defined as not succeeding, missing the mark, or receiving a “below average grade or score” (Inoue 333). However, this perception of failure works to instill a fear in students that may last through their academic journey. Throughout a student’s academic journey, they are taught to operate within the binary of success and failure. “According to self-worth theory, in school, where one’s worth is largely measured by one’s ability to achieve, self-perceptions of incompetence can trigger feelings of shame and humiliation" (De Castella, Byrne and Covington 862). Teachers have attempted to address this problem throughout first-year …

Making The Political Personal: Consciousness Raising For The Contemporary Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, Danica Fuerst

Honors College Theses

Consciousness raising (CR) typically refers to the specific small group practice pioneered by second-wave feminists, but as networked media gradually replaced the small group process, new forms that are descended from the original CR emerged. This thesis traces consciousness raising from it's origins in the late 1960s and early '70s, through third-wave feminism, to contemporary feminist uses. It analyzes the rhetorical effects and functions of CR from the perspective of Symbolic Convergence theory, considering the various media through which CR is practiced. Finally, using the understanding of CR and its functions that this provides, it analyzes how one specific contemporary …

Defining And Transferring Digital Literacies: What Does This Mean For High School And College Educators?, Jocelyn Spoor

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis aims to create a digital literacies transfer framework through a discussion regarding current conversations on transfer and digital literacies in the English field, including synthesizing the two ideas to think about the transfer of digital literacies as a concept. This digital literacies framework is made up of five components: the functional skills, critical skills, and rhetorical skills found in digital literacies scholarship and the genre awareness and meta-cognitive ideas found in transfer literature. This digital literacies transfer framework is then used to analyze information gleaned from four college and five high school English educators. The key findings from …

A Burkean Analysis Of Eighteenth, Nineteenth, And Twentieth Century Christian Hymns, Keely Hardeman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hymns are one of the most popular forms of Christian worship, dating back to biblical times. Throughout history, hymns have been a way for people from all backgrounds and beliefs to express themselves in song. Hymnists have based their hymns on scriptures from the Bible, but have also written their hymns based on inspiration from scripture or divine revelation as well as their own earthly experience. To this day, hymns are still very present in both traditional and contemporary places of Christian worship, suggesting they are continually influential to the masses. My analysis looks at how hymns inform Christians’ theological …

"1984" Apple Commercial, Eloise Sharkey

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

In 1984, Apple released a commercial to advertise their first personal computer, The Macintosh. The ad aired during the 1984 Super bowl on January 22^nd and was titled “1984”. With the rise of computers and the information age, I set out to discover how Apple was able to distinguish themselves from IBM and why this was so important for them to do. The company used revolutionary rhetoric to address the dreaded social consequences of a world run by computers by positioning the Macintosh as a tool for agency and creativity in a world of mindless drones. This commercial took …

Final Report: Oer Textbook For Core A2 Courses, Cathy Gabor, Leigh Meredith

USF OER Faculty Grant Projects

This report provides an overview of the project completed with OER grant funds received from USF’s Gleeson Library in 2021. Our OER project was to create a textbook that would reduce costs for students in USF’s current Core A2 classes, including RHET 120, 250, 295 and HONC 132. It was also intended to provide a “multimodal” (writing, speaking, digital) approach to composition to reflect best practices and pedagogical innovations in the teaching of composition and communication. This report will cover the specific plan for the OER, what was accomplished, what assessment efforts were undertaken, and areas for further development. Findings …

Writing For The Humanities And The Arts, Olivia Wood

Open Educational Resources

This is the syllabus, course calendar, and grading contract used for Olivia Wood's section of ENGL 210: Writing in the Humanities and the Arts at City College in Spring 2023. Students write opinion editorials in the first unit, research a genre of their choosing and create a "genre guide" to help others write in that genre during the second unit, and then complete a multimodal project in the third unit, perhaps using their own or a classmate's genre guide to assist them.

Organizations Ensuring Resilience: A Case Study Of Cortez, Florida, Karla Ariel Maddox

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“Resilience” has often been defined by examining case studies in resilience failures. In contrast, this case study utilizes the oldest, still functional fishing village in Cortez, Florida to rhetorically analyze how organizational communicative practices have worked to ensure its resilience. Situating this conversation within Rhetoric proves valuable since so many attempts to define and utilize “resilience” seek to capitalize on its positive connotation but distort resilience definitions and practice. This dissertation explores three research questions: 1. “What systems and/or structures made our continued existence possible and what ideologies or goals drove their creation?” 2. “What ideologies, perceptions, and/or goals inspired …

The "Othering" Of America: How The Strategic Use Of Crisis And Ressentiment Succeeded In The Trump Era, Laura J. Franklin

Dissertations

The establishment of a crisis theme through public rhetoric often triggers widespread attention, resulting in public concern and media coverage of an issue that could potentially be overblown or deceptive. In right-wing political discourse, this crisis warning is typically delivered by a White male leader with ready access to the powerful news media. An “us versus them” theme often occurs. Within this mode of a hegemonic exclusion, a culture of immigrants or an American minority are often depicted, perhaps aggressively, as a threat: A threat used to motivate, enrage and create the frustrations inherent in ressentiment. This dissertation explores the …

The Crossroad Of Hamsters, Robots & Electropop, Olivia Crimivaroli

[Archive] Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

Kia Corporation is an automobile manufacturer based in South Korea, who produces and sells vehicles with one of the most well known of their models being the Kia Soul. There are a number of factors that contribute to the Soul being a well known car but one of the biggest reasons is because of the infamous and out-of-the-box commercials that have been crafted in order to promote this style of car. This critique will encompass the contents of one commercial released in 2012 in an attempt to stimulate sales for this specific model of the Kia Soul. This advertisement is …

Twitter As Limited Digital Rhetorical Forum – The Reproductive Rights Discourse Online, Jacob L. Longini

Comparative Woman

Rhetorical discourse has long been characterized by patriarchal systems, and this reality has persisted in online spaces. How might today’s scholar dissect and better understand the nature of online communities, specifically those that engage in women’s rights discourses? I argue that using Thomas Farrell’s notion of “rhetorical forum”, James P. Zappen’s outline for digital rhetorical theory, and Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin’s feminist understanding of rhetorical practice, one can account for the current state of such discourses on Twitter. The patriarchal flaws that Foss and Griffin identify in traditional rhetoric can shed light on the negative aspects of …

The Rhetorical Art Of Risk Assessment: Lessons From Risk Management In Rural And Tribal Communities, John L. Velat

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Risk assessment, mitigation, and communication rely on data from multiple sources to form a complete understanding of hazards and how to manage them. Experts can use these data to make informed decisions about the nature and extent of risks and inform the public to protect health, the environment, and economic welfare. However, in an effort to objectively make decisions, technical experts and policymakers increasingly rely on quantitative data as the most important determiner of risk, which can alienate the public, limit risk understanding, and delay or miss obvious signals of impending catastrophe. I examine several cases based on my experiences …

Rhetorical Conversations: Race, Class, And Gender In The Works Of Jacqueline Jones Royster And Shirley Wilson Logan, Tanya Robertson

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This project is an examination of Jacqueline Jones Royster and Shirley Wilson Logan as knowledge-makers in the field of rhetoric and composition. There is a large gap in research on the contemporary African American women scholars who act as knowledge makers of rhetorical theory and rhetorical pedagogy. There is circularity in the notion that as Royster and Logan examine the history of the fieldâ??African American rhetorical practices, feministic rhetorical practices, English language studies and literacy, and classroom practicesâ??they are, themselves, having an impact on the field.

Teaching About Teaching: A Philosophy Of Critical Literacy Through Phenomenological Ethics And Rhetorical Practices, Corina Lerma

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis presents a phenomenological approach to developing an alternative teaching curriculum for a first-year writing course anchored in rhetorical practices, but reflecting upon my experiences and understandings of phenomenological ethics and philosophy, which I believe can help envision the classroom differently and provides relevant theories to help develop more ethically aware rhetorical practices for first-year composition students. A phenomenological ethical approach that is grounded in experience, embraces ambiguity as an access point, and makes a call to responsibility and problematizes the ideas associated decontextualized and prescriptive teaching practices in higher education foregrounds the ethical implications and responsibilities we hold …

From #Stopthesteal To An Insurrection: A Fantasy Theme Analysis Of The Discourse Surrounding The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, Guy Riggins

Student Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this thesis is to understand the ways in which Donald Trump perpetuated widespread claims of election fraud throughout the 2020 election. I use Fantasy Theme Analysis to examine connections between the rhetorical strategies of #StopTheSteal and the speech Trump gave on January 6, 2021. I argue that Trump facilitated the development and evolution of a shared rhetorical vision of a democracy under attack by perpetuating the fantasy themes of a biased media and an imminent unlawful transfer of power. I argue that the rhetorical strategies developed by #StopTheSteal were evoked during Trump’s speech at The Ellipse, which …

To The Glory Of God Evaluating Origen’S Exposition Of The Scripture In His Leviticus Homilies, Andrew Johnson

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Johnson, Andrew M. “To the Glory of God: Evaluating Origen’s Exposition of the Scripture in His Leviticus Homilies”. Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2022. 237 pp.

Origen has been called “Adamantine,” an impossibly hard metal. Many have found his work to be strong and powerful and equal in its density. Origen’s preaching is almost impenetrable to the Evangelical preacher. This dissertation seeks to offer an entry for modern evangelical preachers to engage with the historic practice of figural exposition in Origen’s Leviticus homilies. The dissertation investigates the interpretative, homiletical and rhetorical histories which intersect in Origen’s homilies. It unpacks Origen’s use …

Taiwanese Indigenous Representation, Rhetoric Of Resistance, And Heteroglossia In Warriors Of The Rainbow: Seediq Bale., John Yu-Choh Chang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the relationship between Taiwanese indigenous narrative and rhetoric, in textual representations of the Seediq people and the 1930 Musha Incident. It explores how the forced colonization of Taiwanese indigenous people affected their identities and cultural representation, and how multi-voiced forms of narrative, storytelling, and meaning-making have rooted in indigenous oral traditions and rituals that counter colonial representations. Across a range of cultural texts, I identify what I call Taiwanese indigenous rhetoric of resistance (TIRR), drawing on Simon J. Ortiz’s theory of indigenous literature and oral traditions as indigenous-nationalist forms of cultural resistance. In addition, I draw on …

Inventing Network Composition: Mobilizing Rhetorical Invention And Social Media For Digital Pedagogy, Jacob Richter

All Dissertations

Inventing Network Composition: Mobilizing Rhetorical Invention and Social Media for Digital Pedagogy investigates how students learn through writing and invention in digital social networks. Pursuing a primary research question of How do student composers invent within networked social media environments?, the dissertation examines how social media and digital writing tools can help students to learn, connect, and share generatively. The core theoretical contribution that this dissertation offers is a theory of network composition, which is a mode of invention that composers engage in social media environments that is intensely social, that is structured by a digital interface, that …

The Narrative Paradigm In Sarah Kay's "If I Should Have A Daughter", Stephanie G. Chan

Pepperdine Journal of Communication Research

In her 2011 TED Talk debut, spoken word poet Sarah Kay presented a breathtaking performance of two of her poems, “B” and “Hiroshima.” Throughout her speech, she takes the audience through the process of self-realization that transformed her into the poet she is today. From her first performance at just 14 years old, to being welcomed by New York’s Bowery Poetry Club, to creating Project Voice alongside her college classmate Phil Kaye, to now teaching spoken word poetry to the teenagers she once was, Kay proves that spoken word as an art form is more than just pen on paper. …

Expressivism And Its (Dis)Contents: Tracing Theory And Practice From History To Here And Now, Sasha A. Maceira

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the theory and practice of expressivism as a pedagogy viable for the twenty-first century. Expressivism, in its inception (1960s), was wrongly perceived in many ways for the seemingly superfluous nature of its intentions; mainly it was targeted as an elitist, individualistic approach to the teaching of composition, only seen as suitable for a privileged student body. What was entirely overlooked that expressivism offered, were the more conventional ideologies and activities, such as process theory and peer review—things we use and cherish to this day. What I discovered through archival research was that expressivism then was inadvertently divided …

An Overheated Debate: The Influence Of Premillennial Apocalyptic Rhetoric On Climate Reform Discourse In The United States, David Charles Gall-Maynard

Dissertations - ALL

Despite decades of scientific research and increased civil and governmental calls for reform, the United States continues to spiral toward climate catastrophe. Apocalyptic rhetoric helps us understand how even the most pressing environmental and societal threats are perceived differently according to audiences' rhetorical and ideological frameworks. Drawing on the work of Barry Brummett and Kenneth Burke, I argue that the premillennial sub-genre of apocalyptic rhetoric constitutes a rhetorical frame through which many secular climate reformers and evangelical Christians make sense of the environmental and societal impacts of climate change. In chapters that analyze secular and Christian climate reform discourse and …