Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

“When Two Elephants Fight, It’S The Ground That Suffers ”: A Neo- Marxist Rhetorical Deconstruction Of The United States’ Rhetoric Of Power In Resistance To United Nations Treaties, Divine Narkotey Aboagye

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I present a Gramscian rhetorical reading of American antagonism to the International Criminal Court, a crucial agency of the UN. I probed the rhetoric of power in resistance concerning the discourse of international treaties by showing how both the United States and the United Nations have become global hegemons. From the foregoing, I uncover American resistance to the constitutive force of United Nations treaties by paying attention to post-Cold War American presidents. By using a neo-Marxist lens and analyzing a key foreign policy accord – the International Criminal Court – that spans the presidencies of Clinton, Bush, …

Intercultural Rhetoric In The Written Academic Discourse: The Rhetorical Functions Of Citation In English And Spanish By College Students And Expert Writers, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

This research studies the practice of citation in two cultural communities, the American and the Spanish, in an academic setting. The main objective of this research is to determine what are the rhetorical functions of citations in the master’s thesis of 12 American and 12 Spanish students written in their native language, as well as in scientific articles of 12 American and 12 Spanish professional writers in Applied Linguistics, and to identify the differences found among these groups.

To study this pragmalinguistic phenomenon, I used the computational text analysis of the rhetorical functions of citations via the Antconc 3.2.4w concordance …

What Covid-19 Is Teaching Me About Writing, Rebekah J. Buchanan

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This is a narrative piece for the special edition, Writing Teacher Education in Extraordinary Times. It addresses my work with English Education candidates, student teachers, and first-year writing students.

When Everything Changes Over Night: What We Learned From Teaching The Writing Practicum In The Era Of Covid-19, Christina Saidy, Thomas Sura

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

In this article, two university-level writing teacher educators describe their experiences in the Spring 2020 as they abruptly moved their spring practica and first-year writing courses to emergency remote teaching online. The authors share takeaways and guiding principles that emerged from the shift to emergency remote teaching that can be applied in similar contexts and beyond.

Failure, Flexibility, And (Self-)Forgiveness: Authentic Modeling Through Distance Instruction, Brandie L. Bohney

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

After adjusting her writing methods course for distance learning due to coronavirus restrictions, an experienced teacher but early-career teacher educator gets a difficult and important reminder about what failure in the classroom feels like. Using this failure as an opportunity, she chooses an honest and vulnerable approach to readjusting the course and finds that the strategy serves both her and her students well.

Tell Your Story… Share Hope, Nicole Sieben

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This manuscript emphasizes the practice of storytelling in writing teacher education, particularly how it applies to encouraging graduate methods students and undergraduate college students to tell their stories amidst a pandemic that upended their semesters and for many, their lives. In this piece, a writing instructor examines the effectiveness of inviting students to provide feedback on their level of comfort with the change of instructional mode from face-to-face to remote instruction and with their level of concern/comfort in the current life circumstances. By way of example, the piece shares a specific poetry writing assignment that engaged students in storying their …

Film/Tv Response & Critique, Janelle Poe

Open Educational Resources

This extra credit assignment was designed for a joint humanities course in English and Black Studies, combining first-year writing and an introductory survey of African American Literature. Throughout the semester, students are encouraged to complete extra credit assignments, such as this film/tv review, to earn additional points (up to 5%).

Combining rhetorical analysis with applied research, students have a list of films or television shows to choose from, as well as the ability to select their own related media, and write a response that includes a synopsis, analysis of plot, character development and themes, and personal response to the text …

Sonic Rhetoric And Meaning Making In Video Game Sound Design, Adam Deross

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

This thesis examines the rhetorical impact of sound in video games from an interdisciplinary perspective. By synthesizing game studies research with rhetorical theory, the thesis puts the works of notable game scholars, such as Karen Collins, Ian Bogost, Iain Hart, and Paul Cairns in conversation with research on sonic rhetoric by scholars such as Tanya K. Rodrigue et. al and Steph Ceraso. The thesis uses a ludomusicological lens to analyze several video games in which sound and music are heavily emphasized elements within the gameplay experience, such as Banjo-Kazooie (Rare, 1998) and Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall, 2015). Through …

The Storying Of Colombian Writing Centers, Jennifer Erin Pretzer

Masters Theses

Using the results from a study conducted on Colombian writing centers, this thesis applies principles from narrative theory to posit a grand narrative for Colombian writing center professionals. The study was modeled on one Jackie Grutsch McKinney used to examine US writing center professionals’ descriptions of their work, and the thesis includes a comparison with her results. Respondents were asked to answer seven questions, two of which were multiple choice and five of which were short answer. The questions asked respondents to describe their tutoring staff composition, their center’s operations, writing centers in general, and ways their center resembles and …

Helping Nsu's Multilingual And International Students Overcome Language Limitations: A Recommendation Report, Ana Theresa Benavidez Hernandez

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

For decades, scholars in Rhetoric and Composition, like Matsuda, Braine, Lieb, Ferris, and Hedgecock, among others, have argued the importance of second language learners in heterogeneous college writing classrooms. This thesis, in the form of a recommendation report, examines the best practices for multilingual international students in the college writing classroom and the current institutional efforts of Nova Southeastern University to help them. The study identifies the importance of multilingual learners in the international community of NSU, and looks at how the OIA (Office of International Affairs), QEP (Quality Enhancement Plan), the School of Communication, Media, and the Arts (SCMA) …

English As A Lingua Franca: Improving Technical Writing And Communication Methods For International Audiences, Lauren Alyssa Serrani

Masters Theses

This thesis centers on the role of English as a lingua franca in global communication, particularly as it pertains to technical written communication. Over the 20th century, English emerged as the primary language used in global communication. As a result, efforts have been made to standardize the language and teach this standardized English in schools and writing programs around the world. Standard American and British English are dominant in academic and professional fields, which inhibits both native and nonnative language learners from reaching their full potential. This project focuses on the most prominent language acquisition methodologies - Standard English, translingualism, …

Interiority And Narrative Temporality In Jane Austen’S Persuasion, Margaret Flahery

The Criterion

Jane Austen’s last completed work, Persuasion, explores protagonist Anne Elliot’s female agency through use of free indirect discourse and time shifts. In the novel, published in 1817, Austen mediates between different time periods — the present day and seven years prior — to demonstrate Anne’s maturity and the evolved perspective of a woman’s status in society. Anne’s shifting interiority reflects what it means to be a woman in the Regency era, and, perhaps, across time, as she breaks out of the mediated and subjective perceptions placed upon her by herself and other characters. The result is a revolutionary conception of …

Examining Fatherhood Through Historical Empathy In Tristram Shandy, Marygrace King

The Criterion

Laurence Sterne’s eighteenth-century novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy follows the tangential musings of Tristram Shandy — musings so roundabout and convoluted that they force modern readers either to eyerolls of frustration or to a reconceived sense of humor. Within this essay, I explore the character of Tristram’s father, Walter Shandy, through a lens of historical empathy. To twenty-first century standards, Walter’s fatherhood is lacking and distant, even uncaring; yet when viewed through the lens of an eighteenth-century perspective, Walter’s motivations and eccentricities begin to make sense in the context of eighteenth-century mortality rates. I explore his unorthodox …

The Many Paths Of Thoreau’S Writing: A Response To Buranelli’S Critique, Stephen Conde

The Criterion

Henry David Thoreau, a transcendentalist famous for his writings and poetry, lived and wrote during the mid-nineteenth century. Some of his most enduring works include his memoir-like book Walden, which documents his experience living remotely in nature as well as his essay Civil Disobedience, which offers his critiques of society and the government. The scholar Vincent Buranelli, who lived roughly a century after Thoreau, wrote “The Case Against Thoreau” in 1957. His essay criticized, among other aspects, the hyperbole and complexity in Thoreau’s writing and his anarchistic urgings. However, analyzing Thoreau’s works and their context, and consulting the works of …

Rhetorical Roundhouse Kicks: Tae Kwon Do Pumsae Practice And Non-Western Embodied Topoi, Spencer Todd Bennington

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines Tae Kwon Do practitioner manuals as sites for better understanding the way diverse rhetorics can become embodied through technique. This dissertation understands martial arts in a Foucauldian sense as rhetorical institutions which discipline practitioners both physically and ideologically. A theory of “embodied topoi,” a term coined here to describe the process by which cultural commonplaces are incorporated into a material, carnal, or performed identity is presented alongside a review of how athletic or martial bodies have been previously studied. Seven popular Tae Kwon Do technical manuals are analyzed for moments when 1. Commonplaces are described, 2. “Daoist …

Light And Darkness In The Epiphanies Of Henry James’ Heroines, Rose Grosskopf

The Criterion

The famed author Henry James, who lived from 1843 to 1916, occupies a middle-ground between the romantic authors of the nineteenth century and the modernists of the twentieth. Two of his novels, The Portrait of a Lady and Washington Square, demonstrate his evolving sensibilities, as he bridges the traditional and the modern by marrying romantic stories with unconventional conclusions. His technique is present in his use of light symbolism, which, due to an etymological connection from the era of Enlightenment, has accompanied moments of learning and understanding. Through his symbolic and literary gestures, James explores a nuanced definition of “brightness,” …

Song: The Emotional Storyteller In The Tales Of Edgar Allan Poe, Sadie O'Conor

The Criterion

Edgar Allan Poe argues in his Marginalia column that “indefiniteness is an element … of the true musical expression.” Music is a powerful device for expression because of its intangible yet deeply rooted connection to human emotion; it captures ideas that cannot always be put into words. In a similar way, we can never truly “hear” music if it is only described on a page. Poe used this phenomenon on a literary level to illustrate a character’s deep, almost indescribable longing for something that they would rarely reveal to the other people in their stories. The references to instrumental music …

Redesign Your Writing & Research Assignments, Melissa Forbes, Kerri Odess-Harnish, Meggan D. Smith

All Musselman Library Staff Works

With so many variables to account for in the fall, the writing and research assignments we designed for a 14-week semester with regular in-person access to campus resources may no longer be realistic or effective. Join Melissa Forbes, Director of the Writing Center and First-Year Writing, and Research & Instruction Librarians Kerri Odess-Harnish and Meggan Smith for tips on redesigning writing and research assignments to help students succeed whatever the semester looks like. A short 10-minute presentation will be followed by Q&A and open discussion.

“Oceania Is Us:” An Intimate Portrait Of Chamoru Identity And Transpacific Solidarity In From Unincorporated Territory: [Lukao], Maressa Park

The Criterion

Guåhan’s history of Spanish colonization and inflicted genocide, Japanese occupancy, and American militarization poses profound effects on CHamoru land, rights, physical health, and language survival. These include instances of “celebration colonialism” such as Liberation Day, in which CHamorus celebrate the date that the United States dropped 124 tons of bombs on Guåhan to liberate them from the Japanese ([lukao] 44). Through an analysis of his 2017 anthology from unincorporated territory: [lukao], this essay examines how Dr. Craig Santos Perez casts light on the complex inheritance of native CHamorus via an intimate portrait of diasporic CHamoru identity. Furthermore, I argue that …

Narrator’S Attitudes Toward Slavery In Oroonoko And Robinson Crusoe, Meghan Gavis

The Criterion

Oroonoko by Aphra Behn and Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe are narrated by speakers encountering enslaved people in South America during English imperialism. The narrators’ respective sentimental and practical voices are manifested through the details of their narratives: Behn’s speaker tends to dwell on romantic points, like Oroonoko’s relationship with his lover, while Crusoe favors pragmatic details, like the quantification of supplies. The narrators’ perspectives color their relationships with enslaved individuals. Behn’s narrator’s relationship with Oroonoko is filtered through her romantic lens, enabling a dynamic and communicative relationship with the Prince that exhibits her sympathy towards his enslavement. In contrast, …

The Battle For Love Under The Governance Of Strict Social Codes, Nina Masin-Moyer

The Criterion

Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” presents a grand, romantic, and heroic story between Palamon and Emily, who pray to Roman deities that represent the values and qualities that were important to men and women of that time. Conversely, “The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope is a mockery of this heroic style and tells a satirical tale of Belinda and Baron, each of whom pray to the powers of mystical creatures and trinkets, which are tangible manifestations of the rules that govern a gendered social order. Although Pope’s story is a satire of tales such as Chaucer’s, both comment …

“The Speechmaking Of A Girl-Orator”: Reason, Gender, And Authority In Dorothy Hunter’S Free Trade Oratory, Erinn Elizabeth Campbell

Honors Projects

Dorothy M. Hunter (1881-1977) rose to prominence during the 1906 United Kingdom general election as a markedly “girlish” yet widely respected free trade orator. While men on the Edwardian public political platform typically built a reputation for oratorical prowess through theatrical displays of “heroic” masculinity, Hunter established her authority as a speaker through two very different (and apparently contradictory) strategies. Her performance of “charming” middle-class femininity helped demonstrate her right to speak on free trade as a “women’s question,” extending women’s traditional authority over matters of domestic consumption to include questions of political economy. Trusting in the power of education …

Civil Procedure As A Critical Discussion, Susan Provenzano, Brian N. Larson

Faculty Scholarship

This Article develops a model for analyzing legal dispute resolution systems as systems for argumentation. Our model meshes two theories of argument conceived centuries apart: contemporary argumentation theory and classical stasis theory. In this Article, we apply the model to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as a proof of concept. Specifically, the model analyzes how the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure function as a staged argumentative critical discussion designed to permit judge and jury to rationally resolve litigants’ differences in a reasonable manner. At a high level, this critical discussion has three phases: a confrontation, an (extended) opening, and …

Hermeneutics Of Residue: Archival Slime And Queer Literacy, Patrick C. James

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hermeneutics of Residue: Archival Slime and Queer Literacy spans the fields of composition and rhetoric, literacy studies, archival studies, and queer theory. Deploying unconventional archival texts such as public graffiti, self-published zines, and underground manuals, this project explores the notion of the queer archive and its complicated entanglements with historiography, sexual and cultural literacy, and epistemology. In order to pursue to this line of inquiry, the dissertation takes José Esteban Muñoz’s observation of a “vexed relationship” between queerness and evidence as an opportunity to broaden the definition of archive, and practice what Muñoz calls a “hermeneutics of residue.” Consequently, …

Depressed & Dis-Eased: Storytelling, Melancholia And The Rhetorical Affordances Of Affect, Carlee Franklin

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Because racial oppression is often internalized, this thesis examines literature written by POC about protagonists of color struggling with depression. The pieces are Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha, Haruki Murakami’s “Tony Takitani,” and Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Using literary concepts informed by Black feminist theory, decolonial theory, and affect studies, as well as rhetorical frameworks of silence and listening, this thesis attempts to better understand how the relationship between depression and racial oppression work to color the life expectancy and perspectives of depressed people of color

Returning To Imaginative Literary Texts In The Composition Classroom: A Case Study Of Greek Literature And Their Potential In First-Year Writing, Esther M. Gabay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The basis for the argument—a return to literature in first-year college composition—stems from a composition debate that emerged in the 90s that suggested instructors of composition refrain from using literature in their writing courses. The thesis proposes that literature, specifically Greek literature, be re-purposed and integrated back into first-year writing college courses. Chapter one contextualizes the historical debate and proposes imaginative literary texts return to first-year writing. The second chapter presents cross-disciplinary advantages, looking closely at the value of teaching literature in composition classes as a tool for building prior knowledge, developing cross-disciplinary insights and access into other disciplinary conversations, …

Fighting For 504: Negotiating Hegemonic Ability Through Verbal Advocacy And Disabled Embodiment, Drew Finney

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In my thesis, I look at San Francisco’s 504 sit-in for disability rights. I argue that both the verbal advocacy and the embodied actions of protestors demonstrate that dis/ability is constructed through a hegemonic process. I contend that combating hegemonic understandings of disability creates a tension between being a counter hegemonic movement and desiring the benefits of hegemonic legibility. To make these arguments, my thesis draws several conclusions. I argue that activists enacted a civil- rights framework to communicate the need for Section 504 to the public. I explain that activists adopted the role of educator to address problematic ideas …

Death Positivity: A New Genre Of Death And The Genre Function Of Memento Mori, Melony Elsie Del Real

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This article explores Caitlin Doughty’s “death positivity” as an evolved form of the medieval memento mori, and how this medieval genre serves as a genre function for current day thanatophobic audiences. This is specifically done by analyzing Doughty’s book titled Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, as well as some of her other death positivity mediums. By modeling her rhetoric of death positivity after memento mori, Doughty can effectively deliver her anti-death fearing message to the very audiences that fear death.

Furthermore, analyzing Doughty’s rhetoric as operating within the genre function, a concept put forth by Anis Bawarshi, …

Providing Clear Directions And Explanations, Carol Damgen, Carol L. Damgen

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

Giving students an opportunity to do group work in a Public Speaking course allows for an exchange of ideas from various points of view. This activity based on Persuasive Speech can further the students understanding of the assignment in a safe collective.

Working as a team develops strong foundations from which to build a powerful argument based not only on value but factual claims. The outcome of this group activity encourages the steps of building a problem/solution organizational pattern presentation.

The hope of this assessment is to scaffold into a solo presentation building from what the learner has employed from …

Orientation: Seeing And Sensing Rhetorically, Megan Poole

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Many visual terms exist in Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical schema, yet the optical implications of such terms remain largely unconsidered by rhetorical scholars. This study presents Burke’s orientation as both a method of seeing and a way of uncovering rhetoric’s relationship to sensation. Burkean orientation—deriving from ophthalmology and Gestalt psychology—brings into focus three practices of studying the senses in rhetoric: attending to lived experience, considering sensation as elemental to rhetorical work, and practicing rhetorical criticism attuned to the entrenchments and slips of the senses. Engaging the biology of vision reveals sensation as connective tissue between nonsymbolic motion and symbolic action.