Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Can One Small Word Change It All?, Alexis Ronco

Emerging Writers

Finalist in the Short Essay category of the 2019 Emerging Writers Contest. This essay analyzes Erica Strauss's essay "Zombies vs. the Joy of Canning: Motivation in the Productive Home."

Humanity In A World Of Machines, Bryanna Walker

Emerging Writers

Second-place winner in the Short Essay category of the 2019 Emerging Writers Contest. This essay analyzes Tom Chatfield's article "What does it mean to be human in the age of technology?"

The Criterion (2019)

The Criterion

No abstract provided.

A Critical Race Analysis Of Transition Level Writing Curriculum To Support The Racially Diverse Two-Year College, Jamila M. Kareem

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This article applies critical race theory to an institutional analysis of writing curricular outcomes to assist two-year college writing program administrators, curriculum coordinators, and instructors with examining the racist implications of writing curriculum outcomes and to develop antiracist curricula that support the academic, professional, and civic success of the majority of their students.

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 …

Learning And Laboring : Student-Workers’ Networked Experiences Of Literacy, Agency, And Mobility In The Neoliberal University., Layne Porta Gordon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rhetoric and composition has a well-established tradition of considering the connections between literacy education and the discourses and structures of political-economic institutions. This dissertation builds from this work and foregrounds the experiences of student-workers in the UPS Metropolitan College program through a qualitative study that is informed by institutional ethnography (Smith, 1987, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006). Institutional ethnography examines institutional texts and text-mediated discourses as coordinators of individual action. Therefore, I draw on primary data gathered from individual interviews with nine student-workers and one Metropolitan College administrator as well as supplemental data gathered from a survey administered to composition instructors, …

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 …

Tracing Sehnsucht To Place: Mythopoeia, Visions, Transcendence, And The Journey Of The Rhetorical Refugee, G. Brandon Knight

Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to explicate a rhetorical conceptualization from C. S. Lewis’s notion of longing, or sehnsucht, in hopes of extending its employment to two other contemporary contexts—Christian Hedonism and American Humanism. To do so, I utilize the method of rhetorical criticism to analyze Lewis’s most famous sermon entitled The Weight of Glory. Following this paradigm chapter, I then compare uses of longing within the contemporary evangelical philosophy called Christian Hedonism initiated during the eighties through the seminal text entitled Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. In doing so, I uncover distinct aspects of longing within …

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 …

The Rhetoric Of Camp: Adam Lambert's Identification And Division Strategies In His American Idol Performances, Isabelle Lanthier

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes camp style as a rhetorical strategy for Burkean rhetorical identification. Through a case study of Adam Lambert's use of this style on American Idol in 2009, this study produced a rhetorical theory of camp that challenges the typically dialectical relationship between identification and its opposite: division. This study responds both to Susan Sontag's seminal essay on camp style and to other conversations surrounding identification, which revolve around how rhetors avoid division (Borrowman and Kmetz; Jones and Rowland), how rhetors appeal to conflicting audiences (DeGenaro; Helmbrecht and Love), how rhetors create new narratives as a means of identification …

Affordances In The Work Of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: Pedagogies Of Writing, Reading, And Making, T. Meyerhoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For many who have been transformed by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick through reading her books and essays, by being a student of hers, or in friendship with her, the question "What does Eve do?" is often a mystery with no precise answer. These transformations can be highly varied in their manifestations. In his essay for the 30th Anniversary edition of Between Men, Wayne Koestenbaum discusses an "Eve effect" which makes "her listeners more curious, more intelligent, more consecrated to the vocation of being thrilled" (emphasis in original, xiv). This dissertation unravels some of these mysteries by tracing how the …

Vanishing Leaves: A Study Of Walt Whitman Through Location-Based Mobile Technologies, Jesse A. Merandy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Vanishing Leaves is a location-based mobile experience (LBME), which employs mobile devices equipped with GPS and high-speed wireless internet capabilities to take users to Brooklyn Heights to learn about the poet Walt Whitman and his connection to the neighborhood where he lived, worked, and published the first edition of his masterwork Leaves of Grass. Through this active first-person immersive learning experience, Vanishing Leaves embraces experimental scholarly methods that extend outside the classroom and off the page in order to engage learners and invite them to create meaningful, personal connections to writers and their literary works.

The following white paper …

Writing With Incarcerated Students Towards Humanization: A Christian Critical Perspective, Deanna C. Kabler

Masters Theses

This thesis centers on the intersections between critical pedagogy and writing instruction in a prison college program with the aim of humanization. A theoretical framework is constructed that relies on the pillars of tenets from Liberation theology, critical pedagogy, an anti-racist and multicultural praxis, and generative culture-making. Writing as the foundation of education is the medium for supporting a humanizing and liberatory education.

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 …

Queering Utopia: Act Up And The Disruption Of Heteronormativity, Nicholas Lepp

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The existing literature on queer utopianism tends to analyze static aesthetic artifacts as opposed to diachronic social movements designed to create material policy changes. This opens room for various criticisms of queer utopianism regarding it being too wishful and devolving into political and social forms of queer dystopia. In order to remedy this concern, this thesis seeks to investigate how queer utopic thought can be used to create long-lasting change. To answer this question, this thesis is broadly divided into two sections—one theoretical and one practical. My theoretical section delves into an analysis of the after-effects of queer utopic cuts …

Riding My Bike In Paradise With Margaret Fuller: A Phenomenological Study, Nanette Rasband Hilton

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was perhaps the most famous American woman during the nineteenth century. After her tragic death, reprints of her best-selling books were heavily edited and she was nearly forgotten. During and after her lifetime, Fuller fell victim to the phenomenological alterity identified and defined by theorists including Derrida and Edward Said as Othering. She spent her career combating Othering in all its forms. Through the lens of both social identity theory and multiple identity theory this study examines how Fuller grappled with social prescriptions. As an autodidact, she mined diverse literary resources to construct heterogeneous texts that cultivate …

The Poetic Function Of Imagination: The Parallel Process Of Poiêsis, Angela Carlson

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

In the advent of Postmodernism, modern approaches to understanding the nature of things is being put into question. As the gap between objective and subjective realms of experiences is narrowing, there is an increased need for a more artful approach to science. This paper serves as my attempt to promote the field of Expressive Arts Therapy (ExATh) as a mode of poetic science for understanding the experience of ‘Being’ in the world. Through a critical review of the semantic development of the ancient Greek concepts poiêsis, noêsis, and aisthêsis, the imagination is identified as a function of alêthaic revealing, …

“We Were Just Trying To, You Know, Survive”: Coming Of Age As A Displaced Person And Narrative, Eli Megibben

Undergraduate Theses

“Home” is a personal construct that shapes who we are. It is not a physical place, but rather an experience tied to a place. How are people to respond, then, when the socio-political institutions that rule the land that they call home say “you’re not allowed to exist because of who you are and where you come from”? In this project, I investigate the effects that physical displacement (by way of war and violent conflict) have on an individual’s identity through the analysis of narratives composed by individuals who were displaced by the Holocaust, the Bosnian war, and the current …

“Paying” The Way For A Better Bart Future: A Call For Better Enforcement Of Fare Evasion Policies And Strategic Planning At Bart, Ethan S. Tan

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system has undoubtedly shaped the way the San Francisco Bay Area operates today. BART has molded itself to becoming a popular form of transportation for citizens of the area. However, numerous problems have arisen in recent years in regard to the overall “healthiness” of the BART system with its ex-aging fleet of trains, undertrained staff, lack of BART Police presence, rampant illegal drug use, etc. which has made BART unpopular with riders. The root cause of these problems through, is the lost revenue through “stolen” rides. At any one of BART’s 48 stations in …

Twin Teachers: Advancing Understanding Among Secondary And Post-Secondary Composition Instructors Through Individual Connections, Zachary Garrett

Student Scholarship & Creative Works

This project relates research-based efforts to develop a context-sensitive collaborative plan for instructors of English composition at the high school and college levels, providing a model for professional development and cross-border conversations among writing educators. Adapted from the “twin towns” or “sister cities” arrangements forged between municipalities in different countries with the purpose of strengthening relationships and promoting cultural understanding, this plan targets the cultural differences between high school and college instructors as a step toward incremental improvement implemented by educators themselves. The literature review establishes the cultural divide, describing the divide through discourse and practice, identifies effective practices for …

A Song Of Distant Memory, Andrew Devin Gadberry

Student Theses and Dissertations

This creative thesis features a critical introduction, which discusses both the nature of the fantasy genre as well as my authorial process in creating this story. Our story begins as Ohku, Hunter of hunters, tracks a rabid beast through the depths of the mysterious dark forest of La'ia only to find that the creature is no mere beast. And when the hunter's path crosses with that of a fallen spirit, the creature’s dark nature begins to reveal itself. Yet, when Ohku returns to his village and warns the Chief and Warden of what he has found, he is sworn to …

From Vatican Radio To Inter Mirifica And Beyond - 20th Century Popes On [Im]Media.Pdf, Jon Radwan, Dennis Mahon

CHDCM Publications

[Im]mediacy, a meaningful encounter or contact where there is no space between participants, is a central concept in understanding how 20th century Popes have learned to communicate. The 20th century was characterized by extensive growth of mass media technologies. Modern papal approaches to communication developed from an instrumental to an [im]mediate contact orientation. Where media were originally seen as important tools for sending messages, John Paul II made interpersonal contact the focal point of papal communication via his nearly continuous world tour. The tour itself is mass mediated for the world to see, and each pastoral event is an immediate …

Exploring My Unique Literacy Experiences As A Ukrainian American Emerging Scholar Through Autoethnography, Diana Prokopiev

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This capstone project depicts myself as the research subject as I explore why I make meaning the way that I do in my life. The autoethnography itself—full of reflection, epiphany, reflexive writing, and rich descriptions—provides a preview into my life as a Ukrainian American woman as I participate in three different discourse communities: the domestic community, the academic community, and the religious community. By sharing my literacy experiences, I hope this autoethnography has a transformative impact on all audience members, but especially those who were raised by parents who emigrated to the United States.

Thinking Outside The Toolbox: A Teaching Resource For Vocational Writing, Dustin Ledford

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This capstone project combines elements of contextualization, professional writing, and process pedagogy to create a course design for teaching writing in the technical college/vocational school setting. With this course design, students are asked to complete a variety of scenario-driven, workplace-related writing tasks that teach fundamentals of college composition including research, critical thinking, and process-based writing. With this sample curriculum, students write from realistic scenarios from the healthcare industry, especially tasks from the medical office environment. The goal of this course design is to model and promote new practices for teaching writing in vocational settings to better engage students in these …

Open Technical Writing: An Open-Access Text For Instruction In Technical And Professional Writing, Adam Rex Pope

Open Educational Resources

This book presents technical writing as an approach to researching and carrying out writing that centers on technical subject matter. Each and every chapter is devoted to helping students understand that good technical writing is situationally-aware and context-driven. Technical writing doesn’t work off knowing the one true right way of doing things—there is no magic report template out there that will always work. Instead, the focus is on offering students a series of approaches they can use to map out their situations and do research accordingly.

Saruman As ‘Sophist’ Or Sophist Foil? Tolkien’S Wizards And The Ethics Of Persuasion, Chad Chisholm

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Persuasive speaking is an important part of J.R.R. Tolkien's fiction, and the wizards Gandalf and Saruman are often the most skilled orators and speakers in the Middle-earth stories. Literary critics and Tolkien scholars (including the author in his prior publications) have spent much time discussing how the oratory of the wizards helps to advance the narrative action within the stories as well as add depth to the wizards themselves and the other characters. Many critics describe the speech of Saruman as 'sophistry,' but does the white wizard really personify the rhetoric of the historical Sophists? The author explores this question, …

Subverting The Patriarchy And Its Ties To Feminism: Du Maurier And Her Adaptations, Samantha Koller

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

This paper describes the common (mis)reading of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca as upholding Victorian patriarchal values and attempts to demonstrate that the novel is indeed feminist and acts as a critique and subversion of those patriarchal standards; it then examines the film and stage adaptations of Rebecca, demonstrating via comparison to the original medium that feminism has begun to affect other cultural interpretations and depictions of the narrator, Mrs. Danvers, and Rebecca herself.

In Sickness And In Health, Katharine Keiser

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

Being the most sensitive person in my family was always a problem. My parents would constantly tell me I was exaggerating largely and making issues worse than they were, and I took this as a criticism every single time it was said. At 12 years old, I began to learn why they always told me not to exaggerate a circumstance. My grandmother was diagnosed with colorectal cancer, but nobody told me she was battling cancer until after her major surgery. When my dad was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma a year later, I truly understood what it meant to appreciate those …

The Song That Lives On, Katlyn Miller

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

This personal essay dives into the relationship between Evanescence's song "My Immortal" and two specific events of loss Miller has experienced in her life. The paper explores how different forms of loss intertwine and how music is the bridge between those varying types of loss.

If You Hate Group Projects Say, "I", Rebekah Smith

KUCC -- Kutztown University Composition Conference

This is a blog post that strives to understand the hatred of group assignments in hopes to create a more collaborative classroom.