Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Makine's Postmodern Writing About Exile, Memory, And Connection, Mary Theis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Makine's Postmodern Writing about Exile, Memory, and Connection" Mary Theis explores the implications of some of the many literary epiphanous moments that Andreï Makine shares with his readers in his neo-Romantic metaphysical literary quest to transcend lyrically the limitations imposed by our human condition. The analysis of this theme in Makin's literary career features several of his most important novels, his one play, and his subsequent meta-utopian reflections in Alternaissance, written under the pen name Gabriel Osmonde.

Miłosz's Quest For Affirmation And His Reflections On Us-American Culture, Joel J. Janicki

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Miłosz's Quest for Affirmation and His Reflections on US-American Culture" Joel J. Janicki discusses Czeslaw Miłosz's writings in exile devoted to his home in California. Miłosz, a Polish Lithuanian poet, essayist, and historian of literature, after experiencing five years of the nazi regime in Warsaw and six years of Stalinized rule in post-World War II Poland, threw himself "into the abyss" of exile. Miłosz's writings and translations have served as a bridge between the Polish and Anglo-Saxon cultures seldom encountered on such a scale. At the same time, his ability to look at a distance, his sensitivity …

Nádas's A Book Of Memories And Central European Journeys, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Nádas's A Book of Memories and Central European Journeys" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek discusses theoretical, literary, political, social, etc., aspects of travel in Péter Nádas's novel. "Travel" in the novel represents both a conceptual and lived experience at a time when travel between the East and the West in Europe was restricted and when a person hailing from the "East" considered a journey to the West a complex and ideological matter. Further, the aspect of urbanity, that is, cultural and social spaces and the journey and what such entails in terms of ideology, points of origin, knowledge, …

Metropolitan (Im)Migrants In The "Lettered City", Stacey Balkan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Metropolitan (Im)migrants in the 'Lettered City'" Stacey Balkan employs Ángel Rama's discussion of audience as a means of analyzing a Latin American diaspora that exists beyond the "rational periphery" of the state. Herein, the term diaspora is redefined as a translocal phenomenon wherein the metropolitan (im)migrant moves from rural margin to urban center. Normative definitions of exile — persons displaced from autonomous nation-states — are likewise scrutinized in the context of what the Rama terms a post-contemporary "city of letters." This post-contemporary city is the subject of what Mabel Moraña refers to as a "subaltern boom" — …

Deconstructing Definitions: Repositioning Technological Access & Literacy Within Agent Ability, Carole Reynolds

Department of Humanities Publications

Our society cannot have concerns about access without literacy because they are congruous; neither is distinct nor complete without the other in technological contexts. The United States Department of Education repeatedly calls for more, better, and increased access and literacy to technologies. Our elected officials make national speeches imparting similar rhetoric and ideas. A problem with this particular information dissemination by inherently powerful entities or persons is they make assumptions of what access and literacy are, with minimal definition, and virtually no context of agent ability with technology. These ambiguous terms and deficient definitions have subsequently proliferated in academic scholarship, …

Imagining What Eve Would Have Said After Cain’S Murder Of Abel: Rhetorical Practice And Biblical Interpretation In An Early Byzantine Homily, Kevin Kalish

Bridgewater Review

Why does the story of Cain and Abel leave out what we would consider essential details? Is there a reason for this silence? Works of fiction that imagine a historical event from an untold perspective are as popular as ever, and recent years have seen an influx of fiction that gives voice to silent characters in older works of fiction. By imagining what other characters might have said, we also come to a deeper understanding of the text.

The Rhetoric Of Mom Blogs: A Study Of Mothering Made Public, Madeline Yonker

Writing Program – Dissertations

This dissertation examines the phenomenon of mom blogs to determine their handling of conventional motherhood and the rhetorical nature of their discourse. Unlike other prior studies of blogs and specifically of mom blogs, the dissertation examines both the blog entries themselves and the many comments such entries generate from readers.

In addition, it seeks to determine the values and rhetorical practices of any community that might be established through such blog commenting. To accomplish these aims, the dissertation focuses on the entries and comments from three particular blogs chosen to represent the network of mom bloggers.

The commonplaces or ideals …

"Carefull" Ethos: The Construction Of Ethos In Dorothy Leigh's The Mothers Blessing, Julia D. Combs

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As one of the most popular conduct manuals in the early seventeenth century, Dorothy Leigh's The Mothers Blessing is often categorized as private, domestic literature. In this dissertation, I examine the strategies Leigh employed to create ethos, and I argue that her strategic depiction of herself as a "fearefull, faithfull, carefull" mother helped her authorize herself as a public figure. Specifically, I investigate the strategies Leigh employed to create a persuasive ethos within the genre of the conduct manual. Through mother-based ethos strategies, Leigh presented herself deliberately, augmenting her authority as Mother and positioning her work within a male-dominated print …

New Forms Of Contemporary Aesthetics: A Review Article Of New Works By Camerotti And Quaranta, Marina Mantini

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Evans's The Turducken And Chekhov's The Seagull, Brian R. Johnson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Evans's The Turducken and Chekhov's The Seagull" Brian R. Johnson approaches The Turducken as a travesty of The Seagull, examining six iconic scenes from The Seagull, in order to explore the satirical effect of the altered scenes. In December of 2008, Bedlam Theatre of Minneapolis presented The Turducken, "a holiday dinner theater spectacular inspired by Anton Chekhov's The Seagull." Playwright Josef Evans takes Chekhov's 1895 work and turns the classic piece into a musical and farcical satire. The plot of The Turducken follows the plot of The Seagull, and some scenes …

Barthelme's "Paraguay," The Postmodern, And Neocolonialism, Daniel Chaskes

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Barthelme's 'Paraguay,' the Postmodern, and Neocolonialism," Daniel Chaskes explores the analytic opportunities afforded by conjoining globalizing critical approaches with a story by an author who has often been circumscribed by the postmodern rubric. Donald Barthelme's "Paraguay," written the summer after Nelson Rockefeller's fact-finding mission to South America in 1969, provides a chance to consider modes of anti-colonial critique in Barthelme's work. It also offers examples of a more self-reflective criticism aimed at the U.S. counterculture and the indeterminacies of postmodernism. Chaskes reads "Paraguay" with the aim of understanding Barthelme's hemispheric interest and he investigates the multiple cultural …

Intercultural Approaches To Cities And Spaces In Literature, Film, And New Media: A Review Of New Work By Manzanas And Benito And López-Varela And Neţ, Ana María Martín Castillejos

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Evoking A Memory Of The Future In Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, Doro Wiese

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Evoking a Memory of the Future in Foer's Everything is Illuminated" Doro Wiese discusses Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. In the text a photograph plays a decisive role: the image of two young people drives the Jewish American Jonathan to visit the Ukraine. The photograph is presumably of Jonathan's grandfather Safran and a woman named Augustine who saved Safran's life during a nazi raid of his village: the photograph becomes an ekphrasis, a description of a visual work of art in another medium which transforms the generic characteristics of written and photographic representations. According to Anselm …

Egypt's Police State In The Work Of Idris And Mahfouz, David F. Dimeo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Egypt's Police State in the Work of Idris and Mahfouz" David F. DiMeo examines how two leading twentieth-century authors of politically committed fiction addressed an angry generation's confrontations with former members of the oppressive state police apparatus. Yusuf Idris's The Black Policeman (1962) and Najib Mahfouz's al-Karnak (1974) remain particularly relevant as today's Egyptian activists confront the vestiges of the former regime's security forces. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnival as a paradigm for analysis, DiMeo examines how both texts present sharp contrasts between hollow quests for public revenge through purges and a genuine overturning of …

Metaphor Translation As A Tool Of Intercultural Understanding, Ipshita Chanda

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Metaphor Translation as a Tool of Intercultural Understanding" Ipshita Chanda takes up specific cases of metaphor translation as a methodological exercise towards understanding intercultural exchange. Chanda's study is based on a semiotic and linguistic understanding of metaphor as a signifying and cognitive device. When a metaphor is translated from one linguistic-literary field into another, the process of translation itself yields some specific operational steps for studying inter- and cross-cultural relations. Here, translation is not proposed as a framework but as practical method: the translation of metaphor becomes an exercise in strategy for the pedagogy of …

Aesthetics In Gao's Soul Mountain, Mabel Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Aesthetics in Gao's Soul Mountain" Mabel Lee analyses Nobel Laureate 2000 Xingjian Gao's aesthetics. Transnational conglomerates today control the book industry from publishing house to bookshop and through aggressive market strategies they exert considerable influence on readers. Nonetheless, there are writers who refuse to capitulate to market demands and seek only to actualize their aesthetic ideas in the creation of literary texts. One such writer is Gao, author of the novel Soul Mountain. Lee posits that Gao's aesthetics is founded on the close interrogation of both Chinese and European models and practices and explores specific …

Nostalgia In Oral Histories Of Israeli Women, Yael Zilberman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Nostalgia in Oral Histories of Israeli Women" Yael Zilberman explores the narration of nostalgia of elderly women about the city of Be'er Sheva. In their narration, the subjects of the study create textual and spatial practices which are engendered and create analogies between the city, their maturing/ed bodies, and by-gone youth. Further, the grief owing to the perceived condition of the city intensifies the idealized description of the city and the longing for its past. Zilberman's study brakes new ground in that the study of urban experience within folklore is a lesser explored field as the urban …

Victims Of The City In Novels Of Zola And Dostoevsky, Marta L. Wilkinson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Victims of the City in Novels of Zola and Dostoevsky" Marta Wilkinson argues that urbanity in its nineteenth-century setting functioned as the culpable agent in criminal behavior found in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and in several of Zola's Rougon-Macquart novels. Wilkinson an analysis of the novels based on Merlin Coverly's concept of psychogeography which supports the extension of the cityscape as an integral part of the novels' characters. Further, Wilkinson illustrates how in Zola's and Dostoevsky's novels the city reigns triumphant as characters fall victim to disease, drink, or are left with desperate choices: in Dostoevsky's novel …

Contemporary Us-American Satire And Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk), J.C. Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Contemporary US-American Satire and Consumerism (Crews, Coupland, Palahniuk)" J.C. Lee focuses on contemporary satire's potential (or lack thereof) for change, reform, or rebellion through an investigation of works by Harry Crews, Douglas Coupland, and Chuck Palahniuk, all of which target consumerism. The said writers employ satire not to initiate rebellion or cultural change, but to reflect the problematic role of institutions in modern life and, in turn, the potential, even hope, for personal growth. Lee's analysis of texts by Crews, Coupland, and Palahniuk is intended to question satire's potential as a form of cultural critique and institutional …

Memory, Identity, And Narration: A Book Review Of New Work By Assmann And Conrad And Tilmans, Vree, And Winter, Simona Mitroiu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

When The Virtual Meets The Real: An Assessment Of The Benefits And "Costs" Of Open Access Texts For First Year Writing Courses At Cuny, Johannah Rodgers

Publications and Research

An assessment of the advantages, drawbacks, and costs of Open Access / OER texts for First Year Writing courses at CUNY.

Professional Writing In The English Classroom: Let's Get Real: Using Usability To Connect Writers, Readers, And Texts, Jonathan Bush, Leah A. Zuidema

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The article discusses the application of the concept of usability and user-centered design in the interaction between the writers and the readers in the English classroom. It is inferred that the interaction with readers is essential during the process of writing. The elements of effective lessons on usability and user-centered design are highlighted.

Interpretation And Construction In Altering Rules, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay is a response to Ian Ayres's, "Regulating Opt-Out: An Economic Theory of Altering Rules," 121 Yale L.J. 2032 (2012). Ayres identifies an important question: How does the law decide when parties have opted-out of a contractual default? Unfortunately, his article tells only half of the story about such altering rules. Ayres cares about rules designed to instruct parties on how to get the terms that they want. By focusing on such rules he ignores altering rules designed instead to interpret the nonlegal meaning of the parties' acts or agreement. This limited vision is characteristic of economic approaches to …

On Silence, Daisy Levy

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

I wrote this piece as a way to try to reconcile some difficult events in my life as a teacher, a scholar, and a person living in a complicated world. I wanted to make visible the collage effect of all these things, and so a collage essay was the most interesting form for me. I examine the politics surrounding subjectivity, authority, and the role of voice, in and out of the classroom, in daily life.The events I am drawing on are related: comments from a student on institutional course evaluations, rejection letters from a prominent university's graduate writing program, reflection …

Like Me, Like Me Not, Paul Muhlhauser, Andrea Campbell

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

For us the lack of a "Dislike" button on Fb creates an important asymmetry in communication and promotes a particular Fb worldview. As you pluck our petals, you'll get to see the ways we interpret the presence of "Like" and the absence of "Dislike" buttons.

Comedy As A Feminist Rhetoric, Liz Lemon Style, Risa Polansky Shiman

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Given the stereotypes that come along with traditional feminist activism – She's a feminist. She looks angry, and I can see from here she's not wearing a bra – and the frustration feminists often face as a result, comedy is an entertaining, and therefore presumably palatable, way to expose contemporary feminist issues to broad audiences. But is it effective? A fan of ironic, silly, and sometimes (shhh, don't tell) lewd humor, I'm no stranger to The Looks, which range from “I don't get it" to “You're not as funny as you think you are" to “I am both disgusted and …

Things Are Happening!, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

No abstract provided.

#Definerhetoric, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

No abstract provided.

"I Had An Abortion": A Feminist Analysis Of The Abortion Debate, Elizabeth Fleitz Kuechenmeister

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This article explores the rhetoric surrounding the controversial “I Had an Abortion" t-shirt, sold by Planned Parenthood in 2005-2006. In order to understand the rhetorical impact of the t-shirt, Burkean dramatism is used to identify what terms are added and what terms are overlooked. A dramatism analysis of both pro-choice and pro-life rhetoric is included to position the t-shirt in the abortion debate.

Call For Submissions: Sonic Rhetorics, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

No abstract provided.