Rhetoric and Composition Commons^™

Anxiety And The Newly Returned Adult Student, Michelle Navarre Cleary

School of Continuing and Professional Studies Faculty and Staff Works

Based on interviews with students who had recently returned to school, this essay demonstrates the need for, challenges of, and ways to respond to the writing anxiety many adults bring with them back to school.

The Initiation Of Growth-Focused Relationships Involving Healthy Accountability At The Carbondale Church Of Christ, Stephen Shaffer

Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations

After several years of transition, the Carbondale Church of Christ is in the early stages of becoming a spiritual growth-focused community. However, the emerging growth community appears to reflect the prevailing cultural assumptions that growth is a personal, private, and an individual task. To shape this emergent growth culture, this project initiated a group of congregational opinion leaders, organized in pairs, into the practice of growth-focused relationships involving healthy accountability. The initiation involved a theological orientation followed by a four-week healthy accountability praxis.

The theological framework of the project involved three main aspects. First, the project used the body image …

Mother Knows Best: The Rhetorical Persona Of Michelle Obama And The "Let's Move" Campaign, Monika Bertaki

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Some first ladies are often condemned for being too involved with the presidents' power in politics while other first ladies find themselves condemned for the lack of involvement. First ladies, it seems, are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Consequently, Michelle Obama faces rhetorical problems that in some respects are similar to those of previous first ladies and in other respects are quite different. Along with the criticisms encountered by previous presidential wives, Obama faces the stereotypes African American women have endured since the inception of the nation. Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign serves as a rhetorical …

August 28, 1963: Building Community Through Collective Discourse, Jennifer Nestelberger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The August 28, 1963 March on Washington is often remembered primarily for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, which serves as the pinnacle of civil rights movement oratory. This thesis, in contrast, examines speeches of the leaders of the "Big Six" organizations that preceded King's well-known words in order to shed light on the complexities of the movement and the outcomes that can result from meaningful dissent. Occurring at a time of division, the March emerged as a symbol of hope for change in the nation. The addresses of the day reflected this hope and helped build …

Out Of The Heart Springs The Communication Of Leadership, Jodi A. Kohut

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This study is based on the philosophical and biblical notions that words are a sacred gift from God and should be used with care. This study is concerned with how a leader uses these words in the organizational context. Edification is presented as a performative speech act by connecting its intention, “to build” to the rhetorical functions of the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Using Sullivan’s (1988) foundation for extending these language functions to the organizational context, the author proposes that edifying language has functions across three dimensions: 1.) Perlocutionary, subordinate building properties 2.) Illocutionary, relationship building properties and 3.) …

The Racial Rhetoric Of Cuteness As Decorative Decorum, Nicole Mcfarlane

All Dissertations

This work looks at the trope of cuteness as a means of investigating the topological phenomena of race and public space, particularly in regards to African American rhetorical modes of visual and spatial practice. By introducing a sociological coinage known as the 'teddy-bear effect,' this work explores how racialized expressions of cuteness give off the impression of a demurring civility surrounding the social expectations associated with the cultural norms of gender and class. As a preferred characteristic of information design and strategically deployed for the tactic of racialized passings in the face of increasingly regulated forms of 'post-racial' gate-keeping and …

The Effects Of Service-Learning On Student Writing And Research, Kimberly Anne Pierce

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Several researchers have investigated the outcomes achieved by service-learning; however, the primary focus of many of these studies is on student engagement or the development of civic outcomes. Edward Zlotkowski and Paul Feigenbaum have argued that researchers should look beyond these benefits to discover how service-learning might enhance course work and academic goals. Despite the calls for further research, studies investigating the academic outcomes of service-learning are limited, and those focused on writing outcomes are fewer still. This study, building off the concerns of Zlotkowski and Feigenbaum and utilizing student interviews and artifact analysis, investigates how service-learning affects student writing …

Building A Dream, Jenny Nestelberger

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

The August 28, 1963 March on Washington is often remembered primarily for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which serves as the pinnacle of civil rights movement oratory. This thesis, in contrast, examines speeches of the leaders of the “Big Six” organizations that preceded King’s well-known words in order to shed light on the complexities of the movement and the outcomes that can result from meaningful dissent. Occurring at a time of division, the March emerged as a symbol of hope for change in the nation. The addresses of the day reflected this hope and helped build …

Learning To Teach Argumentative Historical Writing By Analyzing Student Work, Chauncey Monte-Sano, Susan De La Paz, Mark Felton, Roderick Carey, Kelly Worland, Laura Yee

Faculty Publications

History education researchers have called for an emphasis on historical thinking in K-12 classrooms, for its authenticity in representing the discipline, for its potential to cultivate the critical thinking necessary to an informed citizenry, and for its relationship to advanced adolescent reading and writing skills (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Moje, 2008; Wineburg, 2001). Yet, such an emphasis requires that teachers understand the discipline and its structure, as well as the ways of thinking, reading, and writing that are its foundation. Although many regard history as the study of fixed information (VanSledright, 2008), teaching historical thinking emphasizes constructing arguments about the …

Cooking School, Allison Carr

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

As a writer and educator, I'm interested in the parts of our creative processes that aren't necessarily recognized as integral or valuable --the cleaning, cooking, organizing, exercising, screwing around on the internet... All the stuff we do around creation. I created this video, which splices together a double-blind interview between myself and my mother, to show how two totally different people (a scholar and a chef) talk about their creative processes. My contention is that studying the processes of people who do things OTHER than what we do can lend some insight into how we might think about or go …

A Rhetoric Of Bees: A Case Study Of Emergent Community Building Practices Within An Mmo Rule Set, Ben Mccorkle, Matt Howard

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This web text explores the various ways in which an online community of gamers builds and maintains its sense of community, including the production of game-related propaganda, a wiki account of the group's history, and an unconventional approach to game play.

Welcome To Issue 7 And The New Site! 3-2-1-Contact!, Harlot Editors

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Congratulations! You’ve made the best decision of your life and have chosen to visit Harlot on a very special day. On this day we can’t guarantee all your dreams will come true, but some of your mildest dreams about rhetoric and seeing the world a little bit differently will. With this, our seventh issue, we launch you into the rhedesign, the rhestructuring, and the rheimagining of Harlot.

Super Hardcore Subversion, Rob Pickering

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

Geneviéve Goulet is virtually unknown, but her alter ego, LuFisto "the Super Hardcore Anime," is renowned to professional wrestling fans in Canada, Japan, and Mexico as a competitor who will face all challengers, regardless of gender. This resolve, along with her agency over how her image is distributed to the public, creates Goulet as a positive female role-model in the hegemonics of her chosen industry. I am a fat, twice-divorced male born and living in the American Midwest, so of course I'm a wrestling fan, but in spite of that, there is room in approaching wrestling for intellectual and feminist …

(Un)Covering The Story Of Judeo-Spanish: A Personal Exploration Of Language On The Margins, Lisya Seloni

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

In this reflective story of my family rhetoric, I describe the use of a small language, Ladino (Judeoespanyol--also known as Jewish-Spanish) in Istanbul, a cosmopolitan city of around 12 million people. I argue that languages and rhetoric used in families are more than a set of linguistic systems that can be readily passed on from one generation to another. In fact, they are a set of cultural symbols, ethnic representations, and ways of acting in the world, which help the family members create safe spaces, build identities and mark group membership. Through narrating the story of the use of Ladino …

Putting Words On Paper: A Technoautobiography, Andrew Treneer Pitman

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

This project was originally created for a class called "Multimedia Authoring," which is sort of a whirlwind tour through graphic design, web design, and digital filmmaking from both a practical and theoretical perspective. Although the class as a whole is inherently very optimistic about new technologies, because it teaches students how to understand the exciting rhetorical possibilities afforded by them, I wanted to examine a specific case where I had found technological progress to be problematic. This piece explores my personal history with technologies that enable writing.

The Electrate Blues, Pearce Durst

Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion

The following piece articulates a connection between blues music and electronic literacy. I visualize this connection by harmonizing the three dominant chords of the blues (one-four-five) with the three dominant modes of electronic literacy (audio-text-images). The content on each page contextualizes this relationship between music and electronic literacy both historically and personally. The inspiration for this work derives from connections I began to note while simultaneously learning how to play guitar and teach a class on multimedia authoring.

Call For Submissions, Jonathan Bush

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Call for submissions

Competency Vs. Achievement: Why Connections Are So Important In Writing Teacher Education, Kristen Turner

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article focuses on the importance of community in writing teacher education, focusing on the role of the National Writing Project in teacher development.

Promising Connections: Uniting Writing Teachers, Elizabeth Brockman, Ken Lindblom

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article considers work that has brought writing teacher educators together in professional, social, and academic forums and looks towards the future of Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education.

Teaching Writing Together: Joining Stories, Joining Voices, Kirk Branch, Lisa Eckert

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article considers the relationships and common bonds that helps composition specialists and English educators find opportunities for mutually supportive professional relationships and collaboration.

The Future Of Writing Teacher Education, Kia Jane Richmond, M. Kilian Mccurrie

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article provides background for the creation of the journal and suggestions for future submissions and directions.

Opening Editorial: The Next Step In A Disciplinary Journey, Jonathan Bush

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

The opening editorial provides context for the journal.

Writing Teacher Education: Past And Present, Michelle Tremmel, Robert Tremmel

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article provides an overview of some of the recent developments in writing teacher education and considers how the journal can add to this community,.

Inaugural Issue (Spring 2012): Full Issue

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

The inaugural issue of Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education includes invited articles by key figures within writing teacher education.

From A Rodent To A Rhetorician: An Ideological Analysis Of George Alexander Kennedy's Comparative Rhetoric, James Begley

Masters Theses

George Alexander Kennedy, a professor of classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has given birth to a new understanding of rhetorical studies: he argues for the evolution of rhetoric from animals to humans. Using Sonja Foss's methodology of "ideological criticism," this thesis examined Kennedy's case as presented in his book, Comparative Rhetoric: an Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. This study discovered that the book was heavily influenced by a secular, pro-evolutionary ideology which dually contributed to its selective use of scientific evidences and production of inconsistent arguments. Evaluated on the basis of Biblical principles, this thesis concluded …

You Sir Are A Fine Young Gentleman. Thank You, My Lady: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Eighteenth Century Conversations Regarding Gentility And Gender, Kati Overbey

Masters Theses

This study rhetorically analyzed the eighteenth century work of Richard Steele and Joseph Addison's The Spectator and Eliza Haywood's The Female Spectator using Kathleen Turner's framework for rhetorical history as social criticism integrating text and context. Ten essays from The Spectator as well as ten essays from The Female Spectator were selected based on content and subject matter regarding manners and gentility. When Turner's framework for analysis was applied to the essays, defining characteristics of gentility were revealed. A presentation of the results of the textual and contextual analysis of these twenty selected essays is provided. An analysis of the …

Thirdspace Professional Development As Effective Response To The Contested Spaces Of Computers And Writing, Jason L. Mcintosh

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In the physical spaces of writing classrooms and the conceptual spaces of writing practice and pedagogy, knowledge about computers is constructed by many individuals, groups, and institutions. Each has a stake in defining what computers mean for education and the role computers should play in the everyday life schools. Some of these stakeholders are immediate members of our school communities, such as students, teachers, administrators, and technology support staff. Some are not, such as politicians, researchers, and computer manufacturers. The effect of these often competing stakeholders is one of contested space. Writing teachers encounter contested space when we decide to …

Woman At The Top: Rhetoric, Politics, And Feminism In The Texts And Life Of Annie Smith Peck, Hannah Scialdone-Kimberly

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this focuses on the autobiographical rhetoric and public identity of Annie Smith Peck, a scholar, mountain climber and woman rhetor from the turn of the century. My qualitative case study of Peck examines how she worked as a woman rhetor to create a popular identity for herself in both mountain climbing and scholarship. I also focus on how Peck worked to identify herself with her audience; here, I use Burke's concept of "identification," as a way of adding to (rather than substituting for) traditional rhetoric. My project brings new findings in that I examine data on Peck …

Sifting The Commonplace: Topoi And The Grounds For Argument In Classical And Modern Rhetoric, Daniel Verlo Cutshaw

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is a reminder that how we consider reasoning to work and its end is very much bound up with how we think about people, what they are, what they can be, and how they do and should live together. Part of the end of the human being is to understand, to understand the Good or God and thus understand herself and her relation to others and her obligation to others; this is something we see in Aristotle's somewhat-spiritual understanding of Ethics and the Human Being. Focusing on reasoning (and its connection to being) in general, instead of accenting …

Sir Gawain And The Green Knight And The History Of Medieval Rhetoric., Joseph Turner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

During the Middle Ages, rhetoric and literature were thoroughly intertwined, whereas current notions of disciplinarity, in which literature and rhetoric are constructed as separate traditions, muddy our understanding of medieval practice. This essay reads Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an anonymous fourteenth-century poem, as engaged in a Ciceronian debate over the ramifications of legislative rhetoric on civic decision-making. Because of the paucity of information on medieval rhetorical practice, it concludes, literature is a resource that illuminates this neglected and misunderstood historical period.