Rhetoric Commons^™

"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 …

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 …

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 …

A Secret Cunning In The Fens: Subversive Female Identity And The Plight Of Grendel's Mother, Candice Rae Sequine Roark

Theses Digitization Project

Readings built upon the foundation of traditional gender studies and structural binaries have consistently influenced how scholars understand female identity in Early Medieval Germanic texts. This thesis endeavors to dismantle these traditional readings and consider ways in which female identity can be reexamined wihin a post-structural framework.

Silence And Self-Making: Black Lung Rhetoric And The Ken Hechler Letters, Jennifer De Pompei

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis combines history, rhetoric, and feminist identity studies to discuss the subject of black lung disease and the Appalachian coal miner. The first chapter examines the "evolution of mentalities" in historical and popular discourse surrounding the miner, which reflects James V. Catano's subversive form of the self-making identity in Ragged Dicks. The second chapter uses the feminist theory of silence as a form of control and power to understand the absence of black lung disease from the literature of coal. The final chapter is a case study of the correspondence between Congressional Representative Ken Hechler of West Virginia and …

Gender And Race, Online Communities, And Composition Classrooms, Jill Anne Morris

Wayne State University Dissertations

As the culmination of a two-year long Internet ethnographic study of three separate sites, I use examples of women and minorities fighting against discrimination online to explore the power structures inherent to networks and how these might affect classroom practice. I will show how our ordinary assumptions in rhetoric and composition as well as computers and writing about the necessity of safe spaces in fostering communication about gender and race and safety for people of color and women online might actually be harming the rhetorical effectiveness of these writings. To focus this discussion, I will develop three case studies and …

Recognition Of The Transgender Self: An Examination Of The Apologia Of The 'Pregnant Man', Erika Marie Thomas

Wayne State University Dissertations

In 2008, Thomas Beatie, a legally recognized male, transgender man, became pregnant with his first child and approached the American mass media to tell his story and defend his decisions. Shortly thereafter, the public fought against his image, attempting to normalize his body and gender. Beatie's unique gender blurring, his choice for exposure and social recognition, and the resulting public controversy surrounding the incident makes for an important test case to understand Beatie's discursive and visual strategies directed toward the American public.

This study, a rhetorical examination of the discourse and iconic visual image used by Beatie while his pregnant …

The Inadvertent Alliance Of Anthony Comstock And Margaret Sanger: Abortion, Freedom, And Class In Modern America, Karen Weingarten

Publications and Research

This article investigates how moral-reformer Anthony Comstock, who helped outlaw the practice of birth control and to have abortion criminalized, and Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and birth-control activist, advanced their causes through the discourse of freedom and self-control. While Comstock’s and Sanger’s works are often seen in opposition, this article questions that positioning by pointing out how they both lobbied against accessible abortion using similar tactics. Finally, this article demonstrates how Comstock and Sanger, through different means, worked to present abortion as a depraved practice that would lead to the demise of American society. Presenting Comstock and Sanger …

Oppressed, Empowered, Compatriot Woman: Rawa's Online Construction Of Gendered Ideographs, Heather L. Floyd

English Theses & Dissertations

In this paper, I define the ideograph and explain its central role in the strategic communication of two very different entities invested in the advancement of women' sights in Afghanistan: the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an Afghan feminist organization, and the Bush Administration, during the early years of the war in Afghanistan. I employ the rhetorical conceptions of Lloyd Bitzer (1966) and Richard Vatz (1999) to explore the Bush Administration's and RAWA's intentions by analyzing textual and visual ideographs in the context of the rhetorical situation.

In its mission and goals, RAWA repeatedly champions women as …

Rival Radical Feminists--Frances Willard And Ida B. Wells: The Rhetorical Slugfest Of Two Nineteenth-Century Queen Bees Over Lynching, Anita August

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Rival Radical Feminists considers the role of gender and race as master status determining traits and examines them as influential social markers of identity and representation within a nineteenth-century feminist social movement (FSM)--the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Rival Radical Feminists examines how, within a FSM where gender issues understandably govern the political narrative that the philosophical core of the movement shifts into separate and competing spheres when gender issues intersect with racial prejudice? Specifically, Rival Radical Feminists argues that when both political actors are female, with one circumscribed politically by her gender, like Willard, and the other by both …

The Materiality Of The Female In Shirley Jackson's Short Fiction, Lydia Marie Pearson

Theses Digitization Project

Shirley Jackson's fiction continues to be placed within the gothic horror genre because of its supernatural and horror images. I contend the major focus of her work is her critique of the social norms constructed for women by an archaic and inauthentic patriarchial system of rules and domestic expectation for women that result in madness for the resisting female.

Typed Document: Classroom Notes, Edna Louise Saffy

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

Miscellaneous class notes August 28- September 27, 2007.

Fin De Siecle 3.0: Cybernetic Anxieties In Posthuman Science Fiction, Jessica L. Dambruch

English Theses & Dissertations

The examination of technological metaphors as pervasive descriptive structures sustained in the genre of science fiction is most apparent in an analysis of the dialogue between posthuman discourse and science fiction. The literary posthuman, jointly derived from a rich history of socio-cultural anxieties of embodiment and identity dating back to Victorian Gothic literatures, is most recently manifest within the sphere of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk fiction of the late 20th century. A third wave feminist analysis of posthuman technological metaphors is valuable for its potential to apprehend essentialist ideological constructions of gendered identity within science fiction which N. Katherine Hayles and …

Threatening Bodies Resisting Containment: Enemy Combatants, War Protestors And Same-Sex Couples, Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo, Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

The U.S.-launched "War on Terror" has been a major driving force in political discourses during the last few years, including presidential discourse. Since September 11, 2001, presidential rhetoric has systematically entangled international efforts, such as "the War on Terror" and the War in Iraq, with domestic issues, such as same-sex marriages and civil unions. In so doing, international and domestic threats have been effectively merged into one, and in the process, specific bodies have been constructed as "terrorist" agents in need of strict containment (for example, enemy combatant bodies, war protestor bodies, and the bodies of same-sex couples). This paper …

An Inquiry Into Discourse Choices As Indicators Of Gender Attitudes In A Non-Profit Conservative Christian Business, Dawn Marie Kruger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is an inquiry into the discourse styles of men and women who work together in a conservative Protestant Christian business. Many conservative Protestant Christian churches teach that the Bible forbids women from holding positions of authority over men. Yet in the communications department of this particular business, women fill the top three management positions, supervising a mixed-gender staff of 15. Research has shown that men and women subconsciously use language markers that indicate personal attitudes toward the same and the opposite genders. This research project draws on that information while it analyzes the oral and electronic discourse of …

The Power Of Voice: Cultural Silencing And The Supernatural In Women's Stories: Allende's The House Of The Spirits, Kingston's The Woman Warrior, And Morrison's Beloved, Katie Suzanne Skrove

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis focuses on a study of the female voice and silencing as well as on the use of the supernatural in selected works of literature from three different cultures: Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, and Toni Morrison's Beloved.

African-American Life Writing: Harriet Jacobs And Bell Hooks, Luo Yi

Masters Theses

Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and bell hooks' Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood share a common concern with emancipation and employ complementary rhetorical strategies. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl presents Harriet Jacobs' journey of personal self-discovery through various relationships with others, and her personal narrative finally serves the larger goal of emancipation for her people. Jacobs' narrative is full of other voices, or personae. Even the narrator, Linda Brent, is pseudonymous, or "other," in this sense. Jacobs invokes these personae in her autobiography; she explores her experiences as a web of …

Hitchcock's "Rebecca": A Rhetorical Study Of Female Stereotyping, Elizabeth Irene Langenfeld

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

"They Say She Is Veiled": A Rhetorical Analysis Of Judy Grahn's Poetry, Damaris Hawkins

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

Typed Document: Class Meeting Mcc 5935, Edna Louise Saffy

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

Class notes for MCC 5935, January 13, 1988.

Typed Document: Course Requirements, Edna Louise Saffy

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

A description of the requirement for completion of of course EDU 502.