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Articles 1 - 23 of 23
Full-Text Articles in Rhetoric
"That’S Not A Meal, Bestie”: Humor, Identity, & Feminized Consumption In “Girl Dinner”., Claire Tudor
"That’S Not A Meal, Bestie”: Humor, Identity, & Feminized Consumption In “Girl Dinner”., Claire Tudor
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines the viral “Girl Dinner” trend as a case study in how gendered consumption, digital identity, and feminist humor intersect in digital spaces. Using “Girl Dinner” as a rhetorical artifact, this thesis explores how women use gendered trends to navigate visibility, labor, and autonomy in online spaces. Through thematic analysis of TikTok content, media coverage, and branded adaptations, the research traces the evolution of the trend from a lighthearted joke to a site of cultural negotiation. This study reveals that while “Girl Dinner” may appear empowering and relatable on the surface, it often reinforces traditional gender expectations under …
Incarcerated Women: Gendered Rhetoric From The Outside And Reality Inside Prison Walls., Taylor Riley Geiser
Incarcerated Women: Gendered Rhetoric From The Outside And Reality Inside Prison Walls., Taylor Riley Geiser
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines how formerly incarcerated women navigate and resist gendered media portrayals through digital platforms, focusing on the “mad” and “bad” woman tropes that shape public perceptions. Drawing on feminist rhetorical theory—particularly Royster and Kirsch’s methodological practices and Ratcliffe’s concept of rhetorical listening—this study combines Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of mainstream headlines with Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) of TikTok content. CDA of media coverage surrounding Lori Vallow Daybell, Casey Anthony, and Andrea Yates reveals how language, imagery, and cultural logics sustain harmful binaries that portray women who commit crimes either as depraved or as excused by madness, obscuring the …
“Long Live Ear X-Tacy!”: An Oral History Study Of Rhetorics Of Nostalgia And Place., Aubrie Warner
“Long Live Ear X-Tacy!”: An Oral History Study Of Rhetorics Of Nostalgia And Place., Aubrie Warner
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This study aims to explore rhetorical placemaking through how people understand and construct narratives around places that no longer exist. In doing so, it examines the relationship between nostalgia and place — how rhetorical construction of place is influenced and/or informed by rhetorics of nostalgia, how our experiences influence our sense of place (past and present), and how we create continuity for ourselves in the construction and maintenance of particular narratives. This study contributes to the emerging field of rhetorics of nostalgia and places it in direct conversation with rhetorics of place and unpacks how these two are more connected …
“Difference In/At The Center" A Transnational Approach For Mobilizing International Multilingual Graduate Writers' Writing Assets During Writing Instruction., Olalekan Adepoju
“Difference In/At The Center" A Transnational Approach For Mobilizing International Multilingual Graduate Writers' Writing Assets During Writing Instruction., Olalekan Adepoju
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This research project presents an empirical exploration of how the writing assets possessed by international multilingual graduate writers impact the theory and pedagogical practices in writing studies, especially regarding the approaches to teaching writing. Extant scholarship in writing studies, especially on second language research/teaching, translingual writing practices, and asset-based writing pedagogy has engaged issues of difference in language, race, culture, as well as funds of knowledge, highlighting the impacts of these differences on the academic success of non-native English speakers in US schools and colleges. My dissertation builds on these trends and highlights the narratives, perceptions, and experiences of international …
The Forest For The Trees: How A Local Arboretum Shapes Rhetoric And Discourse Surrounding Environmentalism., Cooper Day
The Forest For The Trees: How A Local Arboretum Shapes Rhetoric And Discourse Surrounding Environmentalism., Cooper Day
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Environmental communication has been situated as a crisis discipline; however, scholars have recently explored how to shift to include care within the discipline. To be sure, this does not mean the crisis element should be abandoned, but, instead coupled with care so that environmental messages are positive and forward looking. This project contributes to this shift by looking at how green spaces are constructed to deliver messages of environmental care. More specifically, I analyze how Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, located about 30 miles South of Louisville, KY, has been constructed and works to promote environmental care in a variety …
“Do You Think This Is Not Happening?”: Rhetorical Laundering And The Federal Hearings Over Planned Parenthood, Calvin R. Coker
“Do You Think This Is Not Happening?”: Rhetorical Laundering And The Federal Hearings Over Planned Parenthood, Calvin R. Coker
Faculty and Staff Scholarship
This essay offers a rhetorical reading of Congressional hearings investigating the Center for Medical Progress’s (CMP’s) videos falsely accusing Planned Parenthood of selling fetal tissue. Despite the suspect nature of the allegation at the time it was levied, and subsequent investigations rejecting the CMP’s claims, the notion that Planned Parenthood profits from the sale of fetal tissue has persisted alongside accelerated antiabortion jurisprudence and vitriolic rhetoric. This acceleration and persistence may be the result of what I term “rhetorical laundering” wherein suspect evidence is justified as worthy of study in a credible public forum, only to have its treatment in …
Taiwanese Indigenous Representation, Rhetoric Of Resistance, And Heteroglossia In Warriors Of The Rainbow: Seediq Bale., John Yu-Choh Chang
Taiwanese Indigenous Representation, Rhetoric Of Resistance, And Heteroglossia In Warriors Of The Rainbow: Seediq Bale., John Yu-Choh Chang
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation explores the relationship between Taiwanese indigenous narrative and rhetoric, in textual representations of the Seediq people and the 1930 Musha Incident. It explores how the forced colonization of Taiwanese indigenous people affected their identities and cultural representation, and how multi-voiced forms of narrative, storytelling, and meaning-making have rooted in indigenous oral traditions and rituals that counter colonial representations. Across a range of cultural texts, I identify what I call Taiwanese indigenous rhetoric of resistance (TIRR), drawing on Simon J. Ortiz’s theory of indigenous literature and oral traditions as indigenous-nationalist forms of cultural resistance. In addition, I draw on …
Definitions And Depictions Of Rhetorical Practice In Medieval English Fürstenspiegel., Joseph Ethan Blaine Sharp
Definitions And Depictions Of Rhetorical Practice In Medieval English Fürstenspiegel., Joseph Ethan Blaine Sharp
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines how medieval authors defined rhetoric and depicted rhetorical practice in medieval English Fürstenspiegel. It begins by analyzing how the field of medieval rhetorical historiography has overlooked the Fürstenspiegel as a rhetorical genre due to its overt reliance on meta-rhetorical handbook genres as the objects of its analysis. This dissertation challenges traditional narratives that positions medieval rhetoric as a primarily academic discipline divorced from political practice by engaging in horizontal reading practices that examine the broader culture of medieval rhetorical practice alongside the definitions of rhetoric found in medieval English Fürstenspiegel. In so doing, this dissertation …
(De)Legitimizing Genres: Rhetoric And Tactical Institutional Critique., Walker Smith
(De)Legitimizing Genres: Rhetoric And Tactical Institutional Critique., Walker Smith
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation forwards a rhetorical theory of institutions that centers their genre-based communications, redefines institutions in relation to organizations, and contributes to the field’s understanding of how communities collaboratively rewrite entrenched institutionalized practices from the outside, thus reducing the harm that institutions can enact. Using evangelical church policies on marriage as a case study, I answer the following questions: How do historically sedimented institutions, their genres, and their practices rhetorically impose, legitimize, and regulate certain patterns of social life? How does an evangelical Christian church manage to govern the gendered and sexual lives of their members and maintain their power …
It's All Fun And—: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Space In The Pandemic., Erica Von Proctor Lewis
It's All Fun And—: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Space In The Pandemic., Erica Von Proctor Lewis
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This exhibition and document explore spatial rhetoric during the pandemic, utilizing materiality and relational aesthetics to reflect on the different ways in which the public and private are made distinct from one another. In doing so, Lewis addresses new cultural navigations of shared spaces, both digital and corporeal, public and private. In addition, the artist also examines the faulty social and institutional systems that the pandemic brought to light, such as socioeconomic dynamics and voter suppression, while utilizing Kenneth Burke’s concept of the terministic screen. Games are a central theme throughout the exhibition, as they are often coded as “home” …
A Woman’S Optics: Margaret Cavendish, Sensory Mimesis, And Early Modern Rhetorics Of Science, Megan Poole
A Woman’S Optics: Margaret Cavendish, Sensory Mimesis, And Early Modern Rhetorics Of Science, Megan Poole
Faculty and Staff Scholarship
Accounts of the rhetorical tradition in early modern England often focus on the Royal Society of London and the scientific epistemologies and visual pedagogies surrounding technologies like the microscope. One critic of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish, theorized her own optics to counter the increasing exclusivity of the scientific community. An analysis of this woman’s optics reveals how the rhetorical concept of mimesis brought a theory of embodied, material sight to a historical moment in which objectivity was emerging. This critically imaginative analysis thus brings forth an early rhetorics of science in which alternative epistemologies may critique mechanical, experimental processes …
Approaching Trans Debates As Fascistic Sites Of Engagement., Sarah Jump
Approaching Trans Debates As Fascistic Sites Of Engagement., Sarah Jump
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
For the past decade, trans rights issues have been a legal topic of discussion and are still discussed publicly in 2021. This thesis researched how arguments surrounding anti-trans issues were successful in the United States. The arguments surrounding these issues are important to study to see how they pass within society and if traditional rules of argumentation are changing. This thesis proposes that traditional dialectical argument is no longer occurring and has taken a post-dialectical turn. The purpose of this thesis is to describe the kinds of arguments used in these issues and build the case that they are evidence …
Prageru As A Parasite Public., Ryan A Corso-Gonzales
Prageru As A Parasite Public., Ryan A Corso-Gonzales
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines the media corporation PragerU as a parasite public, using the framework provided by Larson and McHendry (2019). Parasitic publics are “reactionary discursive spaces formed residual and institutionalized affectively through the invention, circulation and uptake of demagogic rhetorics” (Larson & McHendry, 2019, p. 517). The purpose of this thesis is to identify and analyze the argumentative tactics used by PragerU in the public sphere. I argue that PragerU utilizes its extensive network to resist counterpublicity and influence the dominant public sphere. This thesis demonstrates the ways in which this PragerU utilizes its unique position in the public sphere …
The Emergent Matter Of Archives : A Rhetorical Investigation Of The Queer Formation Of The Williams-Nichols Archive., Richard Wysocki
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 …
Delivery, Facilitas, And Copia : Job Market Preparation And The Revival Of The Fifth Canon., Joseph Turner
Delivery, Facilitas, And Copia : Job Market Preparation And The Revival Of The Fifth Canon., Joseph Turner
Faculty and Staff Scholarship
This essay argues that English Studies departments should implement training programs in oral delivery strategies for graduate students seeking tenure track employment. A sample a 13-week training program, modeled on elements of classical rhetorical pedagogy, can help students develop and refine stills in oral delivery necessary for academic job interviews.
Uncertain Certainties: An Analysis Of The American Response To The 2014-2016 West African Ebola Epidemic., Kelly Carty
Uncertain Certainties: An Analysis Of The American Response To The 2014-2016 West African Ebola Epidemic., Kelly Carty
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This project examines the construction of scientific facts surrounding the 2014-2016 West African Ebola outbreak as well as the subsequent uptake and transformation of those facts by the United States government. While the Ebolavirus ravaged the communities of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, the incidence of the virus in other countries was very low. Nonetheless, the United States spent $576 million on domestic preparedness and response. This study addresses this mismatch in the context of the reinvigorated interest among rhetoricians into writing and science. Applying and expanding the methodology of Jeanne Fahnestock, this study analyzes Ebola-related statements in scientific articles, …
Pens, Print, And Pixels : Gendered Writing And The Epistolary Genre In Transitional Eras., Keri Elizabeth Mathis
Pens, Print, And Pixels : Gendered Writing And The Epistolary Genre In Transitional Eras., Keri Elizabeth Mathis
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation proposes a retheorization of rhetorical genres, media, and modes, with a particular emphasis on how this interrelationship reinstantiates and/or subverts deeply entrenched power dynamics over time. Current scholarship often depicts genres and media in a one-to-one relationship that obscures the intricate ways rhetorical genres and media rely on one another to enable (or hinder) writers’ participation in particular discourse communities. This project primarily focuses on gendered power and analyzes letters—a traditionally feminized genre—in three distinct time periods marked by media transition. Specifically, I explore ways women employ genre and media affordances together to assume positions of greater authority …
Articulating The New Normal(S) : Mental Disability, Medical Discourse, And Rhetorical Action., Andrew Wesley Holladay
Articulating The New Normal(S) : Mental Disability, Medical Discourse, And Rhetorical Action., Andrew Wesley Holladay
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
“Articulating the New Normal(s): Mental Disability, Medical Discourse, and Rhetorical Action” studies the writing of people diagnosed with autism and post- traumatic stress disorder within online discussion boards related to mental health and outlines their unique rhetorical strategies for interacting with biomedical ideologies of psychiatry and activist discourses. The opening chapter situates this dissertation in relation to previous scholarship in Rhetoric, Disability Studies, and other fields. I also provide a summary of the set of mixed methods I use to gather and analyze my data, including rhetorical analysis, corpus analysis, and qualitative interviews. In Chapter 2, “Medical Terminology and Discourse …
Hard To See Through The Smoke : Remembering The 1912 Hillsville, Virginia Courthouse Shootout., Travis A. Rountree
Hard To See Through The Smoke : Remembering The 1912 Hillsville, Virginia Courthouse Shootout., Travis A. Rountree
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines rhetorical rememberings of the 1912 Hillsville, Virginia courthouse shootout. It begins with an overview of the historical event, then through four chapters focuses on different rememberings that take up the event. Using Burke’s terministic screens, the study presents several lenses through which to view these rememberings. Chapter One presents the national and local newspaper constructions of the shootout in three terministic screens: the violent mountaineer, the gangster, and the uncolonized other. These three screens predate what is now the hillbilly image of the mountaineer. Chapter Two analyzes performative actions of the shootout. The ballads about the event …
Rhetoric And Performing Anger : Proserpina's Gift And Chaucer's Merchant's Tale., Joseph Turner
Rhetoric And Performing Anger : Proserpina's Gift And Chaucer's Merchant's Tale., Joseph Turner
Faculty and Staff Scholarship
Although scholars have historically minimized the relationship between medieval grammatical and rhetorical traditions and Chaucer's poetics, Proserpina's angry speech in the Merchant's Tale represents the intersection of medieval classroom grammar exercises, Geoffrey of Vinsauf's theory of delivery, and poetics. Proserpina's angry speech reveals that her rhetoric is calculated to subvert the masculine power structures that surround her. Such a focus on Chaucer's depiction of women's persuasive tactics helps to highlight Chaucer's deep engagement with rhetoric beginning in the 1380's. Moreover, this investigation asks for increased attention to the overlap between classroom grammatical traditions, rhetorical theory, and medieval poetics.
The Available Means Of Imagination : Personal Narrative, Public Rhetoric, And Circulation., Stephanie D. Weaver
The Available Means Of Imagination : Personal Narrative, Public Rhetoric, And Circulation., Stephanie D. Weaver
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines the digital circulation of personal narratives by non-celebrity individuals that become part of larger public and political debates. I posit the “available means of imagination” to describe the ways that narratives – cultural, fictional, and personal – influence our ability to understand the many facets of a given public debate before tracing the interactions among narrative, emotion, and circulation in a series of case studies using new materialist methods. I argue that emotion plays a key role in structures of participation of social media and in how we subsequently engage with contemporary political issues, especially with regards …
"This Machine Kills Fascists" : The Public Pedagogy Of The American Folk Singer., Harley Ferris
"This Machine Kills Fascists" : The Public Pedagogy Of The American Folk Singer., Harley Ferris
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines the figure of the American folk singer as a public pedagogue engaged in rhetorical action for social change. Through four case studies—Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Ani DiFranco, and Tom Morello—the dissertation examines nearly a century of folk music as a form of activism through these four figures. Each folksinger occupies a unique role in a unique era, requiring each musician to revise the work of their musical forebears to accommodate new cultural and technological environments. Drawing on theories of public pedagogy, rhetorical framing, and media, I argue that an effective use of music in social change depends …
Sir Gawain And The Green Knight And The History Of Medieval Rhetoric., Joseph Turner
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.