Rhetoric Commons^™

The Contextualization Of Myth: Identification Of Myth In The Propagation Of Narrative Across Generational Boundaries, Joseph G. Ponthieux

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis demonstrates the unique correlation between myth and the propagation of narrative across generational boundaries. It argues that myth occurs in the intersection of belief, semiotics, and context, and further enables a way of re-encoding a narrative with a dual contextuality. This dual context preserves a narrative’s literal context while endowing it with a new or modified myth context and affords the audience a selection of choices for how to receive a narrative experienced as myth. To demonstrate this correlation a Myth Context Reception Model is designed for the purpose of identifying ascendent, obscure or emergent myths evident in …

The Communicative Constitution Of Environment: Land, Weather, Climate, Leanna K. Smithberger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My project examines the communicative constitution of environment: how we mediate environment in discursive practice, and arrange chaotic and complex timeplaces into organized relationships of agents and objects which act and are acted upon. Climate scholars across disciplines are calling for a paradigm shift in how we understand, study, inhabit, and relate to Earth’s varied environments. In this dissertation, I demonstrate how communication practices do the work of constituting the environment as we know it, and therefore conclude with the hopeful suggestion that these same practices can be used to do the work of a paradigm shift — that is, …

Mental Illness Diagnosis And The Construction Of Stigma, Katie Lynn Walkup

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how mental health legislation and related policy documents contribute to identification, diagnosis, and stigmatization. Using a mixed methods approach including content and stylometric text analysis with R as a heuristic for close and critical reading, I demonstrate how these documents normalize mental health concerns as a public threat. To do this work, I analyze how the Florida Mental Health Act (Chapter 394) and the Florida Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act (SB 7026) circulate and sustain dominant narratives about mental illness. I trace where these narratives are distributed into Florida school districts’ mandatory mental health …

07. Songs, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes his work as a song writer and publisher: 75 stand-alone songs, approximately 40 booklets of his songs, and 18 books he published with his own songs and those of other artists. There are also approximately 420 song books (336 unique titles) from other publishers, 23 of which contain at least one of Cummings' songs. Information about each of these songs--295 in all--is provided in the User Guide.

All of these songs, along with the relevant front- and backmatter in the books, are posted here as a single PDF. It is nearly 140 MB; to make …

08. Correspondence, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes 39 complete or partial letters to or from Cummings; many of his drafts are typed on the back of his sermon manuscripts. All of the letters are posted here as a single PDF; information about each one is provided in the User Guide.

13. Poems Not By Cummings, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes 26 poems that were among the donated materials but turned out to be definitely or probably not by Cummings. They are posted here as a single PDF; information about each poem, including authorship when available, is provided in the User Guide.

06. Poems, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes approximately 45 stand-alone poems, 9 booklets of poems, and An Earth Wayfarer, a 111-page spiral-bound book. Everything is posted here as a single PDF; information about individual poems, including each selection in the booklets and Earth Wayfarer, is provided in the User Guide.

09. Literary And Bible Training School, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes items pertaining to his time at the Literary and Bible Training School (now Trevecca Nazarene University) in Nashville, Tennessee, from which he graduated in 1909. There are examination papers he wrote on homiletics and theology, along with the catalog for the 1909-10 academic year. All items are posted here as a single PDF; additional information is provided in the User Guide.

04. Radio Addresses, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes 35 addresses delivered over the radio. Most aired on station WMON in Montgomery, West Virginia; a few were broadcast over WLW in Cincinnati. They are posted here as a single PDF, and combined with the sermons in a single tab in the User Guide.

12. Newspaper Articles By And About Cummings And His Family, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes some 120 newspaper clippings by and about Cummings and his family; many of Cummings' pieces are short poems published as Corner Couplets or maxims from "Josh Hayseed." All of the clippings are posted here as a single PDF; additional information is provided in the User Guide.

10. Mccrum Slavonic Training School, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes 2 publications by the McCrum Slavonic Training School in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. They date to 1912, the year Mary Kacmar graduated from the school, and 1918, the year she and Cummings married. They are posted here as a single PDF; additional information is provided in the User Guide.

05. Newspaper Columns, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes 66 columns written for various newspapers. They were published under 4 headlines: "Clergyman Chatter," "Our Weekly Message," "Our Weekly Visit," and "The Parson Writes." In some of the clippings, only the words "Our Weekly" are visible, so we cannot be sure which category they belong to.

All 66 columns are posted here as s single PDF. There are also supplemental files for "Clergyman Chatter," "Our Weekly Message/Visit," and "The Parson Writes."

The columns do not have individual titles, but they often have section headings; for ease of navigation, the first heading in each column is included …

11. Miscellaneous Items, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes 34 miscellaneous items, ranging from his drivers licenses to a document entitled "End Alien Control of the United States." All items are posted here as a single PDF; additional information is provided in the User Guide.

03. Sermons, Melville Homer Cummings, Robert H. Ellison

Cummings, Melville Homer, 1890-1978

The Cummings collection includes approximately 100 typed and handwritten sermons, sermons printed or summarized in the newspaper, and some "sermons in rhyme." The sermons and radio addresses have been combined in a single tab in the User Guide.

The master PDF of the sermons is nearly 150MB in size; to make things somewhat more manageable, the contents of each folder in the physical collection have been upload as supplemental files.

Intimate Rhetorics Of Networked Motherhood, Katie Nelson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Fundamentally pregnant bodies are understood, similarly to women’s bodies, as necessitating discipline. However, new networked forums have emerged where pregnancy is understood as affirming and having the capacity to challenge a silenced subject position. Using three case studies, the #IHadAMiscarriage Instagram page, the #TakeBackPostpartum Instagram page, and mediatized discourses surrounding Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy, this dissertation writes intimate publicity into these mediatized transgressions of pregnancy and postpartum. I argue discourses about pregnancy and postpartum in these networked spaces constitute intimate publics through the cultivation of shared affected investments and divestments in embodied experiences. These investments in the embodied experiences are crafted …

"Will God Forgive Us?": Christianity And The Climate Crisis In Auteur Cinema, Margaret Alice Parson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Climate change is an unavoidable and real catastrophic threat to the future of Planet Earth. This dissertation is interested in how contemporary auteur cinema draws on Christian forms to give expression to the ineffability of environmental collapse. In this rhetorical generic criticism, I discuss three recent auteur films: First Reformed (2017, directed by Paul Schrader), Interstellar (2014, directed by Christopher Nolan), and mother! (2017, directed by Darren Aronofsky). In order to best rhetorically analyze these films, I perform a generic criticism which utilizes aspects of psychoanalysis and affect theory as per the work of Gunn. Each film is …

The Rhetoric Of Spirituality, Gender, And The Environment In The Wicker Man (1973) And Midsommar (2019), Emma Frances Bloomfield

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

The Wicker Man (1973) and Midsommar (2019) are horror films that address dominant ideologies including the patriarchy, anthropocentrism, and Christianity. Both films have a nature-connected cult that sacrifices for the community and performs rituals informed by pagan eco-spirituality. I perform an ecofeminist rhetorical criticism to analyze how, despite these shared themes, spiritual, gender, and environmental messages differ between the two films. In The Wicker Man, the audience is invited to sympathize with Neil’s character, his Christianity, and his individualistic masculinity as he is sacrificed in the cult’s harvest ritual. Alternatively, the main character in Midsommar, Dani, gets revenge …

Investigating Resilience Through The Rhetoric Of The Revolution, Leah Danielson

Conspectus Borealis

In this paper, I examine the relationship between Cuba's core values and the rhetoric used by revolutionary leaders. To do so, I frame my paper around two critical questions; how was it that revolutionary leaders created such a deep loyalty to their cause, and in what ways has that loyalty continued today? As such, I will investigate how the rhetorical choices exemplified in linguistic, visual, and other ethnographic observations, collected in a trip to Cuba in 2020, represent a Cuban society that continues these revolutionary characteristics as is carried out through themes of community identity and belongingness, a desire to …

Generic Expectations In First Year Writing: Teaching Metadiscoursal Reflection And Revision Strategies For Increased Generic Uptake Of Academic Writing, Kaelah Rose Scheff

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how student uptake of academic genres in First Year Writing (FYW) are challenged by the concept of writing expectations. Previous research on uptake has focused on uptake between genres with little attention to the role of writing expectations on the event of uptake or how to translate these expectations to students pedagogically. Identifying pedagogical uptake strategies for students to use across academic genres provides instructors with insight into student challenges in FYW and strategies for students to understand their own writing on a metacognitive level by assessing writing expectations. My thesis investigates uptake of academic writing in …

Alchemical Word-Magic In 'The Winter’S Tale', Rana Banna

Accessus

Within alchemical writing there is both a religious and scientific register in simultaneous coexistence. The linguistic symbols of alchemy are themselves to be understood as chemical matter embedded in the world by divine providence: a principle manifest in the doctrine of signatures. The natural world offers a complex but ultimately resolvable hermeneutic challenge to the natural scientist, whose job it becomes to be a reader of the book of nature wherein the Creator has inscribed a legible, if often allusive, meaning and purpose. This paper will proceed to explore how early modern alchemical-thinking impacted attitudes towards language and meaning …

A Genre Analysis Of National Endowment For The Humanities Nonprofit-Project Grant Proposals, Jeffrey M. Lapointe

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

To reveal how writers can craft effective nonprofit grant proposals the study examined proposal narratives for which the U.S. National Endowment For The Humanities (NEH) had awarded financial grants to nonprofit organizations. The study identified the rhetorical moves that the various proposal authors had made as steps toward persuading NEH to award grants.

Immigrants In Writing, Roshny Maria Roy

Theses and Dissertations

Through this autoethnography, I intend to explore and understand how migration impacted and continues to impact my identity along with the languages and literacies I speak, write, and practice. How does the normalized devaluing and valuing of literacies, languages, cultures, and in extension identities play out in the process of migration? The devaluation of languages and cultures is in fact the devaluation of those who identify with them; they are left to “feel undervalued” or “not good enough” in the languages they speak, cultures they identify with, and literacies they practice. To be “good enough” or valued, they have to …

Julia Spokane's Portfolio, Julia Spokane

Honors College Portfolios

This portfolio details my work as a McAnulty College of Liberal Arts Honors College student at Duquesne University majoring in Rhetoric Communication with a Pre-Law Certificate. My trajectory as a pre-law student follows the 3/3 program: graduating in three years, achieving a Bachelor of Arts degree, then acceptance into the Duquesne University School of Law for an additional three years resulting in a Juris Doctor degree.

War Of Words: A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Military's Sexual Assault Prevention Posters, Nancy Thurman Clemens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Joining the expanding discourse surrounding language and its effects, specifically regarding the performance of gender in a hypermasculine environment, this dissertation offers a rhetorical analysis of the United States Department of Defense's sexual assault prevention and response training materials, particularly posters created between 2009 and 2012. This dissertation examines the context of sexual harassment and assault within the military from the late 1970s until the mid-2000s. Presenting scandals that led up to the development of the Department's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) program, I give a brief history of the establishment and scope of responsibility for the program in …

Lebanese Colonial Hang-Ups: Anti-Blackness And The Kafala System In Lebanon, Sarah Gonzalez Noveiri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lebanon’s colonial legacy has not only influenced the legal and political systems which operate in the country today. As I hope to demonstrate in this dissertation, the strength and cementation of these systems can be seen as a consequence of negotiations of identity, citizenship and nation state that took place during the Ottoman Empire and French colonial rule. The Kafala is one of such systems that developed through the Ottoman Empire and against the backdrop of European colonization. Discourses of race, citizenship, gender and sexuality that were being negotiated by colonial citizens and colonial powers, served to cement the racialized …

The Sound Of Identity: Audios And Hashtags As Nexuses Of Practice On Tiktok, Lindsey Wright

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study investigates TikTok audios and hashtags through the lens of digital literacy studies, using Ron Scollon's nexus of practice as a theoretical framework. The researcher sought to investigate literacy practices on TikTok, such as how lurkers and posters interact with the app in ways that both define and are defined by their individual identities. Relative to other social media platforms, there is a dearth of research on TikTok. This study contributes to the gap while also building off the findings of Kaye et al., who investigated authorship and (mis)attribution on the app, and Sachs et al.'s claim that Goffman's …

The "Information Pandemic": Technical Communication And False Information On Social Media In The Age Of Covid-19, Mia M. Stephens

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The goal of this thesis is to explore the various forms of rhetoric utilized in digital communities pertaining to COVID-19. The body of this thesis synthesizes social media data with original human subjects research, supplemented by a review of the literature surrounding digital communication. The analysis of these freestanding communities highlights the differences in communication throughout these spaces, as well as discusses their differences in reaction to disordered information. Through rhetorical analysis of the language employed by COVID-19 denialist communities on Twitter and a review of the experiences of COVID-19 “long-haulers” in COVID-19 related online communities (such as Facebook and …

Strategic Misrepresentation Or Something More Sinister? Deception In George W. Bush's War Rhetoric On Iraq, Cassandra D. Hightower

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Presidential war rhetoric is an incredibly complex and far-reaching genre of political rhetoric, and the consequences of such rhetoric can often lead to mass destruction and death. Based on the continuously changing rules of warfare and the increased use of deception in political communication, this study aimed to analyze this usage of deception more closely in presidential war rhetoric. This project examined the case study of George W. Bush’s war rhetoric on the Iraq War f 2003 to determine if the deception he used fits the “strategic misrepresentation” characteristic that Campbell and Jamieson identified in their landmark 2008 book, Presidents …

The Presidential Function: An American Public Performed Through The Rhetoric Of Catastrophe, Maxwell Whisnant

English Honors Papers

In this thesis, I explore the ways in which rhetoric is used as a tool within the American presidency. I also study how the concept of the heroic president and gender affect how US presidents communicate with the American people. I then examine the very story of the United States and how words can build publics and counterpublics while remaining distant from platitudes. Finally, I define the presidential function and the ways in which US presidents are able to use the power of definition to shift focus away from massive tragedies.

Death, Discipline, And The Dead: Biopolitical Rhetoric In Early Modern English Texts, Leslie Raybuck Malland

Theses and Dissertations--English

Death, Discipline, and the Dead: Biopolitical Rhetoric in Early Modern English Texts locates allusions to the biopolitical culture of Early Modern England within popular English texts. Through my examination of the period’s fascination with death—public executions, newly-authorized anatomies—and the ways in which death, as well as the treatment of the dead, was authorized by and supported the ideological aims of the state, my research identifies how those themes carry over into the most popular works of the day, reviewing instances of both verbal and nonverbal rhetoric across genres to find allusions to biopower — or, state control of the biological. …