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Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons™
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Articles 1 - 25 of 25
Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies
Hozier, Tiktok, And Sapphic Rhetoric, Sophia Marie Kovalcik
Hozier, Tiktok, And Sapphic Rhetoric, Sophia Marie Kovalcik
English Theses & Dissertations
Through the process of social circulation and critical imagination, Sappho’s poetry, which maintains rhetoric that women, nature, and love are related to ritual and feminine divinity, intersects with queer digital rhetoric. Via discussion of feminist spirituality rhetoric, Marie Cartier’s lesbian theology, and rhetorical and literary analysis of Sappho’s lyrical fragments, I explore her Ancient Greek mythological, cultural aesthetics. I then connect sapphic rhetoric to two contemporary artifacts that represent or influence contemporary feminist, digital, and queer identities: the lyrics of the Irish musician Andrew Hozier-Byrne, known as Hozier and TikTok comment sections surrounding Hozier’s music and concert clips.
Queer Crises: Movements From Queerness And Feelings Of White Religion In The United States, Austin Williams Miller
Queer Crises: Movements From Queerness And Feelings Of White Religion In The United States, Austin Williams Miller
Communication ETDs
Anchored by contemporary crises surrounding queer and trans people in the United States, I employ movements from queerness within an affective queer phenomenological framework to understand how arrangements of “white religion” (Schaefer, 2015, p. 63), a process whereby U.S. American Christian forms escape ideology into religious affective economies in the United States, relegate queer people “to the background… to sustain a certain direction” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 31). I assemble a queer rhetorical context analyzing white religious space in documentary film, secular sexual regulation through contemporary U.S. legal contexts around marriage, and settler colonial Christian nationalist political imaginations to critique how …
"Ok, Groomer" :(Post) Truth Rhetoric And Transphobia, Adit R. Selvaraj
"Ok, Groomer" :(Post) Truth Rhetoric And Transphobia, Adit R. Selvaraj
All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations
Paying attention to anti-LGBTQ rhetoric circulating on social media in Fall 2022, this thesis situates political rhetoric on Twitter, by analyzing the use of the hashtag #okgroomer. This hashtag, a corruption of the popular phrase “ok, boomer,” has been used to show contempt on social media by equating left-wing ideologies to pedophilia. Informed by gender critical theory, this work espouses the idea that #okgroomer is constructed as a post-truth ideal aided by the mythos that queer people are dangerous to children. To study #okgroomer, this thesis employs a critical technical discourse analysis informed by ecological scholarship to a case study …
Black Female Athletes’ Use Of Social Media For Activism: An Intersectional And Cyberfeminist Analysis Of U.S. Hammer-Thrower, Gwen Berry's 2019 And 2021 Podium Protests, Ariel Newell
Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations
Much attention has been paid to Black male athlete activism both historically and in the contemporary movement for black lives. Black female athletes have also made historic contributions as activists, and they continue to do so. However, Black female athlete activism has not always been acknowledged or heard. This is a problem, as Black women in American sports and society face overlapping racial and gender inequities and injustices that distinctly marginalize and oppress them. However, some Black female athlete activists (BFAAs) have begun using social media to challenge media narratives about themselves, to redefine what it means to be a …
Sexual Harassment As A Narrative Contest, Christine Vossler
Sexual Harassment As A Narrative Contest, Christine Vossler
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines how stories shape both the perpetration of sexual harassment and the experiences of victims during and after sexual harassment. During and after the experience of sexual harassment, a narrative contest transpires between the harasser, victim, and others who contribute to the contest by engaging in the formal and informal conversations that follow known experiences of harassment in the workplace. I analyze 22 public statements, interviews, and investigative reports, including statements from men accused of sexual harassment, women who were sexually harassed, and bystanders. A narrative framework, including concepts of narrative believability and story credibility, is used to …
Because Potato, Candice Evers
Because Potato, Candice Evers
MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture
This thesis project explores the phenomenological qualities of the internet; asking, since the internet is difficult to grasp, what other modes of investigation might we have available? Using an investigative framework set forth by Jack Halberstam, this thesis declines to come to knowledge solely through understanding the formal, the structural, the highly visible and mainstream. The literature that I have gathered provides a range of modes for interrogating the simultaneously central and inconsequential subject of my thesis itself: the potato. Juxtaposing the physical, political and material conditions of the potato the internet’s least academic mode of knowing: the meme. Analyzing …
Receiving A Queen: A Queer And Trans Feminist Classical Reception Rhetorical Historiography Of Elagabalus, Thomas William Passwater
Receiving A Queen: A Queer And Trans Feminist Classical Reception Rhetorical Historiography Of Elagabalus, Thomas William Passwater
Dissertations - ALL
This dissertation studies representations of Elagabalus, the sovereign of Rome who ruled between 218–222ce, after her assassination to examine how depictions and historical accounts of Elagabalus's life make rhetorical decisions about Elagabalus's identity and being that can foreground the composer's relationship to history and the function of history as a rhetorical force. Thus, this project, through studying Elagabalus's composers, raises questions about the nature of figure studies and history. The project draws on trans, queer, and feminist theories and rhetorics which help highlight the contingent and conflicting nature of Elagabalus's identities across representations without settling them into a singular narrative …
The Future Is Full Of Monsters: Queer Survival One Click At A Twine, 'Aolani N. Robinson
The Future Is Full Of Monsters: Queer Survival One Click At A Twine, 'Aolani N. Robinson
All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations
Spurred by a desire to explore queer rhetoric through interactive forms of media, this project analyzed the game-making program Twine to uncover how independent queer creators use the tool to explore queer survival against time, capitalism, and constrained identities. A more accessible platform than other game-making tools, Twine’s unique interactivity puts the ability to make interactive games and stories into the hands of indie marginalized creators who are often overlooked in both mainstream gaming and queer rhetorics (Anthropy, 2012). Thus, this thesis contributes to queer rhetoric, game studies, and trans rhetorics by exploring the strategies indie Twine creators use in …
Assimilating Through Consumption: A Rhetorical History Of The Early Years Of The Advocate, Cora Beth Butcher-Spellman
Assimilating Through Consumption: A Rhetorical History Of The Early Years Of The Advocate, Cora Beth Butcher-Spellman
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This thesis uses analysis of constitutive rhetoric and queer archival methods to examines how The Advocate used assimilationist rhetoric and consumerist rhetoric in fundamentally anti-democratic ways to consolidate the form of ideal gay consumer-citizenship. Focusing on the first three years of the publication, I utilize queer theory and theories of citizenship and political economy to explain how The Advocate’s rhetoric and mainstream success allowed the publication to normalize a limited and politically weak gay identity. This thesis argues The Advocate’s rhetoric of exclusion, authority, and consumerism were three central features shaping ideal gay consumer-citizenship as most available to people who …
Menstruation Regulation: A Feminist Critique Of Menstrual Product Brands On Instagram, Max Faust
Menstruation Regulation: A Feminist Critique Of Menstrual Product Brands On Instagram, Max Faust
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Much research about advertisements for menstrual products reveals the ways in which such advertising perpetuates shame and reinforces unrealistic ideals of femininity and womanhood. This study aims to examine the content of Instagram posts by four different menstrual product brands in hopes of understanding how these functions may or may not be carried out by social media posts by these brands as well. Building on the body of research about menstrual shame and advertising, I specifically ask: How do the Instagram pages for four menstrual product brands dissuade individuality; how do they prescribe femininity; and how do these functions differ …
Hear Me Roar, Abigail R. Seethoff
Hear Me Roar, Abigail R. Seethoff
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Hear Me Roar, a compilation of personal essays interspersed with short forms, grapples with the nuances of compliance versus autonomy in the context of the male gaze, beauty standards, and pop culture. The collection also explores what it means to treasure something—another person, an object—and how to express and deepen that affection.
Narratives Of Queerness: Queer Worldmaking (In) The Classroom With Undergraduate Students, Rachel Briggs
Narratives Of Queerness: Queer Worldmaking (In) The Classroom With Undergraduate Students, Rachel Briggs
Doctoral Dissertations
This research brings together education research, queer theory, and performance theory to consider the worldmaking potential of the queer classroom. Using students’ stories about queerness in the classroom and my own stories about the classroom, I ask what we can learn from students’ voices about how queerness is/can be performed in the classroom and through relations. This study uses critical ethnography, personal narrative, and performative writing to examine the production of subject positions in the classroom, to connect this to a queer theoretical framework, and to explore the worldmaking potential of the classroom. I interviewed seven undergraduate students at a …
Why Study Language? Discussing Language And Its Influence On Gender Discrimination, Katelyn Eisenmann
Why Study Language? Discussing Language And Its Influence On Gender Discrimination, Katelyn Eisenmann
Honors Projects
An applied research project, with the culminating piece being a panel discussion that focused on the ways in which language use and structure contribute to attitudes and perceptions of gender within our society, and the politics that surround concepts of gender.
An Archive Of Pain: In Queer Suicide's Cultural Wake, Evan Schares
An Archive Of Pain: In Queer Suicide's Cultural Wake, Evan Schares
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
In this dissertation, I argue that queer death is a chief site of political struggle over gender, race, and sexuality in contemporary culture. I consider myriad archives in the aftermath of three queer suicides, an aggregate of discourses I call cultural wakes, to examine how white affective investments circulate around the forces of racism, sexism, and citizenship. I place in situ the trauma of queer pain and loss against the global backdrop of public emotionality.
Fear, Power, & Teeth (2007), Olivia Hockenbroch
Fear, Power, & Teeth (2007), Olivia Hockenbroch
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Vagina dentata is the myth of the toothed vagina; in most iterations, it serves as a warning to men that women’s vaginas must be conquered to be safe for a man’s sexual pleasure (Koehler, 2017). The vagina dentata myth has been carried forth from ancient ancestors in numerous cultures all over the world (Koehler). It is one of many destructive cultural myths that guides discourses about sex and women’s bodies. In this paper, I explore a recent articulation of the myth, the 2007 film Teeth, and I argue that in this film, the vagina dentata is made more complicated. While …
Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender
Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender
Student Theses 2015-Present
This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …
Microaggressions Within The Lgbtq+ Community: An Autoethnography, Erika A. Perez Montes
Microaggressions Within The Lgbtq+ Community: An Autoethnography, Erika A. Perez Montes
Capstone Projects and Master's Theses
This autoethnography is about different points in my life where I committed microaggressions towards the LGBTQ+ community specific to different genders, sexual orientations and/or how people in the community present themselves. I use “thick intersectionality” ‒ an embodied exploration of the complex particularities of individuals’ lives and identities associated with their race, class, gender, sexuality, and national locations ‒ as a means of portraying my message, voicing the emotions that I felt, and the identity I occupied at that moment. I show that the intersectionalities of queer folks’ identities create unconscious microaggressions towards other queer folks. The purpose of my …
Wonder Woman: A Case Study For Critical Media Literacy, Adriana N. Fehrs
Wonder Woman: A Case Study For Critical Media Literacy, Adriana N. Fehrs
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
To better grasp the messages Wonder Woman is sending to its audience, a Critical Media Literacy (CML), ideological, and feminist framework is used to examine whether, and if so how, Wonder Woman succumbs to stereotypes that are often portrayed in the media. These theories will be used in the ensuing project to build a curriculum aimed at high school students.The curriculum positions students to examine the hegemonic ideologies that are represented in pop culture, specifically Wonder Woman.
Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman
Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman
Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
On a campus where women make up a majority of the student population, it is especially important that female voices are heard and given a platform on which they can control their own narrative. I wanted to give those female-identifying voices that platform. I conducted a series of interviews to examine how college-aged female-identifying students feel about their identity and how they construct that identity within the climate of the JMU community. I was particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and ability. I asked each person to share their stories of times when they …
Sexy Robots: A Perpetuation Of Patriarchy, Ashlyn Des Roches
Sexy Robots: A Perpetuation Of Patriarchy, Ashlyn Des Roches
Communication Studies
This feminist critique looks into the way that gender, specifically females, are portrayed in some of Hollywood's top films involving Artificial Intelligence: Blade Runner, Her, and Ex Machina. These movies work as a perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies while maintaining the objectification and hypersexuality of women as normalized behaviors. Additionally, while some forms of empowerment are conveyed, the features illustrate women merely on a spectrum of extreme behavior; due to Heuristics and Cultivation Theory, these misrepresentations can be associated with women outside the surrealist realm of the depicted artificially intelligent worlds.
Knowledge And Resistance: Feminine Style And Signifyin[G] In Michelle Obama’S Public Address, Tracy Valgento
Knowledge And Resistance: Feminine Style And Signifyin[G] In Michelle Obama’S Public Address, Tracy Valgento
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
This thesis examines the public discourse of the first African American first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama. I argue that Michelle Obama uses the double-voiced discourses of feminine style and African American Signifyin[g] to negate post-race and post-gender mythologies that suggest that American society is “beyond identity”. Looking at three of Obama’s speeches: Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic National Convention Speech, The Remarks by the First Lady at Memorial Service for Dr. Maya Angelou, and Remarks by the First Lady at Tuskegee University Commencement Address this thesis argues that Michelle Obama performativity interrogates and questions gender and race relations …
Bloggers And Their Impact On Contemporary Social Movements: A Phenomenological Examination Of The Role Of Blogs And Their Creators In The Lgbt Social Movements In Modern United States, Bobby K. Huen
Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations
The Internet is a ubiquitous feature in everyday life, but its application to social movements has yet to be completely understood. This phenomenological study examines the lived experiences of bloggers who focused on the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement in the United States to understand the impact bloggers and their work as online activists have on existing LGBT social movement organization and operation. Data collection is gathered from semi-structured and open-ended interviews with four social movement bloggers using web-conference software over the course of three months. The results of this study indicated that internet has empowered individual activists, …
The Changing Identity Of Feminism In The Third Wave: A Critical Analysis, Jillian Marie Klean
The Changing Identity Of Feminism In The Third Wave: A Critical Analysis, Jillian Marie Klean
Masters Theses
This thesis examines three texts: Three Black Skirts, The Vagina Monologues, and The Art and Power of Being a Lady to discover the changing identities of women in the third wave movement of feminism. A rhetorical criticism is conducted of the images of feminism put forth by the texts to discover the identities that the authors are advocating and advancing for third wave feminists. This thesis argues that the multiple identities found in these texts are essential to the feminist movement. This thesis also explores the tension between individualism and community in the third wave.
President Mrs. Kimball: A Rhetoric Of Words And Works, Janelle M. Higbee
President Mrs. Kimball: A Rhetoric Of Words And Works, Janelle M. Higbee
Theses and Dissertations
Scholars of rhetoric and speech communications have suggested that the study of a women's rhetoric should focus on the "distinctly female modes of leadership" that may be found among women in "out-groups" that challenge established political authority. Such leaders must be especially inventive to be effective, and are thus likely to be talented rhetoricians. In looking for such leaders, the religious and political rhetoric of early Latter-day Saint women provides a noteworthy, unique study. Nineteenth-century Mormon women not only battled discriminatory political norms—arguing fervently for both universal woman's suffrage and for the freedom to practice polygamy—they did so from their …
Belle S. Spafford: Leader Of Women, Gayle Morby Chandler
Belle S. Spafford: Leader Of Women, Gayle Morby Chandler
Theses and Dissertations
This historical/descriptive study analyzes the speaking career of Belle S. Spafford and attempts to document the relationship between her speaking and her influence with her peers. For over fifty years, the dedicated woman served as a spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the National Council of Women, briding the gap between the secular and religious world of women. A rhetorical analysis of four speeches indicates the following findings: Mrs. Spafford appealed to her audiences through a focus on shared values; she had credibility because of her positions of authority and used it wisely; she effectively …