Department: English/Rhetoric and Writing ![[clear]](close-x.png "Remove this limiter")
32 matches in the database.
These are records: 1 - 30.
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1.
Almjeld, Jennifer Marie.
The Girls of MySpace: New Media as Gendered Literacy Practice and Identity Construction.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2008, Bowling Green State University
► While many composition scholars have eagerly embraced the promise of computers and…
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▼ While many composition scholars have eagerly embraced the promise of computers and other technologies in their pedagogical practices (C. Selfe, 1999, 2004; Wysocki, 2004; Sirc, 2002; Gee, 2003), not everyone views technology as a positive influence on writing instruction and production in this country. One particular genre under fire is social networking sites used by tech-savvy teens and others to post images, information, and diary-like blog entries. Latest estimates put the leading social networking site, MySpace, at 110 million active users with one in four Americans reported to have a MySpace profile (Owyang, 2008). The site is the fifth most visited site on the Web (Alexa, 2008) with millions logging on each day. It may, therefore, be negligent of those in composition studies to ignore a technological pastime taken up by so many of our students and based almost solely on users' composing practices involving both text and images. Although many have dismissed MySpace postings as nothing more than a teenage fad, the new medium's emphasis on multimodality, community building, and identity construction suggest this rhetorical practice is worth studying as one of the most prominent new media texts being utilized by young people.This pilot study focuses on a sampling of profiles (the material "text" for MySpace) composed by females age 16-18 to interrogate the intersection of technology, gender performativity, and identity construction in this cyberspace. This pilot study is useful in classifying MySpace as the latest new media text being appropriated by women to build and expand their own notions of gender, specifically femininity, and also explores feminist research methodologies necessary for exploring such new media settings. Guided by the work of feminist researchers (Hill Collins, 2000; Naples, 2003; Sandoval, 2000) this study pays particular attention to the often marginalized group – teenage females – and the MySpace mode of communication that is so often marginalized within the academy.Utilizing textual analysis, narrative, and some quantitative measures, the study considers rhetorical choices involving text, image, and design as well as ways such new media texts are influential in community building and performing modern feminine adolescence. With an emphasis on MySpace as a remediated new media text (Bolter and Grusin, 2000), this work explores the ways use of multiple media change both message and author (Manovich, 2001; Kress, 2003) and traces out this literacy practice as the latest used by women in constructing their on- and offline identities. A historical account of women's use of new media texts in recent centuries traces the lineage of women's appropriation of existing texts in the form of commonplace books, scrapbooks, autograph albums, note passing, and online texts. Relying on four guiding research questions, this work focuses mainly on the role MySpace plays in the performance of both womanhood and teenhood as well as ways utilizing the variety of media embedded within the MySpace application may shape users as rhetors and tech users as well as part of a larger community. The findings of this pilot study allow a better understanding of how teens are defining themselves and performing femininity within the MySpace community and may offer insight into future research and critical approaches to this and similar online communities and literacy practices.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Rhetoric
Keywords: new media; literacy practice; identity construction; girls
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2.
Bacabac, Florence Elizabeth.
FROM CYBERSPACE TO PRINT: RE-EXAMINING THE EFFECTS OF COLLABORATIVE ONLINE INVENTION ON FIRST-YEAR ACADEMIC WRITING.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2008, Bowling Green State University
► This descriptive study re-examines two online practices, the use of synchronous Chat…
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▼ This descriptive study re-examines two online practices, the use of synchronous Chat and asynchronous Discussion Board, as collaborative invention forums for composing a research-based essay. Basically, I looked at the transfer of invention ideas from each forum to student rough drafts in order to help substantiate the claim that the use of computer-mediated communication is an enabling practice for knowledge construction. Two first-year writing classes taught in a computer laboratory by the same instructor participated in the study; one class used Chat and the other used the Discussion Board for invention prior to drafting the essays. I analyzed the online transcripts, student rough drafts, and the teacher and student interview data to describe the effects of both synchronous and asynchronous platforms as collaborative invention strategies on academic writing. Throughout the investigation, two research questions were addressed: (RQ #1) How effective is each type of online invention in generating ideas for writing academic essays? and (RQ #2) What attitudes/perceptions do the teacher and students have toward the collaborative online invention process? The descriptive findings generally indicate that the transfer of invention ideas and language patterns from both online forums to the essays (RQ #1) is directly supported by the teacher and student interview patterns (RQ #2). Significant data patterns reveal the following effects of Chat and Discussion Board invention forums on student drafts: both show successful transfer of ideas in terms of essay topic, purpose, and thesis statement; average transfer of main ideas and supporting details; and minimal transfer of source ideas. However, the transfer of counterargument ideas from each forum differs: the use of Chat indicates null transfer of ideas while very minimal transfer is attributed to the use of the Discussion Board. Interview data patterns reveal agreement between the teacher and students as regards the capacity of each online forum to promote collaboration and knowledge construction. However, to support the contrasting transfer rates of counterargument ideas from Chat and Discussion Board forums, participants similarly expressed that meaningful and reflective interactions in Chat seem deficient due to its fluid and immediate setting as opposed to the capacity of the Discussion Board to sustain focused interactions and critical reflection. To conclude this pilot study, implications for theory and practice based on descriptive analysis were discussed along with further suggestions for pedagogy and research on computers and writing.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Composition
Keywords: collaborative online invention; first-year writing; online composition; computers and writing
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3.
Baumgartner, Holly Lynn.
Visualizing Levinas: Existence and Existents Through Mulholland Drive, Memento, and Vanilla Sky.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2005, Bowling Green State University
► This dissertation engages in an intentional analysis of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’s book…
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▼ This dissertation engages in an intentional analysis of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’s book Existence and Existents through the reading of three films: Memento (2001), Vanilla Sky (2001), and Mulholland Drive, (2001). The “modes” and other events of being that Levinas associates with the process of consciousness in Existence and Existents, such as fatigue, light, hypostasis, position, sleep, and time, are examined here. Additionally, the most contested spaces in the films, described as a “Waking Dream,” is set into play with Levinas’s work/ The magnification of certain points of entry into Levinas’s philosophy opened up new pathways for thinking about method itself. Philosophically, this dissertation considers the question of how we become subjects, existents who have taken up Existence, and how that process might be revealed in film. Additionally, the importance of Existence and Existents both on its own merit and to Levinas’s body of work as a whole, especially to his ethical project is underscored. A second set of entry points are explored in the conclusion of this dissertation, in particular how film functions in relation to philosophy, specifically that of Levinas. What kind of critical stance toward film would be an ethical one? Does the very materiality of film, its fracturing of narrative, time, and space, provide an embodied formulation of some of the basic tenets of Levinas’s thinking? Does it create its own philosophy through its format? And finally, analyzing the results of the project yielded far more complicated and unsettling questions than they answered. These far more interesting speculations had seemingly little to do directly with the book or the films under discussion, and instead challenged certain understandings of genre, method, and theory. The purpose became a voyage through a vesica piscis of multiply contested spaces: philosophy, film, ethics, and the processes of theory-making.
Advisors/Committee Members: Berry, Ellen.
Keywords: Emmanuel Levinas; Philosophy; film; cinema; noir; neo-noir
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4.
Cadle, Lanette.
A Public View of Private Writing: Personal Weblogs and Adolescent Girls.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2005, Bowling Green State University
► This dissertation examines the public and private nature of personal weblogs written…
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▼ This dissertation examines the public and private nature of personal weblogs written by adolescent girls. During a four-month observation period, the participants continue to post material to their weblogs and the posts during that time are available for examination and analysis. There is also an email interview and an end-of-study questionnaire that lend an inside view to the process. The reflection, collaboration, and mentoring that these blogs enable act as a feminist space as well as a personal one uniquely qualified for investigating identity. At the same time, the intersection of writing, introspection, and digital tools also lends the possibility of answering another feminist goal, that is expressed in AAUW’s Tech Savvy of bringing more girls to the sciences and to make them more comfortable in digital spaces. I propose that identity development and the need for a space that is both public and private may be behind the steady increase proportionately and numerically of adolescent girls in the LiveJournal user base. From April 2004 to April 2005 the increase has been steady, with the female user base rising from 65.2% to 67.3%, the majority of those being between the ages of 15 and 21 as per the statistics on April 30, 2005. This indicates that a need is being filled and provides an important part of the rationale for my study. It is significant also because by sheer numbers, adolescent girls in personal weblogs are making the definition of what acceptable public discourse is more diffuse and inclusive.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Keywords: weblogs; adolescent girls; personal writing; gender; blogs; feminism; literacy; identity
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5.
Chege, Mwangi.
“Old Wine” and “New Wineskins”: (De)Colonizing Literacy in Kenya’s Higher Education.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2006, Bowling Green State University
► Most social critics in the disciplines of Rhetoric and Composition, Education, and…
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▼ Most social critics in the disciplines of Rhetoric and Composition, Education, and Feminist Studies have argued that it is impossible to divorce literacy from politics; that literacy is a hegemonic enterprise. Based on this premise, this study investigated how politics plays out in the discourse patterns in Kenyan universities. Owing to the apparent semblance between colonial and postcolonial literacy policies and acknowledging the historicity of phenomena, the study investigated the role the British colonization of Kenya has played in shaping postcolonial discourse patterns in Kenyan universities – why and how the postcolonial state reproduced the colonial literacy policies. The study concludes by exploring strategies for decolonizing Kenya’s higher education. Based on the data I collected through multiple modes of inquiry including autoethnography; historical and library research; and interviews, it was evident the colonial establishment put in place a literacy system commensurate with its colonial agenda. And, since the agenda of postcolonial regimes was not radically different from that of the colonial establishment and subsequent neocolonial forces, the postcolonial state reproduced colonial literacy policies to entrench and perpetuate their hegemonies. Notably, these regimes suppressed discourse in higher education to curtail dissent and, therefore, ensure perpetuation of the status quo. To decolonize literacy, the study proposes four strategies: stakeholders in Kenya’s higher education, especially educators and students must reconsider the role of the university; educators and students must embrace critical literacy paradigm in place of the prevailing functional approach to literacy, educators and students must reconsider their stance on epistemology and ontology; and, universities must introduce comprehensive Rhetoric and Writing courses.
Advisors/Committee Members: Edwards, Bruce L.
Keywords: KENYA; LITERACY; colonial; Lecturers; Kenyatta; Africans
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6.
Church, Elizabeth L.
Epideictic Without the Praise: A Heuristic Analysis for Rhetoric of Blame.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► This dissertation is a historical and theoretical exploration of epideictic rhetoric of…
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▼ This dissertation is a historical and theoretical exploration of epideictic rhetoric of blame as it functions to build community and teach civic virtues. I have assembled a set of heuristics - concentrating on three strategies of creating ethos, establishing place, and utilizing ekphrasis - to examine the didactic nature of epideictic, especially in environments where social change is being demanded by the rhetor. The heuristic model encompasses 13 guiding questions, which then are applied to two case studies of rhetoric of blame: the writings of journalist Ida B. Wells to stop the lynchings of African-Americans during the 19th century, and a current website created by the Save Darfur Coalition to intervene in the genocide in Darfur, Africa. While a significant amount of research has examined epideictic rhetoric of praise, existing scholarship on rhetoric of blame is minimal. Thus, this project helps to fill the gap both by furnishing evidence of historical and current instances of epideictic rhetoric of blame as it functions to build community and teach civic virtues, and by demonstrating a methodology to assess such discourse. At a time in our nation and neighborhoods when words of condemnation are often flung about too quickly and carelessly, a reliable methodology is needed for creating and analyzing rhetoric of blame – and how it accomplishes a rhetorical purpose beyond that of a one-sided volley of insults. This study breaks new ground by offering a methodology for analyzing how the epideictic rhetor using words of blame can be successful through an expression of ethos and ekphrasis in bringing readers together, and the places where this occurs. This project is grounded in the work of more than a dozen scholars ranging from Sullivan to Royster, Laurer to Hauser, and Agnew to Bolter, and it furthers work concerning ethos and the transformative nature of epideictic discourse. Because new media technologies often play a crucial role in today’s epideictic rhetoric, I have designed the heuristics to be applied to a broad spectrum of epideictic pieces, such as essays, newspaper articles, speeches, videos and websites, which provides a richer understanding of rhetoric of blame from a 21st century perspective.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric
Keywords: epideictic rhetoric; rhetoric of blame; heuristic; composition; community; ethos; ekphrasis; place; Ida B. Wells; Save Darfur Coalition; didactic; digital rhetoric; rhetorical analysis; rhetorical theory
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7.
Colby, Richard.
COMPUTERS, COMPOSITION AND CONTEXT: NARRATIVES OF PEDAGOGY AND TECHNOLOGY OUTSIDE THE COMPUTERS AND WRITING COMMUNITY.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2006, Bowling Green State University
► This dissertation examines the technology and pedagogy histories of composition teachers outside…
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▼ This dissertation examines the technology and pedagogy histories of composition teachers outside of the computers and writing community in order to provide context and future avenues of research in addressing the instructional technology needs of those teachers. The computers and composition community has provided many opportunities for writing teachers to improve their understanding of new technologies. However, for those teachers who lack the resources, positions, and backgrounds often enjoyed by the computers and composition community, there is little that can be provided to more equitably address their teaching needs. Although there is much innovative work in the computers and composition community, more needs to be done to address the disconnect between theory and practice often perceived by the marginalized majority of composition teachers. Although the community has often cast itself as sensitive to the majority of composition teachers, they have also implicitly ignored these teachers because the community has addressed technology in highly focused terms, relied on contexts for its scholarship that do not reach many composition teachers, and has been dismissive of many mainstream technologies. In order to address the gaps left by these assumptions, this dissertation shares literacy, teaching, and technology narratives of five writing teachers from different generations, educational backgrounds, and regions, situating their histories against the backdrop of composition and computers and writing history. These narratives revealed that contemporary theory did not appear relevant to the teaching of writing for those teachers who were not educated in the field of composition. They also revealed that the teaching of writing and the use of technology was remarkably uniform across many contexts, even as the specific technologies employed were different based mostly on an individual’s own educational history. Specific recommendations for the computers and writing community to address the needs of this group of composition teachers were to model technology use in first year composition and beyond, work with individual teachers to adapt technology to meet their needs, consider other disciplines uses of technology and writing, and continue to pay attention to educational histories of those who teach composition to see how technologies are adapted.
Advisors/Committee Members: Kristine, Blair.
Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Keywords: composition; computers and writing; computers and composition; teaching writing
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8.
Cucciarre, Christine Peters.
Audience Matters: Exploring Audience in Undergraduate Creative Writing.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2008, Bowling Green State University
► This study explores undergraduate creative writing instruction with regard to the complex…
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▼ This study explores undergraduate creative writing instruction with regard to the complex issue of audience in the three areas that converge in the creative writing classroom: rhetoric and writing theory, literary theory, and creative writing pedagogy. After an overview of the project in Chapter One, Chapter Two reviews scholarship specific to creative writing pedagogy. The core of the study, Chapter Three explores the theoretical approaches to audience from both rhetorical theory and literary theory and creates a theoretical lens in which to examine audience in undergraduate creative writing. Chapter Four shows the methodological approach and the data analysis methods used in a pilot study of undergraduate creative writing syllabi and textbooks. Included in this chapter is a table listing terms that suggest audience developed from the theory built in Chapter Three. This table informs the pilot study. Chapter Five provides the results of the pilot study, offering evidence of how audience manifests itself within twenty-seven syllabi and twenty-four currently used creative writing textbooks. By tabulating the references to audience and analyzing their contexts, I offer a look into how the reader is considered in undergraduate creative writing instruction. The distinct and interesting patterns that emerged are explained in Chapter Six. Besides revealing the ways and contexts in which audience surfaces in the teaching of creative writing, I offer suggestions on how this important concern to writers can be more transparent. This chapter uncovers the ways in which audience functions-or perhaps can function-within the creative writing classroom. Given that some creative writing instructors are admittedly apprehensive about having a theoretical foundation for their instruction, this dissertation argues that taking on the single issue of audience may create a more critical approach to student writing, and may create avenues to examine other important writerly matters within introductory creative writing classes.
Advisors/Committee Members: Gebhardt, Richard C.
Subjects: Higher education; Rhetoric; Teacher education; Teaching
Keywords: Audience; creative writing pedagogy; rhetorical theory; literary theory; composition theory; writing; teaching of writing; creative writing; undergraduate; writing instruction
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9.
Denecker, Christine M.
Toward Seamless Transition? Dual Enrollment and the Composition Classroom.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2007, Bowling Green State University
► Since their inception nearly twenty years ago, Dual Enrollment Programs (also known…
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▼ Since their inception nearly twenty years ago, Dual Enrollment Programs (also known as Post-Secondary Enrollment Programs or PSEOs) have been touted in the state of Ohio and elsewhere as avenues of "seamless transition" for students as they segue from secondary to post-secondary education. Specifically, participants in these programs can obtain both high school and college credit for college coursework taken in either a high school or college setting. However, scant data exists as to the effectiveness of PSEOs as transitioning agents in Ohio and nationwide; furthermore, data regarding PSEO writing classes is nearly non-existent. Given the historically tenuous nature of the relationship between high school and college writing instruction, this research study delved into the purported "seamlessness" of PSEOs and assessed the program's claims. First, the study explored the history of Dual Enrollment Programs in Ohio and particularly at The University of Findlay, a private university in Northwest Ohio. Written surveys and oral interviews of teachers and students were then conducted at three places of PSEO composition instruction affilitated with The University of Findlay: the traditional college writing classroom, the UF-USA (high school campus) site, and the non-traditional setting (high school students grouped homogeneously on college campuses). In all, 24 respondents participated, and their responses yielded information regarding PSEO teacher pedagogy, impact of place on PSEO writing instruction, and PSEO's claims of seamless transition. Findings here conclude that high school and college composition instruction do not necessarily flow seamlessly, one to the other, as PSEOs suggest. Moreover, this study's sampling proves that secondary and post-secondary writing instruction are rarely aligned given the current curricular, state, and national mandates public schools operate under, and as such, "seamless transition" cannot occur amidst the differing agendas of high school and college writing instruction. Furthermore, this study posits that the issue of "place" of PSEO instruction is pertinent to the program's claims and argues that "place" of PSEO writing instruction may actually serve to re-inscribe already established gaps, assumptions, and misconceptions between writing instructors at secondary and post-secondary levels.
Advisors/Committee Members: Carter Wood, Sue.
Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Keywords: dual enrollment, seamless transition, high school writing, college writing, composition
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10.
Dietel-McLaughlin, Erin F.
Remediating Democracy: Youtube and the Vernacular Rhetorics of Web 2.0.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► This dissertation examines the extent to which composing practices and rhetorical strategies…
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▼ This dissertation examines the extent to which composing practices and rhetorical strategies common to “Web 2.0” arenas may reinvigorate democracy. The project examines several digital composing practices as examples of what Gerard Hauser (1999) and others have dubbed “vernacular rhetoric,” or common modes of communication that may resist or challenge more institutionalized forms of discourse. Using a cultural studies approach, this dissertation focuses on the popular video-sharing site, YouTube, and attempts to theorize several vernacular composing practices. First, this dissertation discusses the rhetorical trope of irreverence, with particular attention to the ways in which irreverent strategies such as new media parody transcend more traditional modes of public discourse. Second, this dissertation discusses three approaches to video remix (collection, Detournement, and mashing) as political strategies facilitated by Web 2.0 technologies, with particular attention to the ways in which these strategies challenge the construct of authorship and the power relationships inherent in that construct. This dissertation then considers the extent to which sites like YouTube remediate traditional rhetorical modes by focusing on the genre of epideictic rhetoric and the ways in which sites like YouTube encourage epideictic practice. Finally, in light of what these discussions reveal in terms of rhetorical practice and democracy in Web 2.0 arenas, this dissertation offers a concluding discussion of what our “Web 2.0 world” might mean for composition studies in terms of theory, practice, and the teaching of writing.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Composition; Literacy; Rhetoric; Technology
Keywords: new media; vernacular rhetoric; digital rhetoric; remix; youtube; web 2.0; digital literacy
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11.
Dunckel, Ramona Lee.
Re-Vision: A Rhetorical Analysis of Change in the Holocaust Memorial Center.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2005, Bowling Green State University
► While the number of Holocaust museums in the United States has grown…
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▼ While the number of Holocaust museums in the United States has grown in recent years, few of these museums which serve as memorials to the victims of Nazi violence have existed long enough to undergo major revisions. The purpose of this study was to identify and investigate in light of revision theory those revisions that occurred in the Holocaust Memorial Center, America's first Holocaust museum, during the recent relocation and expansion of the museum. Using existing theory in four fields, material rhetoric, museum theory, memorial theory, and revisiion theory as a base, this dissertation offers a rhetorical analysis of the museum loosely based on Carole Blair's analyses of memorial sites such as the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, as well as a catalogue and discussion of selected changes observed in the museum. Using analysis of archival photographs, visitor guides, and a videotaped museum tour of the previous facility to identify what had been, the study then moved to a careful analysis of the museum as it exists today. This allowed identification and documentation of changes or revisions that had taken place. These changes were catalogued using a taxonomy created for the study, and a discussion of selected changes was presented. The study found strong similarities between text revisions made by experienced writers and the museum revisions. Both were based on the same two key considerations: the identified purpose of the text, and the identified audience for the text. Both the text revisions of experienced writers and the revisions observed in the museum showed a willingness to make radical revisions if necessary. However, there was one major difference discovered between the revisions of experienced writers and the revisions that take place in museums. The revisions that occur in museums are not always the product of the original creator of the text. Implications for further research included replication of the study in publicly-funded or site-location Holocaust museums as well as replication in other types of museums. Another area for further research identified was investigation of the impact of artifact construction by museums.
Advisors/Committee Members: Carter, Sue.
Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Keywords: Holocaust museums; Revision theory; Holocaust; Museum theory
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12.
Fester, Heather Renae.
Rhetoric and The Scholarship of Engagement: Pragmatic, Professional, and Ethical Convergences.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► The scholarship of engagement, an effort to redefine faculty scholarship in ways…
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▼ The scholarship of engagement, an effort to redefine faculty scholarship in ways that emphasize communal outreach, and rhetoric, which is epistemologically relevant to our modern academic lives, are both models for the future of higher education that are pragmatic, post-professional, and based on ethics. External pressures on the university make discussion of rhetoric and engagement, both of which deal directly with knowledge that grows out of scholarship as it guides practice and service, timely and necessary. Rhetoric and the Scholarship of Engagement examines the competing forces behind this scholarship reform, historicizing the trends and arguing that contradictions inherent in the reforms represent a rich dialogue about the future of academic life. Throughout, Rhetoric and the Scholarship of Engagement treats the space between the community and academy as a dialectical space—a space structured by tensions between opposing forces such as tensions between discipline/institution, theory/praxis, service/pure scholarship, traditional professionalized practices/changing models of professionalism, responsive faculty roles/isolated functions, foundational/antifoundational knowledge, and visible/invisible work carried out by faculty members. To suggest best practices for the transition to engaged scholarship, Rhetoric and the Scholarship of Engagement highlights scholarship and faculty roles in the field of rhetoric and composition, arguing that as an already engaged field, it offers a rich theoretical background and successful models for engagement rooted in its pragmatic orientation, struggles for disciplinary legitimation, and overt focus on postmodern ethics in research and institutional life. Through the presentation of rhetoric and composition research, these chapters offer a theoretical background for engagement by examining historical influences, various models of engagement, complications, and examples of application. In conclusion, the dissertation argues that dialectic spaces, such as exists between the academy and community, can be remediated, not by erasing the contradictions but by reconceiving faculty roles around them. By inhabiting a more robust role as an engaged, pragmatically savvy, post-professional, postmodern and ethical “Citizen Scholar,” the faculty member will be better able to adapt to changing demands throughout his/her academic career.
Advisors/Committee Members: Gebhardt, Dr. Richard C.
Subjects: Community colleges; Composition; Education history; Higher education; Rhetoric; School administration
Keywords: scholarship of engagement; citizen scholar; post-professional; dialectical tensions
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13.
Fleitz, Elizabeth Jean.
The Multimodal Kitchen: Cookbooks as Women’s Rhetorical Practice.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► This study positions cookbooks and their associated discourse as rhetorical, relevant to…
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▼ This study positions cookbooks and their associated discourse as rhetorical, relevant to the field and worthy of scholarly study. I argue that cookbooks are more than a simple collection of recipes; the ways in which the texts construct and are constructed by society establish their significance as rhetorical texts. As women have been historically silenced and prevented from using dominant communicative methods, they have needed to develop alternative practices. Naming cooking as a women’s discourse created out of these alternative practices, I argue this form of communication constructed for women and by women has a powerful rhetorical impact which establishes women as experts within their own (private) sphere. This discourse not only enables women to value their own existence but it also gives them a space in which to perform rhetoric, in effect constructing a feminist practice. This analysis is based on synthesis between Certeau’s concept of “making do” and multimodal practice, as I argue cookery discourse is inherently multimodal. I develop my argument exploring what I identify as the major modes used in the discourse: social, visual, and performative. As my project works to extend theories of multimodality, making the concept more widely applicable in rhetorical scholarship, it also furthers work begun by Bizzell, Glenn, and others concerning the limited representation of women in the rhetorical canon, and aids in the rewriting of rhetorical history as women’s stories continue to be added. Previously marginalized as a simple, everyday text, the cookbook is reclaimed in this dissertation as a significant rhetorical – and feminist – practice.
Advisors/Committee Members: Wood, Sue Carter.
Subjects: Folklore; Gender; Rhetoric; Womens studies
Keywords: Rhetoric; Multimodality; Gender; Cooking; Cookbooks; Feminism; Rhetorical practice; Remediation; Social tex; Visual rhetoric; Gesture
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14.
Graves, Robert Christopher.
The Art of Heterotopian Rhetoric: A Theory of Science Fiction as Rhetorical Discourse.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► This study builds a theory or vocabulary that explains science fiction (SF)…
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▼ This study builds a theory or vocabulary that explains science fiction (SF) as a form of persuasion, called Heterotopian Rhetoric. This rhetoric utilizes a cognitively estranged scientific heterotopia (an other place: a utopia, eutopia, or dystopia) as a proof and appeal that persuasively demonstrates to dynaton, what is possible. The vocabulary of Heterotopian Rhetoric is built through the contextual re-vision and synthesis of SF critical theory, classic rhetoric, sophistic rhetoric, feminist rhetoric, and several relevant philosophical and scientific vocabularies. The use of a cognitively estranged scientific heterotopia (CESH) as a proof and an appeal is particularly useful when the rhetor/author wants to critique readers' hegemonies and privileged cognitive paradigms, especially those with which they identify. The CESH proof provides a psychological projection situated within the realm of potentiality that absorbs direct criticism and subverts the readers' defense mechanisms. Numerous feminist SF novels can be read as utilizing the CESH proof to critique and persuade their traditionally white, male audiences by “educating” their cognitive paradigms or “ways of seeing”. So after building the vocabulary of Heterotopian Rhetoric in chapters one through three, Chapter Four applies and exemplifies the vocabulary through a case study of Octavia E. Butler's Lilith's Brood trilogy. The study concludes by suggesting further study of Butler's Parables novels and their embedded Earthseed text as not only Heterotopian Rhetoric, but rhetorical theory.
Advisors/Committee Members: Carter Wood, Sue.
Subjects: Literature; Philosophy; Rhetoric; Womens studies
Keywords: Heterotopian Rhetoric; Sophistic Rhetoric; Science Fiction; Feminism, Octavia Butler, CESH, cognitive paradigms, perception; rhetoric; cognitive estrangement
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15.
Harris, Christopher Sean.
FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITION HANDBOOKS: BUFFERING THE WINDS OF CHANGE.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2006, Bowling Green State University
► This dissertation discusses composition history treatments and the scant amount of scholarly…
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▼ This dissertation discusses composition history treatments and the scant amount of scholarly research devoted solely to composition textbooks, though scholars such as Robin Varnum and Stephen North argue that studying textbooks cannot divulge much about the history of composition instruction. However, in “Handbooks” History of a Genre” and “Handbook Bibliography,” Robert Connors sets in motion detailed historical studies of composition textbooks. Composition textbooks can provide insight into how publishers think instructors should teach students or how colleges want instructors to teach students—merely how students should learn to write, what students should learn about writing. Most importantly, this dissertation explores structural changes of handbooks by: first, in Chapter Three, defining the composition handbook genre as one comprised of textbooks that help instructors mark essays and help students correct essays; Second, in Chapter Four, tracing the development of purely American composition textbooks from the 1800s to 2005, namely by describing how John C. Hodges's Harbrace College Handbook has evolved since it's first printing in 1941; and third, comparing features in the most recent editions of Harbrace to features in current textbooks: The St. Martin's Handbook and Penguin Handbook. Though the composition handbook genre has markedly changed during the last century, I conclude Chapter Four by arguing that the guiding theory behind composition handbooks has not changed. New handbook chapters dedicated to writing with computers or composing in a digital age merely come with corresponding correction codes. Though Connors argues in 1983 that composition handbooks have not changed although composition theory has, my exploration of handbooks shows that handbooks have remained largely similar to Woolley's Handbook, first published in 1907. Handbooks have since then and still exist as tools to assist grading (instructor) and correcting (student) compositions. Because composition handbooks still have structures similar to the 1941 edition of Harbrace, in Chapter Five I discuss hyperliteracy and propose further research into the usability of composition handbooks, as current students generally know how to navigate hypermedia though handbooks have retained their index-driven form.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kris.
Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Keywords: rhetoric; composition; composition studies; writing; writing instruction; composition pedagogy; college textbooks; writing textbooks; rhetoric and composition
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16.
Hurley, Meredith Graupner.
Remediating the Professionalization of Doctoral Students in Rhetoric and Composition.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► In the twenty-first century, advancements in technology continue to influence our understanding…
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▼ In the twenty-first century, advancements in technology continue to influence our understanding of literacy education. According to the National Council of Teachers of English, "[b]ecause technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies." Due to the literacy needs of students in the twenty-first century, graduate student professionalization (i.e. the process of acclimating graduate students to their roles as scholars and literacy educators) has become increasingly complex. To explore how graduate programs in the field of Rhetoric and Composition Studies prepare their students to be faculty members in a digital age, this dissertation examines how four doctoral programs throughout the United States are responding to the pedagogical and institutional demands for preparing technologically literate faculty. Relying on six research questions, this dissertation provides a focused look at how graduate students are professionalized at various points in their programs ranging from coursework to dissertation work. Each of the four case studies triangulates a variety of quantitative and qualitative data (curricular materials, surveys, and interviews), which was gathered from graduate students, faculty advisors, and administrators. The data represented in this dissertation indicate how graduate students and faculty are finding a balance among traditional approaches to professionalization and more recent demands for integrating technology throughout graduate education. The findings suggest that faculty and graduate students need more encouragement to share the responsibility for technology integration throughout the graduate student professionalization process. Recommendations are provided at the conclusion of this dissertation for how doctoral programs can integrate technology more effectively in practice given the professional needs of students and faculty members. Given the findings of these case studies, the field of Rhetoric and Composition Studies can gather more insight about its approaches toward educating its emerging scholars and how those approaches are influenced by advancements in technology.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric
Keywords: graduate education; professional development; technology
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17.
Laverick, Erin Knoche.
Feminist and other Intertwining Pedagogies of Writing Instruction in The University of Findlay's Intensive English Language Program.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2008, Bowling Green State University
► Feminist pedagogy is a rich and current teaching method in the field…
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▼ Feminist pedagogy is a rich and current teaching method in the field of composition and rhetoric. However, it is virtually unexplored in ESL writing pedagogy. Perhaps too engrained in applied linguistics, ESL teachers and researchers have been slow to embrace scholarship in other fields such as composition and feminist pedagogy. A pilot research study was designed to determine the extent to which English as a second language (ESL) instructors at The University of Findlay (UF) draw on feminist pedagogy or practices associated with the approach to decide how the pedagogy could best be implemented into ESL composition instruction. Classroom observations and instructor interviews were conducted to determine the extent to which instructors used feminist teaching practices in their writing courses. From the data collected, it was evident that ESL instructors would benefit from further training in other teaching practices in addition to feminist pedagogy. The findings from the study were used to create a teacher training for UF ESL writing instructors that will be conducted during the 2009-2010 academic year. From the data collection, it was clear that while some faculty unconsciously applied traits of feminist pedagogy in their teaching, they would benefit from training in other types of teaching methodologies. Three conclusions were made. 1) UF ESL writing instructors would benefit from additional training in student-centered pedagogy. 2) Instructors would benefit from additional training in composition pedagogy. 3) Instructors would benefit from a very basic training in feminist pedagogy. Because instructors would benefit from a teacher training that focuses on teaching methodologies other than feminist pedagogy, the training will focus on how good teaching practices such as student-centered, composition, and feminist pedagogies intertwine. Thus, through the training sessions, instructors will discuss how good teaching practices are interconnected instead of viewing them in isolation. The in-services were designed for instructors to reflect not only on their current teaching practices but also to grow as educators where in which they apply student-centered, composition, and feminist pedagogies in order to best prepare ESL students for academic success in their undergraduate and graduate programs at UF.
Advisors/Committee Members: Carter Wood, Sue.
Subjects: Composition
Keywords: Feminist Pedaggoy; Writing Pedagogy; ESL Pedagogy; Student-centered Learning
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18.
Mahaffey, Cynthia Jo.
Wearing the Rainbow Triangle: The Effect of Out Lesbian Teachers and Lesbian Teacher Subjectivities on Student Choice of Topics, Student Writing, and Student Subject Positions in the First-Year Composition Classroom.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2004, Bowling Green State University
► This dissertation examines out lesbian teachers in the college composition classroom from…
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▼ This dissertation examines out lesbian teachers in the college composition classroom from a viewpoint of feminist teacher research and “queer geography”. Employing composition history, the ideological erasure of lesbian teacher subjectivities in the composition classroom is outlined. Case studies of lesbian teachers and students in lesbian teachers’ composition classrooms indicate in a preliminary way that students’ choice of writing topics, student writing and student subject positions are affected by the presence of out lesbian composition teachers.
Advisors/Committee Members: Carter, Lovie Sue.
Keywords: homosexuality; lesbian teachers; lesbian composition professors; composition studies; college writing; college composition; empowerment pedagogies; critical pedagogies; Writing Across the Curriculum pedagogies; queer theory; cultural studies
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19.
Murphy, Robin Marie Merrick.
Post-9/11 Rhetorical Theory and Composition Pedagogy: Fostering Trauma Rhetorics as Civic Space.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2007, Bowling Green State University
► Though a recent series in JAC (24:1and2, 2004) featured special issue on…
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▼ Though a recent series in JAC (24:1and2, 2004) featured special issue on Trauma and Rhetoric, little to no information is available in the Composition and Rhetoric field that provides instructors a writing curriculum by which to address social traumas. At the same time, only in the last several years has there been a noteworthy surge of theory and practice in the field calling for the inclusion of technology and visual rhetoric in composition production. Add to that lack of training available for teachers to maintain the knowledge to meet the growth of new media and its influences on current literacy demands and classroom practices, and these omissions constitute significant gaps in curriculum needs necessary for the 21st Century, post-9/11 writing classroom. Defining the needs of a post-9/11 writing student is a complicated process and requires a wide scope consideration of both ancient rhetorical traditions and contemporary composition pedagogies. This study uncovers the common characteristics of those traditions and pedagogies that best suit post-9/11 students by first considering the historic role linking rhetorical and composition education while explicitly concentrating on their shared function of teaching citizenry. Next, the text explores rhetorically resonant artifacts from WWII, The Vietnam War, and the Oklahoma City Bombing to indicate the shifts in literacy practices that seem to correlate with traumatic social events. The text triangulates Critical Theory, Culture Studies, and the Post-Process Movement to build a rhetorical theory and subsequent composition pedagogy based on three tenets: 1) the democratic values of traditional rhetorical education, 2) a complex citizenry that is both global- and cyber-responsible, and 3) the importance of multi-modal literacy. In the compilation of Post-9/11 Rhetorical Theory and Composition Pedagogy, it seemed sensible to describe the theory and pedagogy via three areas: literacy, rhetoric, and curriculum while also negotiating alternative production practices, teacher training, and assessment strategies. The result is a complex theory designed to utilize the intricate social and rhetorical situations derived from trauma events to provide students a commonplace by which to produce alternative compositions. Thereby, the theory and pedagogy developed here asks instructors to end the marginalization of students and their cultural and critical ability to engage in an advanced citizenry when met with trauma and rather to encourage them to be more involved in their education, their communities and their democracy.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine L.
Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Keywords: post-9/11 rhetoric; trauma rhetoric; civic education; rhetorical education; composition pedagogy; alternative composition; multi-modal literacy; writing curriculum
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20.
Petrosino, Krista L.
Some (Still) Like it Hot: Re-envisioning Transdisciplinarity and Collaboration in First Year Composition and Jazz.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► Many of the previous ways of understanding disciplinary knowledge outside of discipline-specific…
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▼ Many of the previous ways of understanding disciplinary knowledge outside of discipline-specific contexts, most frequently metaphors and tropes, are useful when working within abstract, theorized concepts, but do not fare well when a practical application such as collaboration, and specifically transdisciplinary collaboration, is the goal. Rather, in the case of transdisciplinary collaboration between the specific observed First Year Composition and Jazz classrooms and learning environments, the situated literacies identified within each classroom are useful foundations for understanding how knowledge is produced or transferred in those environments, and therefore function as points of engagement around which instructors and students can design discipline-specific or transdisciplinary collaborative initiatives.
Advisors/Committee Members: Nickoson, Dr. Lee.
Subjects: Composition; Higher Education; Literacy; Music; Rhetoric; Teaching
Keywords: collaboration; transdisciplinary; Jazz; First Year Composition; literate activity; situated literacies
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21.
Rowe, Karen D.
Painted Sermons: Explanatory Rhetoric and William Holman Hunt's Inscribed Frames.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2005, Bowling Green State University
► This study was undertaken to determine the rhetorical function of the verbal…
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▼ This study was undertaken to determine the rhetorical function of the verbal texts inscribed on the frames of the paintings of the Victorian Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt. The nineteenth century expansion of the venues of rhetoric from spoken to written forms coupled with the growing interest in belle lettres created the possibility for the inscriptions to have a greater function than merely captioning the work. Visits were made to museums in the United States and Great Britain to ascertain which of Hunt's paintings have inscribed frames. In addition, primary sources at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the British Library, London, were consulted to determine if the artist had recorded his design plans or stated any specific purpose for the inscriptions. In addition, secondary sources were examined for relevant discussions of Hunt's works. It was concluded that the inscribed works fit the parameters of explanatory rhetoric, a form informational and didactic rather than persuasive in nature. The common nineteenth century venue for explanatory rhetoric was the pulpit, instructing converted parishioners about their Christian duties and Church doctrines. It was also concluded that this shift in rhetorical purpose was not new to the Victorian era, rather that there is a long history of explanatory rhetoric going back at least to Augustine. As well it was determined that there is a long history of the use of the visual in sermonizing. Thus, Hunt's works, addressing both doctrine and duty, reflect the characteristics of explanatory rhetoric. This study suggests that exploration of explanatory rhetoric should be undertaken in greater detail, for it is a rich addition to the field of rhetoric, potentially reaching across the boundaries of the liberal arts. In addition, this study suggests that a re-examination of the modes of discourse be considered, according information the same consideration as persuasion and opening the door for categorizing rhetorical practice by purpose, not genre. The conclusions of this study support the contention of Robert Connors whose articles on explanatory rhetoric encourage a deeper consideration of that relatively unexplored field.
Advisors/Committee Members: Carter, Sue.
Keywords: Explanatory Rhetoric; William Holman Hunt; Inscribed Frames
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22.
Royster, Brent Jason.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF SELF IN THE CONTEMPORARY CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP: A PERSONAL JOURNEY.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2006, Bowling Green State University
► After receiving an MFA in Creative Writing, I continued graduate study in…
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▼ After receiving an MFA in Creative Writing, I continued graduate study in Rhetoric. Before entering this new degree program, the views I'd developed in respect to my writing process were shaped, primarily, by the conventional “rhetorics” of the MFA program. The construction of my identity-my “style,” or “voice,” or self-was one of a staid, concrete centeredness, oftentimes described as the authentic or autonomous self. For this reason, I viewed the formation of voice in writing as a practice involving the speaking of this authentic self. And since mine was a product-centered process, I viewed the rhetorical situation as somehow grounded in the poems I produced, as in, my writing had its own reason for being. Finally, this product-centered speaking of an authentic self relied wholly upon “inspiration,” and I viewed my creative processes as individual and autonomous. Ideas I'd formed concerning the writing process, the construction of the self through writing, the formation of “voice,” the rhetorical “situation” (as the impetus for creation), and the nature of creativity would soon be revised in light of research in contemporary composition pedagogy. Pedagogical practices in the creative writing classroom must recognize the students' processes, in the construction of the self in writing, in the construction of aesthetic perspectives, and in the ongoing growth all writers-both students and teachers-must assimilate during the writing process. The purpose of this dissertation project is to define the workshop as a site for identity construction, and to illustrate how the construction of self is more complicated than has oftentimes been assumed. To do this, I will overview notions of self in Classical and contemporary rhetoric, and then explore ways these notions influence the teaching and practice of creative writing. The end goal of this dissertation is to suggest a pedagogical model based upon a revised notion of identity. This dissertation is written as a personal and intellectual journey and so many of its assumptions and conclusions are drawn directly from my own practice as a writer, and from my experience as a teacher.
Advisors/Committee Members: Wood, Sue Carter.
Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Keywords: creative writing; pedagogy; rhetoric
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23.
Rybas, Sergey.
Community Revisited: Invoking the Subjectivity of the Online Learner.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2008, Bowling Green State University
► In this project, I argue that the communal potential of online education…
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▼ In this project, I argue that the communal potential of online education has been limited to an essentialized and inflexible notion of community that has served as a yardstick of success for education across levels and disciplines. Tracing the roots of the limited understanding and uses of online community to two themes in sociology and communication - the instinctual drive toward community-building and the egalitarian promise of online technology - I propose examining online communities in light of a fundamentally different bind - a discourse that allows divorcing the notion and practice of online community from the notion and practice of any other discourse, particularly face to face communication, and enables assessing and appreciating online community as a dynamic concept in its own right. Such approach to online community allows for a more informed idea of communicating online that resonates with the many paths of identity and literacy formation afforded by online technology. The empirical part of the project examines the online interactions in a distance learning class, focusing on the subjectivities of its students. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, the study explores the role the online subjectivities play in the formation and functioning of an online community. Situating this project in a larger discussion of collaborative education, I examine how the newly established subjectivities of students and teachers both reflect and problematize the traditional understandings of community. The analysis of subjective power and knowledge suggests the idea of online community as open source, which points to the individual agency of every constituent of the communication process and promotes consideration and inclusion of the subjective understandings and performances of communal interactions. An open source community observes a shift from building and preserving the communal to locating it in the practices and performances of community members. I argue that a vibrant, multimodal, and flexible idea of community could be a revisable structure based on the needs, skills, and goals of the users and the possibilities of the technology that harnesses online communication. The project also emphasizes the need of an additional exploration of the power relations in limited-access entities, such as online classes, mapping the ways in which subjective power plays into the construction of community, and welcoming the individual knowledges and performance of communal communication online that present new possibilities for a more inclusive, diverse, intellectually-fair and challenging education.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Communication; Rhetoric; Teaching
Keywords: Community; subject; subjectivity; power; online learning; open source
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24.
Schirmer, James Robert.
Acquiring Literacy: Techne, Video Games and Composition Pedagogy.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2008, Bowling Green State University
► Recent work within composition studies calls for an expansion of the idea…
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▼ Recent work within composition studies calls for an expansion of the idea of composition itself, an increasing advocacy of approaches that allow and encourage students to greater exploration and more play. Such advocacy comes coupled with an acknowledgement of technology as an increasingly influential factor in the lives of students. But without a more thorough understanding of technology and how it is manifest in society, any technological incorporation is almost certain to fail. Therefore, it is of great importance that we not only keep up but, in fact, reflect on process and progress, much as we encourage students to do in composition courses. This document represents an exercise in such reflection, recognizing past and present understandings of the relationship between technology and society. I thus survey past perspectives on the relationship between techne, phronesis, praxis and ethos with an eye toward how such associative states might evolve. Placing these ideas within the context of video games, I seek applicable explanation of how techne functions in a current, popular technology. In essence, it is an analysis of video games as a techno-pedagogical manifestation of techne. With techne as historical foundation and video games as current literacy practice, both serve to improve approaches to teaching composition.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kris.
Subjects: Composition
Keywords: composition; episteme; ethos; kairos; literacy; pedagogy; phronesis; video games
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25.
Schnieder, Jeremy Lee.
Placing One Program's Assessment and Its Effects on a Novice Teacher.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► For over one-hundred years, and since the work of Thorndike and Hillegas,…
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▼ For over one-hundred years, and since the work of Thorndike and Hillegas, writing assessment practices have rested on the value of interrater agreement to show reliability - agreement achieved through norming practices. Recent conversations have emphasized a greater use of localized practices and the importance of stakeholders against a background of standardized assessments such as No Child Left Behind and a society that values accountability. Due to very real circumstances, such as student enrollment and a need to ensure a consistent student experience across sections, some writing programs, especially those making use of graduate student teaching assistants, may have a desire to use norming techniques and standardized writing assessment designed around local contexts and requirements. Several studies have been conducted on the effects of standardized assessment on primary and secondary education, but none have done so in the post-secondary composition classroom. Thus, via qualitative methods, this ethnographic study investigates the effects of standardized writing assessment practices on a single, novice instructor, even though those practices are locally designed and governed. Using feminist research principles and activity theory, interviews with a novice instructor and program mentors, several classroom observations, and an analysis of the novice instructor's commenting practices, a deep map is created. This map provides a richer understanding of the relationship between the program rubric, end-of-term portfolio exchange, and the classroom decisions of this instructor. This contextualized study contributes to conversations regarding the effects of standardized writing assessment practices on instructors, teaching and learning to the test, and localized writing assessment practices.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Teaching
Keywords: writing assessment; standardization; novice instructors
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26.
Shetzer, Lucie.
Confronting Aging and Serious Illness through Journaling: A Study of Writing as Therapy.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2007, Bowling Green State University
► This pilot study asked whether people suffering from illness, injury, or the…
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▼ This pilot study asked whether people suffering from illness, injury, or the often dehumanizing effects of aging could benefit from the integration of written discourse as non-medical but parallel treatment options. As such, it focused on implementing writing as therapy, and involved three separate workshops, ranging in duration from 6-8 weeks throughout the fall of 2005. Workshop participants from each group were volunteers recruited through advertisements developed by the researcher and disseminated through the cooperation of three separate institutions located in Northwest Ohio. Specifically, one group of participants involved senior residents at a retirement community; a second group included clients at a local organization that offers non-medical support to cancer survivors and their family members. The final group was recruited from a hospital cancer support service, bringing the total number of participants across all three groups to approximately fifteen. Writing workshops were conducted separately, and in the case of the retirement community participants, workshop material was geared more toward reflective and autobiographical writing than toward illness and recovery. Ultimately, the variation in materials reflected participants’ reasons for joining the workshops, and the resultant exigencies from which their writing emerged. Implementing and expanding upon the work of scholars who advocate the therapeutic effects of writing, the study methodology relied upon triangulation of data, including participant interviews, written artifacts, and surveys whose analysis produced thick description of the extent to which written discourse provided therapeutic benefit to individuals experiencing: 1) latter stages of life, which trigger a confrontation with mortality and the subsequent desire to create a permanent record that validates existence, 2) life threatening illness that hastens awareness of mortality, 3) loved ones’ life threatening illness, and its emotional repercussions. The study’s findings incorporated service-learning theory and community literacy programs as natural extensions for writing-as-therapy projects. More specifically, it sought to nurture a perspective of written discourse that transcends the academy to include not only health care services, but communities in general, as a bridge for service learning and community literacy programs; furthermore, it argued for the inclusion of such theories in writing curricula, with a purpose toward balancing academic writing with writing for personal growth.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Keywords: written discourse as non-medical but parallel treatment options for the seriously ill; writing as therapy; therapeutic writing and aging; literacy and aging; reflective and autobiographical writing
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27.
Shultz Colby, Rebekah.
RESISTANCE AS NEGOTIATION: STRATEGIES AND TACTICS FOR REDEFINING POWER RELATIONSHIPS IN THE COMPOSITION CLASSROOM.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2006, Bowling Green State University
► From an educational perspective, student resistance is often defined as any oppositional…
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▼ From an educational perspective, student resistance is often defined as any oppositional student behavior that protests or undermines oppressive educational practices, specifically practices that hinder what and how students learn. However, most of the literature on resistance tends to define resistance as a reductive, static entity which can be possessed by one person and studied from only one perspective or context – usually that of the classroom. This dissertation complicated this definition through a case study of a first year composition class looking at not only the instructor but two of its students as not individually representative of resistant behavior but in a power relationship, extending Michel Foucault’s definition of power to resistance. In particular, I viewed resistance as an important part of the power relationship between student and teacher, which both teacher and student equally engage in to form a type of negotiation – a type of dialogue created either indirectly through responsive actions or directly through verbal discourse. Furthermore, in examining resistance as a relationship, I also examined how other socio-political institutions outside the classroom also affect this relationship, specifically examining how students’ previous roles and relationships with knowledge, other writing teachers, classrooms, and pedagogies, as well as their families and their communities shape their resistances of disengagement. The conclusion of my case study emphasized the importance of instructors spending individual time with students to find out as much as possible about these previous relationships so that they can renegotiate relationships with students in ways that better fit the needs of the class, lessening the student’s need to resist through disengagement. In other words, in negotiating with students, teachers need to help students resist those previous roles that keep them from successfully inhabiting the roles of their writing class. However, in doing this, teachers also need to resist overly rigid traditional academic roles that may prevent them from meeting students’ needs. In fact, to fully negotiate, both students and teachers need to be flexible enough to at least partially inhabit each other’s roles and put themselves in the other’s place.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Keywords: composition
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28.
Stalions, Eric Wesley.
Dynamic Criteria Mapping: A Study of the Rhetorical Values of Placement Evaluators.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2007, Bowling Green State University
► Adapting Bob Broad’s Dynamic Criteria Mapping (DCM) research model, the most current…
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▼ Adapting Bob Broad’s Dynamic Criteria Mapping (DCM) research model, the most current qualitative and quantitative model for researching exit assessment practices, this dissertation study identified, analyzed, and mapped the rhetorical values or criteria that guided placement program evaluators at an Ohio university in placing students into one of the first-year writing courses in 2006. Because DCM had not been applied in a placement assessment institutional context, the purpose of this dissertation was to bring the benefits of DCM to bear on the programmatic assessment of placement practices. This dissertation validated the assumption that DCM can be used to study and understand placement assessment practices, and it employed DCM to provide a focused constructivist content validation argument to improve the placement program’s communal writing assessment practices – rhetorical, deliberative, collaborative assessments – as well as to reflect more accurately the writing program’s curricular criteria. Regarding the primary focus of the dissertation, the study of the rhetorical criteria of the 2006 placement program evaluators, this study used grounded theory methodology, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, QSR International NVivo 7 qualitative coding software, quantitative analyses, and Broad’s Dynamic Criteria Mapping procedures to classify, analyze, and map the evaluators’ rhetorical criteria, to define the correlation between evaluators’ criteria and the writing program’s principal and secondary curricular criteria, and to present a focused validation argument – four validation-argument questions for the placement program to consider – intended to strengthen the relationship between the placement program’s communal writing assessment practices and the writing program’s curriculum. Derived from the research study’s results, these four validation-argument questions highlighted conclusions for discussion – evaluative issues which the placement program’s administrators should consider to strengthen the placement program’s constructivist content validity. These questions asked administrators to encourage placement readers to use evaluative criteria clearly connected to the curriculum, consistently applied over time, appropriately used with respect to context, and properly utilized to assess the use of narrative. Finally, this dissertation adapted Broad’s streamlined DCM techniques, a more focused and efficient form of DCM, to provide a general heuristic for writing program administrators to investigate the evaluative criteria of their placement programs’ rhetorical assessment practices.
Advisors/Committee Members: Gebhardt, Richard C.
Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Keywords: assessment; Bob Broad; communal writing assessment; constructivist content validity; criteria mapping; curricular criteria; CWA; dcm; DCM; dynamic criteria mapping
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29.
Thomas, Brennan M.
Composition Studies and Teaching Anxiety: A Pilot Study of Teaching Groups and Discipline- and Program-Specific Triggers.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2006, Bowling Green State University
► Although previous studies on teaching anxiety have clarified the general characteristics and…
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▼ Although previous studies on teaching anxiety have clarified the general characteristics and manifestations of this phenomenon and established the need for more effective teacher preparation programs, most do not reflect the practices or concerns of writing instructors or indicate how or why they experience anxiety. The purpose of this dissertation, therefore, was to determine how the rhetorical and situational elements of writing instruction contribute to teaching anxiety and to what extent composition instructors attempt to resolve or minimize the effects of potential triggers and symptoms. Over a period of sixteen weeks, five first-year composition instructors completed a series of interviews and surveys related to their teaching and met periodically in small groups to discuss instructional matters and strategies for handling them. Data yielded from interview and group session transcripts and survey responses indicated that a) general teaching anxiety triggers (that is, triggers found in any discipline and at any level) are often compounded by discipline- and/or program-specific anxiety triggers, b) the potential anxiety triggers instructors reported or exhibited seem to interfere with their abilities to successfully impart student learning, and c) instructors’ behavioral responses to such anxiety triggers are influenced by what they consider to be the likeliest and/or most addressable sources of their anxiety. These findings provide several starting points for a much needed in-depth look into the causes and manifestations of and possible remedies for teaching anxiety as well as the long-term effects of teacher preparation and faculty development programs on anxiety and job performance.
Advisors/Committee Members: Carter Wood, Sue.
Keywords: teaching anxiety; communication apprehension; teacher efficacy; efficacy; composition instruction; writing instruction; composition studies; rhetoric and composition; first-year composition; teacher-student communication; writing program administration
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30.
Tran, Thai T.
Indirectness in Vietnamese Newspaper Commentaries: A Pilot Study.
Degree: PhD, English/Rhetoric and Writing, 2007, Bowling Green State University
► Since ESL literature has ascribed circuitous textual development, covert ideational connections, and…
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▼ Since ESL literature has ascribed circuitous textual development, covert ideational connections, and usage of implicative devices to second-language-writing indirectness, the purpose of this project was to inquire into (1) whether Vietnamese writing in both English and Vietnamese exhibited any or all the three aspects of indirectness, (2) how the employment of the second language as a vehicle of thought as well as the concern with the intended audience might influence the writer’s utilization of such indirectness, and (3) whether such manifestations might negatively affect Western text interpretation. My survey of forty commentaries written in English and in the native language from eight Vietnamese newspapers, four targeting senior audience and four aiming at junior readers, indicated that (1) the general textual advancements were quasi-deductive and quasi-inductive, (2) texts in the second language seemed to be developed in an approach closer to the deductive method (i.e.; quasi-deductive), (3) the theme-delay progression appeared to be the general writing tendency in both the native- and foreign-language texts, (4) implicit inter-propositional connections might be problematic for Western readers, (5) the L2 inappropriate employment of indirectness devices might involve a lack of instruction in style and tone, and (6) more influences of language than audience on the usage of indirectness in all the three aspects. The findings also suggested explicit and specific instruction to address non-Western writing features in second-language composition. Further in-depth investigation is needed to confirm these findings and to explore rhetorical practices by Vietnamese, an area scarcely traversed by rhetoricians.
Advisors/Committee Members: Blair, Kristine.
Subjects: Language, Rhetoric and Composition
Keywords: indirectness; indirection; rhetorical situation; vague language; propositional relationship; textual; ideational; text; linguistics; discourse analysis; text grammar; discourse bloc; discourse matrix; coordination; subordination; superordination
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