Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, English

From 1901-1938, the ecumenical Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions (CCUSFM) published a series of annual textbooks intended for American Protestant women, members of local branches of women's foreign missionary societies, to study and teach each other. The United Study texts constructed a version of women's rights rhetoric that I refer to as modern missionary feminism. They positioned their readers as heirs to the history of Christianity, participants in contemporary political and social movements, and sisters to “heathen” women around the world who needed their help. In these ways, the United Study series created interrelated exigencies for American women, who were told that because of their privileged status as educated, modern, Western women, they were required to help other women and that the way to do so was through their support of Christian evangelism. To CCUSFM members and the authors they commissioned, the conversion of the world to Christianity, the spread of women's rights, and modernization through Western cultural imperialism were inseparable. In particular, they believed that modern Christian women needed to act on behalf of missions in order to bring about the ideal, unified, egalitarian, and peaceful Christian utopia of the future. The contradictions inherent in their rhetoric (which utilized opposing ideas such as conservative/progressive, professional/familial, international/local, and unity/diversity) went largely uninterrogated; rather than viewing such binaries as either/or, their rhetorical positioning of modern missionary feminists allowed them to embrace multiple sides of various debates, revealing new ways in which rhetorical scholars can consider women's and religious rhetorics.

Committee: Nan Johnson (Advisor); James Fredal (Committee Member); H. Lewis Ulman (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Religious History; Rhetoric; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

The history of women's rhetorical education is diverse, combining issues of access and exclusion, and intersecting with other factors of social location and identity such as class, race, and geography. Scholars like Gere, Johnson, Logan, and VanHaitsma have all explored the various ways women have pursued education in rhetoric and writing outside of the formal space of classroom settings, through women's clubs, parlor rhetorics, letter-writing, and more. Additionally, scholars such as Costa and Kallick and works like the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing have considered the role that habits of mind play in shaping writing education. This project has two primary goals. The first is to analyze the role of self-culture (the process of seeking out knowledge and education of one's own volition) as an element of rhetorical education for diverse women living and learning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through an investigation of self-culture texts and women's archival records. The second is to analyze the role of habits of mind in women's self-culture practices, and to draw connections between the historical evidence and contemporary research. I employed a feminist historiographic methodology, relying on digital archival research and textual analysis. The project outlines key elements of self-culture as an aspect of rhetorical education, focusing on texts' instructions related to speaking, reading and writing; analyzing diverse women's uptake and modification of self-culture advice; and uncovering the interconnected and multilayered importance of habits of mind. The findings of my analysis offer insight into modes of writing and rhetorical education that occurred alongside and outside of formal educational settings, showcase diverse women's uptake of those educational methods, and describe the interconnected role played by habits of mind in extracurricular learning activities. This project draws connections between the practices of self- (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sue Carter Wood PhD (Advisor); Jean Marie Gerard PhD (Other); Neil Baird PhD (Committee Member); Lee Nickoson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Black History; Composition; Education; Education History; Gender; Gender Studies; History; Literacy; Pedagogy; Rhetoric; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2023, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This dissertation examined media rhetoric in the Los Angeles Times about 51 murdered marginalized women in the “Southside Slayer” serial killer cases. The “Southside Slayer” was five different Black men who did not fit the profile of a serial killer and were able to continue murdering women from 1983 to 2007. The victims and/or killers were all associated at one point with the “Southside Slayer” moniker and/or task force, even though some of the killers were later given different nicknames in the press. The goal of this study was to identify harmful narratives against marginalized women victims, and how they were perpetuated through the Los Angeles Times. Through qualitative archival research and a feminist social constructionist lens, language and word/phrase choices in 126 articles from the Los Angeles Times dating from 1985 to 2020 were examined for the use of synecdoche, derogatory language, and negatively connotative language when referring to the fifty-one women. In addition, use of the victims' names, use of the killers' names, and use of killer-friendly language were examined. Using critical discourse analysis and grounded theory, harmful narratives and dehumanization of the women were perpetuated through the underuse of victims' names combined with overused combinations of synecdoche, derogatory, and/or negatively connotative words/phrases. Digital media of today was also examined, and perpetuation or disruption of the harmful narratives and dehumanization varied.

Committee: Lee Nickoson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Christopher Ward Ph.D. (Other); Radhika Gajjala Ph.D. (Committee Member); Chad Iwertz-Duffy Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Journalism; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Rhetoric; Social Structure; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2020, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

In 2008 Kosovo gained independence and began to transition into statehood. During that transition a new constitution was created providing an opportunity for new leadership roles for Kosovar women. In 2017, Kosovar Ambassador Teuta Sahatqija gave a speech at Ohio Northern University's College of Law titled “The Leadership Roles of Women in Transitional States.” It was at this speech that she shared many stories and photos illustrating the ways in which Kosovar women were breaking silences during this transition period. This dissertation applies the lens of the rhetoric of silence and feminist rhetoric to the rhetorical moves made by women in Kosovo that Ambassador Sahatqija described in her speech. Four discussion points of the Ambassador's speech (artifacts) were chosen for analysis. The artifacts chosen were a story she told about the parliament women protesting a diplomatic assignment list that was only comprised of men, Articles 7, 22, and 37 of the new Kosovo Constitution, and a memorial and an art installation both dedicated to the estimated 20,000 rape victims of the Kosovo war. Heuristic analysis of these artifacts explored the ways in which these artifacts helped women overcome silences previously placed upon them, prevent future silencing, and amplified Kosovar women's voices. The analysis found that each artifact gave women in Kosovo agency and empowered them to make global changes and amplify the voices of women. It found that each of the artifacts utilized social circulation, globalization, critical imagination, and strategic contemplation in ways that allowed them to de-silence women. This dissertation concludes that the implications of these rhetorical moves to overcome silences and amplify marginalized voices can have impact on a larger more global scale. It also suggests ways that we can incorporate the same movements in our classrooms in order to continue to amplify previously silenced voices and help our students find their own voice.

Committee: Sue Carter Wood PhD (Advisor); Danielle Kuhl PhD (Other); Neil Baird PhD (Committee Member); Lee Nickoson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2018, English

As our digital environments—in their inhabitants, communities, and cultures—have evolved, harassment, unfortunately, has become the status quo on the internet (Duggan, 2014 & 2017; Jane, 2014b). Harassment is an issue that disproportionately affects women, particularly women of color (Citron, 2014; Mantilla, 2015), LGBTQIA+ women (Herring et al., 2002; Warzel, 2016), and women who engage in social justice, civil rights, and feminist discourses (Cole, 2015; Davies, 2015; Jane, 2014a). Whitney Phillips (2015) notes that it's politically significant to pay attention to issues of online harassment because this kind of invective calls “attention to dominant cultural mores” (p. 7). Keeping our finger on the pulse of such attitudes is imperative to understand who is excluded from digital publics and how these exclusions perpetuate racism and sexism to “preserve the internet as a space free of politics and thus free of challenge to white masculine heterosexual hegemony” (Higgin, 2013, n.p.). While rhetoric and writing as a field has a long history of examining myriad exclusionary practices that occur in public discourses, we still have much work to do in understanding how online harassment, particularly that which is gendered, manifests in digital publics and to what rhetorical effect. In this dissertation, I critically examine how harassment is enabled and circulated by digital platforms as well as the effects it has on people, online cultures, and social media design and policy. I outline a feminist theory of what I call “volatile visibility,” the correlation between a woman's circulation online and the amount of harassment she experiences. To document and analyze the effects of volatile visibility, I conducted a survey and in-depth interviews with women who have experienced severe forms of online harassment. Their stories reveal how online harassment works to maintain existing cultural boundaries that exclude women from public discourses. Therefore, I argue online har (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jason Palmeri (Advisor); Tim Lockridge (Committee Member); Michele Simmons (Committee Member); Lisa Weems (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric

Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing​, University of Findlay, 2017, English

The introduction of the comments section to online news articles enabled new forms of interaction, allowing readers to participate directly in the conversation. Scholars have hailed the comments sections as digital public spheres of democratic discourse. However, scant research has been done on how sexist rhetoric affects women's ability to participate in online discourse, despite research indicating that such rhetoric is a problem. This thesis project draws connections between research on the comments sections, uninhibited behavior and flaming, cybersexism, and women's participation in discourse to look at the impact of sexist rhetoric. I conduct a close reading of comments from BuzzFeed, MSNBC, and Fox News, analyzing the material using feminist and sociological rhetorical criticism. I argue that the presence of sexist rhetoric leads to a reduction in women's participation in the comments and negative effects on women's agency within the comments. Findings include consistent patterns of sexist rhetoric on all three sites, and consistent patterns of responses from women, the most predominant of which is silence. If the comments are to meet the ideal of a democratic public sphere, then the role of sexist rhetoric must be understood and mitigated.

Committee: Ron Tulley PhD (Committee Chair); Elkie Burnside PhD (Committee Member); Kathy Mason PhD (Committee Member); Christine Tulley PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Communication; Composition; Gender; Language Arts; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Multimedia Communications; Rhetoric; Technical Communication

Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing​, University of Findlay, 2016, English

Equality in different facets of life is becoming second nature in the United States. Unfortunately, there is still work to do to create a united America. One of the places where our country lacks in equality is politics. While more women are becoming involved in politics, our country has still never had a female president, or vice president. In looking at the rhetorical constructs of The Cult of Domesticity, with ethos, pathos, and logos; a study was conducted following the debate strategies of Hillary Rodham Clinton in her quest for the presidency in both 2008 and 2016. Four debates were watched and critically analyzed to determine Clinton's political qualifications, and if they should have been enough to win her the presidency. The four core characteristics of a politician were analyzed with Clinton and male politicians in mind to see any major differences.

Committee: Christine Denecker PhD (Committee Chair); Sarah Fedirka PhD (Committee Member); Kathy Mason PhD (Committee Member); Christine Tulley PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Gender; Gender Studies; Political Science; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2022, English

This dissertation examines the important affective labor of diverse feminist activists and sexual assault survivor advocates and contributes a theory of feminist affective resistance. I define feminist affective resistance as the transformative rhetorics and literacy practices feminists employ to challenge dominant pedagogies of emotion while building toward feminist and survivor-centered futures. In Chapter 1, I situate this dissertation within scholarship on affect, feminist rhetorics, and literacies, establishing how feminist scholars and activists have begun to identify and resist social-emotional scripts. In Chapter 2, I constellate a feminist trauma-informed methodology and introduce my participants and methods. I investigate feminist rhetorical strategies and literacy practices through interviews with eleven feminist activists and an ethnographic case study at a rape crisis center where I have volunteered for three years. In Chapter 3, I describe how feminist activists enact digital tactics of feminist affective resistance while making social media work for them. Participants in this study established feminist affective counterpublics online and carefully navigated the affective burdens of their online activism. In Chapter 4, I investigate the feminist rhetorical pedagogies at the Midwest Rape Crisis Organization (MRCO), including five rhetorical tenets that guide advocate interactions with survivors. MRCO rhetorics and pedagogies help survivors and advocates realign away from discourses of rape culture and toward feminist values of the organization. In Chapter 5, I present MRCO as a literacy sponsor that helps advocates affectively attune with survivors and affectively realign away from vicarious trauma. Literacy practices of MRCO advocates include reading to believe, writing to process, and gathering to heal. In Chapter 6, I review four lessons of feminist affective resistance, including the importance of rhetorical affective education. I conclude this diss (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jason Palmeri (Committee Co-Chair); Sara Webb-Sunderhaus (Committee Co-Chair); Lisa Weems (Committee Member); Emily Legg (Committee Member); Michele Simmons (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Gender Studies; Literacy; Rhetoric; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Media and Communication

This project examined traditional gendered discourses surrounding the ends and means of sexuality, the emerging role of digital sexual technologies in purported sexual empowerment, and the socio-material aspects which revolve around these technologies, sexual medias, and sexual discourses. Combining critical feminist insights with media ecology, this project explored happenings within the sociosexually violent pre- and present-COVID-19 United States ecology, documenting novel and rigorous contributions in our increasingly algorithmic world. This study of the U.S. context critiques foundational constructs created by Enlightenment decisionmakers who rationalized colonial rhetorics and logics built into each preceding iteration of capitalisms from industrialism into neoliberalism since national origin. As such, it extends critiques of mechanistic models of the human body and sexual communications and situates them within the vastly uncriminalized sexual violences, as well as insufficient sexual education standards. Theoretically, I argue that a mechanization of humans has occurred, been pushed to its extreme, and is flipping into a humanization of objects. To demonstrate this, I critical feminist rhetorically analyzed 75 biomimetic sextech advertisements from the brand Lora DiCarlo, contextualizing them in salient discourses within 428 present-COVID-19 TikTok videos, investigating: “What rhetorical themes occur within advertisements for biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers in the late-stage present-COVID-19 neoliberal U.S. landscape?” “How have biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers effected how their sexual experiences are created and maintained in the sociosexual U.S. landscape?” and “How are biomimetic sextech changing vulva-havers sexual sense-making, experiences, and relations within the sexually violent late-stage capitalist present-COVID-19 U.S. landscape?” Using a feminist eye, this brings to media ecology a contextualization (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ellen W. Gorsevski Ph.D (Advisor); Kristina N. LaVenia Ph.D (Other); Lara M. Lengel Ph.D (Committee Member); Terry L. Rentner Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; American History; American Studies; Bioinformatics; Black Studies; Communication; Economic History; Education; Ethnic Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Health Education; Higher Education; Individual and Family Studies; Information Systems; Information Technology; Marketing; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Medical Ethics; Middle School Education; Modern History; Organizational Behavior; Personal Relationships; Philosophy; Philosophy of Science; Public Health; Public Health Education; Rhetoric; Science Education; Secondary Education; Social Research; Social Structure; Sociology; Systematic; Systems Design; Technical Communication; Technology; Web Studies; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

It is believed that over 90% of sexual violence cases involve situations in which a victim knows their attacker. Yet, cultural depictions of sexual assault and rape focus primarily on furthering the violent `stranger-in-the-alley' narrative, than representing the majority of victim's lived experiences. This disconnect contributes to many victims of sexual assault, specifically within romantic relationships or friendships, struggling to recognize what happened to them as rape or as something else. Researchers refer to this as rape ambiguity or unacknowledged rape, where a victim cannot define what happened and thus internalizes victim-blaming rape myths. Yet, the role of relational context is rarely acknowledged in examining this disconnect, and the impact this has on recognizing and naming experiences is broadly overlooked. Blending an evocative autoethnographic method – detailing the author's personal experience with sexual abuse within relationships – with the findings from qualitative community-based research, this project asks how sexual abuse has become normalized in intimate heterosexual relationships and what impact this has on a female victim's ability to name her experiences. Grounded in feminist theory and utilizing The Listening Guide, participant narratives are presented in the form of voice poems, with a critical focus on language. Findings highlight a trend of male-centric relationship dynamics, manipulation, and sexual coercion as normalized within heterosexual relationships. Additionally, the rhetorical discourse of sexual assault and rape as inherently violent is cited as a disruption to naming experiences as either term, due at least in part to concern over labeling male partners rapists. Implications of this research suggest a greater need for gender equality in heterosexual relationships – with a specific need for consent communication to involve sex positivity grounded in the normalization of female (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lee Nickoson Ph.D. (Advisor); Hyeyoung Bang Ph.D. (Other); Dan Bommarito Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sue Carter Wood Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; Literature; Rhetoric; Womens Studies

Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing​, University of Findlay, 2020, English

In this thesis, I rhetorically analyze two landmark texts in the academic advice genre: Michelle Ballif, Roxanne Mountford, and Diane Davis' (2008) Women's Ways of Making it in Rhetoric and Composition and Elizabeth A. Flynn and Tiffany Bourelle's Women's Professional Lives in Rhetoric and Composition: Choice, Chance and Serendipity. To analyze these guides, I first give a brief overview of the genre standards and then compare the composition of the two books. Next, through coding for emerging genre trends based on my frame as a potential female in the rhetoric and composition field, I analyze the two books' feminist methodologies and locate the general rules and the comprehensive attitudes imposed on young women entering and beginning in the field. I also situate the two advice guides for better or for worse into the genre of self-help books. Academic advice guides are a part of the self-help genre because they present a challenge and subsequently offer strategies and solutions. I then discuss how these findings provide results to four targeted research questions. My primary goal is to establish the patterns and problems with the academic advice guide genre targeted towards rhetoric and composition women in order to house a more productive research space where women can safely find a sisterhood. This genre research is crucial to the field as a whole because a) self-help style books retain reader popularity especially among women so the messages should be monitored and b) the rhetoric and composition field remains a difficult place for women to achieve academic advice guide's version of “success” (a constant eye to the next publication, tenured professorship, AND a life).

Committee: Christine Tulley (Committee Chair); Christine Denecker (Committee Member); Megan Adams (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Educational Leadership; Families and Family Life; Gender Studies; Language; Teacher Education; Womens Studies

Master of Humanities (MHum), Wright State University, 2019, Humanities

In this thesis, I illustrate how epistemic injustice functions in the divide between white working-class men and the educated elite by discussing the discursive ways in which working-class knowledge and experience are devalued as legitimate sources of knowledge. I demonstrate this by using critical discourse analysis to interpret the underlying attitudes and ideologies in comments made by Clinton and Trump during their 2016 presidential campaigns. I also discuss how these ideologies are positively or negatively perceived by Trump's working-class base. Using feminist standpoint theory and phenomenology as a lens of interpretation, I argue that white working-class men are increasingly alienated from progressive politics through classist and ableist rhetoric. If progressives wish to win over white working-class men, they will need to ameliorate this division, otherwise this gap will continue to grow. Finally, I suggest class-sensitive approaches for moving forward and bridging this gap.

Committee: Kelli Zaytoun Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jessica Penwell-Barnett Ph.D. (Committee Member); Donovan Miyasaki Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Demographics; Epistemology; Gender; Gender Studies; Philosophy; Political Science; Rhetoric; Sociology; Womens Studies

Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing​, University of Findlay, 2019, English

Findlay, Ohio's nineteenth-century newspapers published crime reports, legislative actions, and opinion pieces about prostitution within the city. Victorian ideology was inherently rigid and imbalanced between men and women, which is why nonconforming sexual activity, specifically sex for sale, represents a rhetorically significant phenomenon. When considering Findlay's historical and contemporary reputation as a politically conservative and traditional family-focused municipality, the newspaper articles show that some residents resisted gendered behavioral standards that city leaders sought to uphold during its most socioeconomically formative years. This thesis critically looks at previously unstudied, male-authored Victorian prostitution articles to determine how journalists ideologically situated and represented the female-centric trade within the community. The project also identifies new information that reflects the women's rhetorical presence. This paper argues that, despite the phallocentric nature of the newspaper articles, prostitutes' voices can still be “heard” and recognized for their rhetorical contributions, thereby encouraging historical revisioning.

Committee: Christine Denecker (Committee Chair); Sarah Fedirka (Committee Member); Diana Montague (Committee Member); Christine Tulley (Advisor) Subjects: American History; Communication; Cultural Anthropology; Gender Studies; Journalism; Rhetoric; Womens Studies

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Arts and Sciences: English

Enabling Spaces: A Rhetorical Exploration of Women Writing in Community is a qualitative study of women writing together in a gendered core writing class at a non-profit community writing center called Women Writing for (a) Change®. This study explores how diverse women experience and value rhetorical practices and surroundings as they write and collaborate in a gendered group. The study illuminates how women view and bring to life feminist principles and guidelines implemented to support personal growth and change, in the self and in writing. Using a feminist relational approach grounded in participant observation of two consecutive course terms of fifteen weeks in total and the voice-centered analyses of semi-structured interviews, this study explores how these practices and contextual dimensions help and hinder women in developing their confidence, voice, and personal growth. While paying specific research attention to the stories of women who have survived traumatic experiences, Enabling Spaces, reveals that aspects of environment, audience, and change hold relevance towards empowerment and change across all participants. The study shows that the perception of safety connects with ritualized, multi-sensory interactions in a women-only writing environment. Specifically, rituals provide vulnerable women with a needed sense of structure and bonding, helping them to situate themselves in the sheltering boundaries of a gendered group. Findings foreground the importance of engaged listening and collaborative practices in creating a growth-fostering environment where women can build the trust to share their life stories. The cross-case analyses demonstrate that even women who initially felt skeptical, alienated, or restricted by guidelines to provide feedback and implemented ritualized acts, such as marking the writing circle as a safe space and symbolizing one's right to speak by holding a speaking stone, validate these interactions over time as a recognizable st (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Russel Durst Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Laura Micciche Ph.D. (Committee Member); Miriam Raider-Roth Ed.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Comparative Literature

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2018, English (Arts and Sciences)

This research project seeks to establish the degree to which morality and ethics are implicated in writing pedagogy. While writing, rhetoric, and ethics have long been interlinked in the traditions of rhetorical pedagogy, perhaps most famously in Socrates' admonishment of the Sophists, postmodern skepticism has, in part, diminished the centrality of morality and ethics to college writing instruction. I arrive at this project prickled by my own assumptions that writing might well be taught aside from moral and ethical considerations. To this end, I curate a collection of representative work applying the concepts of ethics to composition pedagogy research and scholarship from 1990 to the present. This work is necessary because the theory and practice of ethics in composition studies is diverse and diffuse. While a few scholars have made ethics a primary concern (for example, Marilyn Cooper; Peter Mortensen; James Porter) and others who have sought to map the disciplinary engagement (for example, Paul Dombrowski; Laura Micciche), treatments of ethics in composition scholarship remain fragmented and idiomatic. This research project draws together the streams of thought informing composition's diverse engagement with ethics to provide a representative sampling of approaches and ethical treatments pertaining to writing pedagogy. My approach is to seek to understand what prompts scholars to engage ethics: What problems and questions drive writing scholars toward ethics? And what do these scholars hope to accomplish by doing ethics? Employing a descriptive method grounded in feminist interpretations of pluralist ethics, this research project collects ethical interventions into writing scholarship interested in writing tradition, theory, research methods, and social advocacy. This research projects concludes by considering how writing ethics has transformed my writing praxis.

Committee: Sherrie Gradin (Committee Chair) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2017, English

My research in affect theory and composition teacher development is grounded in the belief that lived experience is a foundational way of knowing, of making sense of the world. This dissertation project makes the argument that through research on affect specifically, we can develop a greater awareness and familiarity with our social and embodied emotional processes, which will ultimately help composition instructors reframe their complicated affective experiences in generative and meaningful ways. In Chapter One, I explore previous investigations into emotion and affect from a variety of disciplines while also illuminating the dearth of research that currently exists on instructor affect, especially within the field of composition and rhetoric. I then draw from neuroscience, philosophy, and cultural studies to develop a definition of affect as “the capacity to change and be changed,” and I use this theoretical framework to help identify locations for generative intervention for composition teacher development practices. In Chapter Two, I turn to the methodologies and methods I enacted while collecting my data, focusing on how feminist and queer understandings of social-science research helped me embrace the messiness of affect theory. At the heart project is a case study with eight first-year composition instructors at two different universities. After conducting classroom observations, I engaged in two interviews with each of my participants. In Chapters Three and Four, I include moments from these conversations in which my participants and I talked about their affective experiences—how they feel about teaching, what influences their affective responses, how they negotiate their emotions, and how they might come to better understand the nature of these affective experiences. In Chapter Five, I use these interactions to offer practical interventions for composition instructors and writing program administrators to help these instructors negotiate their affective res (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jason Palmeri PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Michele Simmons PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Kate Ronald PhD (Committee Member); Lisa Weems PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Pedagogy; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2017, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This project is situated in scholarship surrounding the rescue, recovery, and (re)inscription of historical women rhetors, particularly those within religious spaces. It places a lens on the rhetorical practices of two religious women: Jessie Penn-Lewis and Margaret E. Barber. I argue that it is important to investigate these women, for doing so reveals not only an area that has not received extensive critical attention, but also informs how scholars look at pedagogy, particularly in religious spaces. The project and methods are grounded in feminist research practices. This project is historical in nature and will thus draw upon feminist historical and archival research methods as my primary methods of investigation. Further, this project is framed as two case studies, which examine closely through textual analysis surviving work produced by these women to begin to extend our knowledge of pedagogical and rhetorical practices in religious spaces. The heuristic used to investigate these texts and women bring forward key themes for study and application such as: how space is used, whether rhetorical or physical; what kind of tools can be used or appropriated for teaching practices; how texts and women circulate and under what conditions and intentions. Finally, I argue for their inclusion within the rhetorical canon as well as rewriting histories of women's rhetoric; for their work is not only worthy of recognition from the past but more importantly for future scholarship that acknowledges the ways in which institutions of power are still over girls and women. This dissertation points further to the need to research literate practices of “ordinary” people and the barriers of public and private still existing today.

Committee: Sue Wood PhD. (Advisor); Ellen Gorsevski PhD. (Other); Kristine Blair PhD. (Committee Member); Lee Nickoson PhD. (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Religious History; Rhetoric

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2017, Communication

Applying feminist media theory to the 2015 Spike Lee film Chi-Raq, this thesis explores portrayals of black-female power and sexuality. In three layers this thesis examines: the language used by and toward women of color, the gender roles and power constructs within the film, and finally the either/or dichotomous thinking associated with the four controlling images of Black womanhood, particularly the role of the Jezebel as a promiscuous and socially dangerous character. This thesis seeks to understand how sexualized portrayals of Black women, despite the power associated with their sexuality, are limiting and problematic.

Committee: Mary E. Triece Dr. (Advisor); Kathleen D. Clark Dr. (Committee Member); Kathleen Endres Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Media and Communication

In 2014, the leadership performances of National Basketball Association (NBA) Commissioner Adam Silver and National Football League (NFL) Commissioner Roger Goodell (both men who occupy White positionality), in response to two critical moments in their respective leagues, offered insight into prevailing racial and gender ideologies between United States (U.S.) professional men's sport, and ultimately, U.S. society. In the NFL, a domestic abuse incident between NFL star Ray Rice and his then-fiance Janay Palmer, two individuals who do not occupy whiteness, and in the NBA, racist comments made by then-owner of the Los Angeles Clippers Donald Sterling, a man who occupies whiteness, required responses and disciplinary action from the commissioners. Utilizing critical rhetorical analysis as a method of textual analysis (McKerrow, 1989), this dissertation examines and critiques Commissioners Silver and Goodell's rhetorical performances as leaders in response to these incidents as well as the surrounding global news and sports media reactions to their decisions. Informed by concepts within critical whiteness studies (e.g., Nakayama & Krizek, 1995), intersectionality (e.g., Crenshaw, 1989; 1991), Black Feminist Thought (BFT) (e.g., Collins 1991; 2004; Griffin, 2012b; hooks, 2004), hegemonic masculinity (e.g,., Trujillo, 1991), and dialogism (Bakhtin, 1981; Baxter, 2011), this dissertation examines the intersection of whiteness and hegemonic masculinity within the commissioners' performances to explore how whiteness functions dialectically and intersectionally to secure its persuasive power as a strategic rhetoric. The analyses within the two case studies revealed two distinct dialectics: (1) rhetorics of postracism vs. critical rhetorics, and (2) rhetorics of honor vs. rhetorics of shame. Overall, this project extends understanding of how the rhetorics of whiteness work dialectically and intersect with the rhetorics of masculinity within the NBA and NFL via the rhetorical p (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alberto Gonzalez Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Lisa Hanasono Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Christina Lunceford Dr. (Other); Ellen Gorsevski Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2015, English

Composition specialists have long recognized how online writing technologies call into question our notions of what it means to write, and how they might offer opportunities for resistance and empowerment, particularly when it comes to gendered identities and epistemologies. But there is no doubt that the internet—like any technology—is embedded in networks of power that govern the production of knowledge, identities, and agency. In this project, I employ a person-based, feminist materialist methodology to map these networks in three online spaces (Wikipedia, Ravelry, and Feminist Frequency) in order to develop a theory of multimodal feminist epistemologies. By foregrounding the materiality of composing, multimodal feminist epistemologies help rhetors reflect on their embodied positions within larger networks, in addition to highlighting the overlapping networks of power that produce identity and agency. Embracing this subversive multimodal textuality will enable researchers, students, internet users, and web designers to acknowledge the diverse locations of identity production and explore alternative epistemologies, ultimately facilitating more ethical and effective rhetorical action online. The value of a multimodal feminist epistemology, then, lies in its ability to articulate new ways of being and knowing— and that can ultimately equip us to make the internet, as well as the rest of the world, a more inclusive, empowering place.

Committee: Jason Palmeri (Committee Chair); Kate Ronald (Committee Member); Heidi McKee (Committee Member); Michele Simmons (Committee Member); Gaile Pohlhaus (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition