Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, English

As a common touchstone for millions of college students annually, First-Year Writing (FYW) is an important site of research activity that seeks to determine high-impact teaching practices that serve this increasingly diverse student population. Many teacher-scholars have turned to principles of Learning Transfer as a solution for promoting student learning in the writing classroom. Learning transfer, the repurposing or generalization of knowledge between contexts, is an incredibly complex process. Discussions of transfer often lack critical attention to what prior knowledges, skills, dispositions, or literacies we expect students might bring into writing courses, as well as what we hope they will take with them. Writing studies scholarship needs a model that defines prior knowledges and transfer in ways that explicitly attend to sociocultural and linguistic diversity to establish practices for cultural accountability in teaching for writing transfer. To address this need, I designed a mixed-method study that was guided by four research questions: 1. What prior knowledges, if any, do First-Year Writing instructors expect students to possess? 2. To what degree do those expectations account for sociocultural and linguistic knowledges from home, school, and other contexts? 3. How are students' prior knowledges valued or mobilized by instructors? 4. What patterns, if any, exist across instructors' beliefs about teaching and learning, assumptions about student prior knowledges, and instructional practices? Through a framework of writing studies transfer scholarship and asset-based, multicultural education pedagogies, my mixed-methods analysis of participating instructors' survey, interview, and teaching document data offers two contributions to writing studies and transfer scholarship. The first is a systematic Typology of Prior Knowledges, makes it possible to account for the various expectations instructors have about students' prior knowledges. When used as a re (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kay Halasek (Advisor); Scott L. DeWitt (Committee Member); Beverly J. Moss (Committee Member); Timothy San Pedro (Committee Member) Subjects: Curriculum Development; Education; Literacy; Rhetoric; Teacher Education

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2019, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This dissertation explores how a group of first-year graduate teaching associates (TAs) at Bowling Green State university (BGSU) accounts for embodied performance in teaching first-year writing (FYW). Guided by a feminist community-based teacher-research methodology, I conducted a mixed-methods case study of BGSU's Fall 2017 composition practicum course, ENG 6020: Composition Instructors' Workshop, in order to understand how TAs performed embodiment as they taught for the first time locally, and for some, for the first time overall, in BGSU's FYW program, General Studies Writing. By analyzing TAs' teaching portfolio documents, including teaching philosophy statements, performance narratives (a video-recording of the TA teaching plus a written reflection), and observation memos, plus individual interview conversations with four TAs, I hoped to learn how first-year TAs representing a range of English sub-disciplines and experience levels demonstrated embodiment and performance, as well as teacherly identity construction, in their teaching portfolios. Through this study I concluded that my TA co-researchers practice what I term rhetorical embodied performance in their FYW instruction—they perform their bodies so as to construct themselves as the teacher. Moreover, I identify three modes through which the TAs demonstrate rhetorical embodied performance in their teaching: embodied engagement, embodied authority, and embodied reflection; and I explore how each of my co-researchers individually cultivates their teaching identity by referencing their rhetorical embodied performance in their teaching philosophy documents. I use this analysis to propose a pedagogy of rhetorical embodied performance for TA education, which would contribute to scholarly conversations in rhetoric and writing surrounding the theoretical and practical divide in TA preparation and development. Therefore, this dissertation project contributes to disciplinary conversations on the intersections of tea (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lee Nickoson PhD (Advisor); Daniel Bommarito PhD (Committee Member); Sue Wood PhD (Committee Member); Radhika Gajjala PhD (Other) Subjects: Composition; Pedagogy; Rhetoric; Teacher Education

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

Beset with political, social, economic, cultural, and environmental degradation, along with the imminent threat of nuclear war, the world might be at its end. Building upon Richard Miller's inquiry from Writing at the End of the World, this dissertation investigates if it is “possible to produce [and teach] writing that generates a greater connection to the world and its inhabitants.” I take up Paul Lynch's notion of the apocalyptic turn and suggest that when writers Kurt Spellmeyer, Richard Miller, Derek Owens, Robert Yagelski, Lynn Worsham, and Ann Cvetkovich confront disaster, they reach an impasse whereby they begin to question disciplinary assumptions such as critique and pose inventive ways to think about writing and writing pedagogy that emphasize the notion and practice of connecting to the everyday. Questioning the familiar and cultivating what Jane Bennett terms “sensuous enchantment with everyday” are ethical responses to the apocalypse; nonetheless, I argue that disasters and death master narratives will continually resurface if we think that an apocalyptic mindset can fully account for the complexity and irreducibility of lived experience. Drawing upon Zen, new materialism, and Yagelski's theory of writing as a way of being, I call attention to the affective dimensions of capitalism, anti-apocalyptic thinking, and environmental writing pedagogies that run contrary to capitalist-driven environmental disaster.

Committee: Sherrie Gradin (Advisor); Talinn Phillips (Committee Member); Robert Miklitsch (Committee Member); Wolfgang Sützl (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2024, English

This dissertation examines research-writing as an activity system in the rhetorical ecologies of first-year writing instruction. It offers parallaxing ecologies as a methodological and pedagogical framework for examining and teaching such activity systems. I define parallaxing ecologies as a methodology for examining an object, concept, and/or practice with the goal of seeing how it is brought into being and how it is excluded across multiple and simultaneous rhetorical ecologies. Parallaxing some of the ecologies of research-writing at one institution, as I've done in this dissertation for instance, helps us better see not just how something like research is brought into being from different dwelling places, but also tends to how the lines of sight afforded from different dwelling places might preclude alternative points of view. In chapter 1, I situate this project in writing studies scholarship on research-writing instruction, looking at both the histories of the field and current conversations to establish how teacher-scholars have defined, understood, and taught research-writing in the context of first-year composition. In chapter 2, I describe parallaxing ecologies and offer dwelling places and anchoring objects as visual-spatial metaphors for how we become orientated in ways that open up some ways of knowing and foreclose others. In chapter 3, I use parallaxing ecologies to examine research-writing from the multiple ecologies of a specific writing program, looking to the dwelling places and anchoring objects and the lines of sight they offer for understanding research as multiple and simultaneous. In chapter 4, I turn to parallaxing ecologies as a pedagogy, describing how it informed the design and implementation of a research-writing course. In chapter 5, I explore further implications of and opportunities presented by parallaxing ecologies as both a methodology and a pedagogy, with examples and proposals for rhetoric and writing studies as a field, and f (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Linh Dich (Committee Chair); Heidi McKee (Committee Member); Gaile Pohlhaus (Committee Member); Lizzie Hutton (Committee Member); J Palmeri (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, English

This project responds to disciplinary calls from within Composition Studies to take up socially just, linguistically just (Baker-Bell) pedagogies of “languaging” (Inoue). Specifically, it examines the potential for one integral, yet largely unaddressed pedagogical site for furthering such goals: grammar instruction. Through a two-stage, mixed methods study, I first analyze generalizable trends in contemporary grammar pedagogy and training practices through a national survey. I second evaluate receptivity to and potentials for developing and circulating anti-racist, liberatory grammar curriculum and training through a college-wide case study. Overall, my project seeks to examine the ways that Composition instructors and writing program administrators might understand, develop, and circulate grammar pedagogies in ways consistent with contemporary disciplinary ideologies on languaging. After articulating the exigency for the project in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 reports on a nationwide survey that was completed by over 130 Composition instructors across the U.S. on their grammar pedagogy training, attitudes, perspectives, goals, and practices. Out of findings that revealed the presence of both historically established pedagogies and an emergent, grassroots grammar pedagogy responsive to anti-racist perspectives, this chapter proffers an ideological framework for categorizing and understanding grammar pedagogies. This frames Stage Two of the project, which applies the framework as an administrative and analytical tool for localized curriculum development and training. Chapter 3 situates Stage Two's case study, which was a collaborative project between me and Linn-Benton Community College English faculty member Dionisia Morales. Chapter 4 discusses the results of our Feminist Writing Program Administration and critically pedagogies-based participatory action research, which supported Morales' project by surveying over 200 students, faculty, and staff, conducting 14 indi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Beverly Moss (Advisor); Jonathan Buehl (Committee Member); Evonne Kay Halasek (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Curricula; Higher Education; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, English

Composition scholars and writing instructors have mobilized developments in theories about audience, rhetorical labor, and the rhetorical situation to help students examine and interact with exigences outside the classroom. Pedagogies such as service-learning, client-based teaching, and community-engaged writing situate students with(in) communities, clients, and/or partners for the purpose of immersing them in "real-world" rhetorical contexts. Although collaborating across rhetorical situations that expand beyond the classroom can create educational opportunities and meaningful projects, such an undertaking comes at a cost. Successfully understanding, managing, and delegating labor within client- and partner-based composition pedagogy can be a challenge to coordinate effectively. Misunderstanding complexity in client- and partner-based composition courses can result in unsatisfactory or unfulfilling outputs, unethical authority imbalances, and marginalized course participants and partners. Addressing these challenges depends on localized and inductively derived frameworks to navigate this labor distribution well. From my case study of a partner-based digital composition course, I posit two frameworks for comprehending and executing ethical and successful client- and partner-based composition courses: a "macro-rhetoric" model to understand and strategize rhetorical labor, and an authority|collaboration matrix to negotiate distributing that rhetorical labor. I developed these frameworks inductively using institutional ethnographic strategies to gather data and grounded theory to analyze it. Macro-rhetoric emerges from this study as a localized theory that explains the complex interaction of components in a rhetorical situation. In essence, a macro-rhetoric model of labor in client- and partner-based composition courses encourages participants to explicitly think about and strategize their partnership as a networking endeavor. Thus, macro-rhetors in a client- a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christa Teston (Committee Chair); Jonathan Buehl (Committee Member); Beverly Moss (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric; Technical Communication

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 (PhD), Ohio University, 2013, English (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation considers verbal dysfluencies, such as stuttering, as generative to writing and its complex process through the various techniques and strategies that derive from verbal dysfluency. Very little work in the field of Rhetoric and Composition has been undertaken to further understand what might occur, and how writing teachers can help, during moments of writing dysfluency or moments in the process that are not necessarily generating text. Writing dysfluencies include a range of things from a hyper- attention to the generalized rules of writing to various avoidance behaviors that inhibit the composition of prose, all of which slow or disrupt the process of writing. I argue that techniques such as circumlocution offer a new way to conceptualize the dysfluencies that student writers may encounter and offer possibilities to better manage or adapt to these dysfluencies. I also argue that the field has too long neglected Demosthenes, famed stutterer, and I suggest that his fabled dysfluency created some of the rhetorical strategies we now rely on. This work posits that Demosthenes's life story may also be considered one of the first "overcoming narratives," a narrative form common in Disability literature. While Disability Studies has recently quite firmly disavowed the overcoming narrative, I suggest that the "overcoming narrative" may provide an avenue for dysfluent speakers and student writers to voice their apprehensions, moments of uncertainty, and misunderstandings about the writing process. Moreover, I assert that dysfluency and its related narratives have been neglected in Disability Studies and suggest that their inclusion would strengthen the field's awareness of other lesser known (dis)abilities. Finally, I argue that an infusion of dysfluency into Composition theory and pedagogy would provide student writers and writing teachers with new, unexplored techniques and strategies for overcoming the moments when students find themselves unabl (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sherrie Gradin (Committee Chair); Mara Holt (Committee Member); Eric LeMay (Committee Member); Janis Holm (Committee Member); David Descutner (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Higher Education; Language Arts; Linguistics; Pedagogy; Rhetoric; Sociolinguistics; Speech Therapy; Teacher Education

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2010, English (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation examines how "modern literacy" and "contemporary writing" are increasingly influenced by technology from a critical pedagogical perspective. The study develops a definition of literacy that takes into account a reliance on technology, particularly computers, in our writing classes and writing lives. With a focus on one particular institution of higher education, and an emphasis on a qualitative, narrative perspective, the dissertation traces how "traditional" perspectives concerning writing and the job of a writing class influence the technological resources at instructors' disposal. The study focuses on the well-known critical pedagogical work of theorists such as Freire, hooks, and Giroux in order to tease out the critical and political imperative of developing a modern literacy attuned to a more broadly defined kind of modern writing. More specifically, the dissertation focuses on the work of Henry Giroux, by utilizing his theory of "border pedagogy" in a way that centers on borders of different literacies in different mediums, rather than borders between different social groups. As a series of "texts" for examination in order to develop the practical applications of techno-critical pedagogy, Multi-User Domains Object-Oriented (MOO) technology is explored in a qualitative study. The dissertation also explores a techno-rich freshman composition course, focused on matters of online representation (from MOO to Second Life to violent videogames), as a text for elucidating techno-critical pedagogy and its relation to our students' compositions and in composing themselves in electronic environments.

Committee: Sherrie Gradin (Advisor); Linda Rice (Committee Member); Jennie Nelson (Committee Member); Marjorie Dewert (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This dissertation research, Trauma-Informed Pedagogy: Practices and Insights from the College Writing Classrooms, looks into the issue of trauma or traumatic stress in students through a pedagogical lens, investigating how college writing teachers perceive and apply trauma-informed pedagogy in their teaching as they teach during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study uses informed grounded theory to frame the research issue and qualitative method to collect data. The study then employs abductive analysis method to examine approximately 600 minutes of video-recording data collected from 10 semi-structured individual interviews with writing teachers who work across teaching contexts in the United States. Findings from this study help address a number of misconceptions related to the use of trauma-informed pedagogy in the writing classroom and explain various ways in which writing instructors can navigate the boundaries between compassion and professionalism. The study furthermore discusses issues of trauma disclosure, discussion facilitation, writing topics and content warning, and writing assessment and suggests concrete ideas for implementing various pedagogical practices that could help develop a safer and more inclusive space for learning. Lastly, the study introduces the design of a writing course that seeks to achieve a two-fold learning outcome: (a) develop academic writing competence and (b) through learning to write, discuss and support student well-being.

Committee: Chad Iwertz-Duffy Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Lee Nickoson Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Vibha Bhalla Ph.D. (Committee Member); Daniel Pavuk Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: Community College Education; Composition; Curriculum Development; Education Philosophy; English As A Second Language; Teaching

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

Since ITAs teach many first-year writing classes, finding the best way to support them is crucial to their success as instructors and the students they teach. Many go on to teach classes in the United States, so preparing them to teach has far-reaching professional implications for their work in the U.S. (Mihut, 2020). In this dissertation, I investigate the experiences of ITAs learning about teaching writing in the US. In the first phase of research, I distributed a survey to discover more about the general experiences of ITAs, including questions about the format of their writing pedagogy education (WPE), the content, opportunities for mentoring, and experience with resistance. In the second phase, I conducted a series of interviews with ITAs in three groups: a focus group, a dyadic interview, and an interview. The results indicated room for improvement in mentoring and resistance. Mentors need good training that enables them to empathize with ITAs. WPE classes need to recognize obstacles to resistance for ITAs and create access to resistance in classes.

Committee: Neil Baird Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Meridith Reed Ph.D (Committee Member); Kimberly Spallinger M.A. (Committee Member); Lee Nickoson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Pedagogy

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, English (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation investigates the challenges and resources of international students who come from countries experiencing high levels of distress, war, violence, and unrest but who do not have refugee status in the country they are studying in. This project involved four qualitative case studies that examined the participants' intersectionalities as both international students and students who may have similarities to refugees. The study brings together acculturation strategies (Berry, 2005) found in second language writing research (Hung & Hyun, 2010) and identity studies (e.g., Harre et al., 2009; Estrem, 2016; Hooper & Enright, 2011). Additionally, it draws on trauma informed writing pedagogy (e.g., Munro, 2018; Tayles, 2021) and refugee literature (e.g., Matsuda and Hammill, 2014; Shapiro et al., 2018). The study found the participants had incredibly rich resources and a distinct vulnerability of more instability. While they had similar perceived needs to refugee students and may benefit from similarly supportive resources, they may also be more difficult to identify. Participating writing teachers expressed a lack of self-efficacy in working with students with trauma backgrounds and little awareness of ISDL needs apart from their English language development. Several implications for writing teachers emerged that align with trauma informed writing praxis. Some implications for further multilingual writing research also emerged, such as a correlation between acculturation strategies and student value for writing practices, and potentially expanding previous studies in transfer theory on the disposition of attribution. Ultimately, this research argues for more compassionate classrooms that adopt trauma informed writing pedagogy in response to self-disclosed trauma symptoms and perhaps as a regular practice rather than as an exception.

Committee: Talinn Phillips (Committee Chair); Ryan Shepherd (Committee Member); Sherrie Gradin (Committee Member); Matthew deTar (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; English As A Second Language; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2023, English: Composition and Rhetoric

New materialist rhetorical theories and Indigenous ways of knowing concerned with relationality and becoming offer a way to look at our communities through the lens of webs of relations, entanglements, assemblages, and becoming-with. This project aims to expand upon theories of relationality and becoming, including the inherent reciprocal duties to human and nonhuman others we must hold ourselves to when we acknowledge our relationality, to suggest how community-engaged rhetorical scholars and community organizations themselves might use relationality to resist oppression and effect sustainable change in their communities. Additionally, this project develops a specific methodology called a choric methodology by way of Plato's chora and rhetorical becoming in order to highlight how community organizations are using relationally-driven tactics within their public-facing communications in the name of resisting oppression and creating sustainable change. The data for this project was collected with The Fringe Coffee House, a reentry program operating out of a coffee shop in Hamilton, Ohio whose mission includes changing public perceptions about returning citizens. The case study included in this project analyzes data collected from The Fringe's in-house podcast and the graffiti street art-inspired murals decorating the interior walls of the coffee shop. This project analyzes these data sets through the choric methodology and finds that using relationally-driven tactics within public-facing communication can resist oppression and create the conditions for sustainable change by fostering responses of response-ability in public audiences. Specifically, fostering response-ability in public audiences through relationally-driven tactics is especially beneficial when used to tell alternative narratives meant to resist negative dominant narratives about marginalized populations and when used to invite community members to participate in the co-creation of equitable community sp (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michele Simmons (Committee Chair) Subjects: Composition; Pedagogy; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, English

What is the value of code in the humanities class, and what does it do for a humanities education? To what degree does code help us think about and compose texts, and to what degree can we engage with it as a text itself? Guided by these framing questions, this dissertation lies at the nexus of digital humanities; rhetoric, writing, and composition; and teaching, learning and pedagogy. It engages coding as a fixation of the global information economy: a literacy that has joined reading and writing to constitute a foundation of “moral goodness and economic success” signaling “the health of a nation and its citizens” (Vee 3). The larger argument of this dissertation is developed around the notion of seeing the code as a pedagogical framework for teaching and learning with code in the humanities. Scholars have begun to investigate how we can think about code and coding cultures vis-a-vis literacy studies, rhetoric, and the hermeneutical methodologies of the humanities. This dissertation extends the developing humanities framework for analyzing and composing with code into the larger discourse on teaching and learning with code. Just as the past few decades have seen the multimodal turn in writing and humanities pedagogy, this dissertation looks ahead to a coding turn that will just as much naturalize a peculiar medium of representation and agency as part of the teaching mission of our disciplines. The overall goal of the dissertation is to construct a rigorous, multidimensional, and transdisciplinary ethos for digital humanities pedagogy—and code-focused pedagogy in particular—that draws from research and teaching in rhetoric, writing, and textual studies; the (digital) humanities broadly; education studies; and science and technology studies. Chapter one develops a vernacular theory of code by calling on a variety of phenomena and disciplines. I examine how code resonates with and advances learning goals in the humanities, particularly for rhetoric, writing, com (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Scott DeWitt (Committee Chair); Jonathan Buehl (Committee Member); John Jones (Committee Member); Ben McCorkle (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Education; Information Technology; Pedagogy; Rhetoric; Teaching

PHD, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

This study seeks to understand how students will be asked to use writing once they enter into writing intensive courses (WIC) that are specific to their discipline. The findings add to the field of Writing Studies and writing in the disciplines by observing how instructors outside of an English department teach writing, and the reasons behind their pedagogical choices. This study analyzes 36 writing assignment documents, interviews with 18 instructors, as well as the feedback to student writing of 7 instructors by focusing on identifying the presence of writing pedagogy. The analysis stems from pre-existing definitions of learning to write (LTW) and writing to learn (WTL), adding to these definitions with nuanced discussions of how these writing instructors develop their WICs. The analysis identifies moments of disciplinary interdiscursivity to connect the presence of varying writing pedagogies across the data sets, to understand how the instructors' past experiences while working and learning in their field have impacted their pedagogical development. Ultimately, this work uncovers how and why these experiences influence instructor pedagogy, showing that these courses are a valuable means of learning about writing's role in various professions and disciplines.

Committee: Jennifer Cunningham (Committee Co-Chair); Derek Van Ittersum (Committee Co-Chair); Andrew Barnes (Other); Kristine Pytash (Other); Patricia Dunmire (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Higher Education; Pedagogy; Rhetoric; Teaching

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2022, English

This thesis examines how students in first-year composition and instructors of first-year composition understand and perceive the concepts of “good student” and “good writing” in first-year composition. To examine these concepts, I conducted interviews with instructors of Miami University's English 111. I also collected survey data from English 111 instructors and English 111 students during the Fall semester of 2021. The following thesis explores the resulting data and implications of this research on composition pedagogy. The data primarily indicates that both students and instructors share majority consensus on some ideas (i.e., value of improvement on writing, good student is hardworking, etc.), while dissensus both within each group and between students and instructors is also prominent for other ideas (i.e., Standard English, rule-following, audience awareness, goal of composition students, etc.). Additionally, instructors more often agreed with one another while students had a large variety in beliefs and less evidence of consensus. Perceptions of the “good student” and “good writing” will always vary between individuals and contexts but this thesis argues that we, as composition instructors, must value the experiences and identities of our students to best problematize these two concepts.

Committee: Sara Webb-Sunderhaus (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Wardle (Committee Member); Jason Pameri (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Teaching

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2022, Arts and Sciences: Romance Languages and Literatures

El proposito de la disertacion Escritura creativa para no escritores es plantear un nuevo metodo y unos nuevos objetivos para la ensenanza de la escritura creativa en espanol, en ambitos academicos e institucionales. El presente trabajo es un aporte novedoso a los estudios literarios por dos razones especificas. Primero, se inserta en un campo en expansion en el que abundan los libros con iniciativas de creacion que apelan a lo experiencial, pero en el que el material editorial critico y metodologico es escaso. En segundo lugar, se ubica en la brecha que existe entre espacios formales e informales de aprendizaje de la escritura creativa. La disertacion esta conformada por dos partes. En la primera, analiza los antecedentes, alcances y objetivos de la ensenanza de la creacion literaria. Este analisis permite entender el rol que el autor, como figura simbolica, desempena en la ensenanza de este campo y, de manera mas especifica, en la configuracion de tres contradicciones a la hora de formular una pedagogia de la creacion literaria: escribir vs. ser escritor, la escritura como expresion vs. la escritura como una disciplina creativa y artistica, y la formacion del autor individual vs. la creacion de comunidad. A partir de estos tres ejes se hace la lectura atenta de una serie de manuales de escritura de los ambitos anglo e hispanohablante. Este analisis no solo permite alzar una cartografia de los derroteros de la escritura creativa, sino ademas es un proceso inevitable de cara a la segunda parte de la disertacion: una nueva propuesta metodologica de taller de creacion literaria en la que se incluyen experiencias, dinamicas y ejercicios de escritura; y que puede llevarse a cabo no solo en el ambito academico o informal, sino tambien en un espacio interdisciplinar. The purpose of this dissertation is to present a new methodology and new objectives for creative writing learning in Spanish, in academic and institutional contexts. This research configurates a new (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Maria-Paz Moreno Ph.D. (Committee Member); Kara Moranski Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jorge Espinoza Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Latin American Literature

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

This project advocates for sustained, explicit, graduate-level reading instruction in the discipline of writing studies. It posits that professional academic reading is a complex activity that requires graduate students to develop contextually unique skills and habits of mind to perform effectively. It posits also that graduate students struggle to learn this form of reading and would benefit from direct instruction. Further, it positions threshold concepts for reading—oft-“invisible” disciplinary assumptions or ways of thinking that are troublesome to learn but important to internalize to fully enter an academic community—as an important pedagogical tool in graduate-level reading curricula. The project makes several moves in advocating for such reading instruction: (1) It makes the case for why graduate-level reading instruction is needed; (2) it consolidates multiple strands of reading theory that have influenced writing studies into a working definition of professional-level reading in the discipline; (3) it constructs a list of threshold concepts for disciplinary reading; (4) it outlines a framework—the reading sandwich cycle—for integrating threshold concepts with reading instruction; (5) and it makes suggestions for integrating reading instruction throughout course work and elsewhere in graduate curricula.

Committee: Lee Nickoson Ph.D. (Advisor); Neil Baird Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sue Wood Ph.D. (Committee Member); Per Broman Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: Adult Education; Curricula; Educational Theory; Literacy; Reading Instruction; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2021, English

Following the latest comparative rhetoric methodologies, this dissertation recovers the ancient Chinese rhetoric of qi (文气 , respirational air, vitality, or energy mobilized by the cosmological yin-yang dynamics) and brings its related literary theory "wenqi 文气" (the holistic and contingent manifestation of an author's distinctive pneuma or ecological self in a written text) into reflective dialogues with the Euro-American concept of "voice" in writing studies. By studying the Chinese "voice" with its own term and in its own context, the study recuperates an ecological worldview embedded in the Chinese wenqi theory and challenges the widespread misconception of "Asian voice" as completely "collective" without individual originality, a misconception influenced by the Eurocentric binary theorization of voice as either individual-centered or socially-constructed, which continues to haunt the research analysis, teaching, and assessment of voice in both Euro-America and China. Through a detailed analysis of resonances and dissonances between voice and wenqi, the author draws insights from both cultures to develop a hybrid "qi-voice" theory that aims to chart out new approaches to conceptualizing, analyzing, assessing, and teaching voice in contemporary writing classrooms. The qi-voice theory situates writers in a reciprocal and mutually constitutive relationship with their human and nonhuman others in the ecosystem and urges writers to ever invent and develop their qi-voice by mobilizing their body and mind to sympathetically/ethically and critically/self-reflectively interact with their situated ecosystem. It hence concerns not only the contingent textual manifestation of one's distinct/inventive and ethical qi-voice in the final product of writing but also one's self-conscious processes of cultivating (inventing and refining) and manifesting (choosing textual strategies) their inventive and ethical qi-voice through ongoing critical, reflective, and dialogical negotiati (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: LuMing Mao (Committee Chair); Heidi McKee (Committee Member); Jason Palmeri (Committee Member); Tony Cimasko (Committee Member); Liang Shi (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Comparative; Composition; Curriculum Development; Ecology; Education; English As A Second Language; Ethics; Language; Multicultural Education; Multilingual Education; Pedagogy; Philosophy; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, English (Arts and Sciences)

Video games are worthy of and have been the subject of extensive scholarly exploration and pedagogical application in English studies (Alexander; Bogost; Colby and Colby; Gee; Vie; Yee). However, insufficient research has explored connecting the usage of video games in the composition classroom with writing transfer. In this dissertation I explore the position of video game scholarship as a vibrant and fully emerged field (Alexander; Colby, Colby, and Johnson), using the scholarship of Gee and Murray to espouse the potential of video games and multimodality in the classroom, and I highlight the reflective and critical benefits that video games offer as procedural rhetoric (Bogost). Building on this understanding, I apply my video game pedagogy to an enhanced Teaching for Transfer (TFT) curriculum (Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak) focusing on the importance of backward-reaching multimodal transfer (Shepherd) while using adaptive transfer (DePalma and Ringer) to use video games to help students facilitate successful high-road transfer. I argue that an important factor in writing transfer theory is the utilization of modern multimodal, interactive, and real tools, such as video games and community writing projects to help bridge the gaps and recontextualize the relationships between student self-sponsored writing, career writing, and academic composition. Video games have the potential to create opportunities for successful transfer in the learner in unique ways through a combination of procedural rhetoric, adaptive transfer, and student engagement. I build upon this argument by presenting a series of five assignments for a first-year composition (FYC) course that takes advantage of video games as a vehicle to help students make connections between their own self-sponsored writing, academic writing, and all future writing environments. I conclude this dissertation with a set of solutions for potential funding and political pitfalls when attempting to institute thi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sherrie Gradin (Committee Chair); Ryan Shepherd (Committee Member); Talinn Phillips (Committee Member); Sarah Wyatt (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Education; Rhetoric