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, 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, 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

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

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

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2021, Music

Piano instruction is often conducted as an isolated practice. Most pre-college pianists attend regular private lessons, practice their repertoire at home, and occasionally partake in competitions and recitals. On rare occasions, piano students have access to collaborative environments, such as studio classes, chamber music, or other ensembles. Due to the segregated nature of private music instruction, pianists are often deprived of collaborative or interdisciplinary creative opportunities, which can lead to limited self-expression and perspectives on how music relates to other art forms and to society. Unless pianists are presented with practical instruction and examples of how different art forms intersect with each other, many immersive opportunities can go undiscovered. This thesis explores the applications of the arts in comprehensive, pre-college piano instruction. An experiential program was implemented for young pianists to interact and collaborate with four different art forms: dance, literature, theatre, and visual art. This project observed how interdisciplinary experiential learning affects piano students' interpretations of music as well as how it encourages confidence and liberty in musical improvisation, collaboration, and performance.

Committee: Florence Mak DMA (Advisor) Subjects: Art Criticism; Art Education; Art History; Education; Fine Arts; Music; Music Education; Pedagogy; Performing Arts; Teaching; Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies

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, The Ohio State University, 2021, English

Disability Memoir: A Study in Pedagogy and Practice positions Disability Memoir as a distinct category grounded in radical self-narration and resistance to popular constructions of the ideal body/mind. I argue that Disability Memoir destabilizes the concept of normativity and, as a literary genre, often disrupts popular constructions of narrative linearity. Although Disability Memoir is not a new category, my research moves away from distinct classification tools (“autism memoir,” “cancer memoir,” etc.) and the focus on white physically disabled activists, towards life writing that captures intersectional and multifaceted disability experiences. I approach this interdisciplinary project from the standpoint of a memoirist, rhetorician, educator, and Disability Studies scholar, interrogating not only what I teach and why I teach it, but also how I teach it. Utilizing pedagogy as methodology, I explore the dual entry points of content and process, indicating how specific texts demonstrate effective writing practices while reinforcing creative construction as political action. At the center of this work is what it means to describe experiences often understood as “unspeakable,” or resistant to language. Through this interrogation, I identify disability memoirs as texts that combat practices of erasure and instead leave evidence.

Committee: Amy Shuman (Advisor) Subjects: American Literature; Composition; Literature; Pedagogy; 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

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

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2020, English

Many college composition instructors are facing lower levels of student engagement in their classes, and it is not entirely clear why this disengagement is happening or what we can do to stop it. To test a potential solution to this problem, the author built and taught two sections of a second-year college composition course using the structure of Project-Based Learning (PBL), then performed a qualitative summative evaluation of each section using interviews with students and personal notes. This paper concludes that students prefer the PBL classes to traditional English classes for a variety of reasons, including the wider range of choice and control afforded to them by projects and the real-world impact of their creations, but that PBL can make it more challenging for instructors to meet all learning outcomes. While there are many limitations to PBL, it is worth considering as a possible model for composition instructors and an exciting new area of study for composition scholars.

Committee: Bryan Bardine Ph.D. (Advisor); Margaret Strain Ph.D. (Committee Member); Fatima Esseili Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Education; Higher Education; Pedagogy; Teaching

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

Using a transdisciplinary, multi-method framework of queer rhetorics paired with kinky empiricism (Rutherford, 2012), this dissertation takes as its central concern the question: How can teachers work with students to invent and orient learning toward queer possibilities without reifying culturally oppressive norms through neoliberal accountability logics? This line of inquiry, established in Chapter 1, orients toward digital and multimodal compositions, which offer rhetorical power within and beyond the classroom. Furthermore, digital media composing, when oriented through queer rhetorics, can be a space for disidentifcation from institutionalized accountability logics and related oppressive systems (Munoz, 1999; Ahmed, 2006). In turn, this project studies assessment practices (Chapter 2), curricular developments (Chapter 3), and pedagogical engagements (Chapter 4) as conduits for queer possibilities in digital media composing classrooms. Chapter 2 troubles current neoliberal accountability logics while tracing counter-histories of assessment. Assessment, a notable concept in education and rhetoric, composition, and digital media studies, is easily positioned and co-opted by neoliberal accountability logics animated by learning outcome regimes. However, by engaging early discussions of assessment ethics, the social justice turn in assessment, and the affect of digital media/multimodal assessment, this project shows assessment can and should be (re)oriented as a tool of queer possibility through an ethic of response-ability. Following the theorization of the opening chapters, the third and fourth chapters are grounded by a practitioner inquiry project (cf. Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1993; Nichols and Cormack, 2017), which collected and analyzed qualitative data in a digital media composing course. The data, when reviewed using qualitative data analysis methods, materialize and triangulate claims of queer possibilities in digital media composing by accounting fo (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Scott DeWitt DA (Committee Chair); Beverly Moss PhD (Committee Member); Christa Teston PhD (Committee Member); Eric Pritchard PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Curriculum Development; Education Philosophy; Educational Theory; Higher Education; Literacy; Pedagogy; Rhetoric; Teaching; Technology

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

The project detailed throughout these chapters addresses a critical scholarship gap in meeting the needs of autistic students in a collegiate composition classroom. I became aware of this gap as a mother of an autistic son, as an English teacher, as a student in Rhetoric and Writing, and as a graduate student instructor of English 106: College Writing II. My experience in English 501: Writing Theory and Pedagogy led me to believe that through examining the Cognitive Process Model by Flower and Hayes that a series of lesson plans could be produced to make First Year Writing more accessible for students with ASD. I determined areas of potential breakdown in each stage of the Flower and Hayes model in the composing of students with ASD. I applied strategies from my literature review to develop accommodations for deficiencies in each stage for autistic students. As a result of applying strategies to make writing more accessible for students on the autism spectrum to the different stages of the Cognitive Process Theory by Flower and Hayes, I proposed modified English 106 lesson plans for an argument research essay unit. As a result of my study, instructors will be able to find suggestions for teaching the analysis of primary and secondary sources, research and documentation skills, and argumentative thesis generation to students with ASD. Each lesson plan will contain scaffolding, suggested strategies and rationale for implementation of the strategies.

Committee: Christiine Denecker PhD (Committee Chair); Christine Tulley PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Composition; Education; Educational Theory; Rhetoric; Secondary Education; Special Education; Teacher Education; Teaching

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

This project is a series of essays aiming to develop inclusive creative writing curricula by utilizing resources from the areas of creative writing studies, writing & composition studies, and critical identity studies, to address avenues toward developing a “culturally competent” curricula for student authors involved in creative writing. The project investigates how creative writing practices might be examined for their ethical, linguistic, political, and pedagogical potential; how 21st-century writing practices affect the production and consumption of literary works for culturally diverse audiences; and, finally, how the imminent social issues in creative writing theory and pedagogy might be adapted for graduate student instructors (GSIs) and teacher-practitioners involved in bridging creative writing and composition instruction.

Committee: Sherrie Gradin PhD (Advisor); Eric LeMay PhD (Committee Member); Mara Holt PhD (Committee Member); Theodore Hutchinson PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; English As A Second Language; Higher Education; Multicultural Education; Sociolinguistics; Teaching

Doctor of Musical Arts, The Ohio State University, 2019, Music

As an indispensable skill of music composition, creativity has been tied to every aspect and step of the compositional process: from the preparation period which requires a collection of creative thoughts to the incubation stage where random “sparkling” ideas are incorporated in the process; from the illumination period when creative ideas start to pump out from background research to the final stage which results in a creative product which displays a person's experiences and important capacities. A variety of approaches in the creative study domain and other fields have achieved a large amount of research on the topic of creativity, and there have been several attempts to organize the pedagogies of this field. Along these lines, my thesis will first examine a widely cited organizational framework, the Four Ps theory of creativity and its modifications afterwards. Based on the original scheme and its modifications, several teaching pedagogies from the fine arts will be discussed to demonstrate the interrelationships between theories and applications in the classroom. Inspired by the Four Ps Theory and other pedagogical applications in the Fine Arts domains, my aim is to address many aspects of learning to compose as well as broaden the scope of research on teaching creatively and generatively.

Committee: David Clampitt (Advisor); Anna Gawboy (Committee Member); Jan Radzynski (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, English

This thesis investigates how writing-related dispositions develop by turning to a theory of accumulative affect while at the same time employing queer and feminist epistemologies to examine the role of emotion in learning. A mixed methods survey of ENG 111 students at Miami University reveals the deeply affective and emotional experiences with writing that students bring to the classroom that impact their writing. Participants' narrative responses show that affective experiences with writing are often attached to specific individuals, processes related to writing, and writing assessment. These associations often impact how they approach the writing process, as well as their self-conceptions of themselves as writers. Implications for classroom instructors are also discussed in order to recommend consideration of accumulative affect in pedagogy, in addition to methodological recommendations for studying emotion and affect.

Committee: Jason Palmeri PhD (Committee Chair); Heidi McKee PhD (Committee Member); Elizabeth Wardle PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Literacy; Pedagogy; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, English

This project investigates the complementary and contradictory ways that Black women graduate teaching assistants' (GTAs) lived experiences inform their teaching efficacy (i.e. preparedness and confidence) and pedagogical approaches in first- and/or second-level composition courses. Through survey, focus group, and individual interviews, and using Black feminist frameworks, this project documents how Black women's bodies and practices have traditionally been read as disruptive, and I argue noisy in quiet academic spaces (re: spaces governed by legacies of inequity and racism). Similar to intersectional frameworks, I suggest that noise is a multivocal representation of belonging that challenges legacies of mislabeling, dehumanizing, and silencing Black women GTAs and their bodies within institutional spaces. In order to centralize a discussion of Black women GTAs' noise, I turn to the contributions of Black feminist rhetorical scholars, literacy scholars, and Hip Hop scholars and ground my research in the noise itself--a multiplicitous and polyvocal understanding of Black women GTAs' lived experiences and practices as teachers of composition. In this sense, I highlight how and when Black women GTAs utilize intersectional instruction to retool their noise by relating their pedagogies to their epistemologies, pedagogical approaches, and networks of support inside and outside of their current home institutions. I suggest this retooling reflects what I refer to as Black women GTAs' “pedagogies of noise”—teaching approaches that acknowledge their confrontations with oppression and cultivate cultural knowledge production on a historical continuum through composition instruction and curriculum development. Ultimately, Pedagogies of Noise helps to challenge some of the gaps in the ways the fields of Composition Studies and Writing Program Administration (WPA) talk about composition teacher training, and who those current approaches to training do or do not serve.

Committee: Beverly Moss (Committee Chair); Kay Halasek (Committee Member); Christa Teston (Committee Member); Valerie Kinloch (Committee Member) Subjects: Black Studies; Composition; Pedagogy; Womens Studies

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

During the past twenty years video games have increased in notability in the discipline at large and within computers and composition discourse, leading to the occasional examination of games in composition curricula both as an object of study and as a means of further promoting student multimodal literacy. And although they are not widespread within composition courses, video games, like competing text-types literature and film, are a serious subject deserving of academic treatment, exploration, inquiry, and discussion (Bogost; Alexander; Vie; Colby and Colby). Yet little research so far has utilized video games in teaching composition courses to focus on student attitudes and responses through reflection. Throughout this dissertation, utilizing the work of Gee in the educational potential of video games, I have maintained that video games as procedural rhetoric (Bogost) provide a useful reflective medium for composition (Yancey), especially within first-year composition (FYC) curricula. And building on the work of Gradin, I coin the term network expressionism as a pedagogical position that synthesizes the digital subject position taken by players of video games with a complex network understanding of composition. I argue that knowledge of non-human actants affects the rhetorical awareness of human actants by making students aware of the greater complexities of the situation and providing a rhetorical savviness to students. To further explore network expressionism, I coin the concept algorithmic suture as a means through network expressionism to explain and explore how video game algorithms rhetorically make meaning through cooperation with players. I am here setting up the personal writing subject as the frame of the discussion of algorithms and reflection, specifically via experience and heuristics, while engaging a post-humanist network discussion. I review and discuss selections from the available relevant scholarship for conceiving network expressionism, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sherrie Gradin Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Albert Rouzie Ph.D. (Committee Member); Ryan Shepherd Ph.D. (Committee Member); Edmond Chang Ph.D. (Committee Member); Ofer Eliaz Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Mass Media; Pedagogy; Rhetoric; Teaching; Technology

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

Though matters of style are a frequent source of public interest, anxiety, and investment, style is often pushed to the margins of composition theory and pedagogy, weighed down by the baggage of historical movements in composition studies. “Style Made Visible: Reanimating Composition Studies Through Comics” investigates three approaches to style—as grammar, voice, and generic performance—in order to reconceive of style in our theory and practice. To remediate and illuminate the issues at hand, I use comics as a site of research, drawing on comics scholarship, graphic narratives, and published author interviews. In each chapter, I employ a single approach to style as a lens, pursue parallels between comics and composition, and finally apply my findings to the classroom, advocating for a pedagogy of style that relies on a foundation of awareness, control, and selection. Overall, my project seeks to advance a pluralized theory of style that invites us to recognize the role(s) of text, composer, and discourse community each in turn and holistically. My first chapter establishes an introduction for my project, noting the recent renaissance of style in composition studies, justifying comics as a site of research, and outlining the research questions and stakes of the project. Chapter 2 investigates local style, noting a disparity between the positions of grammar in comics and composition: Whereas comics creators celebrate the tools of their craft, sentence-based writing pedagogies are neglected as a product of current-traditional rhetoric. Using case studies from Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp and Small's Stitches, I demonstrate how writers can employ local style to move beyond an “ethos of error” and open up new rhetorical possibilities. Chapter 3 explores style as voice, arguing that though voice is valued by independent communities of composers, compositionists have cast it aside along with the expressivist movement. Examining in particular Bechdel's Fun Home and Forn (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jonathan Buehl (Committee Co-Chair); Jared Gardner (Committee Co-Chair); James Phelan (Committee Member); Susan Delagrange (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Pedagogy; Rhetoric

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Arts and Sciences: English and Comparative Literature

The Role of Feedback in Student/Teacher Relationships is a qualitative study of student intake of teacher feedback in first-year writing. While research on feedback has typically elevated the written comment on an object of study without considering how contextual conditions shape its meaning, more recent work foregrounds instead the feedback cycle, the back-and-forth negotiations of texts between students and teachers in a class. My dissertation builds on this work by examining how relational perception informs students' interpretation of feedback as well as their affective responses to it. Considering relational dynamics in first-year writing is significant given what is known about student retention in postsecondary schools: the first-year is a pivotal period when students adjust, or fail to adjust, to the academic and social expectations of the college environment. Using data culled from transcripts of forty hour-long interviews and textual analysis of student writing, I contend that an instructor's rapport with and immediacy in responding to a class impacts students' intake of feedback, particularly with regard to nondirective comments, in measurable ways that have been underexplored to date. Two expert teachers and four focal students from each of their classes participated in the study. Focal students were chosen to embody a range of subject positions—age, gender, race, intended career path—and also a range of levels of motivation toward writing. Motivation was measured using a Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, or MSLQ, which has been used and validated in a variety of contexts. While this data set could have supported a case-study analysis of any one of the students or teachers, I analyze the data set for patterns across participants regarding affect circulation, relational impression, and feedback interpretation as these commonalities are more useful than portraits of individual students would be. Patterns revealed that students articula (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Laura Micciche Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Christopher Carter Ph.D. (Committee Member); Russel Durst Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Rhetoric