Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2016, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

In my project, "Towards a Cultural Rhetorics Approach to Caribbean Rhetoric: African Guyanese Women from the Village of Buxton Transforming Oral History,"I build a Cultural Rhetorics approach by listening to the stories of a group of African Guyanese women from the village of Buxton (Buxtonians). I obtained these stories from engaging in a long-term oral history research project where I understand my participants to be invested in telling their stories to teach the current and future generations of Buxtonians. I build this approach by using a collaborative and communal methodology of asking Wah De Story Seh? This methodology provides a framework for understanding the women's strategies in history-making as distinctively Caribbean rhetoric. It is crucial for my project to mark these women's strategies as Caribbean rhetoric because they negotiate their oral histories and identities by consciously and unconsciously connecting to an African ancestral heritage of formerly enslaved Africans in Guyana. In my project, I enact story as methodology to understand how the rhetorical strategies of the Buxtonian women make oral histories and by so doing, I examine the relationship between rhetoric, knowledge, and power.

Committee: Andrea Riley-Mukavetz Ph.D (Advisor); Sue Carter Wood Ph.D (Committee Member); Lee Nickoson Ph.D (Committee Member); Alberto Gonzalez Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: African Studies; Black History; Black Studies; Caribbean Literature; Caribbean Studies; Composition; Cultural Anthropology; Gender Studies; History; Literacy; Pedagogy

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2022, English

In this thesis, I examine the ways in which race, ethnicity, and the raced body are written into the Census as a document of technical writing. The United States Census is the key site of inquiry that I examine in analyzing and articulating a rhetoric surrounding race and identity. While the Census does not dictate the ways how ethnicity is made visible or erased or the ways in which race is reified; the ways in which conceptions of race and racism permeate American society are complex and too large for the scope of one conference proposal or project. The Census, however, is an important technical document that tracks identities and demographics in America. And as a governmental document, its use in public discourse impacts minority communities such as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Hispanic Americans, as well as other minoritized communities like migrants or refugees. In this thesis, I use this analysis of the Census document to focus on Middle Eastern identity and its relationship to race, ethnicity, and the raced body in technical writing, and seek to use this study to develop a theory of delivering identity through writing.

Committee: James Porter (Advisor); Adam Strantz (Committee Member); Sara Webb-Sunderhaus (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Middle Eastern Studies; Rhetoric; Technical Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2020, English

This dissertation explores how disenfranchised people reshape power asymmetries by forming inter/connectivity, a relating-yet-separating relationship, with more powerful interlocutors. While it is crucially important to assert difference, disenfranchised rhetors also face the urgency of mediating the risks of speaking to power and the urgency of disrupting the Eurocentric and colonial logics that have set up and maintained the categorization of the dominant and the marginalized. Inter/connectivity emerges to be a framework that attends to the paradoxical subject position of disenfranchised rhetors, that is, how they insist difference and assert identities while seeking association and coalition with the more powerful interlocutors to collectively disrupt imbalanced power structures. Inter/connectivity reminds us that one pathway to subvert power is not necessarily through speaking up or against power, but through forging a relationship of interdependence where difference and similarity co-exist. I argue for the rhetoric of according-with as a pathway to inter/connectivity. According-with signifies a way of navigating, using, and reinventing discursive conditions. The rhetoric of according-with attends to the specific concerns of the less privileged rhetors, namely, how they figure out discursive norms and conditions, while using and refiguring these discourses to reshape power differentials. I specifically draw upon the tactics-strategies (i.e. shu) taught by Guiguzi and his notion of yin, or according-with, to establish a classical wisdom of speaking to power. I further constellate Guigucian rhetoric with multiple rhetorical traditions and theories, notably, the Greek concept of metis, feminist rhetorical listening, and performative deliberation, to envision a responsive, tactical, and practical mode of doing-thinking-being that the rhetoric of according-with signifies. Such rhetoric shines a light on how international teaching assistants accord with-navigate, u (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: LuMing Mao (Committee Chair); Jason Palmeri (Committee Chair); Emily Legg (Committee Member); Elizabeth Wardle (Committee Member); Haosheng Yang (Committee Member) Subjects: Comparative; Composition; History; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2018, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

In this dissertation entitled, “Theorizing A Settlers' Approach To Decolonial Pedagogy: Storying As Methodologies, Humbled, Rhetorical Listening And Awareness Of Embodiment,” I outline a set of pedagogical practices for settlers to enact in their classrooms. The purpose of this project was to investigate options for decolonial pedagogical practices, examining how a non indigenous or settler version of decolonial pedagogy may require a different approach. My primary argument is that varieties of decolonial pedagogical practices must be allowed to exist rather than attempting to homogenize or present formulaic methods. Failure to do so enacts and re-inscribes colonialist practices that attempt to homogenize a complex concept and construct a universal narrative, discounting embodied differences. Instead, I contend that the embodied experience(s) of the educators, specifically in all variations of culture, influence interpretations and applications of decoloniality to pedagogical practices. I also contend that that if settler or non-indigenous educators wish to employ the term decoloniality in scholarship, enact decolonial pedagogy, and consider their work to be decolonial in nature, then they must first engage in rhetorical listening, humility and self-reflexivity with people of color, learning about issues of sovereignty and how settler colonialism affects certain bodies differently than others. I further urge settlers in the field of Rhetoric and Composition, who wish to use the term decolonial, to listen to, learn from, and honor indigenous methods through active relationships and community membership, and to avoid cultural appropriation or false allyship. Finally, I argue that story as methodology that is genuinely decolonial in nature must revere storying and extend those practices to all professional roles—that of researcher, scholar, community member, and teacher. Drawing from indigenous rhetorics and storied interviews with (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Andrea Riley-Mukavetz (Advisor); Daniel Bommarito (Committee Member); Lee Nickoson (Committee Member); Irina Stahkanova (Other) Subjects: Composition; Epistemology; Pedagogy; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2016, Media and Communication

The following study investigates the genre of after-dinner speaking (ADS) as articulated within US public discourse in the twentieth-century. Though ADS is an integral facet of speech communication pedagogy and was, in the early twentieth-century, the most popular site of public address outside of pulpit oratory, because the genre is identified as a form of epideictic oratory for the personal sphere, the history of the genre is obfuscated. This dissertation argues that during the early twentieth-century ADS provided a space for the expression of nineteenth-century platform oratorical culture in the banquet halls of the twentieth-century US urban landscape. As a central part of this historical moment of US rhetorical and political culture, ADS functioned to remediate platform oratorical traditions and provide opportunities for cultural identification.

Committee: Alberto Gonzalez PhD (Advisor); John Dowd PhD (Committee Member); Ellen Gorsevski PhD (Committee Member); Douglas Forsyth PhD (Other) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2016, English

This dissertation analyzes the rhetorics of Appalachian civic organizations that make the argument “remaining” is a tenable option among discursive, material, and economic pressures to do otherwise. This dissertation analyzes “remaining” through a rhetorical frame to show how remaining is more than simply staying put—it requires active rhetorical intervention in civic contexts and attention to the circulation of rhetorical positions and content. Analyzing “remaining” as a cultural rhetoric enables us to identify a civic techne that can be used in Appalachia and other areas where rhetorics of remaining are (or could be) deployed. I identify and develop this new frame—rhetorics of remaining—through my year-and-a-half participatory research with two Appalachian civic organizations: Appalshop, a multi-media non-profit in eastern Kentucky; and the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition, a community advocacy group for Appalachian out-migrants and their descendants in Cincinnati, Ohio. I trace acts of rhetorical remaining through interviews, analyses of media productions and web spaces, and collaborating with these groups in developing rhetorical strategies and producing content. This dissertation contributes to ongoing scholarship of how culture shapes rhetorical practice in civic spaces and how questions of circulation shape our rhetorical decisions by examining the civic work heritage claims do for communities. I uncover three broad strategies used in rhetorical remaining: "keeping with" heritage as a civic art among oppressive or indifferent discourses; offering "inventional trajectories" that redirect media flows; and "slow circulation," a strategy for community advocacy oriented toward sustained change over the long haul. Through these strategies, rhetorics of remaining offer a rhetorical theory for social change for communities struggling to pull themselves out of economic decline, halt outmigration, and/or to maintain cultural identities outside of a homeland.

Committee: W. Michele Simmons Dr. (Committee Chair); James Porter Dr. (Committee Member); Heidi McKee Dr. (Committee Member); James Coyle Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Ethnic Studies; Multimedia Communications; Regional Studies; Rhetoric; Technical Communication

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2016, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This dissertation, "Practitioners of Earth: The Literacy Practices and Civic Rhetorics of Grassroots Cartographers and Writing Instructors," addresses the question of how diverse literacies can advance the civic rhetorical work of communities underrepresented in public discourses. Specifically, I explore how grassroots cartographers make geographic maps to change dominant narratives and material realities of marginalized communities. I also explore how writing instructors teach geographic maps and diverse literacy practices in relation to civic learning objectives. I align my scholarship with feminist cultural geographers and rhetoric and composition scholars such Amy Propen; Nedra Reynolds; and Amy Diehl, Jeffrey T. Grabill, William Hart-Davidson, and Vashil Iyer who explore geographic maps in material, spatial, and rhetorical contexts. My dissertation continues this discussion, yet it goes further by examining the relationship between civic rhetorics and literacy practices as related to geographic mapping. To do this, I conducted semi-structured interviews to gather data from my participants shared with me. Additionally, I used textual analysis, narrative inquiry, and critical citation practices. To code and analyze the data, I used feminist-oriented teacher research and grounded theory methodologies. What I learned is that grassroots cartographers engage with diverse literacy practices, specifically rhetorical (audience and ethos), composing (multimodal and situated processes), intercommunal (cultural self-awareness and cultural humility), and technological (tools and communication). My findings also show that civic rhetorical work, including grassroots mapping, is accomplished through infrastructures that rely on people who practice a range of literate activities.

Committee: Kristine Blair (Advisor); Ronald C. Scherer (Other); Lee Nickoson (Committee Member); Sue Carter Wood (Committee Member); Clayton Rosati (Committee Member) Subjects: Rhetoric