Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2013, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD

This dissertation presents a selected version of the story of Feministing, a primarily online community of young adult feminists, and builds conversations about how and why feminists are, and are not, using literacies of technology to enact feminist activism in a digital age. My findings build out of ethnographically informed methods: interviews with three members of the Feministing editorial team, surveys completed by seventeen registered users of Feministing, and observation and coding of over nine hundred pages of text from the last eight years of the Feministing archives. I situate this data within larger historical contexts and exigencies of digital literacies and feminist activism, particularly in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Likewise, I join scholars (Blair, Collins) who argue material conditions are key components in understanding women's (but for me, feminists') texts and literate practices. My analysis combines aspects of material rhetoric (Collins) and rhetorical genealogy (Queen) to model a way to study digital texts and literate practices and, as a result, I argue for the importance of design and literacy sponsorship for Feministing while also highlighting ways design can challenge traditional notions of feminist space as non-hierarchical and uncensored. My analysis also demonstrates how to use rhetorical ecology as a theoretical framework to trace digital texts' circulations across other spaces and time and, as a result, I complicate discussions of trolling and theories of invitational rhetoric and argue the importance of technofeminists knowing feminist histories, including very recent histories beginning to unfold in digital spaces. In addition to these findings, I call for feminist writing studies scholars to recognize that literate activities within/of certain communities or people exists within larger continua of literate activity and to lend, among other skills and knowledges, awareness of the importance of writing not onl (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kristine Blair (Committee Co-Chair); Lee Nickoson (Committee Co-Chair); Sue Carter Wood (Committee Member); James Foust (Committee Member) Subjects: 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

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2022, English (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation project investigates the multimodal composing habits of college students on Snapchat. This investigation responds to calls from other scholars, such as Monty (2015) and Vie (2016), that ask us to more fully consider the ways in which students are writing in non-academic spaces, especially on social media. Using a mixed methods approach, this study incorporates data from surveys and interviews with college students to learn more about how those students are writing on Snapchat and what their perceptions are of that writing. Using this data, this project seeks to demonstrate how a better understanding of students' Snapchat habits can help instructors to build connections between the multimodal composing students are doing both inside and outside the classroom. As such, this project exists at the intersections of multimodal composition, social media, and learning transfer research. By exploring the possibilities of Snapchat through these different lenses, this project offers Snapchat as a means facilitating learning transfer through the development of students' critical digital literacy.

Committee: Ryan Shepherd (Advisor) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric

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

This research investigated the relationship between digital media composing practices and feelings, specifically turning to authors of digital media texts and books in the field of rhetoric and composition. My primary purpose was to understand the extent to which digital composing is an embodied, felt experience, thereby articulating how authors feel about drafting, coding, designing and revising scholarly projects for digital environments. Theories of digital rhetoric and emotion supported a framework for analyzing a range of authors' behind-the-scenes articles (VanKooten; Sheridan) and “practitioner stories” (Ridolfo) about digital composing. In order to capture the affective complexities and workflows of authors composing digital texts, qualitative methods were necessary for this research. More than 20 authors participated in semi-structured interviews or online questionnaires. Methods that stemmed from digital rhetoric practitioner research and emotion studies positioned me to interview authors, take stock of their composing practices (e.g., sharing screen recordings; drafts of documents), and co-review data generated from interviews and observations (e.g., participants reviewed transcripts and responded). Presenting six case studies supported by ancillary interviews and survey data, my research suggests that responding to reviewer feedback and coding a digital media text are the most painful parts of the rhetorical-affective workflow. Research also suggests that collaborating with vertical and horizontal mentors (e.g., editors and peers) and delivering a text in public are the most pleasurable. Consequently, my research implicates the support systems (or lack thereof) and editorial workflows that make digital media production possible.

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

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2019, English

Very few scholars have examined how women adapt to a leadership role in a primarily male-dominated workplace. Those who do study women's communication in the workplace often do so in comparison to male counterparts. This project, however, aims to examine solely the style of communication, specifically in email communication, among women in leadership positions. Because language style and perceptions of effectiveness imply rhetorical concerns, it is important to understand not only how women leaders are perceived by others but also how these women perceive themselves as workplace communicators. To discover how women in leadership write and what affects their writing, this research applies the methodology of Royster & Kirsch's Feminist Rhetorical Practice, employing a mixed approach between a case study and autoethnography. The research includes four female participants' email communication and interview results from two of the four participants. The results show that the women's realization of influence from male-dominated workplace is through dialogue. That said, the way women in leadership write depends very much on the end goal of the email, the audience, and the relationship between the sender and the recipient. Future research will be necessary to include more participants in the interview process because the dialogue with the women provides more contextual background and thought process to the textual analysis.

Committee: Patrick Thomas (Advisor); Margaret Strain (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Rhetoric; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2019, English

Planning, developing, and assessing sustainable mobile strategies is a challenge that many non-profit organizations face as they build mobile sites, native applications, and mobile experiences with community members. Through interviews with community organization leaders (n=3), community members (n=11), and a survey of a non-profit organization's members (n=266) in the southern Ohio region, this project, Designing Mobile User Experiences for Community Engagement, extends mobile literacy scholarship within the field regarding community-based work and, more recently, mobile communication literacies. Seeking to fill a gap in writing studies research concerning mobile communication strategy in non-profit organizations, this study's research questions include: (1) How do community organizations use mobile technologies and mobile communication practices for community engagement?; (2) What does the mobile technology and strategy development process look like in community organizations? (3) How do community members and leaders define the affordances of mobile technologies?; (4) What purpose do mobile technologies serve in community engagement?; (5) What are the challenges and benefits of using mobile technologies for community engagement purposes? Findings show participants encountered major breakdowns in motivation in using the application regarding three key areas: pertinence, personalization, and duplication of content, rather than issues that would be typically defined as breakdowns in ease of use. Ultimately, this dissertation offers a methodological framework based in activity theory and space as practiced place for studying mobile communication and mobile user experience that highlights identifying motivations and breakdowns that exist across communication ecologies and offers key strategies and practices for building, using, and developing mobile communications for community engagement.

Committee: W. Simmons PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Composition; Rhetoric; Technical Communication

Master of Arts (M.A.), Xavier University, 2008, English

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Committee: Thomas Patrick (Advisor) Subjects: Marketing; Web Studies

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Arts and Sciences: English and Comparative Literature

Toward a Relational Theory of Invention argues that rhetorical invention— the constellation of practices and theories involved in discovering or gathering ideas —can be productively theorized as relational. Rather than being concerned with origins, a relational invention is a means of relating to others and to the world; a relational invention steps away from the idea that writing is controlled by humans, as well as from the elision of human agency, and instead envisions agency as distributed amongst an assemblage of both human and nonhuman actors, like composers, texts, objects, feelings, and sensations. A relational approach to invention thus helps writers to dwell longer in process—and more closely attunes invention to potentiality and becoming—because it as an emergent method of response, in which the composing subject is adapting to and interacting with others in an entangled network. First I review literature on invention, primarily focusing on work on the teaching of writing, arguing that field conversations have characterized invention as either a private, interior process or as a process that is socially constructed and distributed. To remedy this binary, I work to recover moments in formative field scholarship that acknowledge the contributions that material, environmental, and affective agents (and their interactions) make to invention, moments that have been erased by dominant field narratives. Then, I offer three characteristics of relational invention—(1) networked mediation, (2) inviting rhetorics, and (3) complex and interactive systems—and develop a discussion that associates relational invention with theoretical concepts from contemporary theoretical work, primarily in writing ecologies, affect, and new materialism, in order to construct a vision of invention that is dynamic, emergent, and responsive. Finally, I turn to a narrative theory analysis of video-recorded interviews gathered in 2013 at Ohio State's Digital Media and Composing Insti (open full item for complete abstract)

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

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Educational Studies

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive case study was to examine one kindergarten teacher's use of digital and multimodal technologies to mediate early writing instruction, explore the students' appropriation of that instruction to support their independent writing, and investigate how student use of the tablet application, Seesaw, mediated student writing. Data sources included observations of writing instruction as well as students' participation during independent writing time, student handwritten and digital writing samples, and interviews with the case study participants. Data was analyzed inductively using a sematic relationship analysis (Hatch, 2002) and a conventional content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). Results of the study revealed that the teacher explicitly taught new literacies skills so that students could be independent users of the technology. The teacher's process approach to writing instruction focused on helping students plan, revise, and publish their writing. The technology afforded students the opportunity to engage in revision strategies and publish their writing in a digital environment where the teacher invited parents into the online writing community to view and comment on their child's digital writing. Students appropriated important concepts and strategies from their teacher's writing instruction, which they used to compose narrative texts during independent writing time. However, the technology constrained the students' writing in that it added to their cognitive load, limiting the details included in their shorter digital compositions as compared to their handwritten compositions.

Committee: Cheri Williams Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Connie Kendall Ph.D. (Committee Member); Matthew Schmidt Ph.D. (Committee Member); Dong-shin Shin (Committee Member) Subjects: Teacher Education

PHD, Kent State University, 2018, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies

This qualitative study explored how student writers adjust to the shifting composing demands in a multitude of composing contexts: in English, in history and across the two disciplines, as well as in various modes, including alphabetically and multimodally. Naturalistic inquiry case study was applied to explore the participant's experiences with these shifting composing contexts by addressing the following questions: (a) How does a student's perception of composing differ across disciplinary contexts, such as in a history class rather than an English class? How does this change when the composing is done in a cross-curricular project that spans both history and ELA? (b) Because new literacies expand the choices students must make through multimodal composing, what relationship can be seen between the authoring choices a student makes while composing multimodally and the literacy demands of various content area classrooms? (c) How does a student who is engaging in cross-curricular inquiry in both English and history perceive the disciplinary demands specific to each content area? (d) How do teachers account for the negotiation students must undergo in order to meet both English and history curricular goals in that cross-curricular project? Findings suggest that student agency and choice are important factors in helping students address shifting contexts for composing. These factors seem to alleviate the sense of anxiety and ambiguity students perceive when faced with shifting and unfamiliar composing demands. Importantly, multimodal composing supported writer's agency by offering vast choices and allowing students to use composing in support of inquiry.

Committee: William Kist (Committee Co-Chair); Kristine Pytash (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Composition; Curricula; Curriculum Development; Educational Theory; Language Arts; Literacy; Multimedia Communications; Pedagogy; Secondary Education; Social Studies Education; Teaching

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2017, English

This thesis argues for studying social media as a cultural and contextual practice, caught up in networks of actors that constitute and construct a given context and that influence compositions before, during, and after creation. Ultimately, the author proposes a heuristic that helps researchers break down or revise measures to better accommodate the ways in which social media is being used; recognize social media as influenced by actors that both constitute and construct a cultural context; acknowledge expanded notions of kairos and rhetorical success; and engage ethically and reciprocally with community partners. Such an approach allows researchers, teachers, and practitioners to not only better accommodate the affordances and constraints of individual research sites, but also to better understand social media practices so that we can better navigate complex contexts and create content that accommodates the differing needs of various situations and audiences, teaching our students to do the same.

Committee: Michele Simmons (Committee Chair); Timothy Lockridge (Committee Member); James Porter (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2017, English

This project examines how writers compose research texts, such as reports, infographics, digital content—so that they might circulate. Specifically, I study a group of writers at The Women's Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation (TWF) and their writing processes for their research texts, texts they write both to inform audiences and to motivate those same audiences to share and discuss the texts with others. TWF researches and distributes information on the unique socio-economic challenges women in Cincinnati face. They strive to change the local conversation about socio-economic issues so that everyone from citizens to businesses leaders to local politicians understand the distinct challenges that women face. They want to inform Cincinnatians about these issues and equip them to engage in discussions with others about these issues. Studying TWF's efforts to get their research texts discussed so as to change local conversations affords the opportunity to study how professional writers compose texts both to inform and to circulate. More specifically, it enables an examination of the ways writers compose amidst circulation, both its possibilities to expand conversations and its limitations. Additionally, it enables me to articulate specific strategies that other professional writers can draw upon in their efforts to compose texts for similar public engagements and circulation. To study TWF, I use a Circulation Studies methodology and corresponding methods to perform a multi-part case study of their strategies for a few representative research texts. I first outline the local conversation that TWF works to change, establishing the narrow constraints that influence what texts and information circulate. From there, I study TWF's understanding of that local conversation, particularly its narrow perspective on local social and economic issues. I next present how TWF incorporate that understanding into their research texts—infographics, reports, presentations, digi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michele Simmons Dr (Committee Co-Chair); Jason Palmeri Dr (Committee Co-Chair); Tim Lockridge Dr (Committee Member); James Porter Dr (Committee Member); Glenn Platt Dr (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Composition; Gender; Mass Communications; Public Policy; Rhetoric; Technical Communication; Web Studies

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

Since the advent of digital composing methods, scholars of first-year writing have produced research exploring the implications of digital writing instruction for writing professionals and students. However, despite extensive consideration of how digital writing instruction may perpetuate societal inequalities, little scholarship has explored how the government's digital surveillance of citizens may jeopardize writing studies' understanding of human agency and its mission to preserve student agency even as students interact with increasingly complex, networked digital interfaces. In the following thesis, I address this gap by examining available information regarding the NSA's surveillance of web users and the role web companies such as Microsoft play in such surveillance. Furthermore, I review composition studies scholarship that examines the implications of the digital interface for writing instruction, scholarship that has recently grown concerned with the potential for the government to exploit networked digital interfaces as a means of surveilling users. I suggest that Cynthia Selfe's argument to writing professionals to pay attention to their technology use reinscribes a democratic humanist vision of agency. Furthermore, I suggest that the correlation of paying attention with increased agency limits scholars' understanding of the insidious, secretive nature of government surveillance as an alien object that resists understanding. Ultimately, I present alien phenomenology as an alternative theoretical lens through which scholars may pay attention to government surveillance without assuming that doing so will increase the agency of writing professionals or students. Finally, I suggest that by paying attention to government surveillance through the lens of alien phenomenology, scholars may consider the possibility that agency is not a sustainable category as writing professionals and students engage with networked digital interfaces implicated in government surve (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christine Denecker PhD (Committee Chair); Ronald Tulley PhD (Committee Member); Megan Adams PhD (Committee Member); Christine Tulley PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Composition; Educational Technology; Higher Education; Information Technology; Legal Studies; Literacy; Mass Communications; Multimedia Communications; Pedagogy; Philosophy; Rhetoric; Teaching; Technology; Web Studies

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2017, English-Composition

Students entering our freshman composition classrooms use digital writing every day, whether on social media, blogging, or various other digital areas. Students also have fast access to news, media, and other information. These two interactions, writing and reading, in today's digital realm are often drenched in social propaganda and debates. In Ira Shor's sub-section titled “Academic Problem-Posing: Media Studies and a Critical Literature Class” within his work Empowering Education, he writes that students “are starved for meaningful contexts, for intellectual and emotional pleasure in the life of the mind, and for holistic learning that feeds their understanding. Schooling teaches many students that education is a pointless ritual wrapped in meaningless words” (83). Shor's words still ring true today, especially in classrooms where student's 21st century interactions with technology are disused for traditional composition classrooms with lectures and no digital components from the social media world in which they actively participate. When students are unable to address propaganda and digital identities in the classroom when they see it their everyday lives, how do they learn to critically analyze these messages? With Critical pedagogy's teachings and digital culture commodities, teachers can help prepare students for decoding and deconstructing digital propaganda with the hopes of fostering participation and push-back through social media. By using critical pedagogy's core teachings and digital instruction, teachers can create a classroom where students can recognize and debunk propaganda used in online media while also introducing them to the ways that digital mediums can aid in resistance. Helping students to decode online media while understanding its power can foster student's critical thinking in a digital world. The primary goal of this thesis is to research and discover the importance of rhetoric and propaganda in writing on social media and how the dissec (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: William Thelin (Advisor); Amanda Booher (Other); Joseph Ceccio (Other) Subjects: Composition

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

First-year composition pedagogy and course communication (especially as implicitly endorsed by institutionally presented means) is often limiting in modes and modalities, which juxtaposes vibrant composing practices in the daily lives of students. Additionally, writing program requirements tend to value primarily alphabetic texts despite multimodal composing's empirically-supported benefits to students. Many in the General Studies Writing program at Bowling Green State University (a sequence of Academic Composition courses) are also enjoying the affordances of Web 2.0 (an umbrella term for digitally connected platforms including file sharing, video and audio conferencing/commenting, and social networking) while creating ePortfolios. My dissertation takes advantage of this rich learning opportunity given the field's call for published teacher research on digital pedagogy. Based in technofeminism, phenomenology, and grounded theory, this project reveals quantitative and qualitative data from digital surveys and interviews on the practices and preferences surrounding Web 2.0 in GSW. Voicing these likes is part of an ongoing thread on digital composition scholarship and teaching. This project provides examples, ideas, and activities showing how Web 2.0 can explicitly support GSW learning outcomes, university writing program goals, BGSU missions, state regulations such as the Ohio Transfer Module (OTM), and federal right to privacy.

Committee: Kris Blair Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Lee Nickoson Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Sue Carter Wood Dr. (Committee Member); Ernesto Delgado Dr. (Other) Subjects: Rhetoric

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

Although a substantial body of research exists with respect to the digital literacy practices of the “traditional” American college student, research relevant to the English Language Learner (ELL) population in American institutions of higher education has not developed as extensive a corpus. Some, like Aisha Walker and Goodith White, advocate for greater integration of digital tools in ELL instruction, but only look to convince instructors to consider new methods. Others, Bruce Horner, Cynthia L. Selfe, and Tim Lockridge, call for more acceptance of non-standard communication practices, but focus more on institutional pushback to change. Still others, like Dana R. Ferris, take a more traditional approach and advocate for strict adherence to grammar instruction. Those researchers who advocate for greater use of digital instruction and communication often do not consider the student perspectives on digital literacy, multimodal composing practices, or the technological preferences of ELLs. This study aims to address this gap by seeking to better understand how ELLs use and interact with technology to help them write, and to explore how the digital literacy preferences of ELLs influence their understanding and use of multimodal composing practices. The ultimate goal of this project is to help those instructors who work with ELLs better understand the needs of this student population. I attempt to address this goal by introducing student voices into the conversation surrounding their digital literacy practices through the collection and analysis of survey and interview data.

Committee: Kristine Blair PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Lee Nickoson PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Tracy Huziak-Clark PhD (Other); Sheri Wells-Jensen PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Composition; Curriculum Development; English As A Second Language

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2016, English

From prompts to share, update, and retweet, social media platforms increasingly insist that creating widespread circulation is the operative goal for networked writing. In response, researchers from multiple disciplines have investigated digital circulation through a number of lenses (e.g., affect theory, transnational feminism, political economy, public sphere theory, and more). In rhetoric and writing studies, scholars have argued that writing for circulation—i.e., envisioning how one's writing may gain speed, distance, and momentum—should be a prime concern for teachers and researchers of writing (e.g., Gries, 2015; Ridolfo & DeVoss, 2009; Porter, 2009; Sheridan, Ridolfo, & Michel, 2012). Such work has suggested that circulation is a consequence of rhetorical delivery and, as such, is distinctly about futurity. While a focus on writing for circulation has been productive, I argue that that writing in circulation can be equally productive. Challenging the tendency to position circulation as an exclusive concern for delivery, this project argues that circulation is not just as an end goal for rhetorical activity but also as a viable inventional resource for writers with diverse rhetorical goals. To make this case, I construct a methodology of assemblage to retell stories of tactical rhetorics. Grounded in the cultural notion of metis (an adaptable, embodied, and wily intelligence), the framework of tactical rhetorics seeks to describe embodied practices that pull materials out of circulation, reconfigure them, and redeploy them for new, often political effects. Blending historical inquiry with case-based methods, I assemble an array of stories that include practices of critical imitation, collage, tactical media, remix, digital hijacks, and protest bots. In retelling these stories, I show how tactical approaches are inventive in their attempts to solve problems, effect change, or call out injustice. In the process, my project pushes toward a critical circul (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Porter (Advisor); Heidi McKee (Committee Member); Jason Palmeri (Committee Member); Michele Simmons (Committee Member); James Coyle (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Intellectual Property; Multimedia Communications; Rhetoric

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2015, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Educational Studies

Academic failure is a common problem for adolescents in the United States with more than half of fourth and eighth graders failing to achieve proficient scores on national literacy measures. This qualitative descriptive holistic multiple-case study explored the ways in which four adolescents who were deemed “at-risk” constructed academic identities through digital writing in order to understand the possibilities for selfhood that digital writing in a classroom context creates for adolescents. New Literacies theory (Leu et al., 2013) was used as a theoretical lens to interpret the learning contexts in which adolescents engaged in digital writing practices. Writer Identity theory (Ivanic, 1998) was used to analyze the identities adolescents constructed within their writing as well as the contexts in which they were writing. Gee's (2000) framework for four ways to view identity was also used to analyze how adolescents perceived themselves, as well as how they were perceived by their teachers, within the Discourse of school. Participants included two fourth grade students and their English/language arts teacher in a suburban elementary school and two ninth grade students and their English teacher in an urban high school in Ohio. Qualitative data sources included classroom observations, digitally recorded observations of participants' writing events, semi-structured interviews, and artifacts. Data were analyzed inductively using pattern codes and deductively using the theoretical frameworks. Findings are presented both as narrative vignettes of each adolescent's perceptions of academic identity and experiences with digital writing, as well as a cross-case synthesis of the four individual cases. Cross-case findings suggest that possibilities for selfhood are limited or expanded by the parameters of the assignment more than the medium in which the writing takes place, and that the teacher's positioning of students as technology experts expands their possibilities (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Vicki Plano Clark Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Tom Romano Ph.D. (Committee Member); Chester Laine Ph.D. (Committee Member); Cheri Williams Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2015, English

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

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

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2015, English (Arts and Sciences)

This dissertation is a study of Wikipedia's collaborative, open access culture and the opportunities for writing pedagogy it provides. Because the encyclopedia showcases productive writing processes in radically transparent ways, Wikipedia enables rich opportunities for students to observe, practice, and learn about writing. Wikipedia can help students gain social and procedural writing knowledge as well as more traditional learning outcomes related to research, writing and rhetoric. Engaging students in Wikipedia's interactive community can also lead to an increase in rhetorical knowledge as students practice negotiation and collaboration with authorities outside the “traditional” classroom. Additionally, the encyclopedia provides opportunities for cultural studies projects that involve students in the recognition of identity politics of representation and cultural marginalization as they work to rectify missing articles and topics that are underrepresented. Discussion of these opportunities provides a range of pedagogical insights into how writing instructors can approach and teach with the encyclopedia, by asking students to join the Wikipedia community and—through their writing—improve existing articles and create new ones. Such insights are supported by three information-rich classroom case studies, made available through a qualitative research design that emphasizes student and instructor experience by re-creating classroom contexts. In addition to asserting and describing the pedagogical benefits of Wikipedia writing assignments, these classroom studies interrogate the cultural politics of access and representation that emerge when students and others try to join and write in this community. Despite its ambitions for global representation and its open access editorial ethos, Wikipedia's project is hindered by problems of homogenous editorship, troubling issues of editorial access, and gaps in coverage of already marginalized topics. Examination of how these i (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Albert Rouzie PhD (Advisor); Mara Holt PhD (Committee Member); Jennie Nelson PhD (Committee Member); Howard Welser PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Composition; Cultural Anthropology; Educational Theory; Pedagogy; Rhetoric; Teaching; Web Studies