Matching Items (5)
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- All Subjects: Autobiography
- All Subjects: pedagogy
- All Subjects: Technological innovations
- Creators: Long, Elenore
Description
This dissertation theorizes nineteenth-century public performance of spiritual media as being inherent to the production of autobiography itself. Too often, dominant social discourses are cast as being singular cultural phenomena, but analyzing the rhetorical strategies of women attempting to access public spheres reveals fractures in what would otherwise appear to be a monolithic patriarchal discourse. These women's resistant performances reap the benefits of a fractured discourse to reveal a multiplicity of alternative discourses that can be accessed and leveraged to gain social power. By examining the phenomena of four nineteenth- century Spiritualists' mediumship from a rhetorical perspective, this study considers how female spirit mediums used their autobiographies to operate as discursive spaces mediating between private and public spheres; how female mediums constructed themselves in the public sphere as women and as spiritual authorities; how they negotiated entry into volatile and unpredictable publics; how they conceived of the vulnerability of the female body in the public sphere; and how they coped with complications inherent to Victorian era constructions of feminine corporeality. In conclusion, this dissertation offers a highly situated performative theory of subaltern publicity.
ContributorsLowry, Elizabeth (Author) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Thesis advisor) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
In this dissertation, I study large-scale civic conversations where technology extends the range of “discourse visibility” beyond what human eyes and ears can meaningfully process without technical assistance. Analyzing government documents on digital innovation in government, emerging data activism practices, and large-scale civic conversations on social media, I advance a rhetoric for productively listening to democratic discourse as it is practiced in 2016. I propose practical strategies for how various governments—from the local to the United Nations international climate talks—might appropriately use technical interventions to assist civic dialogues and make civic decisions. Acknowledging that we must not lose the value that comes from face-to-face civic deliberation, I suggest practical pathways for how and when to use technology to increase democratic engagement from all stakeholders.
ContributorsSutherland, Alison (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Simeone, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
My dissertation is situated in the speculative—that rhetorical domain of human affairs concerned with conditions we cannot entirely predict or control. Specifically, my research investigates the polarization and unease many of us feel as we imagine a world in which humans are no longer in the driver’s seat. It offers a literate practice of framing to facilitate substantive talk about the possible effects of the impending technology. To pursue this line of inquiry, I draw from Kenneth Burke’s frames of acceptance and rejection. In particular, I developed a computer-based tool and tested the prototype in a pilot project. The study is designed to assess the technai (rhetorical problem-solving tools that transform limits and barriers into possibilities) I fashioned from Burke’s six frames of acceptance and rejection to prompt participants to articulate epic, tragic, comedic, elegiac, satirical and burlesque driving futures. Findings from the study reveal that the practice of framing helps scaffold participants’ thinking beyond the good/bad binary and toward more realistically complex understandings and expectations of the future of driving. For example, one student commented that “the frames guided discussion and added a well-rounded perspective that we individuals may not have otherwise taken into consideration.” Ultimately, this study demonstrates the power of effectively designed deliberative experiences. Technai teach useful practices to teachers, students, scholars – all of whom need opportunities to critically assess the risks and rewards of our technology-laden lives. This research pushes our scholarship to focus on rhetorics that surround speculative public scientific controversies like the driverless car, in order to advocate for our individual and collective well-being.
ContributorsSantana, Christina Jean (Author) / Long, Elenore (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Keith (Committee member) / Hannah, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This dissertation posits that a relationship between a feminist rhetorical pedagogical model and autobiographical theoretical tenets engage students in the personal writing process and introduce them to the ways that feminism can change the approach, analysis, and writing of autobiographical texts. Inadequate attention has been given to the ways that autobiographical theory and the use of non-fiction texts contribute to a feminist pedagogy in upper-level writing classrooms. This dissertation corrects that by focusing on food memoirs as vehicles in a feminist pedagogical writing course. Strands of both feminist and autobiographical theory prioritize performativity, positionality, and relationality (Smith and Watson 214) as dynamic components of identity construction and thus become frames through which this class was taught and studied. I theorize these “enabling concepts” (Smith and Watson 217) as identity pathways that lead to articulation of identity and experience in written work.
This study posits that Royster and Kirsch’s four feminist rhetorical practices— Critical Imagination, Social Circulation, Strategic Contemplation, and Globalizing Point of View (19)—taken together offer a model for instruction geared to help learners chart identity pathways in the context of one semester of their undergraduate rhetorical education. This model is operationalized through a writing classroom that focused on feminist ideals, using a food memoir, The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber, as the vehicle of inquiry. This study offers a starting point for analysis of food memoirs in university writing classrooms by focusing specifically on the ways that students understood and applied the framework, model, and vehicle of the study. This dissertation prioritizes the composition and valuing of individual and communal lived experiences expressed through the articulation of identity pathways. Teachers and scholars can use the knowledge and takeaways gained in the study to better support and advocate for the inclusion of the students lived experiences in writing classrooms and pedagogy.
This study posits that Royster and Kirsch’s four feminist rhetorical practices— Critical Imagination, Social Circulation, Strategic Contemplation, and Globalizing Point of View (19)—taken together offer a model for instruction geared to help learners chart identity pathways in the context of one semester of their undergraduate rhetorical education. This model is operationalized through a writing classroom that focused on feminist ideals, using a food memoir, The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber, as the vehicle of inquiry. This study offers a starting point for analysis of food memoirs in university writing classrooms by focusing specifically on the ways that students understood and applied the framework, model, and vehicle of the study. This dissertation prioritizes the composition and valuing of individual and communal lived experiences expressed through the articulation of identity pathways. Teachers and scholars can use the knowledge and takeaways gained in the study to better support and advocate for the inclusion of the students lived experiences in writing classrooms and pedagogy.
ContributorsBruce, Kayla Ann (Author) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Thesis advisor) / Boyd, Patricia (Committee member) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This thesis argues that celebrities and celebrity studies should be taken more seriously in writing studies as productive sites for writing instruction in the composition classroom. Historically, celebrity culture has been overlooked for ostensibly lacking in substance or relevance to critical thought. However, academic disciplines, such as cultural studies and celebrity studies, are paving the way for celebrities having a more significant rhetorical relevance as figures in the public. This thesis explores celebrities as cultural figures who are advantageously positioned in the public realm as rhetorical agents. Their increased visibility and the increase in observation of celebrity culture in the public sphere are contributing to how people form opinions and make judgments about the world around them. Yet, despite some of the connections between the public, writing, and celebrity rhetoric, there has been little work in the field aligning celebrity rhetoric as a site for public writing instruction within academia. This thesis seeks to address this gap by aligning celebrity rhetoric with scholarship on public writing pedagogy in composition studies. To model how students might approach analyzing and writing about celebrity rhetoric in the composition classroom, this thesis offers a critical look at the celebrity rhetoric of Taylor Swift. The case study rhetorically analyzes sites of public writing that work intertextuality across various mediums to construct her celebrity as a representation of modern feminism. This thesis concludes with a discussion about the pedagogical implication of implementing celebrity rhetoric in the composition classroom. It concludes that celebrity rhetoric is useful for students in composition classrooms for making personal connections with their work, negotiating an understanding about culture and public issues, and influencing the production of rhetoric, writing and their own identity as scholars.
ContributorsHorton, Kathryn (Author) / Daly Goggin, Maureen (Thesis advisor) / Long, Elenore (Committee member) / Hannah, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021