Following 9/11, U.S. immigration law and policy toward international students in the U.S. dramatically changed. Post-9/11, the government instilled restrictive policies, including a tracking program (SEVIS), to closely monitor international students because these students were viewed as possible terrorists. Additionally, the government replaced the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) with a new enforcement agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The elimination of INS was part of a major reorganization of the executive branch, which consolidated Federal departments and agencies into a single Department of Homeland Security, whose mission is to prevent terrorist attacks within the U.S. and reduce U.S. vulnerability to terrorism. This dissertation examines the interactive nature of a transformative event, such as 9/11, discursive strategies, and organizational design in promoting these changes. This project further explores the effect of such changes in law, policy, and government structures on language and meaning. To probe the interrelationship between material events, discourse, and organizational structure, I used three theories of rhetorical analysis: kairos, frame theory, and genre analysis. Each theory provided a different level of analysis to examine the narrative of international students in the post-9/11 United States. Collectively, these three methods offered a systematic and sustained way to examine the story of international students in a time of transition. These three methods expose a process in which material events and discursive practices led to organizational change that then acted as a rhetorical device to replace discursive practices. The new organization created new understandings of social and cultural situations and influenced language and the ability of individuals to promote and curtail argument. This study reveals that rhetoric is not confined to discourse and language. Discourse and organizational change can become so intertwined that organizational change seamlessly replaces discourse and therefore must be considered in rhetorical analysis. While my work has focused particularly on legal institutions and on how institutional change within the executive branch of the United States affected the meaning associated with “international student,” this work has implications for the study of institutions and organizations generally. Furthermore, this work demonstrates the need to consider organizational change in rhetorical analysis.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Melbourne, 2003.

Thesis (M.A.)--Eastern Illinois University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-56).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Virginia, 1997. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 615-626).

Thesis (Ph. D., Education)--University of Idaho, Fall 2007. / Major professor: George Canney. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-94). Also available online (PDF file) by subscription or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis--Northwestern University. / Abstracted in Dissertation abstracts, v. 20 (1959) no. 6 2439-2440. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 305-315.

Thesis (PH.D.)--Syracuse University, 2003. / "Publication number AAT 3099525."

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1963. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-198).

<p> In this thesis, I explore how an informal form of discourse like sidewalk chalking functions as and within a rhetorical ecology, how ideas and texts circulate within such a complex system, and how this sometimes disruptive medium affects the potential for productive dialogue. By applying Margaret Syverson's four principles of rhetorical ecologies (distribution, embodiment, emergence, and enaction), we learn that chalking is an interconnected but informal system of sidewalk-based communication that uses playground chalk for writing or drawing messages, from art to insults, event notices to poetry, protests to love notes. It is a complex, dynamic system that includes other writers, other ideas, other texts, and other overlapping, entangled ecologies of the physical, social, historical, and cultural worlds we live in. Chalking is both social and material, and by mapping the interactions of and relationships between its human and nonhuman actors, we can explore the blurred boundaries of its rhetorical ecology and examine the disruptive potential within that ecology. Furthermore, we can uncover its practical uses: chalking can serve as visual rhetoric that can be studied in the composition classroom, connect students with the "real" world outside the classroom, and encourage them to engage in productive discourse. More broadly, informal discourse, however mundane it may seem, can guide or influence public rhetorics in often surprising, meaningful ways.</p><p>

<p> This project explores how people enact citizenship through discourses in postindustrial Rust Belt cities. Drawing on Robert Asen&rsquo;s discursive theory of citizenship, this dissertation views prevalent discourses through various media tropes. Media tropes reflect and construct authenticity, a key element to the status of urban citizen. Analysis of four tropes, the urban wasteland, nature, rebirth, and DIY, reveals how neoliberal governmentality serves to coopt how people enact urban citizenship. Two books, two documentaries, and a selective sample of booster publications make up the texts analyzed in this dissertation. The aim of the dissertation is to break down common tropes that serve to exclude indigenous urban citizens from revitalization and open up space for more inclusive discourses in the city.</p><p>