This dissertation explores U.S. monuments as contested sites where marginalized groups who have been either omitted or villianized in the original monument at a site have sought to gain inclusion and have their narratives of the past articulated on U.S. sacred sites. My project expands on academic literature on German counter-monuments and links American counter-monuments to this field of study. Following my analysis of three German counter-monuments, this project explores three American counter-monuments: Chicagos Haymarket Square, Liberty Place in New Orleans, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., which offer examples of struggles over public memory on issues of class (Haymarket Square), race (Liberty Place), and sex (Vietnam Veterans Memorial). I selected each site intentionally because each has been marked with an original monument, as well as served as a site where the narrative contained in that monument has been challenged by those denied representation on the sacred site. Each has been altered significantly since the creation of its original monument, and has also been the locus of vernacular performances and responses in the years since the inception of the original monuments. Accordingly, my dissertation offers a critical analysis of the aforementioned counter-monuments by exploring four central traits of counter-monuments: 1) the evolution of monumental sites, 2) presence, absence, and irony, 3) the monuments relation to sacred space, and 4) the use of the site as a forum. I argue that American counter-monuments begin with competing claims to a sacred space, the eventual creation of multiple monuments (each representing a different perspective on how the past should be remembered), and the representation of the development of the site across time. Ultimately, those in control of each site have attempted to reconcile the competing perspectives under some transcendent ideal, thus rearticulating the different perspectives not as competing, but as different perspectives pursuing common American ideals. Both by gaining access to build a monument at U.S. sacred sites, and by having this monument marked as a perspective contributing to an American ideal, counter-monuments offer spaces at which U.S. public memory has been expanded to include previously marginalized perspectives.

In this study, I place toilets and toilet practices center stage. Each chapter begins with and is compelled by a performance event in which a toilet plays a central role, such as the display of toilets in museum settings, a festival celebrating the building of public toilet blocks, and a Big Squat event, in which people gather en masse to squat collectively for one minute in recognition of the millions that lack access to toilets. By means of performance, the toilet is transferred from the backstage to center stage. Out of place, the toilet defamiliarizes and refunctions the bodys techniques, proprieties, and ceremonies of the body. I explore the body at the level of its practices and move from body to self to society (Frank 47), thus understanding the body as a bearer of social patterns and structures. By focusing on the performance of toilets, I associate the toilet with the artistic and generative possibilities of culture-making, aiming to refunction the toilet as an object that encourages productive communication rather than a taboo object that silences and represses interaction. Broadly, I am interested in how performing toilets might serve to counter disabling disciplinary norms, encourage collective action, and bring about generative change for people who desire it.

Between 1958 and 1972, author William S. Burroughs undertook a series of radical experiments with alternative compositional modes based on the aleatory form of the Cut-up. Burroughs sold the entirety of his work from the period, assembled into an archive, to a collector in 1972. This study uses performative writing to document a year of archival research in Burroughs' collection, currently housed by The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library. Melding Bakhtin's theories of the chronotope and the grotesque body with creative writing and experimental modes of scholarly production as praxis, I theorize archival research as a uniquely embodied practice. By exploring themes of history, biography, documentation, and discovery, this project identifies Burroughs' use of the Cut-up as a mode of aesthetic collaboration and offers it as a pedagogical model for future critical/creative scholarship.

In this study, I examine and theorize AMD&ART, an artwork devoted to treating polluted water in Vintondale, PA. AMD&ART is much more than simply a water treatment facility, however. Each chapter of this document examines AMD&ART through the lens of a different body of scholarly literature: the literature associated with land art, Systems Theory, Network Theory, Companion Specieshood and others. The theoretical focus of this paper is the emergent importance of the concept of performativitythat reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains (Butler, Bodies 2)in the deconstruction of the binary division of nature and culture. I offer AMD&ART as an example of a site wherein the fraught, complex webs of affect muddle the easy division of nature from culture. To this end, my paper argues that Bruno Latours compound-term natureculture can afford scholars of performance points of access to other, disparate fields: philosophy, natural history, geography and art, to name a few. Beyond this, readers are asked to consider their role in the unfolding of the world around themboth mundane and spectacular.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the effects of identity supportive messages on nontraditional students in terms of facilitating identification with the student role. Identity support involves the extent to which an individual believes that others understand, accept, and/or provide instrumental support for valued social identities. Considering the life-changing (identity altering) adjustment of resuming school in the middle of adulthood and assuming the new âstudentâ roleâespecially in connection with other roles and responsibilitiesâthe relationship between nontraditional students and identity support is particularly salient. Twenty-four in-depth interviews helped identify encouraging and discouraging messages students received from a variety of sources. The results indicated that identity support served as an essential resource during the identity work process because it promoted or restored a sense of competence. Consequently, identity encouraging messages (particularly from âcredible othersâ) helped motivate older adults to resume their educations, to persist through challenges and doubts, and to develop identity-preserving counter-discourses to cope with discouragement. Interestingly, counter-discourses were a type of identity work strategy utilized to counter negative identity messages and were co-constructed through a combination of personal agency and encouraging messages from supportive networks. From a practical standpoint, the results indicated that universities also play a role. They convey messages of support indirectly through the resources they provide to assist older learners. However, educational institutions can work to improve full recognition of nontraditional students on campus as valued members of the student body.

This analysis is an attempt to study the rise of a new mobile food medium the food truck. I examine the movement of rhetorical actors, the situation, the audiences, and discourses created and sustained through rhetorical practices. These include looking into contemporary controversies, the history and storytelling that helps to convey identity, a new aesthetic experience created by the medium, and specifically their sophistic character and rhetoric helping them speak on issues of social justice and change. To understand these texts, I examine each of them in light of their rhetorical situation and the convergence of a multitude of kairotic factors. I use the situation as a hinge to examine how the movement, through its rhetorical practices and characters have changed the foodscape and the foodways of the communities in which they are active.

This ethnographic research study documented the use and effects of an electronic medical records system (EMR) by healthcare providers working in a community hospital-based emergency room. Using data collected from participant observation, in-depth interviews, questionnaires, and hospital documents, the research findings suggest EMRs impinge providers agency, alter emergency room systems, affect communication patterns among providers, and exacerbate structurational divergence (SD) conditions. Findings suggest that providers attempts to regain lost agency tips the SD-nexus into an SD-cycle, characterized by negative communication spirals between providers. The discussion chapter examines the impact of EMRs on emergency room structures, system reproduction, providers workflow and communication patterns, patients experiences, and unintended consequences, and it expounds implications of the study with regard to what lessons learned from this analysis suggests might be best practices for hospitals and emergency rooms adopting EMRs.

In this project I study Joseph Cornells practices of art-making through a performative lens. Rather than focusing on his finished products, I am interested in his embodied processes of assemblage. I call on Mikhail Bakhtins theory of the chronotope to articulate how time and space operate within Cornells finished works and his processes of assemblage art. In so doing, I conceptualize Cornells textual chronotope, métaphysique déphemera or everyday magic, as well as his chronotopes of assemblage: wandering, archiving, collaging, and assembling. I move from the finished work to the contingencies and strategies of the performance of assemblage. This project is unique because I extend my research into the creative realm, developing multi-media artworks through my embodiment of Cornells chronotopes of assemblage. My performance of Cornells chronotopes engenders projects that provide discoveries and expand my understanding of each chronotope, Cornells practices, and my own creative and scholarly work. The projects include: wandering New Orleans collecting memories that I then use to create an interactive website, creating a video of one of Cornells film scripts that was never realized by combining digital and analog technologies, creating a collage film composed of found footage, and directing a theatrical performance, Métaphysique dÉphemera, that was restaged three years later. I conclude by arguing that Cornells textual chronotope, métaphysique déphemera, offers an aesthetic to work within, while his chronotopes of assemblage provide a model for both creative and scholarly work. I conclude by questioning whether the textual and process chronotopes are inextricably connected or if they can be practiced independently by artists/scholars.

This dissertation explores the rhetorical components of the famous novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes novel continues to be celebrated around the world four hundred years later. His two main protagonists epitomize opposite virtues, but their love for one another, and the promise of an ínsula, creates a bond that overcomes their differences. Don Quixote, the mad knight, values lofty ideas idealized in chivalric romance. Conversely, Sancho, the simple squire, values tangible materials he can see and touch in his own life. While the two characters first appear to be contrary in nature, by the journeys end, as displayed in their speeches, have grown and learned from one another. Analyzing how these two rhetors develop throughout the course of the novel is the aim of this dissertation. By developing their models, I show the essence of their rhetorical strategies as example for real life practice. Literature provides what Kenneth Burke calls an equipment for living. On the one hand, the essence of Don Quixotes rhetoric romantically transcends tragic situations inspiring heroic action to provide catharsis and experiences for learning. Readers can use his failures and successes as equipment for living, as he stubbornly challenges opposition and never backs down. On the other hand, Sanchos rhetoric prudently imitates those around him, transcending lofty ideas into grotesque realism. He is the perfect sidekick: loyal, compassionate, critical, and funny. Both Don Quixotes and Sanchos rhetorical strategies act as resources for approaching changes in society. Coupled together, the persuasive skills of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza provide great insight for students of rhetoric as these two characters create rhetorical strategies for confronting impious change in society.

This thesis offers a rhetorical criticism of two speeches delivered from a 1972 panel at the American Psychiatric Association (APA): Franklin Kamenys Gay, Proud and Healthy and John Fryers I am a Homosexual. Both speeches seek to challenge heteronormative constructions of homosexuality through the construction of a positive homosexual identity. Kamenys speech uses an extensive set of metaphors to deconstruct the sickness theory of homosexual, challenge the role psychiatrists should play in society, re-conceptualize sexuality, and empower homosexual identity. Fryers speech enacts a constitutive rhetoric through the use of consciousness raising strategies and a collective coming out narrative which creates a motivated subject position. Both speeches worked as part of a larger movement to try and delist homosexuality as a mental disorder.