This work focuses on Chican@ identity in academia and uses CRT counterstory to address topics of cultural displacement, assimilation, the American Dream, and ethnic studies. This research considers where the field of rhetoric and composition currently stands in terms of preparedness to serve a growing Chican@ undergraduate and graduate student population. Through counterstory, I offer strategies that more effectively serve students from non-traditional backgrounds in various spaces and practices such as the composition classroom, faculty mentoring, and programmatic requirements such as second language proficiency exams. Since rhetoric and composition can confront structurally and historically specific racisms--e.g., segregation, lack of access for the racial minority to higher education, ethnocentric curricula--embedded in our field, then we, as teachers, students, and administrators, can strategize ways to achieve social justice in academia for historically marginalized groups. My dissertation is focused on Chican@ undergraduate and graduate students because this is the fastest growing population in the academy and is a group with which I feel I can draw upon my cultural intuition; however, the critical race theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological strategies I make use of in my project can be adapted to assist other historically marginalized groups in academia.

Creative Writing Joins Rhetoric and the Public Arts: A Comparative Study of Craft, Workshop, and Practice beyond English Studies analyzes the field of creative writing through the lenses of classical rhetorical scholarship, aesthetic theory, and craft criticism in the arts. Through a historical analysis of techne (craft or method) and telos (end or final cause) in the work of Aristotle and Plato, I argue that what we call "craft" often suffers from a limiting definition that privileges formal and material constraints over the more vital concerns of knowledge and consciousness reflected in artistic education. Craft knowledge is demonstrated through the processes of art-making internalized by the student apprentice. No matter the form or discipline, craft practice embodies the processes and consciousness that make art education possible. The dissertation analyzes concepts of craft as technique while revealing how artistic method illuminates the ends to which art serves. Craft consciousness, a term outlined in this dissertation, is defined as an awareness of artistic method and practice across disciplinary boundaries. If applied by teachers and students of creative writing, this consciousness will redefine writing workshop, curriculum design, programmatic elements, and the mission of creative writing as an academic discipline. By shifting the field toward the craft principles shared with the performing and fine arts, the dissertation uses rhetoric and public arts as lenses for reimagining the mission of creative writing more broadly as a discipline simultaneously engaged with democratic and occultic principles. In proposing an alternative approach to traditional writing workshop by examining author-function, this dissertation also draws from Paulo Freire's term "nuclei of contradiction" in order to argue for a pedagogy that attends to the inherent contradictions that form the foundation of creative writing culture. Freire's "critical consciousness" informs the term "craft consciousness" and the latter term forms the scaffolding in which to reimagine educational principles in creative writing. In order to reimagine craft and workshop practices in traditional and virtual spaces, this dissertation examines how theories, histories, and practices in craft will transform creative writing into a field grounded in artistic practice and intellectual inquiry.

Narrating the Writing Center: Knowledge, Crisis, and Success in Two Writing Center Stories' is year-long comparative case study of two writing centers in the US and the UK and draws upon ethnographic and textographic methodologies. Using writing center documents such as annual management reports, websites, training materials, and interviews with writing center staff and administration, I investigate historical, cultural, and political influences on writing centers and trace moments of change in writing center history in order to contextualize the changes both writing centers faced in terms of funding, location, and identity. I examine traditional and contemporary epistemological paradigms that inform writing centers' everyday practices and underlying ideology that both correspond with and resist institutionally-sanctioned ways of knowing and institutionally-embedded ideology. Using documents and interviews from both sites, I explore the ways in which writing centers find themselves in a reactive position during crises, such as the crisis of access, of literacy, and of funding, rather than a proactive position. Drawing from frame analysis, I argue for reframing the narratives surrounding writing center identity and praxis through the use of code words which have the potential to align writing center praxis with institutional values and result in increased agency for writing centers during crises. I conclude with a blending of contemporary definitions of kairos and stasis in order to create a rhetorical method of writing center communication that can serve as a potential path toward writing center sustainability, and I offer current writing center administrators a heuristic for implementation.

This research aims to explore the effective use of modern technology and the encouragement of learner autonomy in support of English language teaching and learning at a university in Northeastern China in order to address a number of learning and teaching problems, in particular, the so-called “time-consuming, low efficiency” and “deaf and dumb English” problems. Action research was employed as a research methodology in this study. The action research project consisted of three cycles: the teaching time of each cycle was six weeks, with two teaching hours each week in each class. The 102 research participants were the second-year undergraduate non-English major students who had (or had nearly) reached an intermediate level in terms of English proficiency. Research methods included questionnaires, pre-testing and post-testing, interviews, classroom observation, learning diaries and research journal. All the data were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative techniques as appropriate. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) was used for statistical analysis. The research findings from the qualitative and quantitative data analysis show that the students made greater progress and improvements within a very short time (6 weeks) in each cycle in terms of listening and speaking skills by the effective use of modern technologies such as computers and the internet, which were used in ways designed to promote learner autonomy and effective learning strategies. More importantly, a more novel and more effective approach to teach listening from the intermediate level to the advanced level has been discovered from this project and a new teaching model using CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) environments in a Chinese context has come into being. On the whole, the students benefitted a great deal from autonomous learning by using modern technologies, dependent upon the quantitative data such as test score changes and qualitative data such as interview and learning diaries. In the meantime, the student learning experiences, my “teacher as researcher” teaching experience, and my professional development have been improved. This study is of great significance, particularly in the Chinese context, in contributing to the current literature on English teaching and learning research, CALL research and applications such as the novel listening teaching approach and the new teaching model using the CALL environments mentioned above. Finally, pedagogical implications are discussed and some suggestions on further research are also proposed.

This dissertation interrogates the ways in which place-based belongings are constituted through outdoor recreation. By applying material-discursive theories of rhetoric to spaces of outdoor recreation on the Colorado Plateau such as the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort, rock climbing landscapes in the Navajo Nation, adventure mountain biking practices that trace a 19th century stagecoach route, and ultra running trails at Monument Valley on the Navajo Nation and on ancient trails that connect Hopi Villages, and elsewhere, I examine the affective relationships between those activities, landscapes, and cultures. Drawing on spatial and environmental rhetoric and critical theories of race, gender, and sexuality, I analyze affective investments in white settler colonialism to argue that such spaces are more than recreational. The framework I have developed to better explain such spaces, Recreational Colonialism, positions outdoor recreation as the new language of colonialism. Recreational Colonialism is both a discourse and a performance that-in many ways explored in this dissertation-connect outdoor recreational discourses to a trifecta of oppressions through which white settler colonialism depends: white supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy.

Acredita-se que a apropriação de uma língua estrangeira pelo sujeito através do ensino pode ser medida pela a aquisição de determinado grau de proficiência na língua-alvo, por meio de materiais e abordagens que possibilitem um ensino/aprendizagem bem-sucedido. Entendemos por bem-sucedido aquele procedimento que coloca o aprendiz em posição de intérprete historicizado (ASSOLINI, 2013, 2010), ou seja, aquele sujeito que ultrapassa a suposta literalidade dos sentidos, desprendendo-se da relação termo a termo. Isto posto, este trabalho objetiva: 1) analisar a forma como os recursos disponíveis no material didático oferecido pela Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo, por meio do programa São Paulo Faz Escola são discursivizados pelo sujeito-professor de inglês em escolas públicas do Estado de São Paulo; 2) descrever e analisar recortes desse material didático relacionando-os à fala dos sujeitos-professores. O corpus desta análise foi constituído por entrevistas semiestruturadas, realizadas com quatro professores da rede pública do estado paulista, assim como por recortes do material didático referido, buscando estabelecer relações entre o discurso dos sujeitosprofessores e esse material. A Análise de Discurso de matriz francesa (pêcheuxtiana) e as ciências da educação formam nosso arcabouço teórico-metodológico, por possibilitarem relações críticas com a linguagem de maneira ampla, e com o ensino de língua inglesa e o material didático, de forma particular. Os resultados das análises discursivas indicam que: 1) alguns sujeitos (se) silenciam ao falarem sobre o material didático; acreditam que (se) silenciando, esquivando-se, deixariam de significar tal material; 2) alguns sujeitos questionam o material didático, mas, apesar de tal inquietação, ocupam a posição de sujeitos enunciadores de dizeres e práticas preestabelecidas que não lhes fazem sentido; 3) a experiência dos sujeitos-professores, na sala de aula, não corresponde as suas formações imaginárias a respeito do aluno, da escola, nem do material didático; 4) assujeitados ideologicamente, não (se) percebem como profissionais capazes de ocupar a posição de intérpretes-historicizados, condição basilar para que tenham voz e se constituam como autores de seu próprio dizer. Palavras-chave: Material didático. Ensino de língua inglesa. Análise de discurso. / It is believed that foreign language acquisition can be assessed by the acquisition of a certain level of proficiency in the target language by means of usage of any material and approaches, allowing successful teaching/learning process. By well-succeeded, we understand the procedure in which the learner puts him/herself in a position of interpreter-historicized, defined by Assolini (2013, 2010) as the subject who goes beyond literality, free from term-to-term, or word-to-meaning relationships. This work aims at: 1) analyzing the ways through which the subject-teacher of English as a foreign language in public schools in the State of São Paulo puts the teaching material into discourse; 2) describing and analyzing sections of that material, offered by State Government, referred to in the interviews with subject-teachers. This study is based on the perspective of French Discourse Analysis, adopting the views of the philosopher Michel Pêcheux and the Social-Historical Theory of Literacy Acquisition. We understand that those theories allow critical relationships with language in a broad way, and more specifically, with English Language Teaching and its materials. The corpus of this analysis consists of selected excerpts from semistructured interviews with four state public school teachers, as well as sections of material offered by the State government, seeking correlations between the subject-teachers discourse and the teaching material. Our results lead to some observations: 1) some subjects resort to silence, attempting to avoid comments about the teaching material; 2) others, although incredulous about the offered material, assume the position of broadcasters of meaningless practices from that material; 3) teachers experience in the classroom do not correspond to their representation of the subject-learner, school or teaching material; 4) ideologically subjected, teachers do not see themselves as professionals capable of assuming position of interpreter-historicized, a basic condition to be aware of their own voice, authorship and subjectivity.

Abstract not available

While there is a long history of rhetorical studies that focus on oral and written discourses, the relatively recent trend of studying rhetorical images, materiality, and rhetorical bodies presents a shift toward an expanded perspective on what constitutes texts and what can be considered rhetorical. The study of bodies as rhetorical texts prompts the questions of how language is material and visual in nature. In my dissertation I examine the relationship between rhetoric and the body through Judith Butler's theories of materiality and performativity. Using Butler's theories of performance as a lens, I analyze the rhetoric of plastic and cosmetic surgery and demonstrate the role of performance in the perpetuation of and response to rhetoric of the body. Cosmetic and plastic surgery are performatives in that they not only confer a binding power on the action performed by altering the body through surgical and non-surgical means, but also initiate various citational practices within the field of medicine and in popular culture (through various mediums such as television, magazines, billboards, and websites). These procedures result in images and claims that authorize particular social expectations of beauty, youth, and sexuality.I examine a range of mass media texts related to cosmetic surgery (television shows, magazines, news clips, websites, and films) that portray different normative and deviant performativity of the body. In my research, I include interviews from volunteers in Los Angeles; my analysis involves local individuals' relationships to plastic and cosmetic surgery and their various body performatives in terms of normativity and agency. By comparing global and local perspectives, I argue that media sensationalizes the agent/victim binary in order to sell plastic and cosmetic surgeries, as well as related texts. The local stories serve to counter assumptions about the role of power in plastic surgery, revealing a far more complicated relationship between clients, rhetoric, and the reasons behind their surgeries; the agent/victim binary that is emphasized in mass media fails to capture lived experience and creates a detrimental rhetoric of empowerment.

This dissertation accesses memory and archival studies for inclusion in the discipline of rhetoric and composition in order to study "collective invention" (Bisecker, 125) practices as they occur in memory places, such as that of the archive. I theorize a pedagogy and memory practice for writing studies classrooms and communities by providing an autoethnographic case study across three levels of composition and rhetoric classes and community archives including the Writing After Katrina Archive Project and the Arizona Memory Project, where I explore the links between memory, place, and the process of rhetorical invention. In doing so, I hope to examine the agentive potential for students, emerging scholars, and community partners to reflect on various acts of composing, such as composing ideas, composing writing, and composing knowledge through the study of memory places and the creation of archives. Using the space of the archive as a pedagogical tool, my project seeks to redefine the space and place of the "archive" from that of a dusty space reserved for scholars, to that of a potentially generative location where critical dialogue is organically produced around the acts of what I term, rhetorical (re)invention. Rhetorical (re)invention, like the production of memory, is a social process of meaning of making that can be extrapolated from local resources. In doing so, this project continues the important work of scholars in both memory studies and rhetoric and composition studies in redefining the archive, reframing invention, and positing a pedagogical framework for teaching college writing and rhetorical studies.

In this dissertation, I use ethnographic observations, interviews, personal narrative, and analysis of youth slam poetry in conversation with theories of identification to demonstrate how members of the Tucson Youth Poetry Slam (TYPS) perform, inhabit, and develop a consciousness indicative of coalition and critical inquiry. TYPS poets demonstrate evidence of what I propose as critical latticework, an image and heuristic that brings together identificatory screen-work with rhizomatic and intersectional perspectives on growth and development. Through my analyses of poetry, interviews, and the activities of this youth slam community, I aim to illustrate the value of critical latticework as a perspective that can contribute to altering our perceptions of youth as developing in one direction, with one sense of healthy progression to adulthood. A critical lattice is another way of perceiving the activities of identification that take place in in-between-and-through-spaces, as well as the potential activism and labor occurring in those spaces, which act as more than screens but spaces of growth and significant chaos. I argue that an understanding of critical latticework is transferrable to writing classrooms, offering a practical image with which students of writing can imagine and move with fluidity to generate meaningful discourse and expand their perspectives on identity and writing.