Research in writing studies has focused on what happens as students, and often their teachers, talk about student writing. This line of inquiry has identified several strategies for productive peer interactions, including spontaneous talk (Danis; Dipardo and Freedman; Johnson, The New Frontier; Bruffee; Lam), a flexible environment (Dipardo & Freedman; Johnson, "Friendly Persuasion"), positive rapport (Rish; Thompson; Wolfe), feedback and support (Barron; Covill; Flynn; Grimm; Lam; Yucel, Bird, Young, and Blanksby; Zhu), and reflection (Yucel, Bird, Young, and Blanksby). However, research invested in understanding the extent to which such interactions result in better revisions or make students better writers has been slower to emerge. To address this gap in the existing scholarship, this thesis involved case studies of two first-year undergraduates as they navigated multiple peer review interactions throughout one semester of ENC 1101. Data collection for this inquiry included observations of three peer review sessions, retrospective interviews with each participant, and participants' end of semester e-portfolios. Using conversation analysis as a lens (Black; Ford and Thompson; Kerschbaum), this project explores the extent to which peer interactions inform students' revision of their writing. The analysis of the data suggests that the amount of interruptions and control during peer interactions influences the amount of comments a student takes up in the revision process. The results of conversation analysis identify a power structure within peer interactions that are developed and constantly changing. Those power structures also show the relationship between social interaction and revision. Teachers can use this study to motivate students to use the comments given during peer review toward revising their papers. Also, with the development of more diverse case studies, researchers would be able to identify if these phenomena show up more consistently.

Media is a constant feature in our modern lives, transforming and influencing society and culture. This study examined how increased participation in digital media has changed the nature of religious representation, culture, and practice. Data was collected from both secular websites and religious media spaces where people post information about religion. This discussion is a necessary step in determining how media has not only become embedded in religious culture but has influenced the transformation of American religious culture. The first part of this analysis concentrated on uncovering rhetorical strategies in religious digital spaces. I assumed that organizational identification would be a common approach used on the Mormon.org member profiles. The data collected verified this assumption. The second part of this analysis compared collaboratively produced articles in wiki-spaces that described Roman Catholicism and Mormonism. The goal of this part of the analysis was to determine how faith organizations are represented in digital spaces that are situated outside church authority.

Research in medical education includes a number of studies that describe the complexities (Tierney et al., 2013; Gagon et al., 2009; Pippitt, Stevenson, & Samuelson, 2013), benefits (Milano et al., 2014; Hammoud et al., 2012; Silverman et al., 2014), and limitations (Peled, Sagher, Morrow, & Dobbie, 2009; Wald, George, Reis, & Taylor, 2014; Pelletier, 2016) of helping medical students understand and achieve fluency with electronic medical records (EMRs). In addition, studies in the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) have been calling to attention the effectiveness of rhetorical studies within medical contexts (Scott, Segal, & Keranen, 2013; Segal, 2005; Rausch, 2016; Fountain, 2014; Melocon and Frost, 2015; Graham and Herndl, 2014). However, there is not a unified idea of the best way to teach EMR fluency, nor is there any research that studies and analyzes the perceptions of students in their undergraduate medical education, including their pre-clerkship years. This thesis investigates students' perceptions of their medical education at the University of Central Florida's College of Medicine (UCF COM), specifically how 76 students who participated in surveys and focus group interviews perceive and engage with their education and ideas of EMR application and fluency. It also compares their perceptions with the goals of the module directors who designed the curriculum. In its analysis, this thesis employs classical and contemporary scholarship about stasis theory (Crowley and Hawhee, 2012; Fahnestock and Secor, 1988) to identify points of congruence and dissonance between students and module directors, as well as across cohorts of students in their first, second, and third years. Through data analysis, I found key points of congruence and dissonance between the perceptions and experiences of students and goals of module directors. I also identified key factors affecting both groups, such as the time constraints of the curriculum and the fact that hospitals use different EMR systems. The results of this study demonstrate the complexities of medical education and EMR education for both students and module directors. By understanding how rhetoric can be more beneficial to other fields, such as medical education, this study can help those creating curricula better reach outcomes that both students and licensing boards will appreciate. That said, more research needs to be conducted to understand how regulated medical education creates these points of contention between future physician curriculum designers.

This thesis describes and analyzes the how and why behind first-year college composition (FYC) instructors' practices for choosing and using examples for teaching writing at UCF. In educational research, developments related to cognitive load theory, analogical transfer, and worked examples reject discovery learning pedagogy, instead advocating for providing examples to aid in problem-solving. Scholars in ill-structured disciplines have studied the use of worked examples (Kyun et al.; Ondrusek et al; Rourke and Sweller), paving the way for fields such as composition studies to apply this concept in new contexts. Although composition scholarship recommends the use of models or sample texts in the practices of imitation, modeling, and genre-based pedagogies (D'Angelo; Pemberton; Dean; Dethier; Derewianka), examples have yet to be either the focus of research in the field or connected to research on learning by example or worked examples. Grounding composition instructors' current practices for using examples in theories of learning and writing instruction, my research theorizes UCF FYC instructors' purposes and practices for choosing and using examples, begins characterizing and defining worked examples in composition classrooms, and considers how they work for solving the ill-structured problem of writing. To examine these instructors' purposes and practices, I collected data through a survey, classroom observations, interviews, and course documents. When choosing and using examples, instructors' practices of providing multiple examples, noting specific elements of these examples, and revisiting and comparing examples, directly connected to their most common purposes of demonstrating assignment expectations, illustrating a genre or writing process in action, presenting possibilities of what students can do, and practicing reader response. Ultimately, I argue that, rather than simply providing students with worked examples, FYC instructors engage students in the process of "working" examples for these purposes, as their practices guide students' learning to problem-solve for upcoming assignments and future writing tasks.

Writing center tutors enact their conceptions of writing in every tutoring session, and yet their conceptions of writing have not yet been systematically researched. This thesis researches the conceptions of writing of writing center tutors at the University of Central Florida's University Writing Center. To uncover tutors' conceptions of writing, I interviewed three tutors by asking them open-ended questions about their experiences with writing and tutoring. After coding and analyzing the transcripts of these interviews, I found seven shared conceptions of writing. These conceptions are the basis of my argument. Because these conceptions are shared but not taught, I turn to legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) as a possible explanation for how tutors have arrived at similar conceptions of writing. This thesis also responds to Adler-Kassner and Wardle's (2019) call for the integration of threshold concepts into writing studies research by comparing tutors' conceptions of writing to the threshold concepts revealed in their edited collection, Naming What We Know (2015). Ultimately, this thesis is exploratory. It begins to uncover tutors' conceptions of writing, and could be of particular value to writing center administrators who wish to better understand what their tutors think about writing by conducting their own, similar research.

This study analyzes the discursive strategies used by participants in online non-political spaces to negotiate and propagate political ideologies. Through the use of Critical Discourse Analysis in rhetorical studies (Huckin et. al.), this study produced a theory of political ideological vectors in digitally connective social network platforms. The analysis uses discussions taken from Twitter and Reddit surrounding the introduction of an Asian female character, Nagini, in the Fantastic Beats: Crimes of Grindelwald trailer immediately following its release in September 2018. Ultimately, this study found that participants are less likely to isolate themselves within politically congenial echo chambers than previously theorized (Iyengar & Hahn). Additionally, the study found that discursive language patterns including using personally diminishing language in conjunction with referencing false or un-confirmed premises fostered high levels of engagement, while high or intellectual registers and overly emotional language were rejected by the community and met little or no success due to communally agreed upon social norms and lexis.

Robots have been a part of the imagination of Western culture for centuries. The possibility for automation and artificial life has inspired the curiosity of thinkers like Leonardo Da Vinci who once designed a mechanical knight. It wasn't until the 19th century that automated machinery has become realized. The confrontation between human and automation has inspired a fear, referred to as "technopanic", that has been exacerbated in tandem with the evolution of technology. This thesis seeks to discover the historical precedence for these fears. I explore three modes of knowledge (Philosophy, Economics, and Film Theory) to examine the agendas behind the messages on the topic of Artificial Life, specifically Robots. I then advocate for an alternative philosophy called Post-Humanism. I argue that what is needed to alleviate the fears and anxieties of Western culture is a shift in how humanity views itself and its relation to the natural world. By structuring my thesis in this way, I identify the roots of Western humanity's anthropocentric ontology first, explore the economic implications of automation second, analyze the cultural anticipations of artificial life in Western media third, and finally offer an alternative attitude and ethic as a way out of the pre-established judgments that do little to protect Western culture from E.A.I.

This thesis examines how graduate student teachers (GTA's) employ agency in order to establish and perform professional identities. Understanding agency as interactional, performative, and acting in a way "unintended by power" (Butler, 1997, p. 15), this thesis examines the spatial practices and performances of a graduate student teacher through a mixed methods approach combining video recordings with autoethnography. This project begins by using Lefebvre's (1991) social imaginary to examine the potent arguments being made to and about GTA's from their shared office, using visual rhetorical analysis to examine how this space communicates ideas of identity and place that work at rhetorical purposes counter to the performances GTA's are employing within that space. Exploring how GTA's respond to the social imaginary within space, this thesis conducts an analysis of the tactics employed, using De Certeau (1984) as a framework. Graduate student teachers use spatial practices and performances to make do with the space and the power allotted to them; however, they employ key tactics such as altering body position and vocal tone to turn interactions with students and with each other into dynamic moments for the production of agency. Finally, this thesis argues that, while GTA's use tactics and spatial practices to negotiate the performances and spaces allotted to them, their agency is temporal and limited. Departmental investment in relationships with GTA and integrating them further into the life of the department through apprenticeship can bolster the tenuous agency of the GTA.

This thesis details an analysis of a project called Exposing the Silence in order to learn about agency and discursive space. This gallery for traumatic birth stories serves as a relevant site for better understanding how women are constituting their experiences with embodied autonomy and rhetorical dis/empowerment and how they come together to visually and discursively form a feminist space online. I completed a rhetorical analysis of the birth narratives and of an interview with Lindsay Askins, one of the creators of Exposing the Silence. My study finds that a dyadic relationship between embodied autonomy and rhetorical agency exists while women negotiate power constructs during their traumatic obstetric experiences. When their rhetorical agency was diminished, so was their embodied autonomy. While they asserted agency during the traumatic experience, loss of agency is the main reason for their feelings of trauma. However, they work to re-assert rhetorical agency by sharing their narratives in the discursive space. The discursive space of the website is feminist because it promotes the rhetorical agency of its users and provides the opportunity for its users to socially construct that agency. My study contributes to the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) through its focus on how women constitute their embodied autonomy and rhetorical agency when speaking about an experience in which they lost some amount of both. I especially contribute an interpretation of how rhetorical agency, a discursive assertion of agency, can interact with agency itself, or embodied autonomy, without being the same entities. This project also contributes to RHM through its focus on how an online feminist visual-discursive space is socially constructed by its occupants and creators to assert rhetorical agency.

This study is meant to elucidate how fanfiction-related activities can incorporate many types of critical review, to call attention to what has been overlooked as significant forms of learning, and to understand and take advantage of the opportunities fanfiction's unconventional writing affords in lieu of more deliberate learning environments. This thesis was undertaken due to the significant gap in work done by aca-fan — a portmanteau of academic and fan— scholars who have strong links to the fanfiction community and culture. The aspects explored are the technical writing skills and techniques demonstrated in fanfiction reviews, the influence of the nontraditional online learning environment, the rhetorical strategies that reviewers use to give feedback, the significant categories of things that reviewers comment on, and the value of skills taught peer-to-peer in this manner. The results of my research suggest that peer review in a relaxed, non-academic context leads to improved confidence and skill among a wide demographic range. This thesis proposes that fanfiction writing, reading, and reviewing supports learning. The evidence suggests that it be incorporated where applicable in formal classroom learning to supplement traditional understandings of grammar, syntax, tone, and the use of universal tropes.