This study analyzes camp style as a rhetorical strategy for Burkean rhetorical identification. Through a case study of Adam Lambert's use of this style on American Idol in 2009, this study produced a rhetorical theory of camp that challenges the typically dialectical relationship between identification and its opposite: division. This study responds both to Susan Sontag's seminal essay on camp style and to other conversations surrounding identification, which revolve around how rhetors avoid division (Borrowman and Kmetz; Jones and Rowland), how rhetors appeal to conflicting audiences (DeGenaro; Helmbrecht and Love), how rhetors create new narratives as a means of identification (Wilz; Stob; DeGenaro; Jones and Rowland), how rhetors might use identification for a greater good (Stob; Wilz), and how rhetors achieve partial consubstantiality (Fernheimer). It analyzes how camp can be used in this way via Adam Lambert's performances on American Idol in two different rhetorical situations - his performances for America's votes at the end of the competition, and his performance with KISS during the Season Eight finale after his fate had already been determined. These performances were cross-referenced with Lambert's similar performances on and off the show, as well as with numerical data about the show's viewership. Ultimately, this study found that camp style can be used to identify with conflicting audiences and be used to gain rhetorical agency, and that division can be a means of identification, or even an intentional rhetorical strategy. In Lambert's case, although division is what allowed him to stand out from his American Idol competitors, he had to do so carefully in order to also appeal to the show's producers and audience.

In light of calls to study digital composition outside of school-based domains (e.g. Yancey), this project specifically explores a counterpublic in the YouTube beauty community that has arisen in response to the encroachment of and attempts to institutionalize the space. Utilizing iconographic tracking and rhetorical analysis, this study illuminates a network of discourse geared toward a more responsible and educated consumption of makeup and participation within the beauty community. This study found that within the beauty community, a counterpublic has formed in response to a more commodified, product-centered public sphere that has dominated the space and is most associated with well-known YouTube channels. As a result, many in the "community" exhibit dialogue that hints at a fracturing between an "us" and "them" mentality and find difficulty identifying with the current state of the space. In response, the discourse of the counterpublic—which promotes utilizing products you already own, focusing on more creative and original content, and influencers being true to their identities—is shared and circulated through tags like "The Beauty Community Tag" or "The Truthful YouTuber Tag." This research space is of particular interest for the writing and rhetoric field because many young adults seek to enter this space as a career or creative outlet. As a result, it is crucial that we, as teachers and scholars, understand the rhetoric present within the community and the implications it has for composition practices and real-world bodies. This study illuminates one current discourse network aimed at an anti-consumerist participation in the community.

Please note: this thesis are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the lock icon and fill out the appropriate web form. / Klásma, meaning “fraction”, in Greek; the intent of this piece is to present how a piece of music can be put together with seemingly disjunct materials, yet sounding as a unified entity. / 2999-01-01

This thesis explores the relationship between the desire for the "good life" and the Gothic. The haunted house is a feature familiar to the Gothic because of its reversal of the comfort a home usually brings. The haunted houses in the Gothic provide a physical space that exemplifies the psychological and emotional disorientation that results from seeking unattainable ideals of domestic happiness and fulfillment. This thesis analyzes the haunted houses of three first-person-narrated gothic novels: Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898), Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca (1938), and Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger (2009), arguing that each novel portrays the ruinous consequences of the narrator's desires within the gothic home. Sarah Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology (2006) and Lauren Berlant's Cruel Optimism (2011) provide a theoretical grounding for exploring how the haunted house as a physical space can illuminate the disorientation of desire. I argue that in each novel, the desire the outsider-narrator feels for the home, the good life, is destructive, and while the destruction varies for each story, the outsider remains hopeful amidst the chaos. The inescapable past and the hope of the future collide in all three novels, and with this collision comes a sense of disorientation, of terror even, for both the first-person narrator and the reader alike.

This thesis aims to answer the following questions: how do speculative and supernatural fictions of the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries imagine women's agency concerning motherhood? How do these novels challenge the ideas of stereotypical, domestic femininity? I explore these questions by analyzing pieces of non-realist fiction written by both men and women, which feature powerful, and often monstrous, mothers: Mary E. Bradley Lane's speculative feminist utopian novel, Mizora (1890), Bram Stoker's gothic horror novel, Dracula (1897), Frank Herbert's sweeping science-fiction epic, Dune (1965), and Angela Carter's feminist dystopian fiction, The Passion of New Eve (1977). I argue that feminist ideas emerging concurrent with the first and second waves in the 1890s and the 1960s–70s influence the novels' portrayals of women, as each novel imagines liberating and terrifying versions of motherhood that exceed the social norms of their day. Chapter 1 explores anxieties about motherhood concerning the figure of the New Woman. Both Dracula and Mizora represent women who are dissatisfied with traditional maternal roles. Although not speculative fiction, Dracula creates a space to imagine the "what if'' of the New Woman: what if women did reject their traditional roles, what if they pursue their desires? Chapter 2 examines two science-fiction novels of the 1960s–70s that offer fully realized, powerful maternal figures. Dune and Passion of New Eve, responding to the same social upheavals as second-wave feminist writers and activists were, envision possible worlds in which supernaturally powerful mothers are political and social leaders and gender roles have been more or less transformed.

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