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Little attention has been paid to the rhetorical practices and implications of reality television within the field of rhetoric and composition. In fact, it is easy to argue that television as a whole has been largely ignored, leaving the research to scholars in media, communication, and cultural studies. However, the convergence of media has raised questions about the nature of the viewing practices of contemporary television audiences--specifically regarding how to reconcile the complex texts audiences produce in response to television with the passive model of consumption that has defined it. Game scholars, as well as scholars of computers and composition, have theorized the powerful rhetorical potential of play with regard to video games, but they have yet to consider the way play has been invoked in other more traditional media. Therefore, this dissertation seeks to connect old media and new by considering how television, specifically reality TV, engages audiences across platforms, how audiences extend their own experience with reality programs, and what this might mean to rhetoric and composition scholars about contemporary literacy practices. In this dissertation, I argue that reality television has successfully used rhetorics of play and new media technologies to engage audiences within, across, and between programs and their digital environments. Using Survivor as a case study, I analyze the strategies that producers use to invite audiences into the program, specifically focusing on the generic characteristics that instigate play, the program's online presence, and the ways in which viewers respond by producing their own texts such as fantasy Survivor games, blogs, discussion forums, and video mash-ups. By doing so, I demonstrate how reality TV and new media technology have renegotiated the relationship among producers, audiences, and texts. Significantly, viewers become active participants with, as well as producers of, texts. Additionally, I use this research to study how play encourages self-motivated writing, community building, and the possible uses for "serious play" within the composition classroom.

Multimodal writing refers to texts that use more than one communicative mode to convey information. While there is much scholarship that examines the history of alphabetic writing instruction and the alphabetic composing processes of students, little research explores the historical origins of multimodal composition and the processes in which students engage as they compose multimodal texts. This two-part project takes a fresh approach to studying multimodal writing by exploring the multimodal pedagogies of ancient Greek and Roman rhetoric and writing teachers, analyzing the role of mental and physical images in modern writers’ composing practices, and investigating contemporary students’ processes for composing multimodal texts. In Part I, I re-imagine the history of multimodal writing by exploring the multimodal pedagogies that instructors of rhetoric and writing developed during Greek and Roman Antiquity, and I show how contemporary students use an array of multimodal composing processes that rely on both mental and physical images to write alphabetic text. In Part II, I share the results of a case study in which I investigate the processes students use to compose audio- and video-essays while enrolled in a multimodal writing course. This study explores what students know about multimodal writing before beginning the course, how they learn the software needed to compose these projects, the challenges students experience as they compose, and the similarities and differences students perceive between their own processes for composing alphabetic and multimodal texts. Ultimately, I argue that composition teachers must acknowledge our long history of teaching with multimodal pedagogies and our experience composing alphabetic text through multimodal processes. Recognizing this lengthy history will decrease the anxiety that many composition teachers experience when tasked with teaching multimodal writing because, while typically only time and experience can grow confidence, in this case, a recognition of how much we already know will allow us to teach with the self-assurance we have earned.

When college composition teachers carefully consider the role and function of multimodal composition in their classrooms, they can enhance the teaching of writing and communication, engage and empower students, and better prepare students for the challenges and possibilities of life in our rapidly changing digital age. To meet this teaching challenge and study the impact of multimedia on student writers, I designed this mixed-methods case study to examine how video documentary essays function as a form of multimodal composition in first-year composition courses and how these types of texts may enhance the teaching of traditional composition skills, as well as contribute to the academic and professional communication skills of students. The study was designed to determine how students react to multimodal composition and how they view the benefits as well as pitfalls of composing new kinds of texts in their first-year writing courses. This teacher research was conducted at a mid-sized, urban community college located in southern Tennessee. I used surveys, interviews and reflection essays to collect the data from student participants. I then analyzed the collected data for this project. My conclusions are that students learn valuable skills in the multimodal composition process, such as organization and time management, in addition to learning how to use movie-making software. Students also develop a keener sense of audience and purpose when they compose video documentary essays. Multimodal composition can be used to teach traditional writing and rhetoric. Multimodal composition can be used to enhance the teaching of writing and communication, engage and empower students to participate in convergence culture, and better prepare them for the challenges and possibilities of life in our rapidly changing digital age.

This thesis explores ways evangelical Christian communicators remediate traditional ministry functions and community formation onto new media platforms. This exploration is framed by a discussion of literacy and digital composing reflecting Stuart Selber’s multiliteracy approach to teaching digital composition. The author positions evangelical churches’ approaches to texts, community, education, and communication as components of a distinct literacy that is often at odds with values, controls, and cultures found on the Internet and in new media. Discovering how church communicators use new media, how their education prepares them for effective digital communication, and how external sources, such as expert authors, aid the transition from print to new media helps us understand the gap between Selber’s ideal multiliteracy and the reality of new media literacy for this group. This also expands our understanding of digital composition, and the role it plays in both the classroom and in all students’ greater lives.

abstract: The discipline of rhetoric and composition established the Writing Program Administrators Outcomes Statement (WPA OS) to fulfill a general expectation about the skills and knowledge students should be able to demonstrate by the end of first-year composition. Regardless of pedagogy used, academic preparation of the teacher, or preference of particular topics or types of assignments, the WPA OS is versatile. This dissertation employs a problem-solution argument showcasing methods to improve assignments through intentional use of the WPA OS for a fluid conversation throughout first-year composition and a more clear articulation of course goals. This dissertation includes summation, analysis, and synthesis of documents that inform first-year composition curriculum from foundational organizations within the field, including National Council of Teachers of English, Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Writing Project, and Conference on College Composition and Communication. This study uses the WPA OS as a lens to examine and revise writing assignments that aid in students' comprehension of the WPA OS with particular focus on the areas of rhetorical knowledge and critical thinking, reading, and writing. Framing assignment design with theoretically grounded content and the use of common topics throughout first-year composition is one way to operationalize the WPA OS. Using common topics throughout course content presents opportunities for teachers to include detailed scaffolding in assignments that expand students' literate practices and engage students as critical thinkers and writers. This study explores how using the topic of family, a common topic to all students, provides a rich bank of social, historical, and cultural elements for research and writing. The topic of family seamlessly employs multimodal composition, which presents students with opportunities for developing rhetorical knowledge and expanding students' literacies. This dissertation displays evidence of praxis of the WPA OS from assignment development to presentation of student samples. This study recommends the use of common topics and intentional application of the WPA OS to construct assignments that clearly articulate learning goals in first-year composition. / Dissertation/Thesis / Appendix H: Cecelia Sound Project / Ph.D. English 2011

This project provides rhetorical and sonic exploration of listening practices, musical song, crowded subject formations and multimodal composition pedagogy. Conceptually drawing from rhetorical studies, sound studies, queer and women of color (Q/WOC) feminisms, cultural studies, affect studies, and composition pedagogies, the project maintains commitments to multiply situated knowledge production. The project's sonic inquiries and cross-disciplinary interests offer scholarly interventions primarily aimed at improving rhetoric and composition studies analytical and affective responsiveness to sonority. Secondarily, the project is aimed at increasing sound studies rhetorical responsivity and attention to personified performance techniques. The project’s first chapter argues that disciplinary distancing between rhetorical, compositional and sonic arts can be lessened through the temporal principle of kairos. This chapter also overviews key methodological concepts, offers working definitions of key terms, and glosses the project's chapter progression. The second chapter is a multi-faceted literature review that surveys the ways listening is rhetorically emplaced and affectively confined within classical and contemporary discussions of Aristotelian epideixis. This chapter notes the limits of commonly accepted and received feminist rhetorical "recovery" projects that frequently place listening in service to logos; highlights the ways listening can act as a generative method of performative "respond-ability" through certain positions; and resonantly attunes listening to two audio-visual materials: timbral tonality and rhythmic temporality. Chapters three and four analytically train listening practices on two specific genres of musical sound: protest song and EDM-pop musical productions. The third chapter analyzes singer-songwriter-activist Nina Simone’s early 1960's protest song "Mississippi Goddam" while the fourth chapter focuses on contemporary singer-songwriter Sia's EDM-pop productions for "Chandelier." Treated as case studies, these songs and artists exemplify body-subject impressionability, political disaffection from historically dominant forms of whitened, hetero-patriarchal, liberalized ideology, and the performative possibilities of crossing and crowding subject-hood through persona crafting. Following these case studies, the project concludes by offering conceptual im/possibilities and pedagogical materials for rhetorically teaching composition as a sonic art. The fifth and final chapter conceptually intervenes in rhetoric and composition's pedagogical tendencies toward elevating and espousing notions of the minimally affected, individual, authorial, agentive rhetor/writer by developing a series of activities designed to give instructional supports for scaffolding student learning and composing specific to vocalic sound and the sorts of affects engendered in listening.