abstract: This interpretive dissertation study sought to understand what happened when a seventh-grade teacher introduced multimodal concepts and texts into his English Language Arts classroom. Multimodal texts contain linguistic features (words and sentences) but also images and graphic design features. The classroom teacher described himself as a novice with regards to multimodal literacies instruction and had previously focused predominantly on written or spoken texts. Motivating his decision to design and enact a multimodal literacies pedagogy was his belief that students needed to garner experience interpreting and composing the kinds of texts that populated his students’ social worlds. Therefore, I asked: What happened when multimodal narratives were used as mentor texts in a seventh-grade English Language Arts classroom? Drawing from ethnographic and case study methods, I observed and gathered data regarding how the teacher and his students enacted and experienced an eight-week curriculum unit centered on multimodal concepts and multimodal texts. My findings describe the classroom teacher’s design decisions, the messiness that occurred as the classroom was (re)made into a classroom community that valued modes beyond written and spoken language, and the students’ experiences of the curriculum as classroom work, lifework, play, and drudgery. Based on my findings, I developed six assertions: (1) when designing and enacting multimodal literacies curriculum for the first time, exposing students to a wide range of multimodal texts took precedence; (2) adapted and new multimodal literacy practices began to emerge, becoming valued practices over time; (3) literacy events occurred without being grounded in literacy practices; (4) in a classroom dedicated to writing, modes of representation and communication and their associated tools and materials provided students with resources for use in their own writing/making; (5) the roles of the teacher and his students underwent change as modal expertise became sourced from across the classroom community; and (6) students experienced the multimodal literacies curriculum as play, classroom work, lifework, and drudgery. The dissertation study concludes with implications for teachers and researchers looking to converge multimodality theory with pedagogical practices and maps future research possibilities. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Learning, Literacies and Technologies 2020

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Recently, disability and writing studies scholars have demonstrated the extent to which widely accepted approaches to the teaching of writing fail to address the fraught intersection between mental disability and academic commonplaces, such as multimodal texts and assignments, with real consequences for the well-being of our students (Yergeau; Oswal; Selfe). Given the dramatic rise of online and other multimodal forms of instruction that has characterized and continues to shape college writing classrooms in the era of COVID-19, the barriers to access (social, physical, and institutional) that exist in multimodal writing classrooms require deeper examination. Drawing upon disability studies scholarship from Price, Kerschbaum, and Walters, my dissertation examines the complex relationship between writing instruction and mental disability in the context of Metro University’s First Year Writing Program (FYWP) and explores the affordances disabled students bring to bear on the multimodal spaces of their writing classrooms. In addition to examining the program’s standard syllabus, policies, and assignments, I conducted individual interviews with Metro undergraduate students, including students with disabilities, to collect data on students’ experiences of course policies (e.g., participation; grading) and practices (e.g., online peer review; multimodal composing) in the first-year writing classroom. I used methods drawn from critical discourse analysis and disability studies to identify elements of the curriculum that presented potential barriers to students with mental disabilities, including cumulative, interconnected penalties for absences, tardiness, and late work; a policy of not grading essay drafts; and the absence of policies designed to address issues linked to mental health. My analysis has revealed conflicting levels of access to participation in the course, pointing to the need for multimodal learning environments flexible enough to address a wide range of access needs at once. This work contributes to emerging writing and disability scholarship on the role of multimodality in developing non-normative writing pedagogies and inclusive program designs. The study was reviewed by the IRB and deemed not to be human subjects research. It was conducted in partnership with the university’s Disability Resources and Services and FYWP, which adopted attendant policy recommendations. / English

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This study attempts to identify normalization cues within multimodal scholarship to highlight moments of "un-seeing" multimodal composing practices and theoretical contributions from non-Western traditions. Advocates of this approach to teaching composition understand it as an effective way for incorporating other voices into the curricular structures of composition courses. However, the instructional resources do not include or cite research that does not lend itself easily to dominant views of composing within academia. I assert that academia must go further with how value is assessed. There is research that acknowledges the multiliteracies practices found within subcultures of America, and plenty of work that deems the communicative practices observed in these subcultural communities as valuable. However, it is more than just including and citing scholarship from and about people of color's compositional practices, academia must also employ these ways of knowing and being to fully empower students and utilize the knowledge that the students bring with them to the FYC classroom. The dominant assignment genre in academia is the academic essay. Other dominant methods of communication and transferring scholarship are the journal article, annotated bibliography, proposal, and personal essay. Not to mention the many scholars who have critiqued academia for privileging print literacies, which although may be multimodal, promotes a multimodality of one culture and ideological standpoint. Although the seminal texts from the study offer exceptional multimodal composition research and classroom resources, if we can agree that "the mission of education…is to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, and economic life" and that literacy pedagogy, essentially what the FYC course offers, "is expected to play a particularly important role in fulfilling this mission," then failing to see the value and utilize the scholarship from and about people of color ensures those that are marginalized continue to be "un-seen" and students remain unprepared for the tasks of composing and communicating outside of school (New London Group 60).

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In The Rhetorical Making of the Asian/Asian American Face: Reading and Writing Asian Eyelids, I examine representations of East Asian blepharoplasty in online video in order to gain a sense of how cultural values change over time. Drawing on scholarship in and around rhetorical theory, cultural rhetorics, Asian American rhetoric, cultural studies, Asian American studies, and postcolonial theory alongside qualitative data analysis of approximately fifty videos and the numerous viewer comments that accompany them, this study is a rhetorical analysis of the discourse on East Asian blepharoplasty in online video. These videos--ranging from mass media excerpts and news reports, to journals of healing and recovery, to short lectures on surgeon techniques, to audience commentary--offer insight into how social time is negotiated in the cross-cultural public sphere of YouTube. I do my analysis in two steps, first looking at how rhetors rationalize the decision to get blepharoplasty, and second, examining the temporal logics that ground these rationalizations. As result, I've identified five tropes through which people rationalize double eyelid surgery: racialization, emotionologization, pragmatization, the split between nature and technology, and agency. Moreover, I've identified at least five temporal logics that ground these tropes: progress, hybridization, timelessness, efficiency, and desire. Using these two sets of findings I build a framework for the analysis, production and organization of multimodal representations of bodies.