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.

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.

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.