VTechWorks Repository :: Browsing by Author "Powell, Katrina M."

Browsing by Author "Powell, Katrina M."

Now showing 1 - 20 of 68

Appalachian Language in the Two-Year College Composition Classroom
Hanks, Janet (Virginia Tech, 2019-11-13)
This dissertation discusses the intersection of first-year composition instructors and Appalachian language and culture at the two-year college level. Very little of the existing literature discusses pedagogy as it pertains to Appalachian students, and virtually none of the literature focuses on either instructors or the two-year college. This study attempts to address that gap and to explore the attitudes about Appalachia that accompany the teaching of writing in two-year colleges in agricultural (as opposed to coal) Appalachia. This study finds that professors express very negative ideas about Appalachian culture and language, and sometimes about Appalachian students themselves. These attitudes do not, however, contribute dramatically to differences in grades and pass/fail rates for the region as a whole. Appalachian students overall are slightly more likely to fail and less likely to make A grades. The more surprising finding, perhaps, is that students from certain either highly stigmatized or highly isolated communities are far less likely to pass the courses, with failure rates between 50-68%. These rates are far higher than non-Appalachian failure rates, and substantially higher than the rates for non-stigmatized communities and do, perhaps, stem from their instructors' inherent biases. The privileging of standard academic English above other Englishes informs the teaching of every respondent in this study and invites a consideration of how a more rhetorical approach to composition pedagogy might change outcomes for Appalachian students in writing classes and in college itself.
Assessing the Impact of Writing Centers on Student Writing
Lama, Prabin Tshering (Virginia Tech, 2018-04-30)
This study assesses the influence of writing center tutorials on student writing and presents tutoring best practices. Writing center scholars have emphasized the need for evidence-based studies to understand how one-on-one tutorials influence student writing practices. After examining twenty tutorial recordings along with their pre-and post-intervention drafts in two state universities (ten in each university), the author traced the influence of writing center tutorials on students' post-session revisions and identified tutoring best practices. The findings show that all the twenty students included in the study followed up on the issues addressed in their tutorials, in some form or the other, in their post-session drafts. In terms of tutoring strategies, the findings revealed that although most of the tutors in the study could identify and speak about global concerns (i.e. development, structure, purpose, audience), many lacked specific strategies to address these concerns effectively. To address this concern, this study identifies tutoring best practices related to global concerns. Furthermore, the findings also revealed that the tutors faced challenges navigating the directive/non-directive continuum of tutoring. To address this concern, this study presents tutoring best practices to demonstrate how tutors can shift flexible between directive and non-directive strategies during a session.
Beating the Dead Horse: Deconstructing the Junk Genius of Naked Lunch
Smith, Kevin Darrell (Virginia Tech, 2013-06-11)
William S. Burroughs challenges each reader of Naked Lunch to make meaning of its convoluted pages. This project explores the two crucial keys to fuller understanding of his groundbreaking literary work: Logic and Ethics. In "Beating the Dead Horse: Deconstructing the Junk Genius of Naked Lunch," I illustrate Burroughs' means of exposing the flawed binaries that undergird the Aristotelian Logic of language. In Naked Lunch, the author bares the slippery nature of any such Logical language, whereby each word comes with a range of denotations and connotations, all of which shift constantly according to a concomitantly shifting context. This project primarily explores Burroughs\' means of subverting traditional logic by exposing the flaws that riddle the foundations of language, essentially undermining the syllogistic system via the system (essentially fashioning a word virus/vaccine chain). I also analyze the Ethical grounding of Naked Lunch, which grows directly from Burroughs' logical/linguistic subversions. Namely, Burroughs sought to expose the problems with the common Utilitarian Ethic that ultimately pushes the individual to the margins while subsuming the individual within the group (a symptom of the binary logical/linguistic systems that pervade thought and encourages othering). This article provides substantial evidence that links Burroughs\' ethical equations directly from his Algebra of Need to Jeremy Bentham's Hedonistic Calculus.
Beyond Binary Digital Embodiment
Clinnin, Kaitlin Marie (Virginia Tech, 2012-04-24)
The late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen the creation of new forms of subjectivities that represent the integration of digital and information technologies into construction of the self and bodies. I argue that to this point there has not been a satisfactory theoretical framework for the experience of bodies in virtual environments that does not default to problematic binaries of physical and virtual, real and unreal, and meaningful and meaningless. These dualistic constructions render experiences of bodies within virtual settings meaningless. In order to examine how this power differential between physical and virtual came to be, I engage with Katherine Hayles' evaluation of information as a disembodied entity. I argue that Hayles' humanist principles prevents her from fully understanding the experience of bodies within virtual spaces as meaningful and important. I then deconstruct the materialist basis of representation in order to demonstrate how information can be reconceived as an embodied force. I further analyze digital media art installations, specifically dance performances, to examine how digital bodies are currently experienced in relationship to corporeal forms. I finally offer two new theories of and the networked body in order to dismantle the binary between physical and virtual and to make a space for all embodied experiences to be valued.
Beyond Invention: How Hackers Challenge Memory & Disrupt Delivery
Lockridge, Timothy Alan (Virginia Tech, 2012-03-29)
This dissertation uses a case study of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly to consider how the practices of a hacker public might be theorized as a rhetorical activity. The project is contextualized within a history of hacking (building from a narrative that centers on Levy's 1984 book Hackers) and within the arc of recent copyright legislation, specifically the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the 2011-12 Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) debates. Within this framework, the dissertation examines how specific patterns and cases within 2600 might further our understanding of the rhetorical canons of memory and delivery and of dissent in digital spaces. Specifically, the project presents three practices of memory at work in 2600: Aggregating, Fingerprinting, and Narrating. Drawing on the work of Collin Gifford Brooke and Mary Carruthers, among others, the dissertation examines how texts printed in 2600 present memory not as an inert technology but rather as a practice and a pedagogy—a response to the increasing commercialization of technology. The dissertation then uses Jim Porter's techne of digital delivery to analyze three specific moments in 2600's history (the 1985 U.S. Government raid on New Jersey hackers, the E911 lawsuit, and the DeCSS narrative), illustrating how our spaces of textual production have become increasingly regulated and commercialized and considering how that regulation/commercialization affects our understanding of ownership, circulation, and the public sphere. Building on Michel de Cereteau's concept of strategies and tactics and Michael Warner's theory of (counter)publics, the dissertation ultimately argues that a history of hacker publics offers one way to reconceptualize and reintegrate theories and technologies of digital circulation into our scholarly work and curricular goals.
Beyond the Tall, Tall Trees: Exploring Land and Digital Literacy in Rural Appalachia
Wagnon, Michelle Martin (Virginia Tech, 2023-06-01)
In this dissertation, I report findings of a case study I conducted in Giles County, Virginia, my hometown, to better understand the way land impacts rural digital literacy sponsorship. With the help of 13 participants, I studied the ways land impacted their access to digital infrastructures and internet access and presented the following questions: how does land impeded access and support access to broadband infrastructure in Giles County? How does land impact what digital literacies residents in Giles County pursue, and how do they navigate the county's "dead zones" I begin the study by diving into the status of internet in Giles County, and I review the failed attempt made by legislators to provide "universal broadband" to the entire state of Virginia. Next, I review the literature on Deep Mapping Analysis and Literacy Networks to provide context as to how I am using land as a framework for studying rural digital literacy sponsorship. Then, the first analysis chapter uses Deep Mapping Analysis to discuss maps reflecting the status of internet access within the county, and then discusses how these maps help support the experiences of participants in the first round of interviews. The second findings chapter focuses on the Literacy Networks created by participants Veronica, Libby, Makayla, and Heather and explores how their networks show the connections between land and infrastructures as rural digital literacy sponsors and what that teaches us about rural access in general. Finally, I conclude with three implications from these analysis chapters that encourage scholars, community scholars, and legislators alike to pay more attention to the role land plays in internet access and rural digital literacy sponsorship. Most importantly, this work calls for legislators to consider what their part is in helping their rural constituents receive the internet access they need to survive without implicating those who cannot afford it or harming the land where they live.
#BlackMamasMatter: The Significance of Motherhood and Mothering for Low-Income Black Single Mothers
Turner, Jennifer Laverne (Virginia Tech, 2019-05-02)
In the present neoliberal era, low-income Black single mothers receiving public assistance must grapple with heightened state surveillance, the devaluation of their mothering, trying to raise Black children in a racist society, and navigating the neoliberal economic system. This dissertation examines how, in light of all this, such women perceive themselves as mothers and what they identify as the greatest influences on their ability to carry out their mothering activities. It specifically investigates how they perceive their race as influencing their motherhood and how they perceive employment in relation to motherhood. Based on in-depth interviews with 21 low-income single Black mothers in Virginia, findings illustrate that the mothers in this study recognize and resist controlling images of low-income Black single motherhood, such as the "welfare queen" and the "baby mama," and that a key aspect of their mothering activities is socializing their children around race and class. Findings also demonstrate that motherhood is a central identity for the women in this study and that they prioritize their motherhood identities over their work identities. In addition, in a departure from previous research on Black motherhood/mothering, findings show that the women in this study do not mother within dense networks of kin and community support.
Bodies in Vertigo: the language of liminalities
Ward, Shelby Elise (Virginia Tech, 2014-12-19)
Starting with my own travel experiences, and with the help of poets, Elizabeth Bishop, Jorie Graham, and Emily Dickinson, I create a theory of displacement, called Vertigo. Vertigo is not only a sense of falling, but a sense of detachment from reality that I felt traversing through different cultures, languages, and worlds for the first time. Vertigo is a liminal, transformative space that allows an individual to experience the created nature of their own worldview and culture. This is also a physical experience, as Bishop, Graham, and Dickinson give evidence to in their poetry, as the individual experiences a heightened sense of their physical bodies. This work acknowledges the privileged position of the traveler, and reveals that often the observations we make in this privileged position can be moves of colonization. Poetry is one way to both acknowledge these moves, and to also show what we can learn from these moments when we continue to question and explore. Additionally, poetry, as a medium of mindful reflection, allows for a language that is capable of handling the physical knowledge of the body; the mental mapping of the cultural and personal realities of the individual; and also the geographic and political landscapes that surround an individual or population, simultaneously. With this understanding, the theoretical framework for displacement, bodies, and place, which Bishop, Graham, and Dickinson give us, is the foundation for exploring how poetry can provide knowledge for more 'scientific' writing, such as, cultural geography or cognitive science.
Brown Skin, White Dreams: Pigmentocracy in India
Dhillon, Komal K. (Virginia Tech, 2015-06-24)
Pigmentocracy or colorism refers to the practice of intraracial groups applying a preferential valuation to lighter skin, resulting in a system of contextual privileges and discriminations based on skin color. In India, this phenomenon is informed by numerous factors, including colonialism, the caste system, media, cultural practices, and patriarchy. The fundamental forces contributing to pigmentocracy are explored independently as well as in conjunction with each other in order to elucidate the multifaceted aspects of social organization in India, specifically, the larger effects of imperialism, capitalism, globalization, racism, and sexism as they relate to colorist ideology. Everyday practices and attitudes informed by caste, class, religion, language, region, and customs are also examined in relation to pigmentocracy. Although there are numerous mechanisms that contribute to the complexity of examining pigmentocracy, larger patterns also prevail that allow for a comprehensive understanding of how pigmentocratic notions influence and are influenced by multiple background and demographic conditions. Benefits for those who are on the lighter end of the skin color spectrum are recognized and leveraged in accordance with the systemic logic of being naturally superior. Conversely, often those on the darker end of the spectrum are perceived as inferior, thus perpetuating the superiority of whiteness. Pigmentocracy is detrimental psychologically, physically, and socioeconomically due to the ways in which darker skin is often viewed (by society, media, lighter individuals as well as darker people who subscribe to the belief that white is better) as less attractive, less valuable, less pure, and less clean. For those perceived to be darker, the consequences can include violence, marginalization, and discrimination in areas of employment, education, government, access to resources, psychological trauma, disparities in marital opportunities and conceived notions of beauty, and underrepresentation in media.
Can You Hear Me? Reflexive Feminist Methodologies and Diasporic Self-Representation in the Digital Age
Rais, Saadia Subah (Virginia Tech, 2016-07-08)
In this exploratory thesis project, I consider what emerging approaches we can take as social scientists to showcase and critically engage self-representations of diasporic individuals, who often lack visibility and legibility within the dominant cultural archive. Filmmaking as a social research practice can provide rich audiovisual data, physical and social access to materials for nonacademics, and opportunities to document and share subjects' comments and settings without the limitations of transcription. This is especially salient in the emerging media landscape of Web 2.0, where digital communications technology applications (such as Facebook, Skype, and Snapchat) are accessible by a global audience, and can act as tools for cultural identity production by diasporic individuals. This project documents the experiences of several first- and second-generation Bangladeshi American immigrants in relation to digital communications technology advances within the past decade, for the purposes of collecting and sharing stories of diasporic individuals, offering a venue for self-expression through empathetic interviewing and collaborative oral history methods, and contributing to the American cultural archive in the context of emerging media and academic landscapes. The full project is comprised of this text document, alongside a short documentary film containing portions of audiovisual data from interviews which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh9puazpdrw.
A Case for Rhetorical Method: Criticism, Theory, and the Exchange of Jean Baudrillard
Gogan, Brian James (Virginia Tech, 2011-03-30)
This dissertation uses the case of Jean Baudrillard to argue that successful critics must consider rhetorical method as it relates to theory. Throughout this dissertation, I follow Edwin Black in using the term rhetorical method to describe the procedures a rhetor uses to guide composition. The project's two main goals are, first, to demonstrate how rhetorical method can serve as a foundation for worthwhile criticism, and, second, to outline a Baudrillardian rhetoric. In order to meet these goals, I perform close readings of Baudrillard's oeuvre alongside a wide range of sources, including critical writings, classical works, analogic photographs, contemporary texts, and recent obituaries. Chapter one introduces my project and the concept of rhetorical method through an anecdote, which compares the later paintings of Andy Warhol to the writings of Jean Baudrillard. Next, I define rhetorical method and distinguish it from the concepts of critical method and rhetorical object. Then, I reveal the importance of rhetorical method in criticism by reviewing three cross-disciplinary interpretations of Baudrillardian rhetoric. I analyze each interpretation according to its argumentative strength, its treatment of rhetorical method, and its engagement with Baudrillard's reputation as a cross-disciplinary, postmodern rhetor. I argue that rhetorical method asks critics to reconsider the foundations of their interpretive claims. To conclude, I analyze one of Baudrillard's own essays that treats Warhol, assessing the degree to which Baudrillard critically engages with Warhol's rhetorical method. Chapter two demonstrates that understanding rhetorical method opens up new understandings of rhetors and their rhetoric, by critically engaging Jean Baudrillard's dominant rhetorical method: exchange. Baudrillardian exchange radically revises the conventional rhetorical paradigm (to the exclusion of audience) and relies upon the perpetual movement between two agonistic theories of language: (1) the materialist theory—appearance, production, meaning-making; (2) the anti-materialist theory—disappearance, seduction, meaning-challenging. Baudrillard metaphorically describes exchange as a two-sided game and often embraces the anti-materialist theory of language in his writing and photography in order to challenge the materialist theory of language. After providing examples from his aphoristic writing and his analogic photography, I show how Baudrillard mobilizes disappearance as a move in service of his rhetorical method by analyzing one of his last works: Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? I argue that, in this text, Baudrillard's rhetorical move of disappearance shifts in accordance with the posthumanist turn in thought, but his rhetorical method of exchange remains consistent with his earlier works. Chapter three deploys exchange as a critical method by generalizing and extending this rhetorical method as an interpretive framework that can be applied to texts other than Baudrillard's own. Specifically, I show how Isocrates's Antidosis is successful in its creation of an ambivalent rhetorical space—a space that upends convention, dissolves logics, and ruptures values—and how James Frey's A Million Little Pieces is unsuccessful. In sum, my analysis of these two texts, one classical and one controversial, considers the ability of each text and its surrounding paratexts to challenge the meaning-making system and break with convention. My analysis further positions Baudrillardian rhetoric as a sophistic rhetoric that offers recourse to rhetors, such as Isocrates or Frey, who momentarily occupy the weaker side of the argument. Yet beyond forwarding a strong counterargument, the attention that Baudrillardian exchange pays to value systems proves a framework that is particularly amenable to questions of the public good. Chapter four offers a metacritical commentary on the use of Baudrillardian rhetoric as a critical method as well as on the construction of Baudrillard as a rhetorical theorist. Focusing on the relationship between method and theory in rhetorical criticism, I argue that rhetorical criticism is a productive enterprise and that existing explanations of this enterprise are insufficient because they abandon method. To better explain the method and theory dynamic that produces rhetorical criticism, I turn to Baudrillard's work on the model and the series in The System of Objects. After demonstrating method's affinity with the model and theory's affinity with the series, I argue that the distinction between the model and the series is a rhetorical distinction. With that distinction in mind, I offer a metacritical commentary about the ways in which rhetorical scholars have treated Baudrillard's writing and constructed him as a rhetorical theorist. To conclude my discussion, I turn to Baudrillard's own critical commentary about his rhetoric as it relates to his notion of the simulacrum. Analyzing his discussion of "the rhetoric of simulation" in The Perfect Crime, I argue that Baudrillard was indeed a rhetorical theorist in the most robust sense, since he engages with both theory and method. Chapter five argues that critics should consider rhetorical method to be as important to rhetoric as ethos. To support this argument, I examine two instances of criticism which involved unflattering obituaries and their responses: Jonathan Kandell's 2004 obituary of Jacques Derrida and Carlin Romano's 2007 obituary of Jean Baudrillard. I, first, analyze these obituaries in accordance with a conventional understanding of rhetoric as representation and, second, in accordance with each theorist's rhetorical method. While conventional responses to these obituaries could repudiate them for their negative tones and nasty messages, I contend that both theorists actually sanction these admittedly distasteful texts. In other words, the unconventional approaches of both rhetorical theorists to writing—namely, the Derridian différance and the Baudrillardian fatal strategies—seem to endorse the respective obituaries. I argue that these obituaries further suggest two new models of obituary writing, both of which are grounded in revised understandings of poststructuralist epideictic rhetoric: (1) a Derridian model that exposes the inadequacy of the contextual component of epideictic rhetoric; and, (2) A Baudrillardian model that revises the relationship between epideictic rhetoric and the value contemporary society places upon vitality. In my conclusion, I propose a methodological definition of rhetoric: Rhetoric is the meeting of two methods. As I argue, this definition of rhetoric is not only grounded in the history of rhetorical studies but it also possesses much potential in contemporary times. As contemporary rhetorical studies emerges as an interdisciplinary endeavor, this methodological definition of rhetoric will allow rhetoricians to explain what rhetorical studies actually studies and how those studies are conducted. It will allow rhetorical critics to bracket the questions that forestall the study of rhetoric and explore a variety of methodological interstices. This definition can further imbue rhetorical studies with a research status tied to method that it has so desperately sought at certain historical junctures.
Codependence: A Novel in Essays
Long, Amy Lorraine (Virginia Tech, 2016-06-24)
The thirteen essays in this collection center on the narrator's shifting relationship to opioid painkillers and other drugs. The narrator and protagonist, Amy, begins using opioids recreationally with her boyfriend Ryan, an opiate addict who initiates Amy's drug use. Years after the couple breaks up, Amy's childhood headaches return as migraines and transform into chronic daily headaches, which she relieves with oxycodone (and sometimes other drugs). The narrative chronicles Amy's relationship with Ryan and her iatrogenic dependence on narcotic painkillers, detoxification, return to opioids following a year spent "clean," and the ways in which her headache treatment regimen shapes her relationship to her family, friends, various medical personnel, and her own embodied subjectivity.
Communicating Performance: First-Year Writing Syllabi as Rhetorical Contact Zones
Sederstrom, Olivia Marie (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-03)
Syllabi are an integral part of any college experience and an understanding for how the genre functions on a rhetorical level is an under-researched area in the field of higher education. Using the tools of rhetorical analysis—looking at language and genre structures—I gathered a selection of 25 First-Year Writing syllabi within the Department of English at Virginia Tech to help address this concern of a lack of research. Using qualitative research methods—specifically those dealing with language and genre coding—I worked through my syllabi selection to ascertain how the genre functions rhetorically. Using Mary Louise Pratt's idea of the "contact zone" as well as Rhetorical Genre Theories and Actor-Network Theory, I argue that beginning with an understanding for how the genre of syllabi function rhetorically will also help us understand how the genre can be communicative, in the sense that it sends a message, as well as performative.
Controlling Bodies: Mothers, Adolescents, and Bad Advice
Canipe, Cayce Leigh (Virginia Tech, 2012-04-24)
Since the 1990s, medical and media articles containing the word "obesity" inevitably included the word "epidemic" as well. These articles usually pointed to the exponential growth in overweight and obese persons in high-income and low-income countries alike. A recent field of literature called "fat studies" has sought to question this so-called epidemic, bringing to light inconsistencies or down-right falsehoods present in obesity research. While researchers in this field have importantly uncovered many myths surrounding obesity and overweight, examinations of the rhetorical strategies used to approve potentially dangerous weight loss or weight maintenance procedures remain few. This thesis project hopes to cover just a portion of that gap by examining two groups targeted most directly by obesity researchers: women and children. Particularly, this research examines potentially dangerous recommendations made by doctors and the media to pregnant obese women and obese adolescents. Ultimately, this project uncovers dualisms of wrong versus right bodies and fat stigmatization in the "objective" language of health about obesity. This polemic leaves pregnant women and adolescents little choice except either to conform or to face a world of media and medicine that blames these two groups for the "choice" to remain fat.
A Culture for Encouraging Shared Knowledge: The Current State of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities across the Nation and at Virginia Tech
Walters, Emily (Virginia Tech, 2018-06-29)
Over the last two decades, higher education administrations have seen the importance of undergraduate students having been exposed to research be increasingly emphasized. Higher education institutions have taken strides to incorporate research into the undergraduate curricula, with the natural sciences fields being the most successful and efficient at implementing these changes. This project aimed to survey the national undergraduate research landscape when it came to humanities fields to see what steps academic humanities researchers, faculty, and administrators are taking, or need to be taking, to encourage more humanities undergraduates to become involved with research. Additionally, this project provides a brief case study of the undergraduate research opportunities available to humanities students at Virginia Tech.
The Dam Fighters: Commons Environmental Rhetoric, Rhetorical Citizenship, and Local Ethos
Murray, Savannah Paige (Virginia Tech, 2020-11-11)
In this dissertation project, I examine the ways in which a grassroots environmental organization, the Upper French Broad Defense Association (UFBDA), was able to contribute knowledge and voice concerns regarding a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) proposal between 1961 and 1972. The TVA proposal included a plan for comprehensive water resource development in western North Carolina which would have required in the implementation of 14 dams, flooding of more than 18,000 fertile agricultural acres and displacing 600 families from their ancestral homes. Employing archival research methods, in this dissertation I analyze the UFBDA's everyday rhetorical tactics which contributed to their overall success in preventing the implementation of the TVA project. I situate archival sources alongside contemporary scholarship in democratic practice, environmental rhetoric, rhetorical citizenship, and ethos, as discussed in rhetoric and writing studies. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates the ways in which the UFBDA case study offers a generative model for future environmental controversies, providing specific techniques which can contribute to the success of grassroots organizations mired in environmental controversies and contentious decisions.
Deliberation, Dissent, and Advocacy: A Rhetorical Study of Teachers' Lived Experiences with Education Reform
Garahan, Katie Lynn (Virginia Tech, 2019-04-23)
Contemporary K-12 education reform policies have focused heavily on the teaching profession through increased accountability measures and decreased job security. In the rhetoric of contemporary reform, teachers are often praised as heroes capable of overcoming any obstacles and at the same time blamed for the perceived failures of public schools. This dissertation examines the impact of such policies and corresponding representations on the lived experiences of K-12 teachers in North Carolina, specifically highlighting the strategies through which teachers gain rhetorical agency within the discursive space of reform. To do so, I apply an analytical frame of public sphere theory and employ a mixed-methods approach that combines archival methods and fieldwork (e.g. participant observation and interviews). This dissertation argues that teachers' discourses provide alternative narratives to the dominant view that modifying the teaching profession is a cure-all for educational problems. I first develop a history of contemporary education reform in North Carolina and argue that within these discourses, teachers are represented as heroes able to do more work with less pay under increased scrutiny. Then, analyzing images of protest signs collected at the May 16 teacher rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, I argue that teachers rhetorically perform their professional identities as student advocates, champions of public educators, and political dissenters. As such, they dismantle dominant representations of their profession and advance a notion of public education that values collaboration, equitability, and the public good. Last, I examine how teachers negotiate the tension between their goals and the constraints of policy, arguing that contemporary reform undermines teachers' expertise. At the same time, teachers devise strategies to work toward their visions of public education. Such strategies include building relationships, being persistent, de-prioritizing policy, and cultivating community.
Democratizing Refugee Governance Through Critical Reflexivity
Barry-Murphy, Emily C. (Virginia Tech, 2015-04-28)
This dissertation considers how refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are conceived in international relations, and how they are understood in relation to the global refugee regime complex. This research explores how cognitive frames are impeding fair/democratic governance of IDPs/refugees and employs two case studies to investigate how the practice of critical reflexivity can lead to the creation of democratic spaces for refugees/IDPs to enact protection preferences. The first case analysis argues that Sarvodaya Shramadana's Deshodaya initiative in Sri Lanka has enabled IDPs in that nation to embrace critical reflexivity to re-constitute/reimagine themselves as governing agents who can redefine state and international organization-based definitions of their protection. The second case examines asylum adjudications at the Department of Homeland Security and is an exploration of how that agency's responsible officials can employ critical reflexivity to recognize seemingly hidden governance structures that condition their decision-making and limit refugee choices. Finally, this inquiry offers a new, organic model for conceptualizing both refugee/IDP governance and strategies for democratization of refugee/IDP governance institutions and systems.
Disciplinary Participation and Genre Acquisition of Graduate Teaching Assistants in Composition
Cover, Jennifer (Virginia Tech, 2011-03-29)
This project focuses on the way that new graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) in English develop both their professional identity as teachers and their view of Composition as a field. Drawing on social theories of disciplines (Prior, 1998; Hyland, 2004; Carter, 2007), disciplinary enculturation (Hasrati, 2005; Bazerman and Prior, 2005; Thaiss and Zawacki, 2006), and legitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger 1998), this dissertation examines the transition that composition GTAs undergo during their first year of graduate school. Many of these GTAs move from little or no knowledge of Composition as a discipline to teaching their own writing courses. I focus on GTAs from MA and MFA programs at a large research university in their first year of teaching composition. Using multiple types of data, including in-depth interviews, observations of practicum and mentoring sessions, and teaching genres written by the GTAs, I construct a narrative that shows the role that teaching composition plays in the overall identity construction of graduate students as professionals. This wide data set has allowed me to see the various ways (and various genres) in which Composition is constructed in the lives of new GTAs. Teacher preparation programs offer a variety of assistance, including experience shadowing current teachers, practicum courses and individual or group mentoring. I study the ways these activities help GTAs in one first-year writing program move toward a fuller understanding of and participation in Composition, and how these experiences relate to the overall graduate student experience. Each of these experiences helps move GTAs toward participation as composition teachers. However, the degree to which these GTAs participate in Composition as a discipline has to do with their relationships with mentors and the connections they make between the multiple communities of practice that they must continually navigate.
Epideictic Space: Community, Memory, and Future Invention at Civil War Tourist Sites
Fields, Cynthia Fern (Virginia Tech, 2015-04-26)
This dissertation examines American Civil War tourist spaces in order to describe how epideictic rhetoric has distinct spatial functions that affect the identity of tourists. Through an analysis of three Civil War spaces in Virginia--Lexington, Appomattox Court House, and the Museum of the Confederacy--I argue epideictic space is a locus of invention that has the performative power to create community, public memory, and a vision of the future through the movement of bodies in space. Through a consubstantial ethos established between space and audience, epideictic creates kairotic space and time by collapsing past, present, and future in order to create a narrative history with which the community can identify. This study traces rhetoric related to the Confederate flag, slavery, nationalism, and reconciliation through an analysis of the Civil War spaces in which these discourses are embodied. I suggest that creating a productive rhetoric of blame starts through connecting blame, such as remembering slavery, to the materiality of space and through creating narratives of responsibility that connect memory to a vision of the future.

Browsing by Author "Powell, Katrina M."

Results Per Page

Sort Options