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- “A 19th Century Physician Answers Popular Yahoo! Inquiries: The ‘Is It Bad?’ Edition”Vollmer, Matthew (Ohio Edit, 2013-09-27)
- 21st Century Prose: We Like Words and Voices and That for Which We Have No NameVollmer, Matthew (2015-04-21)An invited essay describing the goals and mission of the University of Michigan's 21st Century Prose.
- "33rd Balloon"Vollmer, Matthew (2016-07-22)
- Abstract social categories facilitate access to socially skewed wordsHay, Jennifer; Walker, Abby; Sanchez, Kauyumari; Thompson, Kirsty (PLOS, 2019-02-04)Recent work has shown that listeners process words faster if said by a member of the group that typically uses the word. This paper further explores how the social distributions of words affect lexical access by exploring whether access is facilitated by invoking more abstract social categories. We conduct four experiments, all of which combine an Implicit Association Task with a Lexical Decision Task. Participants sorted real and nonsense words while at the same time sorting older and younger faces (exp. 1), male and female faces (exp. 2), stereo-typically male and female objects (exp. 3), and framed and unframed objects, which were always stereotypically male or female (exp. 4). Across the experiments, lexical decision to socially skewed words is facilitated when the socially congruent category is sorted with the same hand. This suggests that the lexicon contains social detail from which individuals make social abstractions that can influence lexical access.
- "Academy Girls"Vollmer, Matthew (Moon City, 2014-03-01)
- The Action-Adventure Heroine: Rediscovering an American Literary Character, 1697–1895 by Sandra Wilson SmithReed, Ashley (Project Muse, 2019)
- Advanced Placement, Essay #3, Free ResponseVollmer, Matthew (The Normal School, 2012-11-01)
- All of Us Together in the EndVollmer, Matthew (Hub City Press, 2023-04-01)
- Andrew Wakefield and the MMR Vaccination ControversyKasik, Olivia (Virginia Tech, 2012-03)This information sheet seeks to explain Andrew Wakefieldʼs role in the MMR vaccination controversy and the reaction that followed from his 1998 publication in The Lancet.
- Anti-Vaccination MovementChapman, Jonathan (Virginia Tech, 2010-03-13)The current anti-vaccination movements that have established themselves in the United States as well as other regions in the world are like a hydra of discourse. Right when one effective measure is created to convince people to vaccinate two more anti-vaccination movements sprout up in its place. These anti-vaccination movements are driven by cultural beliefs, ideologies, medical exemption laws, non-medical exemption laws, distrust of the government, distrust of large pharmaceutical companies, denialism and so on. These antivaccination movements also have developed many methods of distributing their beliefs to the masses. The internet is a huge resource for these anti-vaccination movements and allows them, with relative ease, to get their anti-vaccination message out to a large number of people. Postcards, newspaper, magazines, journals, and pamphlets are other widely used resources for spreading antivaccination information to the general public. If the U.S. wants any chance of gaining the upper hand on this growing anti-vaccination movement in the 21st century it too must use the internet to create positive vaccination rhetoric that reaches the masses. This rhetoric must specifically focus its positive vaccination messages towards these specific anti-vaccination groups to pinpoint and alleviate their expressed concerns.
- "The Art of the Short Story: Helen Phillips and Matthew Vollmer"Vollmer, Matthew; Phillips, H. (LitHub, 2016-07-05)A conversation between writers Helen Phillips and Matthew Vollmer about writing short stories.
- Auteurist Socio-Cultural Critique: Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight as Historical PresentGreene, Justin R. (2017)Twenty-four years and eight films into his career, differing arrays of people are still drawn to Quentin Tarantino and his films. When viewers encounter “written and directed by Quentin Tarantino,” there are certain expectations that accompany these words. In his classic essay “What Is an Author?,” Michel Foucault claims “that an author’s name is not simply an element in a discourse (capable of being either subject or object, of being replaced by a pronoun and the like); it performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function” (107). Following Foucault’s thinking, I associate Tarantino’s name with a particular style or mode of filmmaking, because audiences, no matter the racial or gendered dynamics, have granted Tarantino the opportunity to explore his representation of America. Most recently, by immersing a predominantly white male American audience in his depictions of United States society and culture, Tarantino’s films confront white America’s perceptions and epistemologies of American history. Tarantino’s America is violent, seedy, and vulgar. His films take mainstream, white mainstream audiences into a world vastly different from their own comfortable spaces, through his use of traditionally unrelateable characters...
- Autism and RhetoricHeilker, Paul V.; Yergeau, M. (National Council of Teachers of English, 2011-05)By understanding the verbal and nonverbal manifestations of autism as a rhetorical imperative, a perspective that involves applying Krista Ratcliffe's concept of rhetorical listening, scholars can do much to dissolve the idea of otherness that appears in discussions of this topic.
- Autism and the MMR Vaccine [annotated bibliography]Cobert, Lauren (Virginia Tech, 2010)
- The Autism Vaccine ScareCobert, Lauren (Virginia Tech, 2010)The main goal of vaccination is to stop the spread of communicable diseases. Maintaining a herd vaccination rate of ~90% is how WHO controls outbreaks of preventable infectious diseases. However, the autism vaccine scare of the late 1990s compromises herd immunity rates, as isolated outbreaks of measles, mumps and hepatitis occur as a result of a widespread vaccine boycott. This paper identifies key events and lay interpretations that develop during this awkward, unsure time.
- Bennett H. Young and the Rhetoric of ReconciliationGiguere, Joy M. (Virginia Tech, 2015-11)Serving twice as Commander-in-Chief of the United Confederate Veterans, and then holding the title of Honorary Commander-in-Chief for Life until his death in 1919, Bennett H. Young was an instrumental figure in expanding the Lost Cause memorialization movement by actively supporting monument projects, attending dedication events, and giving countless orations. Throughout these activities, Young's leadership and visibility vested him with a great deal of authority when it came to shaping the minds of ex-Confederates on issues related to the Lost Cause and white reconciliation. While these two ideals were, and remain today, fundamentally at odds with each other, Young often intertwined them in his speeches, at once exhorting his audiences to revere the cause of the South but to also put to rest old prejudices for the sake of working toward a modern era of peace and prosperity. This paper examines his position as a leader of the Lost Cause movement, with a particular focus on his address delivered at the unveiling of the Confederate Soldiers' Monument at Arlington National Cemetery in 1914.
- Black MagicVollmer, Matthew (2020)
- Black Technical and Professional CommunicationMckoy, Temptaous; Johnson Sackey, Donnie; Wourman, Ja’La; Harper, Kimberly; Shelton, Cecilia; Jones, Natasha N.; Haywood, Constance (Virginia Tech, 2020-11-30)A coalition of Black scholars in technical and professional communication offer their perspectives on defining Black technical and professional communication; advocating for the inclusion of Black perspectives in the body of mainstream disciplinary scholarship and pedagogical practice; and carving out the methodological, theoretical, and practical space that will enable other Black scholars, teachers, and practitioners in the field to see and do such work. Speakers: Temptaous Mckoy, Donnie Johnson Sackey, Ja'La Wourman, Kimberly Harper, Cecilia Shelton, Natasha N. Jones, Constance Haywood. Organizer: Jennifer Sano-Franchini. Moderators: Sheila Carter-Tod, Chloe Robertson, Luana Shafer, Matt Homer. Sponsors: Professional and Technical Writing Program in the Department of English, Black Cultural Center, Center for Humanities, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Engineering Communications Program with the Materials Science and Engineering Diversity Committee, Composition Program, Writing Center, Center for Educational Networks and Impacts, Center for Communicating Science, Engineering Communications Center.
- BlackoutVollmer, Matthew (2020-04-01)
- Blake and Rousseau on Children's Reading, Pleasure, and ImaginationWelch, Dennis M. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011)