Recent Dissertations

Rhetorical Agency in Digital Storytelling: New Americans' Voices in the Chthulucene 

Belmihoub, Ibtissem (North Dakota State University, 2021)

This study explores New American (refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers) storytelling and agency through Donna Haraway’s concepts of the Chthulucene (pronounced thulusene), making kin, and staying with the trouble. ...

A Rhetorical Approach to Human Remains Display in Museum Collections: An Ecotriangle of Publics, Objects, and Place 

Watts, Amanda Christian (North Dakota State University, 2021)

This research approaches archaeological human remains in museum collections from a rhetorical perspective. Instead of joining the body of scholarship in museum studies that focuses on the process of curatorial interpretation, ...

Advancing Gender Equity in STEM: Antenarratives and Feminist Leadership Practices in Policy Work 

Petts, Ashleigh Ryann (North Dakota State University, 2020)

While the field technical and professional communication (TPC) has long been concerned with workplace writing and policy writing, few studies have addressed the process of policy writing within an academic context. Using ...

Toward a More Visually Literate Writing Classroom: An Analysis of Visual Communication Pedagogy and Practices 

Zufelt, Darren Allan (North Dakota State University, 2019)

“Toward a More Visually Literate Writing Classroom: An Analysis of Visual Communication Pedagogy and Practices” examines the teaching of visual communication in undergraduate professional and technical communication courses. ...

Because Comics: Comics Literacy and Multimodal Pedagogy 

Gomes, Shane Anthony (North Dakota State University, 2020)

How and what we teach in the post-secondary English classroom has tremendous power, both regarding individual students and larger contexts in which they function. As post-secondary instructors, our pedagogical approach to ...

Composing Comments for Online Students : A Study of Faculty Feedback on Writing in Multidisciplinary Contexts 

Neuteboom, Robert Kimball (North Dakota State University, 2019)

In this dissertation, I present findings from a qualitative research project designed to articulate practitioner-teachers’ beliefs about writing and their role in providing feedback on student writing in online courses. ...

Social Dialect Features of Military Speech: A Sociolinguistic Study of Fargo Veterans 

Albright, Anthony J. (North Dakota State University, 2020)

This mixed-methods study examines the potential existence of a military dialect separate from regional or social dialects experienced by civilians. In particular, how similar is the military-related storytelling lexicon ...

Reclaiming the Place of Translation in English Composition and Technical Communication: Toward Hospitable Writing

Massimo Verzella (PhD, 2016) now Assistant Professor of English at Penn State-Behrend

Abstract: The defining characteristic of a pedagogy informed by philosophical cosmopolitanism is a focus on the dialogic imagination: the coexistence of rival ways of life in the individual experience which incites us to interrogate ...

Energetic Space: The Affect of Literature in a Composition Classroom

Heather M. Steinmann (PhD, 2015) now Assistant Professor of English at Western New Mexico University

Rhetorical and critical theory have both prescribed and proscribed the way scholars view affect. With the exception of Reader Response Theory, literary and rhetorical theory tend to use a more long-term and permanent ...

Writing (Dirty) New Media: Technorhetorical Opacity, Chimeras, and Dirty Ontology

Steven R. Hammer (PhD, 2014) now Assistant Professor of Communication at Saint Joseph's University

There is little doubt that emerging technologies are changing the way we act, interact, create, and consume. Yet despite increased access to these technologies, consumers of technology too seldom interrogate the politics, ...

Carl Sagan's Cosmos: The Rhetorical Construction of Popular Science Mythology

Karen J. Sorensen (PhD, 2013) now Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program at Winona State University

Using Carl Sagan's Cosmos as a case study, this dissertation explores the intersection of science with popular culture and builds a new framework for rhetorically analyzing popular science programming. The arguments and ...