MA THESIS

Summer 2009

Rory Lee This project extends Ellen Barton's 1997 historical study of the first twenty CCCC Chairs' Addresses where she examines what she calls "a tradition of [...] 'evocative gestures'—the articulation of broad concerns in the field" (235). In her analysis, Barton demonstrates two themes: (1) accordant gestures about the complexity of teaching composition and the service this teaching provides to students and the community and (2) conflicting gestures about how best to represent the field through research and where the field should be housed within the academy. Since her study, there have been eleven new Addresses and thus an exigence for additional research. This project responds to that exigence by analyzing the past eleven CCCC Chairs' Addresses, starting with Cynthia Selfe's in 1998 and concluding with Cheryl Glenn's in 2008. The results from this research show the emergence of three new themes in gestures different from the two Barton identifies: recurring gestures about (1) literacy, (2) our stake in writing, and (3) diversity. This project makes two significant contributions to our understanding of our own history: (1) using a coherent set of texts, it maps the important topics in our field over the last eleven years, and (2) using Barton's themes as an historical context, it illustrates how the focus in our field has changed since the inception of the CCCC Chair's Address in 1977.

Natalie Szymanski
Thesis: Understanding the Journals That Write Us: Exploring the Relationship Between the Field of Composition and the Subdiscipline of Computers and Composition
Link: http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-07132009-124303/unrestricted/SzymanskiNThesis2009.pdf
Abstract: This project works to explore the relationship between the larger field of composition and the smaller subdiscipline of computers and composition by examining articles published in College Composition and Communication (CCC) and Computers and Composition (C&C) over the last 25 years. Based on a taxonomy of article types and topics for the technology-related articles published in both journals from 1983 to 2008, this study identifies seven major findings concerning the relationship between computers and composition and the larger field focused on. The first five findings highlight differences between the journals, the next one discuss a similarity between them, and the final one explores a new development in C&C exclusively. These findings include the: (1) journals' overall (publication) relationship; (2) ways both participate in a “sticky Theory-Practice dance” (Grimm 266); (3) shifting leadership patterns (on field-related topics) between the journals ; (4) ways each connect computers and composition work to other subdiscipline; (5) the patterns of topics in each journal, especially where there are absences; (6) their shared display of programmatic stasis and (slow) increase in treatment of professional topics; and (7) the slow and nuanced development of C&C's treatment of article types and topics. This study then concludes by putting these findings in dialogue with current assertions about the relationship between CCC and C&C to explore how they both align and challenge previous assumptions.

Fall 2008

Rebecca Skinner
Thesis: Reader/Writer/Text: Katherine Hayles and 21st Century Composition
Link: http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses_1/available/etd-11102008-154545/unrestricted/SkinnerRThesis.pdf
Abstract: An examination of three major works by Katherine Hayles: How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics (1999); Writing Machines (2002); and My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts (2005). These deal mainly with the materiality of reader/writer/text; formations of identity and subjectivity in the digital age; and with the history of Information theory as it relates to epistemologies of the posthuman. I argue that the key terms: materiality, subjectivity, and epistemology, found in these books, are crucial to understanding the digital revolution, and that Katherine Hayles' work is invaluable to 21st century Composition studies, as we seek to orient ourselves in the landscape of electronically mediated discourse. To illustrate this I apply these terms as a critical lens to different instantiations of a refereed journal: Computers and Composition (print; Volume 23.1: March 2006) and Computers and Composition Online (Spring 2006) and show where Hayles' ideas appear or do not appear across these platforms. I look at the contrast between in these examples of discourse about, and with computer mediated forms. I conclude that Katherine Hayles gives us new ways of seeing these key terms, and that they can be used to understand and explore the digitally networked territories that Composition studies will inhabit in the 21st century, also called the era of the "posthuman."

Summer 2008

Ryan Hoyle
Thesis: Identifying with Superman: Addressing Superman's Career Through Burkean Identification
Link: http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-05092008-144902/unrestricted/HoyleRThesis.pdf
Abstract: This article explores the history of Superman to offer commentary on the changing nature of Burkean identification across distinct historical periods. Beginning with the creation of Superman in 1938, I explore Superman's Golden, Marvel, and Contemporary Age revisions addressing his construction of ethos as a means to establish grounds for identification.

Kelly D. Israel
Thesis: Tracing Kairos: The Modern Applicability of St. Augustine
Link: http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-05122008-111923/unrestricted/IsraelKThesis.pdf
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to test the applicability of ancient texts to contemporary concerns. More specifically, it seeks to determine the relevance of Christianity's forefathers today. This thesis examines the rhetorical situation of Augustine's On Christian Doctrine and that of Jesus Among Other Gods by Ravi Zacharias to determine if the two bear similarities when tested by one framework of analysis, which is derived herein by an analysis of the concept of the modern rhetorical situation and of the classical concept of kairos.

Toby McCall
Thesis: A Burkean Analysis on the Relationship of the Image to Player Motivation in First-Person Shooter Games

MA PORTFOLIO

Spring 2009

Emily Baker
Portfolio: Retroflection: A Portfolio in Reflection
Link: http://english.fsu.edu/library/ebaker
Abstract: This portfolio demonstrates competency in and attention to rhetorical situation as an umbrella concept under which fall audience, genre, modality, and design. It was imperative that each project was not only grammatically correct, but also represented a sampling of audiences, genres, and modalities. Each project is presented in multiple modalities (print and electronic, with images and without) and represents a variety of genres (academic, professional, business writing). Further, I chose to present "Retroflection" electronically in order to utilize the web as a medium that allows for visual design. As a result I was confronted with new rhetorical challenges, many of which I had only previously understood in theory. This portfolio provided a perfect venue for me to put theory into practice as I explored the constraints of the web as an interface, as well as the affordances allowed through its interactivity.