English Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2766
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Item The Dialectical Theory of Art in Kenneth Burke's Essays and Book Reviews of the Early 1920s and its Combination of the Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre and the Structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss(2014) Clarkson, Bruce T.; Harrison, Regina; Lin, Jing; Comparative Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I argue that a dialectical theory of art is developed by Kenneth Burke in the first half of the 1920s that brings together through its own terms and principles two opposing philosophies that would not come into existence in themselves until the 1940s and 1950s respectively: the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre and the structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss. The development of this dialectical theory of art begins in 1920 with several of Burke's book reviews, including his first, "Axiomatics." It then continues with further book reviews and then essays, also including his first, through the middle of 1925, when it is completed by the twin essays "Psychology of Form" and "The Poetic Process." The dialectical theory of art that emerges from this series of works possesses four main parts. These are consciousness, intentionality, action, and true art. Each part, in turn, consists of two opposing subdivisions that are meant to be combined and transcended. They are, in line with the four parts above, creativity / form, originality / communication, art-emotion / artistry, and art's advancement / beauty. These divisions and subdivisions are highly integrated and function to explain Burke's major position on how true art is produced and why it possesses an absolute value for universal judgment. My goal in establishing this dialectical theory is fourfold: to provide a framework for better understanding the early essays and book reviews as a coherent and unified whole, to revalue the 1920s as Burke's first important theoretical period, to provide good reason for bringing existentialism and structuralism forward into studies about Burke, and to offer the dialectical theory itself as the foundation of Burke's later theoretical developments and, hence, as a theory and model that may be useful for acquiring a fuller understanding of his theories after the 1920s, which span over half-a-century and have become of interest to multiple fields of study.Item Neutered Rhetoric: Representations of Orators in the Long Eighteenth Century(2013) Black, Andrew; Chico, Tita; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation tracks representations of orators in a constellation of British texts throughout the long eighteenth century, ranging from plays, novels, and poems to religious, scientific, and pedagogical texts. These colorful and persuasive orators are linked to the disruptive power of mass persuasion, the slipperiness of the spoken word, and the apparent failure of rhetoric as a discipline. From the order of the Restoration to its re-establishment after the Glorious Revolution to the emergence of a Georgian polite culture characterized by its moderation, privileged stakeholders announced both a current and future stability that orators continually threaten. My chapters focus on four discourses in which real and fictional orators play a central role: experimental philosophy, attacks on Methodism, Alexander Pope's poetry, and Scottish Enlightenment rhetorical treatises. I locate an imperative to limit the potential power of the orator, which echoes a general cultural move to "neuter" rhetoric of its affective capabilities and to regulate the troubling instabilities of language. Neutered Rhetoric interrogates the traditional critical narrative of British rhetoric in the period by considering the resurgence of rhetorical theory in the 1750s as both a reaction to and a revision of the vexed cultural status of the orator as presented in literary texts. In charting literary representations of orators and their relationship to the shift in rhetoric from an oral to a written discipline, I present a new avenue for exploring the changing shape and influence of rhetorical theory during the period. I argue that representations of orators - whether real or fictional - can be read as theories about the nature of rhetoric, its inherent value and the problems of its effects. Whenever orators speak, they both represent and provoke cultural responses to rhetoric: its tradition, propriety, integrity, and future in a polite society.Item Visualizing Transmedia Networks: Links, Paths and Peripheries(2012) Ruppel, Marc; Kirschenbaum, Matthew G.; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)`Visualizing Transmedia Networks: Links, Paths and Peripheries' examines the increasingly complex rhetorical intersections between narrative and media (`old' and `new') in the creation of transmedia fictions, loosely defined as multisensory and multimodal stories told extensively across a diverse media set. In order to locate the `language' of transmedia expressions, this project calls attention to the formally locatable network structures placed by transmedia producers in disparate media like film, the print novel and video games. Using network visualization software and computational metrics, these structures can be used as data to graph these fictions for both quantitative and qualitative analysis. This study also, however, examines the limits to this approach, arguing that the process of transremediation, where redundancy and multiformity take precedence over networked connection, forms a second axis for understanding transmedia practices, one equally bound to the formation of new modes of meaning and literacy.Item A Longitudinal Study of Person-Culture Fit: Convergence of Mental Models(2012) Zhu, Lin; Liu, Meina; Comparative Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The person-environment fit hypothesis argues that the match or fit between an individual and the environment predicts positive adaptation outcomes for the person. Unfortunately, the person-environment fit hypothesis has not received consistent empirical support in the context of cross-cultural adaptation due to lack of a clear conceptualization of fit and an appropriate measure of fit. This dissertation proposes to use the convergence of mental models, a dynamic constructivist approach, to conceptualize person-culture fit, and to use it as a viable mechanism for understanding cross-cultural adaptation processes. A cross-lagged structural equation model was developed to examine how cultural adaptability and host language proficiency lead to positive adaptation outcomes through the mediating roles of mental model convergence and mental model change. Participants were 126 sojourning Chinese students studying in the U.S. and 30 American students and professors who were friends of the Chinese participants. Data were collected from the Chinese participants at two points in time: shortly after they arrived in the U.S. and three months after the first round of data collection. Based on results from a pilot study, participants were asked to rate the dissimilarities between 10 concepts relevant to cross-cultural adaptation. An index of person-culture fit was generated by comparing each Chinese sojourner's mental space with the aggregated mental space of domestic American participants. In addition, the Chinese participants reported their level of cultural adaptability, English proficiency, amount of intercultural communication with host nationals, and psychological wellbeing. Results from the study showed that Chinese sojourners' psychological wellbeing declined about three months after their arrival, which is consistent with the U-curve model of culture shock. Results indicated that cultural adaptability affected cultural adjustment. Specifically, cultural adaptability affected the development of host identification and was positively related to the degree of mental model change. English proficiency affected cultural adjustment through its direct positive effect on the amount of intercultural communication and psychological wellbeing. Finally, person-culture cognitive fit had a positive influence on host identification and psychological wellbeing. The interpretations and implications of the results, the contributions and limitations of the study, and directions for future research, were discussed.Item Science in the Public Eye: Communicating and Selling Science Through Images(2012) Gigante, Maria Elena; Fahnestock, Jeanne; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Scientific visuals designed to capture the attention of nonscientist audiences appear everywhere — from magazine covers to Internet blogs, from billboards to the Discovery Channel — and yet they have not received the critical attention they deserve. Situated at the crossroads of the rhetoric of science, communication studies, visual design theory, and the still emerging field of visual rhetoric, this dissertation seeks to shed light on the persuasive function of visuals in communicating science to non-experts. Occupying a grey area between scientific visualizations and art, the visuals used to communicate science to nonscientists should be classified, I argue, as scientific advertisements. Their purpose is to sell a positive and supportive attitude toward science, and since this need for support has existed since the scientific revolution, scientific advertisements have existed in different guises at least since the seventeenth century. Their form, however, differs, depending on the available technology and modes of representation. In this dissertation I explore how such images as frontispieces, portraits, magazine covers, and aestheticized visualizations have contributed to the legitimization of science across temporal and cultural boundaries by influencing public attitudes towards scientists and their research. This project addresses the concern surrounding the public's current disengagement from science by considering whether science can be sold visually in a more responsible way.Item Emotional Evidence, Personal Testimony, and Public Debate: A Case Study of the Post-Abortion Movement(2010) Brown, Heather; Fahnestock, Jeanne; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates a new movement within the abortion debates in the United States known as the Post-Abortion Movement. Bypassing the stalemate between pro-life and pro-choice, activists in this movement focus on the potential psychological trauma of abortion, and in the last twenty years, they have argued for their views in different forums, grounding their case in the personal testimony of women who have undergone abortions. They have emphasized the validity of their narratives in defining their experience over the authority of medical professionals. This project assembles an archive of this movement, from its early advocacy literature to its professional discourse in journals, to its proliferating presence on websites. While offering a case study of how a movement gets started and has an impact on the public's perception of an issue, the Post-Abortion Movement and its tactics also raise important questions in rhetorical theory concerning the role of personal testimony in arguments. In five chapters, this dissertation gives the history of the Post-Abortion Movement and uses rhetorical theory to analyze its tactics. Its most effective tactic has been the creation of a new diagnostic category: "post-abortion syndrome." In a case study of advocacy, professional, and online genres, this project trace the rhetorical development of this concept and show how stakeholders use women's first-person accounts of their abortion experiences--women whom they identify as "post-abortive." This dissertation argues that Post-Abortion Movement supporters use personal testimonies as both a source of evidence for social science claims in policy arguments and a force for building a community of advocates. While contributing to the growing body of scholarship on narrative and the rhetoric of health and medicine, this dissertation shows how the Post-Abortion Movement's persistent casting of abortion as a potentially negative--rather than therapeutic or liberating--event has significantly influenced the current debate on women's responses to abortion.