English Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2766
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Item Modeling Wise Angers Online: Generation Z Activists and Their Digital Rhetorics of Feminist Rage(2023) Starr, Brittany Noelle Schoedel; Enoch, Jessica; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Modeling Wise Angers Online: Generation Z Activists and Their Digital Rhetorics of Feminist Rage” works at the nexus of feminist theory, digital media studies, and rhetoric to investigate how teen and young adult activists use 21st century social media technologies to challenge the sexist, racist, ageist, and ableist anger norms that disenfranchise young women in the public sphere. Each chapter theorizes what I call a “wise anger” strategy that its principal subject deploys to generate rhetorical agency for angry girl activists and change oppressive anger norms. The activists I examine are Greta Thunberg, Thandiwe Abdullah, and Shina Novalinga. While their causes range from the climate crisis to racial justice and Indigenous rights, and their primary platforms in my case studies are Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, respectively, they all make innovative, strategic use of digital affordances to reframe young women’s anger in public discourse. Examining datasets I compiled from the activists’ social media posts between 2018-2022, I use grounded theory and rhetorical analysis to identify patterns in the anger expressions in the multimodal, multilayered posts. I read the patterns through feminist and Black feminist theories of oppressive anger norms (Jaggar, Ahmed, Traister, Chemaly, Lorde, Cooper, Judd, Collins), cultural rhetorical frameworks (Powell et al.; Karetak, Tester, and Tagalik) and youth activist rhetorical frameworks (Applegarth, Hesford, Taft, Dingo). This dissertation is premised on the understanding that emotions have a biological basis, but are constructed socially, rhetorically, and culturally and thus tend to be scripted in ways that reproduce asymmetrical relations of power (Aristotle, Dixon, Fine, Gross, Harrington, Koerber). Ultimately, I develop a theory of wise anger as an angry response to injustice that is intelligent, informed, constructive, justice-oriented, hope-driven, rational, reasonable, and moral. The wise anger these youth activists model through their digital rhetorics on social media is part of a genealogy of feminist rage that envisions and enacts a more inclusive, more livable world.Item CONTAINER TECHNOLOGIES AS LOGISTICAL INFRASTRUCTURE: HOW MARIE KONDO, THE CONTAINER STORE, HOLLINGER BOXES, AND DOCKER SHAPE OUR WORLD(2021) Bickoff, Kyle; Kirschenbaum, Matthew; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is situated at the intersection of digital studies, critical information studies, and cultural studies—I argue that containers undergird the logistical infrastructures of modern capitalism and social life, and they shape the way we think. By understanding our world through this framework, we can apply the perspective to understand problems we face in memory institutions, cloud computing, the retail sector, the culture industry, and even in the ongoing global pandemic, COVID-19. The first chapter considers physical containers, with a focus on the ‘Hollinger box’ (an omnipresent cardboard storage box at memory institutions), which has a design history rooted in World War II and the US’s fight against fascism. The second chapter focuses on Docker, a digital container system, which accelerates containers in cloud computing—I present a protohistory of digital containerization in computing history and look to the role of speed to accelerate information and global capital. The third chapter locates its discussion at a retail site, The Container Store, which facilitates consumerism and the commodification of containment. The fourth chapter looks to Marie Kondo and her KonMari Method. Kondo’s ‘joy’ is rooted in consumer culture, individualism, and storage in containers; her ‘tidying festivals’ are celebrations of capitalism. By tracing the interconnected histories behind these container systems, the dissertation demonstrates how the logic of containerization becomes embedded in our memory institutions, digital technologies, retail systems, and consumer culture. Containers in our society are subsumed by preexisting systems in capitalism: logistics and consumerism, in particular. Container technologies play a central role in our logistical infrastructures: wielded properly, containers hold the power to help us resolve many of our most pressing problems, and they can help us to improve the way we allocate resources equitably, rather than the reverse. But containers do not afford us a quick fix—rather, they offer us insight and a framework to understand the world we live in. Containers, when understood as key to the logistical infrastructure that undergird modern life, offer us the tools to reorganize our world and build it into something better.Item Towards a Theory of Transmedial Immersion(2020) Frew, Kathryn Kaczmarek; Kraus, Kari; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Immersion names a physical, mental, and emotional state in which narrative can take control over a reader. Traditional theories of immersion, rooted in the metaphors of enchantment and transportation, assume that the boundaries of the text constitute the boundaries of the reader’s engagement with the story. In other words, if you close the book, immersion ends. Transmedia narratives, such as the Matrix franchise, challenge these assumptions because the story moves across media boundaries. By putting theories from disciplines such as psychology, cognitive science, narratology, and media studies in conversation and testing them against case studies of transmedia narratives, I propose a new theory of transmedial immersion that accommodates all narratives, particularly those crossing media boundaries. Transmedial immersion is the phenomenological experience of a narrative by which the features of the storyworld, characters, and plot become the primary focus of the reader/viewer/player’s consciousness. This immersion bleeds beyond the boundaries of the medium and narrative experience, allowing it to be individual or communal. As I show through a reading of the interaction of print text, augmented reality, and digital narrative in The Ice-Bound Concordance, transmedial immersion relies on distributed, rather than focused, attention, and embraces the materiality and hypermediacy of the reading/viewing/playing experience. Contrary to assumed effortlessness, transmedial immersion requires cognitive effort as readers collate and assemble all the aspects of the narrative. For example, players of the alternate reality games DUST and The Tessera use cognitive blending (as described by Mark Turner) to blur the ontological boundaries of fiction and reality, demonstrated in their use of metalepsis. Finally, transmedial immersion allows the narrative to be simultaneously enjoyed and critiqued, an approach Alexis Lothian calls “critical fandom.” The theory explains how Harry Potter fans reacted to the Fantastic Beasts movies by embracing Newt Scamander as an unlikely hero while raising concerns about cultural appropriation and queer representation. This theory of transmedial immersion not only provides a framework for understanding narrative engagement in the new media landscape, it also prompts literary scholars to reexamine how their assumptions about the process of reading, viewing, and playing texts in a single medium inform their criticism.Item Electracy in Praxis: Pedagogical Relays for an Undergraduate Writing Curriculum(2016) Geary, Thomas Michael; Logan, Shirley W.; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The paradigm shift from traditional print literacy to the postmodern fragmentation, nonlinearity, and multimodality of writing for the Internet is realized in Gregory L. Ulmer’s electracy theory. Ulmer’s open invitation to continually invent the theory has resulted in the proliferation of relays, or weak models, by electracy advocates for understanding and applying the theory. Most relays, however, remain theoretical rather than practical for the writing classroom, and electracy instruction remains rare, potentially hindering the theory’s development. In this dissertation, I address the gap in electracy praxis by adapting, developing, and remixing relays for a functional electracy curriculum with first-year writing students in the Virginia Community College System as the target audience. I review existing electracy relays, pedagogical applications, and assessment practices – Ulmer’s and those of electracy advocates – before introducing my own relays, which take the form of modules. My proposed relay modules are designed for adaptability with the goals of introducing digital natives to the logic of new media and guiding instructors to possible implementations of electracy. Each module contains a justification, core competencies and learning outcomes, optional readings, an assignment with supplemental exercises, and assessment criteria. My Playlist, Transduction, and (Sim)ulation relays follow sound backward curricular design principles and emphasize core hallmarks of electracy as juxtaposed alongside literacy. This dissertation encourages the instruction of new media in Ulmer’s postmodern apparatus in which student invention via the articulation of fragments from various semiotic modes stems from and results in new methodologies for and understandings of digital communication.