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  Rhetoric

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Courses

Graduates of the Rhetoric Ph.D. program have pursued many different projects for their dissertation research. Here is a list of Rhetoric program graduates since 1989, with links to their dissertation abstracts. 

• Jennifer Andrus (2008). The “Excited Utterance” and the Rhetorical Agent: How Language Ideology Shapes Agency in the American Law of Evidence.
• Erin Friess (2008). The User-Centered Design Process: Novice Designers’ Use of Evidence in Designing from Data.
• Neeta Bhasin (2007). Nation and Ethnicity in Everyday Lives of Immigrants: Toward a Rhetorical Approach to Identity.
• Craig O. Stewart (2006). Orders of Discourse in the Science-Based Controversy Over “Reparative Therapy” for Homosexuality.
  
• Danielle Zawodny Wetzel (2005). A Temporal Approach to Organizational Rhetoric: A Case Study of the Pittsburgh Citizen Police Review Board.
  
• Peter Cramer (2005). A Medium-Based Rhetorical Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of the Brooklyn Museum Controversy.
  
• Susan Lawrence (2005). Accounting for the Past: Memory, Responsibility, and The Political Motivation Requirement in the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission Amnesty Hearings .
  
• Terri Palmer (2005). The Rhetoric of Probability Mathematics.
• Susan Gilpin (2004). Heuretic Engagement: Everyday Talk about Social Issues.
  
• Susan Hagan (2003). Visual/Verbal Meaning Collaboration: A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Communication Design.
  
• Gil Wilkes (2003). From Rupture to Closure: How Communicators Resolve Signal From Noise.
  
• Chris Eisenhart (2003). Waco Decade: A Rhetorical Study of Commemorative Discourse.
  
• Martha S. Cheng (2003). Ethos and Narrative In An Online Classroom Chat.
  
• Jeff Collins (2003). Variations in Written English: Characterizing the Rhetorical Language Choices in the Brown Corpus of Texts.
  
• Susan Swan (2002). Rhetorical Praxis for Social Change.
  
• Chris Werry (2002). Rhetoric and Reflexivity in Chomskyan and Cognitive Linguistics.
  
• Jay Gordon (2001). Appropriating Behavioral and Cognitive Psychology in the Study and Teaching of Written Composition: Problems And Possibilities.
  
• Sean Zdenek (2001). Passing for Human: Rhetoric, Software Agency, and Communicatively Competent Machines.
  
• Kenneth Zuroski (2001). The Rhetoricity of Manufacture: Rhetorical Practices at Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
  
• Amanda Jane Young (2000). Patients as Problem Solvers: Toward a Rhetoric of Agency in Healthcare.
  
• Susan Harkness Regli (2000). Electronic Mail for Asynchronous Collaboration: Comprehension Effects of Context Representation.
  
• Priscilla Kelly (2000). Audience Theory and its Treatment in American Composition Textbooks 1850-1920.
  
• Thomas Joseph Hajduk (1999). The Effect of External Representation in Computer-Mediated versus Face-to-Face Collaborative Peer Review on More and Less Experienced Writers.
  
• Jennifer D. Flach (1999). Making a Difference with Difference: A Study of Mutual Situated Meaning Construction through Intercultural Interpretation and Inquiry.
  
• Patricia Gail Wojahn (1999).Comunication in Peer Reviews: Effects of Computer Interfaces, Problem Equivocality, and Initial Annotations.
  
• Joel Bloch (1998). Contrastive Rhetoric in American English and Chinese: A Study of Intertextual Knowledge in Different Discourses.
  
• Loel Kim Robinson (1998). Students Respond to Teacher Comments: A Comparison of Online Voice and Written Modalities.
  
• Margaret McCaffrey (1998). Constructing Gender through Representation: The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) of World War II.
  
• Mark Werner (1998). The Collaborative Landscape of a Software Development Project. 
  
• N. Ann Chenoweth (1997). Reading for Revision: A Comparison of Teachers' and Students' Judgments. 
  
• Patricia L. Dunmire (1996). Constructing a Projected Event: A Critical Linguistic Analysis of the 1990 Persian Gulf Conflict.
  
• David Fleming (1996). The Rhetoric of Design: Argument, Story, Picture, and Talk in a Student Design Project.
  
• Christine Murphy Silk (1996). Narrative in Rhetorical Argument.
  
• Karen Rossi Schnakenberg (1996). Aristotle's Rhetoric in American Rhetorical Scholarship 1950-1965. 
  
• Eliza Beth Littleton (1995). Emerging Rhetorical Knowledge for Writing: The Effect of Audience-Presence on Five- Through Nine-Year-Olds' Speech.
  
• Lili Fox Velez (1995). Interpreting and Writing in the Laboratory: A Study of Novice Biologists as Novice Rhetors. 
  
• Philippa Jane Benson (1994). Problems in Picturing Text.
  
• Maureen Goggin (1994). The Shaping of a Discipline: An Historical Study of the Authorizing Role of Professional Journals in Rhetoric and Composition, 1950-1990.
  
• Elenore Ann Long (1994). The Rhetoric of Literate Social Action: Mentors Negotiating Intercultural Images and Literacy. 
  
• Cynthia A. Cochran (1993). Rhetorical Relevance in Reading and Writing.
  
• Maureen A. Mathison (1993). Authoring the Critique: Taking Critical Stances on Disciplinary Texts. 
  
• Ann Blakeslee (1992). Inventing Scientific Discourse: Dimensions of Rhetorical Knowledge in Physics.
  
• Lorraine Higgins (1992). Argument as Construction: A Framework and Method.
  
• Charles Hill (1992). Thinking Through Controversy: The Effect of Writing on the Argument Evaluation Processes of First-Year College Students.
  
• Bradley Mehlenbacher (1992). Rhetorical Moves in Scientific Proposal Writing: A Case Study from Biochemical Engineering. 
  
• Rebecca Burnett (1991). Conflict in the Collaborative Planning of Coauthors: How Substantive Conflict, Representation of Task, and Dominance Relate to High-Quality Documents.
  
• John Carson (1991). Writing Across the Business Disciplines at Robert Morris College: A Case Study.
  
• Linda Levine (1991). The Argument on Language and The Language of Argument: Kenneth Burke and Wilbur Samuel Howell.
  
• Wayne Campbell Peck (1991). Community Advocacy: Composing for Action.
  
• Joseph Petraglia (1991). Exploring the Effects of Realism on Arousal and Rhetorical Representation.
  
• David Wallace (1991). From Intention to Text: Developing, Implementing, and Judging Intentions for Writing. 
  
• Sarah Dennis Eldridge (1990). Discovery by Design: A Writing Course for Visual Artists.
  
• Stuart Greene (1990). Writing from Sources: Authority in Text and Task.
  
• Michael E. Palmquist (1990). The Lexicon of the Classroom: Language and Learning in Writing Classrooms.
  
• Wendie Wulff (1990). Writer and Graphic Designer Collaboration: A Case Study of Process and Product. 
  
• John Ackerman (1989). Reading and Writing in the Academy: A Comparison of Two Disciplines.
  
• M. Diane Langston (1989). Engagement in Writing. 
  
• Barbara Sitko (1989). Writers' Cognitive and Decision Processes: Revising After Feedback. 
  
• Richard Young (1989). Cognitive Processes in Argumentation: An Exploratory Study of Management Consulting Expertise.