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Item Embargo Ender(East Carolina University, May 2025) Bradley, Onyx S.C.The first five chapters of a Southern Gothic NA novel titled "Ender." The main character struggles to reconcile what they believe is right with what their family believes is right and morally acceptable to do with magic.Item Open Access Voices of Resistance: Using Indigenous Young Adult Literature as a Pathway for Decolonization(East Carolina University, May 2025) Froemel, AlyssaThis thesis explores the role of Indigenous futurism and Indigenous Young Adult Literature (IYAL) in decolonizing academic and creative spaces that are dominated by Euro-American control. The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline, To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose, and Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger are all powerful stories of Indigenous resistance that subvert traditional colonial power structures through their depictions of Indigenous epistemologies, knowledge, tribalography, and agency. This thesis utilizes an Indigenous conceptual framework that is centered around the following questions: Is settler colonialism ethical? How does settler colonialism harm Indigenous agency and epistemologies? How do Indigenous epistemologies empower Indigenous agency? IYAL is a powerful tool that allows authors to write back against colonization. This study will further analyze how canonical YA, science fiction, and fantasy perpetuate themes of settler colonialism that seek to eliminate or omit the Native. IYAL allows both Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers to confront colonialism utilizing tools discussed in this thesis, like syncretic multiculturalism and Tribal Critical Race Theory.Item Open Access Identifying and Applying Sound Design Principles for Multimodal Content Creation: Analyzing Professional Content Creators’ Adobe Instructional Videos(East Carolina University, May 2025) Kao, YvonneIncorporating sounds in multimodal compositions is an essential skill to develop. The subfield of study that involves the rhetoric of sounds has several names, including aural rhetorics, aurality, sonic composition, and sound studies. Instructional videos (i.e., how-to videos) often use sounds—any sounds—to professionally communicate, such as educating non-expert audiences in how-to-do tasks. My research project analyzes several of these types of instructional videos, ones from members of a professional content creator community, Adobe, for principles of multimodal composition and professional communication, with an emphasis on sound usage. By analyzing what we hear, we make meaning and communicate. It is also important to analyze how people utilize other types of sounds in conjunction with visual and textual elements. This interplay, with the goal of a well-balanced multimodal composition that communicates on a professional level, is where this research study is situated. In this study, I investigate how these Adobe professionals integrate sounds into their works and how audiences might interpret the messages from these sounds. This is “sound design,” which I define as the rhetorical decisions that content creators make about how to use sounds to communicate their goals to their audiences. To inform this set of principles and decisions, I analyze how sounds function rhetorically with the visual and textual elements to create content in a specific setting. The implications of this analysis will inform a set of principles that could be used by content creators. My primary research question is this: How do members of the professional Adobe-based content creator community rhetorically use the sound design principles from my proposed model in creating multimodal instructional videos? These sound design principles are derived from a mixture of physics-related, musical, and colloquial concepts that intersect across these disciplines and all pertain to sound: volume, speed, clarity, pitch, and modulation. Every component of sound design must be considered on some level, just as visual and textual designs must be crafted with care for composition efficacy. This presentation will report on the results of this sound design analysis that have implications for rhetoric, TPC, multimodal composition, and pedagogy. As multimodal compositions and other types of non-traditional essays become both more prevalent and more popular, I argue that it is important to gain a better understanding of how different modes of communication, particularly aural aspects, function rhetorically in digital environments. The sound design principles function as a tool for teaching how to analyze sounds and as a tool for learning how to analyze sounds in multimodal compositions.Item Open Access UNVEILING RACIAL DYNAMICS: BLAIWOC TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION WITHIN WHITE-DOMINANT ONLINE RECOVERY SUPPORT SPACES(East Carolina University, May 2025) Blackmon, Codi ReneeThis dissertation investigates how Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and Women of Color (BLAIWOC) navigate and respond to racism in predominantly white online recovery support spaces (ORSS). Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) and a trauma-informed lens, this study introduces a Critical Race Trauma-Informed Ethic (CRTIE) to guide technical communicators in addressing systemic racism within white-dominant environments, emphasizing six core principles: (1) recognition of racial trauma, (2) trauma-informed practices, (3) centering marginalized voices, (4) critical reflection and education, (5) action-oriented strategies, and (6) transparency and accountability. The study examines the racialized dynamics within ORSS and highlights the strategies BLAIWOC employ to challenge dominant narratives and advocate for racial equity. Through a multi-method approach that combines autoethnography, surveys, and interviews, the research explores how BLAIWOC act as technical communicators, bringing specialized knowledge about race, racism, and recovery to these spaces. The findings show that, despite the intended purpose of these spaces to provide community, connection, and healing, BLAIWOC participants often encounter microaggressions, cultural erasure, and the minimization of race as an "outside issue," leading to emotional disengagement and the creation of BIPOC-specific spaces. Their contributions, rooted in lived experience and collective knowledge, serve as vital resources for reshaping recovery discourse and practices. By amplifying the voices of BLAIWOC and situating their experiences at the center of analysis, this dissertation not only critiques the racism embedded in recovery spaces but also proposes CRTIE strategies for fostering racial equity and cultivating more inclusive and supportive online communities. Beyond recovery spaces, the insights from this project have broader implications for technical and professional communication (TPC), demonstrating how applying CRT and trauma-informed principles can advance social justice initiatives across various contexts. Through this work, I argue that technical communicators have a unique opportunity to disrupt systems of oppression by integrating a CRTIE framework into their respective environments, fostering more racially equitable and trauma-informed spaces for marginalized communities.Item Open Access Police Rhetorics and Rhetorical Self-Awareness, and Their Contributions to Cultural Contexts of Policing in the Higher Education Campus Setting(East Carolina University, May 2025) Sugg, Jason LeeIt is widely accepted that the notion of occupational cultures exists in various forms. Arguably, highly organized professions and workplaces are some of the most encultured spaces in terms of contextual occupational cultures. Not least among them is the policing profession. Inclusive to notions of occupational culture is the idea that occupational culture exists in a manner that is driven by discourses, contexts, understandings, and meanings that are relevant to those who occupy those occupational spaces. The purpose of this qualitative study, backgrounded by a cultural rhetorics lens, is to explore and articulate the notion of “police rhetorics” as a particularized discourse practice amongst police officers and police agencies. This study also seeks to determine police officer rhetorical self-awareness levels and conclude contributory factors of police rhetorics and rhetorical self-awareness to the contextual understanding of policing in the higher education setting. Because campus policing is relatively understudied this study focuses on campus police officers currently employed in the University of North Carolina (UNC) System, of which there are 17 separate institutions, and more than 450 police officers employed. The study consists of one-on-one interviews with currently employed campus police officers of varying years of experience and varying levels of leadership roles. The results largely indicate a high level of recognition amongst the officers of police as well as a high level of rhetorical self-awareness. The results also indicate a general high-level understanding of how their rhetorical positionality impacts the cultural contextual understanding of the police role on a campus of higher education. Takeaways from the study include discussion and conclusions made about police officers’ roles and recognition of their rhetorical discursive practices, and self-recognition of the impacts of their roles in how policing is contextualized in a campus community’s cultural perspectives. Cultural perspectives and understanding are impacted by police interactions, behaviors, and discourse, and influences how policing is understood in that community. Conversely, cultural contexts of policing inform police interactions, behaviors, and discourse. The resulting exchange of perception and rhetorical impacts is supported by cultural rhetorics application in that cultural rhetorics recognizes that rhetoric is culture and culture is rhetoric.Item Open Access Under God, Quite Divisible: Rhetoric, Race, and Multicultural Belonging in Non-Denominational Christian Churches(East Carolina University, May 2025) Partin, Amanda Patterson PattersonThis dissertation examines the rhetoric of multicultural belonging in non-denominational Christian churches, analyzing how race, faith, and institutional discourse intersect to shape inclusion and exclusion within these spaces. While many churches position themselves as racially diverse and welcoming, their rhetorical and structural frameworks often center Whiteness, reinforcing systemic barriers to full inclusion. Through qualitative interviews and rhetorical analysis, this study interrogates how congregants—particularly people of color and their marital allies—experience, navigate, and contest these dynamics within faith communities. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, Biblical Critical Theory, religious rhetorical studies, and scholarship on multiculturalism, this research explores how language, power, and ideology operate in shaping churchgoers' sense of belonging. It highlights the tensions between performative diversity and substantive inclusion, illustrating how multicultural rhetoric can simultaneously invite and marginalize. This study also considers the ways congregants work to create spaces of belonging through counter storytelling, advocacy, and community-building efforts, pushing churches toward deeper racial and cultural inclusivity. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that true multicultural belonging requires more than racial representation; it necessitates a fundamental reimagining of leadership structures, theological interpretations, and institutional practices. By bridging scholarship on race, rhetoric, and religion, this work contributes to broader conversations about faith-based racial reconciliation and the ongoing struggle for equity within Christian communitiesItem Embargo The Knight of Red and White(East Carolina University, December 2024) Black, Nathan JamesThe Knight of Red and White is a work of creative fiction. This portion comprises the first seven chapters of a longer novel-length story. The story features aspects of a classic high adventure tale with elements of political intrigue in a fantasy setting. The narrative centers around themes of religion’s positive and negative influences on society, examining how religion comes to shape nations and history. This story is told from multiple perspectives in the third person and gathers a collection of characters from many different walks of society. From royals to knights, to servants, diplomats, revered clergymen, and street musicians: the story attempts to show the world from every angle and every opinion on faith or the lack thereof. The chapters present a world where faith can be used for great evil and miraculously noble deeds. In this universe religion acts as its magic system, setting a loose analogy to outlooks in our real world. Some characters adhere to faith, some see it as a tool to gain political power, some turn away from it, and others only wish to find a way to survive around it, having no strong feelings one way or another. This story hopes to give rise to discussions about where people find not just answers to universal questions, but where we find confidence and identity through theological and philosophical viewpoints. It seeks to unravel where words turn from personal affirmations to hard-held beliefs, and, by extension, find how beliefs change the destinies of people and the world itself.Item Open Access Mad Women: Grief, Familial Trauma, and Female Rage in Folk Horror(East Carolina University, December 2024) Moroney, StephanieThe film distribution company A24 has produced and distributed several unique films within the folk horror genre. The Witch (2016, dir. Robert Eggers), Midsommar (2019, dir. Ari Aster), and Hereditary (2018, dir. Ari Aster) are examples of contemporary folk horror films that utilize familial trauma as a precursor to the female protagonist’s descent to madness. The elements of folk horror amplify the feelings of isolation and loss of reality, which appear during extreme reactions to grief and trauma. Each protagonist is the eldest or sole daughter within the family structures, extending extra expectations within these roles. These expectations contribute to each protagonist’s descent into madness as they are given to others relentlessly with nothing in return. The element of social cohesion serves to direct the actions of those most vulnerable, specifically vulnerability caused by grief, which creates a loss of familiarity and shattered reality. Examining these protagonists within these three folk horror films exemplifies the harmful nature of expectation and how it draws women into madness. Madness is not simply anger but a culmination of emotions that lead to a drastic loss of self. This thesis serves to use gender theory, trauma theory, and formal analysis of the films to demonstrate the self-destructive burden of keeping a family together during a crisis.Item Open Access Why Flesh? Examining the Power of Flesh in David Cronenberg’s The Fly(East Carolina University, December 2024) Shirley, Lea OliviaThis thesis is an exploration of body horror, specifically how one film’s use of body horror impacts the body and the flesh within the body. “Why Flesh? Examining the Power of Flesh in David Cronenberg’s The Fly is a close-viewing analysis of the film and how Cronenberg’s carefully constructed film allowed for him to isolate the ways in which body horror truly terrifies audiences and forces them to confront themselves. Through the examination of flesh as it is impacted by pregnancy, aging, and chronic illness, The Fly acts as an excellent lens to discuss not only popular themes in body horror, but also get at the root of why they are horrifying.Item Embargo Traps and Other Stories(East Carolina University, July 2024) Tilley, WendyThis selection of four short stories treats low-culture plots, subjects, and storylines, with high-culture rhetorical techniques. Taking as its sources material B-movies, or Portuguese plays from the 16th century, this thesis believes that the distinction between high and low art is nonexistent, another binary created where binaries do not exist. Literature is for, and made of, drunks, prostitutes, and thieves, as much as many honorable people. It is also attempts to be American, in the sense that the plots hint at violence, aberrant sex, and Christianity, the American trinity.Item Embargo Scrumble and Other Stories(East Carolina University, May 2024) Barbee, CassidyThis project finds the liminality that exist between our reality and the magic that can be seen through a fabulist lens. I use my Appalachian upbringing to establish a setting and the stories that I grew up with to bring new meaning to my own experiences. Using the stories of cryptids and magic that I saw during my own childhood, I provide insights that I have connected through the years by using fabulism and lyrical prose. The integration of heavy themes such as trauma and disease that I've witnessed from my adulthood have further stressed the importance of liminality within this collection. These stories are connected through their setting in Appalachia, specifically the mountains North Carolina and West Virigina.Item Embargo The Fragments Between Us(East Carolina University, May 2024) Butler, KaitlinIn The Fragments Between Us, I immerse readers into the lives of Hudson and Emma, two college students who meet by chance in an English class. Each chapter is split between Emma's and Hudson's perspectives, showing fragments of their background and their perspectives. They both come from backgrounds riddled with family and relationship traumas that both repress. Through their developing relationship, readers are shown growth from both Hudson and Emma, through admitting more than they have to anyone, even themselves. Through fragmented flashbacks and confrontations about them, Emma and Hudson fall in love, and give each other the compassion they have never shown themselves. Their pain, their pasts, are mirrored in each other, and they pull each other above water in a way they could never bring themselves to do alone. Two very different people find one other by chance and open each other up to feelings neither of them could have imagined. Emma, a hopeless romantic who believed she could only live vicariously through fiction, and Hudson, who never believed true love existed, meet in the middle and have a chance to build something they never want to let go of. Their trauma and their fear follow them in fragments, but with each other, they just might be able to pick up the pieces and fit those jagged and broken pieces together and move forward.Item Open Access Arthur Miller: A Writer of Tragedy(1967-08) Smith, Phyllis ShuffThe purpose of this study is to prove that Arthur Miller, American playwright, accomplishes his stated aim--the creation of drama similar in purpose and spirit to that of the classical Greeks. This thesis goes a step beyond Miller's statement to maintain that Miller, while achieving his goal, uses the same austere general form that the Greeks employed. Since Miller mentions only one critic of Greek drama by name, H. D. F. Kitto, in his frequent references to the social drama of the Greeks, Professor Kitto's analyses and interpretations of the classical plays are used as the major source for the material on the Greek drama.Item Embargo Deadly Reflection(East Carolina University, 2023-05-09) Fornes, Bradley MDeadly Reflection is a fictional horror novel in which a group of young adults are stalked by a mysterious and sinister entity known as the Old Man, who only appears to them in mirrors or other reflective surfaces. The novel not only focuses on the elements of terror, but also showcases the lives and relationships of the characters the Old Man is menacing. This work aims to break genre conventions by presenting a racially diverse group of characters from differing backgrounds while also showing an understanding of the genre and its necessary conventions. As a work of creative fiction, Deadly Reflection features fully realized characters, a structured plot, and use of carefully crafted prose and descriptions to tell the novel's story.Item Open Access Ubiquitous in Time: Towards a Description of the Supernatural Folklore of Time Travel(East Carolina University, 2023-04-21) Budasoff, AdamThe proliferation of mass-media representations of time travel has, since the late 1800s, created a metatraditional perception that all such variants originated from that selfsame sphere of influence. This has manifested most strongly in the view that prior to H. G. Wells' 1895 novel The Time Machine, notions of time travel and time travelers were not extant. Seeking to prove this belief incorrect, the following thesis charts out an evolutionary pathway for time travel which demonstrates not only strong historical roots within folk traditions of the past, but a very much vibrant and active practice today. The contemporary manifestations analyzed within this work include the time slip phenomenon as reported by first-hand experiencers, ostensive practices inspired by supernatural time travel lore, and a look at the uncanny figure of the time traveler who often sits at its core.Item Open Access AM I WHO I SAY I AM? THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE: BIOMETRIC IDENTIFICATION IN HEALTHCARE(East Carolina University, 2023-05-01) Banville, Morgan CatherineGrounded in surveillance studies and technical communication, this study defines biometric identification technologies as personal identifiers of the body, focusing specifically on how neonatal nurses use and perceive such technologies within the context of the United States healthcare system. As biometric identification and authentication becomes more commonplace within various sectors such as healthcare and medical-adjacent, it is crucial for technical communicators to return to the origins of biometric implementation to inform current interventions, and to question the reasons behind the urgency of implementing such technologies for efficiency, security, and compliance. Drawing from a corpus of communication materials from biometric companies, questionnaires, and ten interviews with neonatal nurses, this study explores the justification of implementing biometric technologies, including how biometric technologies are defined. Data analysis was conducted using interlocking surveillance, a framework that addresses sites of surveillance and their levels of awareness, advocacy, and transparency of normalized surveillant practices. This study contributes to understandings and perceptions that neonatal nurses have of biometric technologies in healthcare and extends far past the scope of privacy. Even so, privacy in this study is situated as both a tradeoff and illusion of choice: you can change your password, but you can't change your fingerprint. Because the U.S. has a preoccupation with security and surveillance technologies, this study can better inform technical communicators how to intervene in and implement decision-making practices. In particular, this study argues that neonatal nurses are technical communicators: they communicate and negotiate specialized information. The findings contribute to redefining what it means to be a technical communicator, re-rhetoricizing how technical communication is represented in the medical sector. Further takeaways from the study influence future coalitional work, questioning and revising normalized surveillance including ethics of biometric use, and localization of community input and participatory approaches for design of and intervention in communication materials.Item Open Access ENCOURAGING PREVENTIVE ACTION BY EMPLOYING EFFECTIVE RHETORIC IN PUBLIC COMMUNICATION OF THE ZIKA HAZARD AND ASSOCIATED RISKS(East Carolina University, 2022-07-26) Morris, Abigail LThreats from Zika and other emergent arboviruses (arthropod-borne viruses) often receive little scholarly attention across most disciplines thanks in no small part to the traditional view that most emergent disease discourse is only immediately relevant to those in medical and economic fields. The reality is that any time endemic threats pose risks to public welfare or become threats to national health and security, scholars from all fields should reevaluate how their current and developing skills and knowledge could be employed to help prevent and/or minimize negative outcomes when outbreaks seem likely. Scholars in the fields of rhetoric and technical communication have developed skills and knowledge that would render us particularly well suited to work with those in medical, economic, and public communication fields to develop or remediate tools and resources to alter potential outbreak outcomes in positive ways if we were offered or willing to claim a seat at their table. This study utilizes surveying of residents in Harlingen, Texas, regarding Zika as a springboard into research on public health communication failures as represented by technical documents designed to communicate health and safety information about Zika and validated by revision of those documents to increase their effectiveness in encouraging proactive prevention behaviors and retention of health knowledge.Item Open Access ENCOURAGING PREVENTIVE ACTION BY EMPLOYING EFFECTIVE RHETORIC IN PUBLIC COMMUNICATION OF THE ZIKA HAZARD AND ASSOCIATED RISKS(East Carolina University, 2022-07-26) Morris, Abigail LThreats from Zika and other emergent arboviruses (arthropod-borne viruses) often receive little scholarly attention across most disciplines thanks in no small part to the traditional view that most emergent disease discourse is only immediately relevant to those in medical and economic fields. The reality is that any time endemic threats pose risks to public welfare or become threats to national health and security, scholars from all fields should reevaluate how their current and developing skills and knowledge could be employed to help prevent and/or minimize negative outcomes when outbreaks seem likely. Scholars in the fields of rhetoric and technical communication have developed skills and knowledge that would render us particularly well suited to work with those in medical, economic, and public communication fields to develop or remediate tools and resources to alter potential outbreak outcomes in positive ways if we were offered or willing to claim a seat at their table. This study utilizes surveying of residents in Harlingen, Texas, regarding Zika as a springboard into research on public health communication failures as represented by technical documents designed to communicate health and safety information about Zika and validated by revision of those documents to increase their effectiveness in encouraging proactive prevention behaviors and retention of health knowledge.Item Restricted Wild Horses(East Carolina University, 2022-03-23) Shope, Ashten LWild Horses is a Literary Fiction novel that intersects with Queer and Indigenous Literature. The narrative is a close third point of view following the perspectives of primary protagonist, Amanda Sloan (Mara), her father, Joel Sloan, and Jonathan (Jack) Aldridge. The plot explores the issues of trans-female identity, sex trafficking, addiction, Queer-family dynamics, Indigenous rights, and the overcoming of societal violence. The novel's primary narrative is juxtaposed with the Umatilla version of the Sahaptin myth, Coyote and the River Monster, a traditional origin story told by many tribes of the Columbia River basin in Oregon. The thesis is the first section of the novel, which opens with teenage Mara being coyoted back over the US-Mexican border after her sex-reassignment surgery where she then finds herself embroiled in a sex trafficking ring. She is trafficked with other trans women, many of whom are trans women of color. The narrative alternates both in POV and time between teenage Mara/adult Amanda, Joel, and Jack. In the subsequent chapters, Amanda returns to her hometown of Little Creek, Oregon to rebuild her family's derelict ranch and reestablish herself within her homeland.Item Open Access Women's Rights and Religious Bias in Dystopian Speculative Fiction: A Closer Look at Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God and Christina Dalcher’s Vox(East Carolina University, 2022-04-27) Macomber, Kelli DSpeculative fiction provides a perfect vehicle to examine the state of women's rights. Through the Intersectional Feminist lens, I consider the speculative projections within Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God and Christine Dalcher's Vox, as well as the impact that religious doctrines have on the possible outcomes the books illustrate. I use recent events to illustrate the type of contemporary actions that influenced Erdrich and Dalcher in their writing.