Previous Dissertations

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.

• William Marcellino (2013). Talk Like a Marine: A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the link between USMC vernacular epideictic and public deliberative speech.
  
• Meaghan O'Keefe (2012).  Everything New Is Old Again: The American Catholic Bishops' Politics of Conscience.
• Daniel Guinn Baumgardt (2012). A Historical View of Science Accommodation: The Case of Sociolinguists and African American English.
• Hilary E. Y. Shuldt (2012). Sakamoto's Double Burden: Creating and Using Interpublic Relationships as Rhetorical Resources in the Japanese American Courier.
• Vida Emily K. Stark (2012). Striving for Legitimacy: Rhetorical Strategies of Expertise in an Immunological Controversy.
• Necia Kay Werner (2011). From communalism to crowdsourcing: How values shape peer review at scientific journals.
  
• Nathan S. Atkinson (2009). This is Crossroads: How Newsreels Made the 1946 Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll Public.
• Robin Lucy Reames (2009). Finding Belief in the Words: The Rhetoric of Paul the Apostle's Confession of Faith.
  
• 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.