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Composition at the "Harvard on the Hocking": Rhetoricizing Place and History

Shepley, Nathan E.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1272727187

Abstract Details

2010, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, English (Arts and Sciences).
In this study, the author assembles and examines versions of composition history at one higher education institution, Ohio University (OU), focusing on the years 1825-1950. Primarily, the author studies texts housed in the OU archives and considers an eclectic array of source types, from students’ letters to local history books to course catalogs and notes from meetings of OU administrators. But rather than attempt to give a full, complete history of composition at this site, the author relies on a sophistic rhetorical tradition to surface and problematize rules that composition scholars abide by when they construct histories, and the author centers the study on sophistic principles that approximate the modern-day concepts of community, context, composition (variously defined), and communication (understood as oral and performance based). Emerging from this sophistic tradition, the results are tentative and potentially conflicting, showing that there is no single overarching narrative of composition history at OU. Instead, the study shows ways in which composition at OU has reflected the norms of the University and the Athens, Ohio, community; conformed to the commonplace attitudes and opinions of the local populace; assumed various forms for groups with varying degrees of power; and developed alongside and through an oral rhetoric used for public performances. The author uses this work to theorize an approach to composition historiography that takes into account the locatedness of writing and a sophistic understanding of textual meaning. Such a historiography would continuously critique the historian’s sources and interpretive tools and would join in a wider postmodern resistance to metanarratives.
Sherrie Gradin, PhD (Committee Chair)
Mara Holt, PhD (Committee Member)
Josephine Bloomfield, PhD (Committee Member)
Raymie McKerrow, PhD (Committee Member)
377 p.
Composition; Rhetoric
rhetoric and composition; composition histories; local histories; neosophistic rhetorical theory; Ohio University

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Shepley, N. E. (2010). Composition at the "Harvard on the Hocking": Rhetoricizing Place and History [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1272727187

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Shepley, Nathan. Composition at the "Harvard on the Hocking": Rhetoricizing Place and History. 2010. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1272727187.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Shepley, Nathan. "Composition at the "Harvard on the Hocking": Rhetoricizing Place and History." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1272727187

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ohiou1272727187
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© 2010, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.