Browsing by Author "Sebek, Barbara, committee member"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Open Access
Haunting rhetoric: Ghost Adventures and the evolution of the ghost hunting genre
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Dale, Shannon, author; Kiefer, Kathleen, advisor; Sebek, Barbara, committee member; Margolf, Diane, committee member
This thesis examines the rhetorical and generic conventions of the popular ghost hunting television show, Ghost Adventures. By first exploring the introduction of this hybrid genre in the work of 17th-century author, Joseph Glanvill, I will reveal how genre conventions are created and morph over time through a genre analysis influenced by the theory of Amy Devitt. As the genre evolves over time, so does the rhetorical purpose of Ghost Adventures. Initially, Ghost Adventures sought to prove the existence of ghosts to a skeptical audience. In more recent seasons, the show has shifted their rhetoric to achieve Glanvill's original purpose to use belief in ghosts to prove the existence of God.
Open Access
Ranciere's distribution of the sensible in Jacob's Room
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Quinter, Jacob, author; Trembath, Paul, advisor; Coffino, Kara, committee member; Sebek, Barbara, committee member
This essay provides a model of reading which combines Ranciere's distribution of the sensible and aesthetic with Deleuze's terminology of minor literature and affect. In doing so I aim to demonstrate how Virginia Woolf's third novel emerges as her first experimental, or modernist texts, in that it makes readers aware of and subverts the arrangements of their own senses by dominant ideology. Though Critical Studies has successfully overcome the false boundaries between formalism and historicism, approaches to texts from the perspective of Ranciere filtered through Deleuze are largely unexplored, and can help the field develop a more comprehensive sense of how texts can transform by way of style. Thus, popularized Baumgartian conceptions of aesthetic as idealist can be alternatively reconfigured towards materialist vocabularies.