Communication Studies
Recent Submissions
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Stunting death : affect, attraction and authenticity in Rated-R superhero cinema
Stunt work is an ever-present and typically overlooked aspect of film production. The labor goes unseen by design; traditionally, Hollywood studio hierarchies regarded a good stunt performer as one who altogether eluded ... -
Anxieties and artificial women : disassembling the pop culture gynoid
This thesis analyzes the cultural meanings of the feminine-presenting robot, or gynoid, in three popular sci-fi texts: The Stepford Wives (1975), Ex Machina (2013), and Westworld (2017). Centralizing a critical feminist ... -
Vision of ourselves : regional rhetoric's impact upon public policy relating to individuals experiencing homelessness, A
Public policy at all levels, local, state, and national, has a profound, yet seldom, recognized impact upon the lives of citizens unless the policy directly impacts them. In the following thesis, I explore the discourse ... -
Maintaining employment in turbulent times : the bridging of resilience and resistance in hotel employees
Previous communication scholarship has studied resilience and resistance separately, but researchers had not often studied them in tandem, especially in the organizational change context. Specifically, this study uses ... -
Constituting the un-American atheist : Eisenhower’s theistnormativity and the negation of American atheists
During the Cold War, President Eisenhower used civil religion and what Philip Wander calls prophetic dualism to construct an image of the American people. In doing so he excluded atheists from his description of the American ... -
Colorblind love and Black love on purpose : Black feminist thought, casting, and the invisibility/visibility of Black womanhood on television
This thesis interrogates the representations of Black womanhood on television by investigating the production context and text of two contemporary television shows. Both case studies reveal the importance of quality on ... -
Corporate communication and intra-organizational legitimacy
This exploratory study investigates the ways in which corporate communication professionals struggle to attain legitimacy within their respective organizations and what tools and strategies are used to navigate an illegitimate, ... -
Intersectionality and intelligibility : queer worldmaking in body positivity and fat activism
This thesis analyzes queer rhetoric produced by fat activists Tess Holliday and Ashleigh Shackelford to understand the larger worldmaking projects of body positivity and fat activism. This thesis uses perspectives and ... -
Black Lives Matter as "social movement" : theorizing the materiality of movement of the social
Utilizing Michael Calvin McGee's notion of social movement as a set of meanings that move the social, this thesis builds upon and adjusts the discursive focus of McGee's rhetorical theory of social movement to include ... -
(Re)Defining movie ratings : acceptability, access, and boundary maintenance
This thesis explores the allure of motion pictures in transition by focusing on moments of controversy, and in the way, these moments play-out through constant negotiation between an industry and an audience. In this way, ... -
How dreaming displaces duty : individualism, the American Dream, and perceptions of houseless individuals
This thesis project analyses the rhetoric of the American Dream myth as it appears within discussions about houseless populations. The American Dream myth has been shown to promote individualistic values, though it has ... -
Partnering for inclusion : democratic function in deliberative recruitment strategies
Inclusion serves as one of the key tenets of deliberative theory. This tenet asks that all those affected by an issue be given a meaningful opportunity to participate in the deliberative process. However, there are multiple ... -
"Do you like my body?" : an interpersonal approach to the growth of bikini competitors on YouTube
This study investigates the popularity growth of bikini competitors on the social media outlet of YouTube. This content falls into the category of "fitspiration" content, otherwise known as fitness social media content ... -
Materiality and discourse : toward a relational understanding of marginalizing onto-epistemologies in the ivory tower
Using epistemological and ontological lenses, this communicative study interrogates the experiences of the graduate community within the communication studies discipline. Specifically, and building on feminist methodologies ... -
Rhetorical resonance : exploring potentiality through materiality and symbolicity
Using the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, as an artifact for analysis, this thesis investigates how rhetoric and communication scholars can better understand and investigate the linkages between material objects ... -
Searching for a cure? : a feminist rhetorical queering of mainstream breast cancer discourse online
This project is a feminist rhetorical analysis of two main sites of breast cancer communication: Komen and the National Breast Cancer Foundation. In order to better understand messages about breast cancer online and how ... -
From parks to presidents : political sensibilities of narrative political fiction
This thesis examines the ways televised narrative political fiction can portray political sensibilities. Using the NBC program, Parks and Recreation (2009-2015), and the Netflix streaming service program, House of Cards ... -
"The season from hell" : the genre of corporate sports apologia
In the fall of 2014 the National Football League (NFL) experienced a drastic rise in the publicity of player arrests for domestic violence. Not only did the case of Ray Rice, who was video taped brutally assaulting his ... -
"Are you feeling what I'm feeling?" : an analysis of communication and emotional work of Korean social workers
This study investigates how Korean social workers experience and communicate emotional work in their organizational experience. Using a qualitative interview approach, I explore the emotional experiences of Korean social ... -
Examining social exchange measures as moderators of politeness techniques in face-threatening acts between romantic partners
Much has been written concerning face and the process individuals engage in to manage both their own and other’s face in a variety of contexts (Goffman, 1967). Despite ample research on the management of one’s own face ...
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