Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

English

Advisor

Amy J Wan

Committee Members

Jessica Yood

Matthew K Gold

Subject Categories

Other Rhetoric and Composition

Keywords

posthumanism, extractivism, cognition

Abstract

The influence of post-humanist interdisciplinary theories on Writing Studies has displaced its conventional preoccupation with the cultivation and management of subjects via First-Year Writing (FYC), to productive but at times artificially divisive ends. This project aims at an inclusive, anti-racist first-year writing ecology through theories of networked consciousness and digital “making.” I reread and recuperate earlier variants of posthumanist writing theory and draw from feminist materialism and mindfulness studies to establish a vision of well-being that I call networked reparative practices. To bring the abstract into the tangible, an often-valued endeavor in a field historically defined by teaching, I introduce a web application which I created to capture the labor of private writing, called BlabRyte. Intervening in Writing Studies’ engagement with new media, BlabRyte enacts the networked reparative which I describe in earlier chapters through its procedural rhetoric.

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