Rhetoric

Projects Underway

GXB: Genres Without Borders

I am currently assisting Dr. Carolyn Miller with her latest project, a website for genre studies scholars. GXB is an exciting open-source project that should be live at the end of the summer.

Completed projects

The large family reality genre: Traditional values in television programming [Opens external website in new tab]

My Master's capstone is a genre and ideological analysis of large family television. My primary research question surrounds the appeal of these widely popular shows: why do audiences flock to them? And what is it that viewers are seeing in these shows? Using Mittell's (2004) cultural genre analysis and White's (1987) theory of ideology and television, I seek to explain the appeal by analyzing the conservative ideology portrayed by the families, coupled with the "freak-show" factor that the producers weave in to the show.

America's Reality Television Fascination with Large Families [Opens external website in new tab]

This essay, completed for a course on rhetorical criticism, examines American's television fascination with large families. I argue that the appeal of these shows can be explained using Nothstine's theory of the pseudo-private sphere, a third type of communicative experience which creates a private display through public media to give the audience the sense of an honest and genuine representation.