The Power of Critical Reflection: Exploring the Impact of Rhetorical Stories on Metacognition in First-Year Composition Courses

Abstrac

Discourses of cinematic culture and the Hollywood director :the development of Christopher Nolan's auteur persona

PhD ThesisThis thesis examines how the concept of the auteur functions in contemporary Hollywood film industry and popular culture through a consideration of extra-textual components of cinematic discourse. By analysing a director’s films along with the industrial and cultural factors surrounding those films, a method for understanding contemporary auteurism in Hollywood is presented. Case study Christopher Nolan has earned a reputation as a director who produces films which are critical and popular successes and also reveal stylistic and thematic consistency across genre and industrial contexts. Building on ideas from Michel Foucault and Timothy Corrigan, this thesis adapts the ideas of the author function and the commercial auteur to examine how Nolan’s auteur persona is developed and used by industry and audiences in understanding his films. Drawing on a hybrid theoretical framework incorporating auteur, star, and reception studies as well as post-structuralist theories on authorship, this thesis analyses how Nolan’s auteur persona is constructed across a range of texts, but especially through DVD extras (official discourse), professional reviews (critical discourse), and responses from the general public (audience discourse). The analysis exposes the mechanisms within the discursive surround which create a distinct auteur persona that helps differentiate Nolan and his films in the marketplace. The research demonstrates that the auteur is an enduring and dynamic concept that is prevalent through all aspects of film culture including in the films, but also from production to critical reviews to audience discussion. Furthermore, due to technological changes, audience discourse plays an increasingly active role in shaping the auteur persona, often adapting the auteur concept to negotiate meanings for films. Ultimately the auteur persona acts as a way to understand not only how the auteur concept functions in cinema to organise economic, artistic, and cultural conditions, but also how film knowledge is developed intertextually in contemporary culture by varied audiences

The Litigation Landscape of Fraternity and Sorority Hazing: Defenses, Evidence, and Damages

In recent years, increasing public and media attention has focused on hazing, especially in collegiate fraternities and sororities. Whether it is because of the deaths, major injuries, or litigation, both criminal and civil, collegiate fraternities and sororities have received increased scrutiny. In this Article, we explore a range of tactical considerations that lawyers must consider—from defenses to evidentiary concerns. We also explore how damages are contemplated in the context of hazing litigation

The Litigation Landscape of Fraternity and Sorority Hazing: Criminal and Civil Liability

Hazing—“the act of placing another person in a ridiculous, humiliating, or disconcerting position as part of an initiation process”—has caused injury and death. Some of the benefits asserted by those who participate in hazing are that the practice “creates deep and long-lasting bonds among those who endure it, instills the values of the group in new members, builds character, demonstrates commitment to the group, forges a connection with all members who had previously endured the experience, and inspires the respect of one’s peers.” Yet numerous lawsuits against individuals, fraternal organizations, and educational institutions have prompted legislatures to pass hazing laws that augment and enhance general criminal laws. The argument for these laws emphasizes that the “benefits of specialized hazing laws purportedly include the removal of procedural hurdles that have impeded prosecuting hazing injuries and increased awareness of the dangers of hazing.” However, the first hazing statute in America was not crafted with the goal of punishing hazing conduct of Greekletter organization members. Rather, “[t]he first hazing statute in America appeared in 1874 in response to hazing in the military” and the “perceived attitude toward hazing by midshipmen.” It was long believed that the best way to eradicate conceit or “freshness” among new military initiates was through personal humiliation, leading to “plebe bedevilment” and torment. In response, Congress enacted a federal law in 1874 criminalizing this type of hazing in military units, whether or not the acts resulted in actual harm. In this Article, we offer an overview of the current hazing litigation landscape and what the future might look like in this area

Cost per User as Key Factor in Project Prioritization: A Case Study of the San Francisco Bay Area

Efforts to accommodate increasing and dispersed demand for travel in the face of mounting traffic congestion, escalating construction costs, limited rights of way, and diminished air quality have caused planning agencies to adopt plans that would enhance transit choices. Faced with fiscal limitations, the need to prioritize the ever-growing list of improvement projects is paramount. To meet this need in the development of the Bay Area System Plan for Regional Express Bus Service in California, a survey of existing literature on capital investment prioritization in transportation was conducted. This review led to development of a simple prioritization methodology with which to analyze the projects. Unit costs per ride were calculated to facilitate comparisons between the various proposals. The cost estimation procedure involved a systematic sequence of analyses that included the development and quantification of conceptual design elements, application of unit capital as well as operation and maintenance costs, and matching of annualized costs with annual ridership to derive costs per affected ride. Results revealed that the greater majority of proposed improvements could be implemented at a relatively low total cost. The estimates also suggest that most proposed improvements will not add very significant additional costs per ride to existing operations. The case study demonstrates the utility of projects and illustrates an approach that could be used by other agencies

Complaints about technology as a resource for identity-work

This article examines how people complain about technology. Using discourse analysis, we inspect sixteen hours of video-recorded focus-group interviews and focused one-on-one discussions where technology was topicalized. We investigate these conversations paying attention to (i) features of language and its situated delivery, including emphasis, word choice, metaphor, and categorizations; and (ii) how these accomplish social actions. We show how interactants use narratives of complaint-like activities about hypothetical categories of people and confessions of their own complainable participation to accomplish a ‘bemoaning’ speech act that manages competing affiliations, demands, and disagreements to construct reasonable moral identities in the situated interaction. By engaging in specific micro-level discursive practices in interaction, participants produce and reproduce what new technologies ‘mean’ to them and for contemporary society. This shows how important it is to examine opinions as situated actions rather than as simple facts about what people believe

Associative Learning from Verbal Action-Effect Instructions: A Replication and Investigation of Underlying Mechanisms

According to the ideomotor principle, repeated experience with an action and its perceivable consequences (effects) establish action-effect associations. Research on verbal instructions indicates that such associations are also acquired from verbal information. In the present experiment (N = 651), first, we aimed to replicate unintentional response-priming effects from verbal action-effect instructions (direct replication; Condition 1). Second, we investigated the involvement of perceptual processes in the verbally induced response-priming effect by perceptually presenting (Condition 1) versus not presenting (Condition 2) the color that was subsequently named as an effect in the instructions. Third, we tested a saliency-based explanation of the verbally induced response-priming effect by highlighting all components (action and effect) without an association between them (Condition 3). Overall, we found the predicted response-priming effect following verbal action-effect instructions (overall conditions and in the replication Condition 1). Condition 2, which did not include perceptual information in the instructions, still showed a significant response-priming effect but was descriptively weaker compared to the effect of the replication Condition 1. Condition 3, which merely highlighted the action and effect component without endorsing an association, did not show a significant effect. In sum, our study provides further solid evidence that verbal instructions lead to unintentional response-priming effects. Other conclusions must be considered preliminary: The between-condition comparisons were descriptively in the predicted direction—perceptual aspects are relevant, and a saliency-based account can be excluded—but the differences in accuracy between conditions were not statistically significant

Changes in food cravings and eating behavior after a dietary carbohydrate restriction intervention trial

Compared to low-fat diets, low-carbohydrate (CHO) diets cause weight loss (WL) over a faster time frame; however, it is unknown how changes in food cravings and eating behavior contribute to this more rapid WL in the early phases of dieting. We hypothesized that reductions in food cravings and improved eating behaviors would be evident even after a relatively short (4-week) duration of CHO-restriction, and that these changes would be associated with WL. Adult participants