As the student intern for this issue of Convergence Rhetoric, I would like to take this time to welcome you, constant reader, and say thank you for engaging with the student research featured here. Each of these articles evidences the time, effort, and energy that UCF students have invested in the learning and writing they encounter in their Writing & Rhetoric courses, and in making their voices heard about the questions and issues that matter most to them. The five articles selected to be showcased in this issue speak to the wealth and variety of ways that writing and rhetoric are threaded into the tapestry of people’s everyday lives. I’m confident that these articles will intrigue you, so pop some hot buttered popcorn, kick back on the couch, open your laptop, and enjoy what you’re about to read. You’re in for a real treat.
Rosalind Rohrbach’s “How All This Stuff We Talked About Made Things Make a Hell of a Lot More Sense, and How I Plan to Use It” offers insights regarding encounters with genre, literacy, politics, rhetoric, and social media in contemporary American life. When these constructs are understood through our lived experiences of them, Rohrback writes, “we enter them with a new perspective and a potential sense of caution and preparedness.”
In “Oh What a Tangled Web We Must Weave: What is Literacy?” Lisa Lucas shares a heart-warming story of a homeless mother struggling to forge a better future for her children by navigating the many currents of literacy that flow throughout her life as she tries to keep pace with continually changing technologies for writing.
Jarrett Webster’s “Exploration and Creation Exercises to Teach Literacy with Poetry” outlines key rhetorical principles of poetic literacy and provides a number of strategies teachers can use to help students recognize and value their engagements with poetic genres in the writing classroom. “By remarrying these rhetorical principles through poetry exercises,” Webster writes, “educators enhance the participation and expression of the students.”
As a graduating senior majoring in Writing and Rhetoric, I’ve been fortunate this semester to work with the faculty editors of Convergence Rhetoric to shepherd these pieces of student writing toward publication. Along the way, I have relished my time sitting beneath the shade trees lining UCF’s Memory Mall as I’ve read and thought through what these five students have to say. Looking back over the semester, I have to say that I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.
Alphonse Holowczak’s “GT Live: Digital Communication & Reflexive Interactions through Livestreamed Gameplays” examines the genre of video game livestreams and key components of their gameplay including fan art and totem typification. Describing the role of livestreamed gameplays in contemporary culture, Holowczak writes that this genre “brings to life a unique community in which the creators of a given channel can actively interact with their viewers and vice versa.”
In “Fantasy/Science-Fiction Rhetorical Analysis: Cultural Rhetoricity within Fledgling,” Nina López explores the rhetorical work in Octavia E. Butler’s novel Fledgling to challenge, subvert, and circumvent dominant constructions of racism, colorism, and ableism. Taking up “cultural rhetoricity” as an analytic lens, Lopez illuminates how Butler’s depiction of the character of Shori invites readers to engage with the lived experiences of Black women and promote positive representations of marginalized peoples through fantasy and science fiction.