Rowe, Desireé D.

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    Monticello's master: Sally Hemings and the deconstruction of the Patriot archetype
    (Delta Sigma Rho--Tau Kappa Alpha, 2004-01) Rowe, Desireé D.; McCann, Betsy; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    We explore the above discrepancy by posing the question: How does the Sally Hemings controversy work to deconstruct the popular conception of Tho-mas Jefferson as American Patriot through the use of converging and conflicting frames? Kenneth Burke’s concept of poetic framing may be used to help answer this question, as Burke asserts history may be socially constructed via poetic frames which reject or accept a given social order or expectations. Historical figures are constructed as heroes, such as Abraham Lincoln, or as buffoons, such as Benedict Arnold, representing the choice to accept or reject the status quo. Burke asserts frames typically exist in isolation; as explored by a number of scholars. While focused and insightful research, the scholars only address the reaction to conflict within the context of an isolated Burkean frame (e.g., Moore 1992, 1996 and Buerkle et. al. 2003). Others have addressed texts in which two frames operate simultaneously, often examining a shift from one perspective to another as a rhetor shifts between rejection and acceptance. In their analysis of public response to Arizona governor Evan Mecham, Buerkle, Mayer, and Olson (2003) address the relationship of Burke’s frames by exploring the simultaneous operation of contradictory frames in interpreting and responding to the same texts to establish how competing frames can synthesize to establish a new identity for a specific rhetor. The rhetoric surrounding the Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings controversy proffers a similar opportunity for scholars, as divergent public responses are indicative of social image construction in the acceptance frame of Burke’s epic, and the rejection frame of Burke’s burlesque. Both frames work together in establishing a more complete version of the truth, yet work in opposition to one another to effectively prevent a full truth from ever being firmly established. Through our analysis, the tensions between Burke’s frames may be more fully examined as well as the implications for the public perceptions of Thomas Jefferson as Americans are faced with rejecting or accepting a particular interpretation and construction of “social order.”
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    When "van talk" steers out of control: a theoretical exploration of team traditions
    (National Forensic Association, 2005) Rowe, Desireé D; Cronn-Mills, Daniel; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    Forensics traditions are classically perceived as positive motivators within the team dynamic. We illuminate, however, the disadvantages of team traditions after exploring the variables within team cohesion, and how those variables are applicable to the Burkean notion of consubstantiation. Finally, we offer a constructive framework for enacting forensic team traditions through a theoretical exploration utilizing the Foss and Foss paradigm for invitational rhetoric.
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    Performative (re)writing: Valerie Solanas and the politics of scribble
    (Miami University (Oxford, Ohio). College of Liberal Arts and Applied Science, 2013) Rowe, Desireé D.; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist writer best known for shooting Andy Warhol in 1968, is also the author of S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a feminist anti-capitalist treatise advocating for women's revolution against work, men, capitalism, and the patriarchy Some time after publication. Solanas defaced the New York Library's copy of S.C.U.M. Manifesto, rewriting it to document her rejection of the unauthorized edits that had been made to the published version of her work. Based on this performance, in this essay I argue for broadening the conception of performative writing to admit Solana's activism. Such an understanding of performative writing allows us to widen our field of investigation to include writings that might be cast aside for not being traditional or conventional enough in style or material location and written by those outside of creative writing or academic circles.
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    Digital discourses: implementing technology within the public speaking classroom
    (Indiana University, 2013-06) Rowe, Desireé D.; Davis, Andrea M.; Towson University. Department of Mass Communications and Communication Studies
    In this semester-long project, students will be able to utilize various digital tools to meet four outcomes within the Public Speaking classroom. First, we are focused on the student’s ability to demonstrate critical consumption of media technologies. Second, students should use these technologies to narrate and curate current events. Third, technology should not hinder collaboration; rather we are seeking to utilize technology to encourage collaborative efforts that may have been impossible prior to the implementation of the technology. Finally, we place an emphasis on the student’s investment in digital citizenship.
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    Ekkreinen: a stop motion capsule performance
    (2018-10-01) Rowe, Desireé D.; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    "Until the day of when I sat patiently on the hospital bed with tears streaming down my face. My anxiety and panic and had returned for an appearance right before I was to be wheeled to surgery. I saw the room begin to blur at the edges not from the anesthesia, but from the shivers of panic swirling through me. I felt insignificant and disposable in the giant medical industrial complex. I was scared."
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    Beyond the talk-back: performing autoethnography and the functions of critique
    (University of California Press, 2017-10-26) Rowe, Desireé D.; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    Reflecting on my own experiences with talk-backs and audience responses, this manuscript uses metaphor to map the functions of autoethnographic performance critique. Through an exploration of vulnerability within performance, I turn to three key areas: theoretical accessibility, performativity, and accountability in order to chart how to engage in critique of performance autoethnography.
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    "I Should Have Done Target Practice": Why Valerie Solanas Missed
    (Sage Publishing, 2011-02) Rowe, Desireé D.; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    Through performative writing, this article seeks to tell the story of Valerie Solanas. Solanas, the woman most notoriously known as the shooter of Andy Warhol, has had little media exposure that does not frame her outside of the violent female assassin trope. (Auto)ethnographic writing, coupled with theoretical interludes via footnotes, works to retell Solanas’ story. In this way this article is telling three stories: the main narrative of Solanas, the footnoted theoretical narrative, and the author’s relationship to Solanas.
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    Troubling violence: a performance project (Book review)
    (Taylor & Francis, 2010-10-09) Rowe, Desireé D.; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    The article reviews the book "Troubling Violence: A Performance Project," by M. Heather Carver and Elaine J. Lawless.
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    Valerie Solanas and the queer performativity of madness
    (Sage Publications, 2011-05-20) Rowe, Desireé D.; Chávez, Karma R.; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    Accusations of madness have long been hurled at queer and feminist bodies, and typically when people are deemed mad, they are granted little agency.This article attempts to read madness as potentially agentic when it manifests as what we call a “queer performativity of madness.” Using the writing of and rhetoric surrounding Valerie Solanas, the infamous radical feminist known for shooting Andy Warhol, we develop the notion of a queer performativity of madness and show how historical figures like Solanas read against the binary oppositions that often create our understanding of sexuality, reason, and politics. Though madness does not always supply agency, we suggest that rethinking madness offers fruitful resources for feminist and queer theory.
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    The performative possibilities of new media
    (Taylor & Francis, 2012-01) Rowe, Desireé D.; Myers, W. Benjamin; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    We understand new media as performative - a medium that is an active participant in a political dialogue. It is political in its iterability; it performs, over and over, passing as/with information. We see this in our Facebook NewsFeeds and ReTweet of Tweets long gone. In this forum, we hope to show how new media scholarship can be purposefully enacted within performance studies (perhaps marking a slippage ... perhaps not) to work towards larger critical goals. New media changes what it means to be a performance studies scholar.
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    The critical lede: new media and ecological balance
    (Taylor & Francis, 2012-01) Myers, W. Benjamin; Rowe, Desireé D.; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    As co-hosts of the podcast The Critical Lede (TCL), we find ourselves at a moment where new media projects are bursting onto the scene of not only communication/ performance studies but also all fields of academe. That we find ourselves in the midst of this explosion calls for reflexivity on the potentials that new media projects open as well as problematics that might ensue as we sort out how to keep our traditional print/stage heritage vibrant while simultaneously making room for scholarship that works outside of this framework.
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    The (dis)appearance of Up your ass: Valerie Solanas as abject revolutionary
    (Taylor & Francis, 2013-03-14) Rowe, Desireé D.; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    Through performative writing and using Cixous' notion of écriture feminine, this piece explores how the archival and treatment of Valerie Solanas' ‘lost’ manuscript Up Your Ass marks her as an abject body. Further, this piece critiques the treatment of Solanas' works as typical of radical feminist activists.
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    Please don't use the restraints: forgetting, failure, and childbirth
    (Sage Publications, 2016-07) Rowe, Desireé D.; Towson University. Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies
    The end of the story is all you care about. So, let’s get that out of the way first. Penelope Jane was born on March 23rd. She was healthy. The trauma of that day still resonates within my body, called into being through subsequent visits to the hospital and a review of my own medical records from that day. A life-threatening fever and 9 hours of pushing led to a powerfully negative birth experience, one that I am consistently told to just forget. After she had a weeklong stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), I have a healthy daughter. In this article, I use auto/archeology as a tool to examine my own medical records and the affective traces of my experience in the hospital to call into question Halberstam’s advocacy of forgetting as queer resistance to dominant cultural logics. While Halberstam explains that “forgetting allows for a release from the weight of the past and the menace of the future” I hold tightly to my memories of that day. This article marks the disconnects between an advocacy of forgetting and my own failure of childbirth and offers a new perspective that embraces the queer potentiality of remembering trauma.