This study provides an examination and application of heterotopic dérive, a concept that combines spatial theories originated by Foucault and psychogeographical methods advocated by the Situationists, as enacted within theatrical performance spaces. The first chapter reviews theories related to space, place, and heterotopias, as well as the psychogeographical methods of the Situationists, particularly the dérive. The literature review is augmented with accounts of my experiences of serendipitous heterotopic dérive over a period of several years as a cast member in, or a technical director for, theatrical productions in the Department of Communication Studies Black Box Theatre. Based on the review, I postulate that heterotopic dérive is a potentially valuable phenomenon that performance studies scholar/artists can utilize consciously in the rehearsal process for mounting theatrical performances. To test this proposition, I worked collaboratively with a theatrical cast to craft a devised performance, Desire Lines, with a conscious effort to engender heterotopic dérive in the process of creating the performance. This performance served as the basis for the second chapter of the study, which analyzes and discusses of the results of that investigation. This project enhances understanding of the significance of the places and spaces in which performers practice their craft, and …

The disproportionate number of police-involved shootings reflect the underlying conditions of traditionally conservative, racist policing. Recent updates and communication refinements to police training methodologies could improve training processes, which in turn, may improve societal perceptions of police in the United States. Law enforcement officers in the United States have become the focus of public policy outcry and generalized distrust, further complicating the dangers of contemporary policing. Concealed weapons and the close proximity of civilians policing the police with cellphone cameras complicate issues of officer safety. State and national incidents have resulted in police processes and behaviors being broadcast and violently challenged. In response to these challenges, Texas police academies and law enforcement training agencies are changing the way police learn to police. During the preparation of this study, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement adopted a legislatively mandated update to the Basic Peace Officer Certification training. After a three-year revision process, in late 2019, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement replaced the former 643-hour Basic Peace Officer Course with the newest Basic Peace Officer Course #1000696. Through its goals, definitions, and instructional guides, the Course #1000696 could potentially stimulate occupational identity, unify community policing culture, and foster community perception repair.

Swinging is a lifestyle choice where members of a couple seek out other couples or sometimes singles, with whom to engage in sexual activity. Swinging is a lifestyle associated with the 1960s and 1970s, but Americans still engage in swinging activities today. Because of stigmas associated with this practice, swinging couples often keep their lifestyle concealed from family and friends. These couples have a unique lifestyle that requires strong communication and boundary management styles. Scholars use communication privacy management theory to examine how individuals or couples disclose private information and how this private information is then co-owned by both parties. The purpose of this study was to understand whom swinging couples disclose their lifestyle to, and what risks the couple experienced from the disclosures. The swingers disclosed to friends in most cases and were concerned about risks of stigma, privacy, and relationship termination. In this exploratory study I showed that swingers’ privacy management seems to align with the components of CPM in concealing or revealing their lifestyle to others. However the findings also indicate that swingers utilize self-disclosure for recruitment into the lifestyle, and that the disclosures seem to be more spontaneous then strategic. Future research should look further into …

Arguing that current discourse surrounding breastfeeding and the lactating body promotes management of the female body, I attempt to devise an explanation of the breastfeeding apparatus and its strategies. In this study, the strategies include visual and linguistic representations of breastfeeding through art, promotional materials for advertisement and recommendations from the medical community, and the language used in the legal protection of breastfeeding. Using a rhetorical lens, I explore how these varied junctions operate within the breastfeeding apparatus and how breastfeeding is both a product of and a product in the technology. I seek to find what else is at work and how breastfeeding functions as a discursive element in its own right, allowing it to function as an apparatus for control. Finally, I question the potential for resistance in breastfeeding, asking if the lactating body has options, or is the subject so policed and managed that decisions are dictated by the breastfeeding apparatus.

This thesis studies the Supreme Court decision, Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944) and its historical context, using a narrative perspective and reviewing aspects of narrative viewpoints with reference to legal studies in order to introduce the present study as a method of assessing narratives in legal settings. The study reviews the Supreme Court decision to reveal its arguments and focuses on the context of the case through the presentation of the public story, the institutional story, and the ethnic Japanese story, which are analyzed using Walter Fisher's narrative perspective. The study concludes that the narrative paradigm is useful for assessing stories in the law because it enables the critic to examine both the emotional and logical reasoning that determine the outcomes of the cases.

The environmental problems associated with the boom in hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," such as anthropogenic earthquakes and groundwater contamination, have motivated some citizens living in affected areas such as Denton, Texas to form movements with the goal of imposing greater regulation on the industry. As responses to an environmental threat that is localized and yet mobile, these anti-fracking movements must construct rhetorical appeals with complicated relationships to place. In this thesis, I examine the anti-fracking movement in Denton, Texas in a series of three rhetorical analyses. In the first, I compared fracking bans used by Frack Free Denton and State College, Pennsylvania to distinguish the argumentative claims that are dependent on the politics of place, and affect strategies localities must use in resisting natural gas extraction. In the second, I compare campaign strategies that use local identity as a way of invoking legitimacy, which reinforces narrative frameworks of environmental risk. In the third, I conduct and analyze interviews with anti-fracking leaders who described the narrative of their movement, which highlighted tensions in the rhetorical construction of a movement as local. Altogether, this thesis traces the rhetorical conception of place across the rhetoric of the anti-fracking movement in Denton, Texas, while …