This section showcases Erika’s presentations and workshops to academic and community audiences, and demonstrate a commitment to providing research on underrepresented communities. This section emphasizes her ability to conduct qualitative research including textual analysis and literature reviews.
“Chinese Wedding Tea Ceremony: Rhetorical Tradition.” Classical Rhetoric Conference. April 2024. University of Findlay. Findlay Ohio.
Abstract: Non-western rhetorical traditions are often overlooked in writing classrooms, especially when it relates to non-text-based traditions. This research seeks to address this gap through a rhetorical analysis of the Chinese text the LiJi and Quintilian to see practices concerning textual and ritual rhetoric in ancient Chinese and Greco-Roman texts. The analysis revealed ancient Chinese textual practices focused on scholarly rhetorical re-mix, while ritual was highly symbolic and communicated values and relationships. In contrast, the Greco-Roman tradition through Quintilian’s textbook on rhetoric showed texts remain mostly static after publication, and re-mix is valued as a tool for learning rather than an end goal. The comparison showed that ancient Chinese rhetorical theory valued the practice of composite, remixed writing which allowed a text to adapt with a culture. Once that text was solidified, it began to become irrelevant as a source for current practices of rituals. This analysis opens up questions about publication, relevancy, and planned irrelevancy. It reminds us of the futility of perfect personal publications, and offers us an alternative to irrelevancy in collaborative cultural remix that obscures authors through its very nature.
“Relation Recipes and Agency in Findlay Cook Books.” Night at the museum. May 2023. Hancock County Historical Society. Findlay, Ohio.
Abstract: Women often write in undervalued rhetorical publications and with techniques that are outside the bounds of male-dominated rhetorical traditions. This presentation looked at one hundred and ten years of community cookbooks published in the Findaly, OH area from 1886 through 1996 through Keneth Burke’s pentad. Burke’s analysis of the rhetorical situation found women published these recipes with the motivation of agency, something these women did not often have in other areas of their lives. Agency was found in the recipes’ formats as the cookbooks transition from narrative style recipes without measurements, to the recipes we are familier with today. Agency was also found in the use of blank spaces in the cookbooks. These allowed women to include notes in the margins, or write in their own recipes at the end of each section. The analysis found that women have a unique approach to rhetoric that allows for ammendments and accommodations to be made to a piece of writing after publication. Research has fallen into the fallacy that because women did not write in traditionally male-dominated spaces that they did not have a rhetorical tradition. This analysis demonstrated that women do have a rhetorical tradition, and we must continue to push against that narrative by looking at non-traditional places where women have had agency.