Date of Award
Spring 2025
Project Type
Dissertation
Program or Major
English
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
First Advisor
Cristy Beemer
Second Advisor
Christina Ortmeier-Hooper
Third Advisor
Florianne Jimenez
Abstract
Recognizing Rhetorical Agency: How Students with Disabilities Navigate Accommodations, examines the often-unacknowledged rhetorical skills students enact in navigating the complicated accommodation process in higher education. University accommodations, as a function of the medical model of disability, require that disability be made visible through diagnosis, but by granting accommodations, which are situated to “fix” difference, disability is thus remade invisible. Further, many disabled students do not pursue university accommodations due to the stigma of disability in academia. In this project, I identify the rhetorical moves that students with disabilities make as they navigate accommodations and contend that as disabled students subvert the accommodation system, they enact rhetorical agency. Expanding on existing theories of rhetorical agency, I define it as a situated, embodied process of making meaning through interaction. Ultimately, my dissertation makes visible the often-invisible rhetorical work of disabled students in higher education and offers Composition and Rhetoric teachers and scholars pedagogical implications with the goal of making writing classrooms more accessible.
Recognizing Rhetorical Agency is a rhetorical study grounded in Critical Disability Studies that centers the voices of students with disabilities. Using qualitative methods of focus groups and interviews, I created a corpus of student voices. I conducted four open-ended focus groups and eight semi-structured follow-up interviews with undergraduate students who self-identify as having a disability. Through a rhetorical reading of participants’ experiences, I identify three ways students with disabilities subvert the accommodation system and enact rhetorical agency: their rhetorically savvy use of disclosure, their use of ethos-building strategies to better self-advocate, and their use of kairos to crip classroom policies and their writing processes. By identifying these strategies, I make visible the rhetorical work that disabled students do to access writing classrooms. Finally, I conclude with suggestions for writing instructors to make their pedagogies more flexible and accessible.
Recommended Citation
Roy, Rachel, "Recognizing Rhetorical Agency: How Students with Disabilities Navigate University Accommodations" (2025). Doctoral Dissertations. 2950.
https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/2950