Lifers, casual offenders, and remixers: Bringing together rhetoric and feminist film and video production

This dissertation provides a comprehensive study of film and video production by Rhetoric and Composition scholars and their students, arguing that feminist filmmaking is a useful model for academics to follow as they explore making moving images themselves and teaching their students to do so. In order to develop a taxonomy of the filmmaking work produced by rhetoricians and their students today and to unravel their theoretical and ideological reasons for working in film and video, I conducted a qualitative study where ten rhetoricians---five faculty members and five graduate students--who work in film and video production provide in-depth interviews about the role filmmaking plays in their scholarship and pedagogy. As I make my arguments, I combine their experiences with my own, being a rhetorician whose films and videos have been published in a peer-reviewed journal and screened at conferences, film festivals, and university courses. I also rely on a survey of film and video work published in online rhetoric journals to theorize the ways in which this new medium is transforming the field.;Chapter 1 maps out the kind of film and video work produced by rhetoricians today and the ways in which they see that work as fitting into their academic careers. Chapter 2 defines feminist filmmaking and argues for bringing together the moving image work done by rhetoricians and feminist practices and traditions. Chapter 3 creates connections between filmmaking and the canons (ethos, pathos, and logos), kairos, invention, and memory. Chapter 4 makes an argument for film and video production to play a stronger role in the digital humanities. Chapter 5 addresses pedagogy, discussing different approaches to teaching film and video production and describing particular assignments that successfully ask students to make moving images.