Books by Jonathan Alexander

Sexual Rhetorics: Methods, Identities, Publics (Routledge Studies in Rhetoric and Communication)

Author(s): Jonathan Alexander, Jacqueline Rhodes
Publication date: 2015-10-28
ISBN: 1138906875, ISBN-13: 9781138906877

Sexual rhetoric is the self-conscious and critical engagement with discourses of sexuality that exposes both their naturalization and their queering, their torquing to create different or counter-discourses, giving voice and agency to multiple and complex sexual experiences. This volume explores the intersection of rhetoric and sexuality through the varieties of methods available in the fields of rhetoric and writing studies, including case studies, theoretical questioning, ethnographies, or close (and distant) readings of "texts" that help us think through the rhetorical force of sexuality and the sexual force of rhetoric.

On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies (Cccc Studies in Writing & Rhetoric)

Author(s): Jonathan Alexander, Jacqueline Rhodes
Publication date: 2014-03-14
ISBN: 0814134122, ISBN-13: 9780814134122

As our field of composition studies invites students to compose with new media and multimedia, we need to ask about other possibilities for communication, representation, and making knowledge--including possibilities that may exceed those of the letter, the text based, the composed.

In this provocative look at how composition incorporates new forms of media into actual classrooms, Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes argue persuasively that composition's embrace of new media and multimedia often makes those media serve the rhetorical ends of writing and composition, as opposed to exploring the rhetorical capabilities of those media. Practical employment of new media often ignores their rich contexts, which contain examples of the distinct logics and different affordances of those media, wasting the very characteristics that make them most effective and potentially revolutionary for pedagogy. _On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies_ urges composition scholars and teachers to become aware of the rich histories and rhetorical capabilities of new media so that students' work with those media is enlivened and made substantive.

Bisexuality and Queer Theory: Intersections, Connections and Challenges

Author(s): Jonathan Alexander, Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio
Publication date: 2014-09-13
ISBN: 1138817422, ISBN-13: 9781138817425

According to David Halperin, sexuality in our time is typified by a "crisis in contemporary sexual definition". What is sexuality? What does it mean to have a sexual identity or orientation? What is the relationship between sexuality as a knowledge construct, on one hand, and the often messy flows of desire and practices of love, on the other? How and why are some sexual, erotic, and intimate practices normalized and others marginalized?

Queer Theory has emerged in the West as one of the most provocative analytical tools in the humanities and social sciences. It scrutinizes identity and social structures that take heteronormativity for granted – that do not question the social construction of heterosexuality as normative in relation to its oppositional binary, homosexuality. At the same time, bisexuality is a practice, identity, and orientation that challenges the binary logic around which cultural notions of sexuality are organized. It is a portal to the imagination of a world of amorous expression beyond that divide.

This provocative collection presents bisexuality and queer theory as two parallel thought collectives that have made significant contributions to cultural discourses about sexual and amorous practices since the onset of the AIDS era, and explores the ideas that circulate in these thought collectives today. We learn much about the construction and experience of sexuality, and the power it still holds throughout the contemporary Western world to shape identities and practices. This volume challenges our understanding of what it means to be sexual, to have a sexual identity, and to practise the arts of loving.

This book was orginally published as a special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality.

Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing

Author(s): Elizabeth Losh, Jonathan Alexander, Kevin Cannon, Zander Cannon
Publication date: 2013-03-15
ISBN: 031264096X, ISBN-13: 9780312640965

This comics-style collaboration between rhetoricians Elizabeth Losh and Jonathan Alexander and illustrator team Big Time Attic presents the content of the composition course in a form designed to draw students in. Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing covers what first-year college writers need to know — the writing process, critical analysis, argument, research, revision, and presentation — in a visual format that brings rhetorical concepts to life through examples ranging from Aristotle to YouTube.

Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies

Author(s): Michelle A. Gibson, Jonathan F. Alexander, Deborah T. Meem
Publication date: 2013-02-14
ISBN: 1452235287, ISBN-13: 9781452235288

The new second edition of Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies by Michelle A. Gibson, Jonathan Alexander, and Deborah T. Meem provides readers with an accessible and riveting introduction to lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) studies. Designed as a text/reader to help students understand the growth and development of LGBT identities and the interdisciplinary nature of sexuality studies, the book combines comprehensive introductory and explanatory material with primary readings and artifacts. The authors provide context (from history, literature and the arts, media and politics, and more) to form a coherent framework for understanding the included debates and readings. This emerging field is complex, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary, but authors Gibson, Alexander, and Meem use instructional apparatus, primary readings, and careful organization to create a clear-cut introduction, ideal for today's students.

Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy: Theory and Practice for Composition Studies

Author(s): Jonathan Alexander
Publication date: 2008-03-15
ISBN: 0874217016, ISBN-13: 9780874217018

Despite its centrality to much of contemporary personal and public discourse, sexuality remains infrequently discussed in most composition courses, and in our discipline at large. Moreover, its complicated relationship to discourse, to the very languages we use to describe and define our worlds, is woefully understudied in our discipline. Discourse about sexuality, and the discourse of sexuality, surround us—circulating in the news media, on the Web, in conversations, and in the very languages we use to articulate our interactions with others and our understanding of ourselves. It forms a core set of complex discourses through which we approach, make sense of, and construct a variety of meanings, politics, and identities.
Â
In Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy, Jonathan Alexander argues for the development of students' "sexual literacy." Such a literacy is not just concerned with developing fluency with sexuality as a "hot" topic, but with understanding the intimate interconnectedness of sexuality and literacy in Western culture. Using the work of scholars in queer theory, sexuality studies, and the New Literacy Studies, Alexander unpacks what he sees as a crucial--if often overlooked--dimension of literacy: the fundamental ways in which sexuality has become a key component of contemporary literate practice, of the stories we tell about ourselves, our communities, and our political investments.
Â
Alexander then demonstrates through a series of composition exercises and writing assignments how we might develop students' understanding of sexual literacy. Examining discourses of gender, heterosexuality, and marriage allows students (and instructors) a critical opportunity to see how the languages we use to describe ourselves and our communities are saturated with ideologies of sexuality. Understanding how sexuality is constructed and deployed as a way to "make meaning" in our culture gives us a critical tool both to understand some of the fundamental ways in which we know ourselves and to challenge some of the norms that govern our lives. In the process, we become more fluent with the stories that we tell about ourselves and discover how normative notions of sexuality enable (and constrain) narrations of identity, culture, and politics. Such develops not only our understanding of sexuality, but of literacy, as we explore how sexuality is a vital, if vexing, part of the story of who we are.

Role Play: Distance Learning and the Teaching of Writing (New Dimensions in Computers and Composition)

Author(s): Jonathan Alexander, Marcia Dickson
Publication date: 2006-02-03
ISBN: 1572736593, ISBN-13: 9781572736597

This book focuses on the development of new theories and pedagogies of distance learning in the English class. It is a serious discussion of the development of effective means of conveying information, developing knowledge and perfecting skills. Through scholarly analyses it shows how distance learning calls instructors of English to different roles in the performance of their duties.

Digital Youth: Emerging Literacies on the World Wide Web (New Dimensions in Computers and Composition)

Author(s): Jonathan Alexander
Publication date: 2005-12-30
ISBN: 1572736518, ISBN-13: 9781572736511

In this book the author argues that many youth are using the Web to experiment with and deploy a number of surprising rhetorical strategies that tell us much about their vision for the new communications technologies and the emerging literacy practices they are using to engage that technology. Such literacy practices foreshadow potential changes in rhetorical and literacy practices. It offers a complex and telling portrait of the future use of communications technologies, particularly the Web, and the kinds of literacies that some youth are developing with those technologies.

Argument Now: A Brief Rhetoric

Author(s): Jonathan Alexander, Margaret Barber
Publication date: 2005-01-28
ISBN: 0321113608, ISBN-13: 9780321113603

This writing guide helps writers develop a familiarity with computers and a sense of how various platforms and programs can develop writing skills. With a combined twenty years of teaching in networked classrooms, the authors provide an introduction for students¿and teachers¿to new ways of analyzing and writing arguments with computers. Emphasizing rhetorical considerations and the writing process, not the technology itself, the text provides new methods for teaching writing with computers. The text maximizes the opportunities computers offer students to engage in the writing process with a sense of freedom and creativity. It encourages students to ¿play¿ with their own text, with their ideas and words, with written dialogue and polylogue. An approachable writing style makes the innovative content easy to understand.


Link to this page using the following URL:  https://www.facultybookshelf.org/author/jonathan_alexander

FacultyBookshelf.org is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and earns money on qualifying purchases.