Beyond the Head and the Hand: A Rhetorical Analysis of Material Ethos in The Craftsman (1901-1905) and Make: (2005-2010) Magazines.

This dissertation rhetorically analyzes appeals to material ethos in The Craftsman and Make: magazines in order to identify two historical considerations of craftwork and craftsperson identities. I argue that these case studies represent two approaches towards craft at historical moments when automation and industrialization were disrupting what it meant to be a craftsperson or maker. While ethos has traditionally been thought of as a rhetorical relationship among rhetors and audiences, within these magazines ethos is treated as a relationship between craftspeople and nonhuman materials. Drawing upon posthuman and new materialist feminist theorists, I consider how writing and rhetoric scholars might better understand digital writing at our own present historical moment in ways that account for a materialist ethos as well. Given that AI and LLMs are changing what it means to be a writer, rhetor, and composer, this dissertation reconsiders how we approach the craft of writing from a materialist rhetoric perspective.