The Future Writers of America

This class project-turned-full-time blog features the eloquent writings about anything and everything that has to do with authorship. The website simultaneously carries an authoritative voice while creating a space for others to contribute their opinions and insights on the subjects provided. Initially, Roddewig created the blog for WRTC 200: Introduction to WRTC, but has since continued the blog to create a community of writers within and outside of academia

Carrying the Torch of Colbert: An Anthology of Right-wing Satire

In this satirical anthology written for WRTC 314: Writing in the Public Sphere, veteran Lexia author Roddewig pays homage to Stephen Colbert\u27s fictionalized persona from The Colbert Report and his book I Am America (And So Can You!). With brevity and hilarity, Carrying the Torch of Colbert offers a poignant parody of the hot-button issues of gun regulation and Trump\u27s wall

To Build the Fire of Revolution

Scholarly examinations of naturalism in Jack London’s 1908 short story “To Build a Fire” often overlook the influence of the socialist political movement. After surveying the American Socialist Party movement and London’s activism in “How I Became a Socialist,” this essay uses the frame of Marxist rhetorical criticism to inspect sociopolitical themes in London’s famous story. London’s critiques of Individualism in “How I Became a Socialist” parallel one of his concerns in “To Build a Fire” as his unnamed protagonist progresses through the Yukon with the larger ideals of American society and the capitalist economy guiding his actions. Although masculinity, individualism, environmental dominance, and capitalist commodification lead the character to believe he can succeed, his slow death represents an implicit critique of Western culture and its ideologie

Moral structure

Chapter 12 provides a comprehensive overview of the moral structure of each of the three realms of Dante’s afterlife: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. It examines Dante’s sources, ethical criteria, and topography, as well as his representation of moral structure in the narrative itself, and its political implications. The first section analyses the four principal regions of Hell through Virgil’s rationale: the circles of incontinence, the ‘rings’ of violence, the ‘pouches’ of simple fraud, and the pit of treacherous fraud. It then explores the three groups of souls that Virgil strikingly leaves out: the ‘neutrals’, the virtuous pagans in Limbo, and the heretics. The second section addresses four key differences between Infernal and Purgatorial suffering, explains the moral theories of disordered love and the seven capital sins underpinning the seven terraces of Dante’s Purgatory, and examines the theologically original antechamber of Purgatory, and the Earthly Paradise at the mountain’s summit. The third section highlights Dante’s distinction between what Paradise is and how it is conveyed, and shows how his layered vision of Paradise overlaps the scheme of the four cardinal and three theological virtues with the theory of astral influence on personality.Postprin