The Rhetorical Agency of Student-Parents: Assembling, Archiving, and Naming Practices and Interpretations that Transform Worlds

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary project that uses interview data collected from six student-parents attending Bronx Community College during 2024 to 2025. Using rhetorical and critical discourse analysis, this dissertation argues student-parents enact their rhetorical agency to transform their college experience. Specifically, student-parents use their rhetorical agency to interpret time and place in a way that centers their own wellbeing as well as the wellbeing of their children. This dissertation focuses on interpretations and ordinary practices that reimagine what time and place can look and feel like on a college campus. Additionally, student-parents enact their rhetorical agency through ordinary practices to align their college experience with their own articulations of what it means to be a student and parent. Through their interpretations and ordinary practices, The Rhetorical Agency of Student-Parents: Assembling, Archiving and Naming Practices and Interpretations that Transforms Worlds argues student-parents expand our history of rhetorical traditions. This dissertation ultimately illustrates student-parents are an integral rhetorical population to study for a richer, more nuanced perspective of higher education.