Welcome to the open-access repository site for the journal Rhetoric of Health & Medicine (RHM). Here you will find various featured digital content (e.g., research videos, multimedia reviews, searchable bibliography) as well as other open access content that appears in journal issues. All of this material is also available on the journal’s main website. This repository site will help improve the access and searchability of select journal content, and will provide the journal and its published authors additional tools for tracking the reach and impact of this content.
To access full current and past issues, learn about author guidelines and submit and article, and subscribe to the journal, go the journal’s main website. RHM seeks to bring together humanities and social scientific research traditions in a rhetorically focused journal to allow scholars to build new interdisciplinary theories, methodologies, and insights that can impact our understanding of health, illness, healing, and wellness.
Featured Content
Review of Kelly Pender's Being at Genetic Risk: Toward a Rhetoric of Care
Jillian K. Zwilling
Date posted: July 2020
Being at Genetic Risk: Toward a Rhetoric of Care. Kelly Pender. University Park, PA, The Pennsylvania State Press, 2018. 174 pages, $69.95 hardcover. Publisher webpage: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08212-7.html
DOI: 10.5744/rhm.2020.1019
Topic: genetic risk, BRCA+, cancer, rhetoric of care, diagnosis, screening
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RHM Author Interview (Youtube video): Cassandra (Casi) Kearney, Ph.D., author of “Mass Shootings and Mental Health: A Historical Perspective on the ‘Mental Illness as Motive’ Narrative”
Cathryn Molloy and Erin Trauth
Date posted: May 2020
RHM Author Interview (Youtube video): Cassandra (Casi) Kearney, Ph.D., author of “Mass Shootings and Mental Health: A Historical Perspective on the ‘Mental Illness as Motive’ Narrative”
In an effort to better understand the historical significance of the "mental illness as motive" narrative, this essay investigates what has been recognized as the first mass shooting in the modern United States--Howard Unruh's 1949 mass shooting in Camden, New Jersey. Given that mass shootings were an unprecedented phenomenon, the news media played an important role in explaining the event. As will be shown, many Americans felt uncertain about how mental illness manifested and who was vulnerable. Given the often undisclosed, albeit perceived threat of schizophrenia, the public needed reassurance that there would be some indicator of insanity. Accordingly, the media used evidence of religious fanaticism and unfavorable physical descriptions of Unruh to cast him as separate, outside, or an "other." Ultimately, the media's rhetorical choices differentiated Unruh and attempted to make mental illness easier to identify for an audience afraid of its influence.
Topic: rhetoric, gun violence, media, othering
Teaching and Researching with a Mental Health Diagnosis: Practices and Perspectives on Academic Ableism
Ann Green, Alyssa _, Lucia Dura, Patrick Harris, Leah Heilig, Bailey Kirby, Jay McClintick, Emily Pfender, and Rebecca Carrasco
Date posted: April 2020
Abstract: Nine people with mental health diagnoses wrote a dialogue to discuss how we navigate our conditions and ask for accommodations within an academic setting. We cogitate on the challenges of obtaining a diagnosis, how and when we disclose, the affordances and challenges of our symptoms, seeking accommodations, and advocating for ourselves. We consider how current scholarship and other perspectives are changing the conversation about mental health in the academy. We conclude that while the 2008 revisions to the Americans with Disabilities Act have addressed necessary accommodations, that those with mental health conditions are still seeking access.
Topic: mental health, pedagogy, diagnosis, accommodations, ableism, mental health disability
RHM Author Interview: Liz Angeli, Ph.D. and Christina Norwood, M.S., authors of Persuasion Brief: The Internal Rhetorical Work of a Public Health Crisis Response
Cathryn Molloy and Erin Trauth
Date posted: March 2020
RHM Author Interview (Youtube video): Liz Angeli, Ph.D. and Christina Norwood, M.S., authors of Persuasion Brief: The Internal Rhetorical Work of a Public Health Crisis Response
This persuasion brief suggests that the rhetorical concepts of techne and rhetorical work facilitate the creation of public health crisis communication. To illustrate this claim, we present findings from a case study with the Johns Hopkins Medicine Ebola Crisis Communications Team, a transdisciplinary group that collaborated with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the 2014 Ebola crisis. The team created multimodal documentation to support healthcare providers as they prepared to treat patients and crafted communication to alleviate the fear among health workers and the public caused by the threat of Ebola. Ultimately, we frame public health crisis communication as a rhetorical endeavor guided by a focus on failure, situated expertise, and techne. This focus pushes specialists to tend to the processes involved in creating a response, and it highlights how gut feelings factor into the process of designing and implementing a public health crisis intervention.
Angeli, E., Norwood, C. (2019) "The Internal Rhetorical Work of a Public Health Crisis Response." Rhetoric of Health & Medicine 2(2): 208-231.
Topic: CDC, PPE, techne, public health
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Book review: Rhetorical work in emergency medical services: Communicating in the unpredictable workplace
Marissa McKinley
Date posted: March 2020
A Review of Rhetorical Work in Emergency Medical Services: Communicating in the Unpredictable Workplace
Marissa C. McKinley
Rhetorical Work in Emergency Medical Services: Communicating in the Unpredictable Workplace. By Elizabeth L. Angeli. New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. 204 pages, $47.95 paper, $23.98 e-book.
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Book review: Bounding biomedicine: Evidence and rhetoric in the new science of alternative medicine
Blake Scott
Date posted: March 2020
A Review of Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine
J. Blake Scott
Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine. By Colleen Derkatch. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016. 238 pages. $55 cloth; $10 e-book.
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RHM Editor Blake Scott's Interview with Lisa Keränen
Blake Scott and Lisa Keranen
Date posted: August 2019
Transcription of RHM Editor Blake Scott's Interview with influential rhetorician of health and medicine and bioethics scholar Lisa Keränen to get her perspective on the first special issue of the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine journal on public health, co-edited by editor Lisa Melonçon and by guest editor Jennifer Malkowski.
Topic: public health
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RHM Author Interview: Dr. Lisa Meloncon, RHM Editor, interviews Dr. Abby Dubisar and Sara Davis on their persuasion brief, “Communicating Elective Sterilization: A Feminist Perspective”
Lisa Meloncon, Erin Trauth, and Cathryn Molloy
Date posted: March 2019
Download includes 1) Interview transcript and 2) Appendices A, B, and C from Dr. Abby Dubisar and Sara Davis
Assistant Editors' Interview with Dr. David Gruber and Dr. Jason Kalin
Cathryn Molloy and Erin Trauth
Date posted: November 2018
RHM Assisant Editor Podcast Interview with Dr. David Gruber and Dr. Jason Kalin on their article,"Gut Rhetorics: Towards Experiments in Living with Microbiota"
Topic: microbiota, rhetoric of health and medicine, gut rhetorics
Assistant Editors' Interview with Dr. Colleen Derkatch
Ellie Browning
Date posted: October 2018
RHM Assistant Editor Dr. Ellie Browning interviews Dr. Colleen Derkatch on her article, "The Self-Generating Language of Wellness and Natural Health"
Topic: autopoiesis, dietary supplements, optimization, risk, self-surveillance
Assistant Editors' Interview with Dr. Berkeley Franz and Dr. Dan Skinner
Cathryn Molloy and Erin Trauth
Date posted: September 2018
RHM Assistant Editor Cathryn Molloy interviews Dr. Berkeley Franz (Ohio University) and Dr. Dan Skinner (Ohio University) on their article, "From Patients to Populations: Rhetorical Considerations for a Post-Patient Compliance Medicine"
An Interview with Dr. J. Fred Reynolds—Preview to his Essay “A Short History of Mental Health Rhetoric Research (MHRR)”
Fred Reynolds and Cathryn Molloy
Date posted: September 2018
An Interview with Dr. J. Fred Reynolds—Preview to his Essay “A Short History of Mental Health Rhetoric Research (MHRR)”
Topic: mental health, rhetoric
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Assistant Editors' Interview with Dr. Lisa DeTora of Hofstra University
Erin Trauth and Lisa M. DeTora
Date posted: March 2018
In issue 1.1 of RHM, Dr. Lisa DeTora, Assistant Professor and Director of STEM Writing at Hofstra University, contributes a research article titled:
“The Dangers of Magical Thinking: Situating Right To Try Laws, Patient’s Rights, and the Language of Advocacy"
To download a transcription of this interview, (will open in a new window).
See more on Dr. DeTora's work at: https://www.hofstra.edu/faculty/fac_profiles.cfm?id=4710&t=/Academics/Colleges/HCLAS/WRITING/
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Assistant Editors' Interview with Dr. Heidi Lawrence of George Mason University
Heidi Lawrence and Cathryn Molloy
Date posted: February 2018
In issue 1.1 of RHM, Dr. Heidi Lawrence, Assistant Professor in George Mason University’s Department of English, contributes a “persuasion brief” titled:
“When Patients Question Vaccines: Considering Vaccine Communication through a Material Rhetorical Approach.”
To download a transcription of this interview, (will open in a new window).
See more on Dr. Lawrence's work at: https://english.gmu.edu/people/hlawren2
Topic: vaccines, first issue of RHM, material rhetoric, Latour, public health, exigence, rhetorical situation
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