Bodily Matters/ Bodies Matter: Unsettling Questions on the Discourse(s) on Health and Medicine

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Abstract

Using rhetorical theory as a conceptual framework and the rhetoric of science and technology as a touchstone, the members of this panel will share their research findings on four “stabilized-for-now” medical genres. The consensus of the panel members is that although these texts appear to be stable, in actuality they are contingent. This panel explores these contingencies through rhetorical readings of medical texts.

Sub Unit

• Association for Rhetoric of Science and Technology

Chair

• Jennifer Schneider, Colorado School of Mines

Individual Presentations

• Muscles, Movements, and Emotions: Moving Discourses/Static Genres - Sara Newman, Kent State University

• An Embodied Rhetoric of Mental Illness in Victorian England: Narrative Representations of Degeneracy in the Case History of a Patient at Ticehurst Asylum - Carol Berkenkotter, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

• A Looming Question: Will All Medicine be Biomedicine? - Erin Wais-Hennen, Lindsey Wilson College

Session Organizer

• Katherine Karsnak, National Communication Association