Overview

The rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) is a growing and vibrant area of inquiry incorporating scholars working across a variety of fields and disciplines. While this makes it a source for rich and innovative scholarship, this emerging field is in need of a guiding text that can bring together the disparate work spread across multiple disciplines and institutional spaces. Rhetoric of Health and Medicine As/Is: Theories and Approaches for the Field answers this call by providing an in-depth and wide-reaching analysis of the state of the rhetoric of health and medicine and offering core concepts and critical theories to ground research moving forward. With a foreword by Judy Segal and in sections that address interdisciplinary perspectives, representations of health and illness in online spaces, and health activism and advocacy, this volume proceeds in a unique format: essays tackle these key topic areas through case studies ranging from food and its relation to public health, to apps that track fertility, to mental health and disability, to racial disparities that exist in public health campaigns about sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The essays within each section are then followed by responses from prominent scholars in the rhetoric of health and medicine-including John Lyne, J. Blake Scott, and Lisa Keränen-who take on the central theme and discuss how the theory or concept under study can and should evolve in the next stages of research. Unifying the essays is a consideration of RHM as a theoretical construct guiding research and thinking alongside the conceptual parameters that constitute what RHM is and can be in practice. In asking questions about the role of rhetoric-both as analytic and productive framework-in health and medicine, this volume engages with broader theoretical and ethical concerns about our current healthcare system and how healthcare and medical issues circulate in all the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of our world.

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9780814255971

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Reviews

This collection makes an invaluable contribution to conversations about the dynamic nature of the rhetoric of health and medicine. The assembled essays spotlight the innovative possibilities of this still-emerging sub-discipline and its novel approaches to theory, method, and history. --Jeffrey Bennett, author of Banning Queer Blood: Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance The editors have achieved a remarkably consistent quality of research and writing throughout the chapters--an incredible accomplishment. I look forward to the theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical impact that this collection will have on our field. --Amy Koerber, author of From Hysteria to Hormones: A Rhetorical History

Author Information

Lisa Melonçon is Professor at the University of South Florida and editor of Methodologies for the Rhetoric of Health & Medicine. S. Scott Graham is Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of The Politics of Pain Medicine: A Rhetorical-Ontological Inquiry. Jenell Johnson is Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of American Lobotomy: A Rhetorical History. John A. Lynch is Professor at the University of Cincinnati and author of What Are Stem Cells? Definitions at the Intersection of Science and Politics. Cynthia Ryan is Associate Professor at the University of Alabama and editor of City Comp: Identities, Spaces, Practices.

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