Author: jensenrobine

National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship

At the beginning of the year, I learned that I had been awarded a 2020-2021 National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship. I am so excited to have the support of the NEH as I work on my next book project. For more information about the project and the award, see the College of Humanities…

Dr. Melissa M. Parks

In the spring semester, Melissa defended her dissertation successfully and became a PhD! The University was closed because of the pandemic, so she had to defend her work to her committee over a Zoom meeting. A traditional defense experience it was not, but certainly a memorable one! Well done, Dr. Parks! P.S. I have a…

Dr. Benjamin W. Mann

You can call him Dr. Mann! In mid-December, Benjamin Mann successfully defended his dissertation, “Intersectional Stigma Communication, Demi-rhetoricity, and Critical Health Communication: Affirming (Neuro)queer Subjectivities.” His committee members agreed that he had put together an important project grounded in interviews with hard-to-reach and often overlooked individuals and that his research would go a long way…

The Chemical Rhetoric Group publishes its study on “brain chemistry” and medicalizing news coverage!

We are excited that our article, “Medicalization’s Communicative Infrastructure: Seventy Years of ‘Brain Chemistry’ in the New York Times” is now published in the journal Health Communication and available here. In this piece, we trace the rhetorical strategies used across time and diagnoses to situate social conditions within the medical domain. This was a project…

The Chemical Rhetoric Group’s Article on Rosalind Franklin is hot off the press!

Our article, “Mapping Nature’s Scientist: The Posthumous Demarcation of Rosalind Franklin’s Crystallographic Data,” is available here from the Quarterly Journal of Speech. We began the research for this piece at our 2017 Writing Retreat in Park City, UT, and it is so much fun to see it published after lots of hard work. We hope…

Melissa M. Parks wins the Benson-Campbell Dissertation Research Award!

Melissa has been recognized with the 2019 Benson-Campbell Dissertation Award from the National Communication Association’s Public Address Division for her dissertation project, “From the Redwoods Conservation Movement to Genome Mapping: Genetic Ecologies of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.” She will be recognized for her project’s “conceptual rigor, important focus, and innovative approach” at the Public…

Benjamin W. Mann is selected to attend the 2019 Doctoral Honors Seminar!

Last July, Ben traveled to the University of South Florida after being selected to take part in the National Communication Association’s Doctoral Honor’s Seminar. The seminar’s theme was “Communication, Engagement, and Social Justice,” which fit perfectly with Ben’s dissertation project on the negotiation of intersectional stigma. He joined excellent faculty leaders and other outstanding doctoral…

Madison A. Krall wins a Rhetoric Society of America Institute Graduate Development Grant!

This summer, Madison won an RSA Institute Graduate Development Award to support her archival research and her travel to the RSA Institutes’ Seminar on Medical Rhetoric in the Archives. And, in other great RSA news, the University of Utah chapter of RSA–Retorica Elevada–was recognized at this year’s Institutes with the Outstanding Student Chapter Award for…

Melissa Parks Heads to the Taft-Nicholson Center for the 2019 Summer Season

For the second year in a row, Melissa Parks has been named a fellow and education coordinator at the University of Utah’s Taft-Nicholson Environmental Humanities Center in Beaverhead County, MT. She will spend the summer helping to keep the center running, giving research talks, and otherwise supporting the many research and educational endeavors the center…

Madison Krall and Robin Jensen take part in RSA’s “Medical Rhetoric in the Archives” Seminar

In the beginning of June, Madison and Robin headed to the University of Maryland to take part in a Rhetoric Society of America Institute Seminar entitled, Medical Rhetoric in the Archives. Robin worked with the amazing Professor Jordynn Jack to lead the seminar of about 30 scholars through a variety of readings, discussions, and activities…

Melissa Parks Participates in the 2019 Rhetoric Society of America Project

From May 20-23, Melissa Parks joined with other scholars and community activists in Reno, NV to take part in the RSA Project in Power, Place, and Publics: Rhetorical Cartographies. The group as a whole focused on rhetorically analyzing the University of Nevada, Reno Campus Master Plan. Melissa’s specific working group, led by Professor Bridie McGreavy…

2018 NCA Conference Brings Many Top Paper Recognitions for Current and Former Students!

My current and former students are amazing! At the 2018 National Communication Association Conference in Salt Lake City, they earned a mind-boggling number of top paper recognitions. Melissa L. Carrion, my former PhD student and now an assistant professor at Georgia Southern University, won the Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine’s Article…

Park City Writing Retreat 2018

Scenes from our 2018 Park City Writing Retreat!  Benjamin Mann, Melissa Parks, Kourtney Maison, Madison Krall, Emily Krebs and I spend these last few days analyzing primary sources, brainstorming, writing, re-writing, and accomplishing a ton of research goals. We also laughed, ate, and tried to figure out how to turn the malfunctioning fire alarm off…

Celebrating Dr. Celeste Condit and Reproductive Justice at the Public Address Conference

  What fun it was to meet up with some of my favorite people in Boulder, Colorado to talk about the amazing work of Dr. Celeste Condit and speak to issues of reproductive justice and health! Below are a few scenes from the event, beginning with the honoree, Dr. Condit, responding brilliantly and humbly (as…

Maya Kobe-Rundio is Named the Tanner Humanities Center Undergraduate Research Fellow

The amazing honors undergraduate student that I’m mentoring, Maya Kobe-Rundio, has been named a 2019-2020 Tanner Humanities Center Undergraduate Research Fellow. This fellowship will support her thesis research, “In Her Element: Outdoor Recreation as a Tool for Female Empowerment and Community Building.” Read more about Maya’s work, as well as the work of my colleagues…

Melissa Parks Serves as a Fellow at the Taft-Nicholson Environmental Humanities Education Center

This past spring, Melissa Parks was named the inaugural field experience graduate fellow at the Taft-Nicholson Environmental Humanities Education Center in Lakeview, MT. She spent the summer in Centennial Valley working with director, Mark Bergstrom, to further the Center’s mission concerning environmental education and communication. Way to go, Melissa!!

NCA 2018 Health Communication Preconference

See below for information about the program, “Welcome to the Sandbox.” I will be giving a talk with Dr. Teri Thompson entitled, “Mastering Publishing: Tips and Tricks for Journal Articles and Books.” Join us for the Health Communication Division’s Doctoral Student and Early Career Faculty Health Communication Preconference At the 2018 National Communication Association Annual…

Sites in Old Town Philadelphia

I loved wandering around Old Town. Above is an installation outside the Arch Street Meeting House. Below is the Liberty Bell, Benjamin Franklin’s grave, Christ Church, the Betsy Ross house, Luna Café (not quite as famous as the rest, but still fun), the Irish Immigrant’s Memorial, and the Franklin Fountain.

Trip to the Science History Institute in Philadelphia

Earlier this year, I won a travel grant to visit the Othmer Library of Chemical History at Philadelphia’s Science History Institute. This allowed me to spend the last week in June combing through the library’s tremendous archives and exploring Old Town Philly. This is me taking up residence in the Othmer Library. The archives are…

The first issue of the new journal, Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, is hot off the press!

Click here to check out the issue’s compelling introduction by journal editors Lisa Meloncon and J. Blake Scott, as well as fantastic articles by Lisa DeTora, Celeste Condit, S. Scott Graham, Mary Lay Schuster, Colleen Derkatch, and more. Below, editor Lisa Meloncon and I coordinate at the 2017 Rhetoric of Health & Medicine Symposium.

I was interviewed for two podcasts that focus on reproductive health and infertility

The first is called Waiting for Babies, and you can listen here! Host Steven Mavros asks great, informed questions, and was such a pleasure to talk with. The second is called Beat Infertility, and you can listen here! Host Heather Huhman has one of the best radio voices I’ve ever heard, and her podcast was…

Review of Infertility is Published in Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Richardson_2017_Review of Infertility_Bulletin of the History of Medicine The author of this review, Sarah S. Richardson, is a professor of History of Science and of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University. She is also the author of this really important Nature article on the implications for women of recent epigenetic-inspired public commentary.

Maud May Babcock Plaque Featured in Downtown SLC

Founder of the Department of Speech at the University of Utah, Maud May Babcock was also the University’s first female faculty member. Today she is recognized with this plaque in downtown Salt Lake City. Over the years, Professor Babcock inspired many to achieve academic prominence. Most recently, doctoral students in the Department of Speech Communication…

Presenting Blake Scott with the Health Communication Division’s Distinguished Book Award at NCA 2017!

I had the great honor of presenting Blake Scott with the 2017 Health Communication Division’s Distinguished Book Award. His book, Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing, instigated the sub-field of rhetoric of health and medicine and is long overdue for recognition. Congratulations Blake!  

Winter Break Reading

All of these are outstanding. Two of them I bought as gifts for other people and then couldn’t stop reading them. One was a gift–thank you Gretchen Jensen! None of them have to do directly with my research, which made them a really nice way to take a break.

The 2017 Winans-Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Public Address

Posing, above, with all of the 2017 awardees (including two others from the University of Utah–Julia Moore and Stacey Overholt!). Posing, below, with some of my favorite people and scholars: Lisa Corrigan, Debbie Hawhee, and Mary Stuckey (left to right).Receiving the award from the president of NCA, Stephen Hartnett. For more information about the James…

Keynote Address at the 2017 Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Symposium

Last week I headed to the University of Cincinnati for the 2017 Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Symposium.  I had the pleasure of finally meeting the amazing Lisa Meloncon (pictured above); who has overseen the symposium since its start in 2013; catching up with my friend and extremely smart former advisee Melissa Carrion (also pictured above);…

The 2017 Alta Argumentation Conference at Snowbird Resort is in the Books!

Professor Robert Asen gave the keynote address entitled, “Disavowing networks, affirming networks: Neoliberalism and its challenge to democratic deliberation.” The conference was held at Utah’s Snowbird Resort, which provided a beautiful setting to deliberate. A panel on “Trump in the network of ideological argument” was standing room only. Here, Professor James F. Klumpp introduces the…

Robin with an E

I found this article today where the author writes that Robin M. Jensen, a professor of theology at Notre Dame, “must be fairly tired of being confused with Robin E. Jensen, a professor at Utah and author of Dirty Words: The Rhetoric of Public Sex Education. Perhaps they both are.”

Chemical Rhetoric goes to ICA in San Diego

The International Communication Association Conference in San Diego included fun, visits with friends, and a talk about public perceptions of the female fertility timeline with my amazing co-author Nicole Martins. Dinner with former Purdue-ites Andy King and Courtney Scherr. Catching up with Josh Barbour over a smoothie.

Dr. Cara Finnegan wins the Rhetorical and Communication Theory Faculty Mentorship Award!!

Here Dr. Cara Finnegan–winner of the 2017 Rhetorical and Communication Theory Faculty Mentorship Award–is shown with some of her former students. From left: Jennifer Mercieca, Jennifer Jones Barbour, Robin Jensen, Cara Finnegan, Jiyeon Kang Billie Murray introduced Cara beautifully before presenting her with the award at NCA in Dallas. Dr. Finnegan’s advisees pose in 2005 with…

New book published!

  In 2016, I published my second book, Infertility: Tracing the History of a Transformative Term, with the Pennsylvania State University Press in the Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) Series in Transdisciplinary Rhetoric. This book demonstrates that, throughout the last century, the inability of women to conceive children has been explained by discrepant views: that…