Category: Archives

Grad School Days and 75th Anniversary Talks at UIUC

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit my old grad-school stomping grounds at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This had me going back down memory lane and looking up artifacts from those good days past. For instance, this photo of several lovely grad students in the program willing to come together…

New Article Published in the American Journal of Public Health

My new article on Dr. Hannah Mayer Stone’s work to create medical contraceptive care in the early-to-mid-twentieth century is out in the American Journal of Public Health! The complete article is available to read here. Jensen, R. E. (2023). The First Publication on Contraception in a US Medical Journal, 1928: Hannah Mayer Stone’s Case for…

Finding Science in the Special Collections

This week, members of our Rhetoric of Science graduate seminar had the fantastic opportunity to visit the Marriott Library’s Special Collections. Original Cataloger for Special Collections, Allie McCormack (pictured below in the front of the class), prepared an engaging and illuminating presentation about archival search engines, theory, and analysis, and she let us page through…

The Chemical Rhetoric Group’s Newest Publication

Our team’s newest publication is hot off the presses at Management Communication Quarterly. Please read the full article at: Cullinan, M. E., Maison, K., Parks, M. M., Krall, M. A., Krebs, E., Mann, B., & Jensen, R. E. (2022). “Seedlings in the Corporate Forest: Communicating Benevolent Sexism in Dow’s First Internal Affirmative-Action Campaign.” Management Communication…

Essay on shifts in gynecological “vision” published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech

I’m really excited that an essay coming from my time as a National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellow has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech. This essay follows the changes in gynecological “vision” instituted by the scientific, pedagogical writings of Dr. Sophia Kleegman in the mid-twentieth century, and it compares Dr. Kleegman’s…

Achival Gems: Zines and more from the Marriott Library Special Collections

Students from my COMM 5950 class on strategic feminist communication and I had the opportunity to check out some of the women-and-gender-oriented archival holdings at the University of Utah’s Special Collections Library earlier this semester. We loved parceling through a sample of the library’s amazing collection of third and fourth wave zines, several of which…

Dr. Melissa Parks accepts Faculty Position at Drexel University

Starting in January, Melissa will begin her new position on faculty in the Department of Communication at Drexel University, where she will teach classes and do research focused on non-profit communication. This allows her to draw from her extensive background in environmental, health, and intercultural communication, as well as her experience working with the Peace…

To the Marriott Library Special Collections we go

Over the past two weeks or so, both my undergraduate “Strategic Feminist Communication” class and my graduate “Rhetoric in the Archives” seminar have made trips to the Marriott Library Special Collections at the University of Utah to look at some of the fantastic primary sources held there and to get some great instruction in finding…

Archival Gems: CRG publishes in Public Understanding of Science

In a new publication headed by Madison Krall, the Chemical Rhetoric Group analyzes the contents of the Science History Institute’s extensive Witco Stamp Collection, which features postage stamps from around the globe that represent chemistry and related sciences from 1910-1938 (see below for some great digitized examples of collection artifacts). You can find an online-first…

Theorizing Chemical Rhetoric in the Journal of Communication

My new article, “Theorizing Chemical Rhetoric: Toward an Articulation of Chemistry as a Public Vocabulary,” has been published in the Journal of Communication! I learned so much in the process of writing this piece and am hoping that it proves useful for others who are interested in how chemistry and its concepts circulate and are…

Archival Gems: Remembering Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi

I found this little gem a few years back at the Schlesinger Library (pardon the poor photography). The library didn’t end up having much on Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi’s communications concerning infertility and reproductive health, which is what I was looking for, but it did have this excerpt from an obituary written about Jacobi on…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…