Our fantastic department administrative assistant, Emmy Darling, put together these childhood photos of our Department Executive Committee for social media. If only we were all still so cute!!
Category: Archives
Conferencing at NCA, 2025
The National Communication Association annual conference was held in Aurora, CO this year. There is always so much going on at this event that it is difficult not to feel a bit overwhelmed and stretched for time. Miracle of miracles, though, I made it through without major mishap AND I got to touch base with…
My New Favorite Office Furniture
This summer, I was thrilled to be gifted this gorgeous library card catalogue from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, my alma mater, complete with original labels following the Dewey Decimal System (these drawers are all from the D’s). HUGE thanks to Drs. Andy King and Abs King for passing this on to me after…
New Book in the JHUP Health Communication series
I was so excited to get to my office this morning to see that a copy of the newest book in the Health Communication series from Johns Hopkins University Press had arrived! Emily Winderman’s beautiful book, Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History, is hitting the shelves and is the latest addition to our incredible series. It is available…
Archival Gems: The Helen Rodríguez-Trias Papers at CENTRO Library & Archives
This summer I was thrilled to be able to access the Helen Rodríguez-Trias Papers at the CENTRO Library & Archives. Rodríguez-Trias was a community focused pediatrician and women’s health movement leader who fought against sterilization abuse in the 1970s and 1980s. She is an important figure in my current book project, and it was such…
To the Penn State University (and Drexel) Archives
Last summer I took an amazing trip to the Penn State University Archives, as well as to the Drexel University Legacy Center, to find records of Dr. Helen Octavia Dickens, the first Black woman certified in Gynecology in the United States. Thanks to the fantastic archivists I worked with, boxes of materials were waiting for…
Archival Gems: Sylvia Plath’s Typewriter
During my visit to Smith College, the Special Collections was displaying an exhibit on the author and famed poet Sylvia Path, who had been a student there in the 1950s. I was especially taken by her typewriter, the very one she used at school and then to type out her published writings later on. During…
Smith College Libraries: The Spring Break Edition
This spring break, I took a variety of planes, trains, and automobiles to get to Smith College in Northampton, MA, and to do research in the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History held in Smith’s Special Collection Reading Room. My visit was a lovely adventure that had me filling out call slips like this one…
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…
Trip to the Utah State Archives
Last Friday, the students in my “Rhetoric in the Archives” seminar and I traveled downtown to the Utah State Archives, where we were treated by state archivists Ken Williams and Jim Kichas to a fantastic tour of the beautiful facilities there and a peak behind-the-scenes to see a range of astounding artifacts being stored, processed,…
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…
Humanities Radio
Last week, Jana Cunningham interviewed me for the new University of Utah Humanities Radio Podcast. She asked about my research on Dr. Sophia Kleegman, specifically, a person who I have had a lot of fun learning about through my current NEH project on the history of infertility science. You can catch our conversation HERE. Thanks…
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…
Melissa Parks is a Tanner Humanities Center Graduate Fellow!
Last spring, Melissa Parks was named a Tanner Humanities Center Graduate Fellow! She has been funded this year by the Center to work on her dissertation project, and this past month she presented a talk for the College of Humanities at the University of Utah on her work (see below).
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…
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend
Last spring I was awarded a Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities to work on a project entitled, Julia Ward Howe, Helene Deutsche, and Sophia Kleegman: 20th-Century Women Shaping the Science and Medicine of Fertility. To read more about this project and the award, click here.
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…
A trip to the Harvard Archives
In mid-May I hopped a plane to Boston and made my way to Cambridge, MA to spend a week searching for archival documents concerning chemistry, women’s history, and reproductive health (not necessarily in that order).
Five Questions with Me: The National Communication Association Spectra Edition
https://www.natcom.org/nca-inside-out/5-questions-withrobin-jensen
Chemical Rhetoric Takes on Friday Night
Last Friday night, Melissa Parks, Madison Krall, and Emily Krebs took over one of our lecture halls to analyze documents. From all accounts, they absolutely lit the place up with their on-point analysis and witty repartee, not to mention their array of post-its, highlighters, and La Croix. Way to teach us all how to live-it-up…
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…
Medical Rhetoric in the Archives–a 2019 RSA Summer Seminar
Next summer, the amazing Jordynn Jack and I will be teaching a 2019 Rhetoric Society of America Summer Seminar entitled “Medical Rhetoric in the Archives.” The course will meet from Monday, June 3rd to Thursday, June 8th at the University of Maryland, and the class as a whole will make a trip to the National…
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…
