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…
The Department of Communication at the University of Utah was very lucky to host the Health & Environmental Justice in Latina/o/x Communities Colloquium this past Friday. The effort was led by the stupendous Drs. Leandra Hinojosa Hernandez and Andy King. What a treat it was to gather in the Edna Anderson-Taylor Communication Institute, directed by…
What a pleasure it was to be a part of the graduate mentoring panel at the 2024 Public Address Conference in Austin, TX. The conference as a whole was absolutely spectacular from start to finish. A huge shout-out to Annie Hill, Karma Chávez, and Stacey Sowards for putting together a really top-notch, innovative, and energy-filled…
The Rhetoric Society of America Conference took place in Denver this past May. It was truly a pleasure to see friends old and new and hear about fantastic ongoing projects. Below, amazing “old friends” I’ve known since graduate school (Jenell Johnson, Christa Olson, and Amy Wan). It’s so strange how none of us have aged…
This past week was a huge one for the amazing Olivia Webster. She successfully defended her M.A. comprehensive exams, a process that was made possible by her outstanding committee members (pictured below) including Drs. Crystal Lumpkins and Lezlie Frye! She also graduated AND accepted a new position with the Lauren McCluskey Foundation. I know it…
This week Kourtney Maison successfully defended her dissertation entitled, Unruly Visions: The Rhetorical Intersections of Humanity, Bodies, and Visual Zoerhetorics. Drs. Kent Ono, Mike Middleton, Angela Smith, and Helene Shugart (not pictured) were there to wish her well and discuss her compelling project. Kourtney is already flourishing in her position as Assistant Professor (and acting…
Our research team met last Friday to begin mapping out a paper associated with our interview study. The group is composed of undergraduate Jasmine Aguilar Lopez, Ph.D. student Gabrielle Garza, and graduating undergraduate (and future medical student!) Miya Jordan, as well as Dr. Madison Krall (meeting remotely from Seton Hall University) and me. I’ve had…
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…
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…
Last week I was quoted in this really compelling Science article on maternal mortality rates by Meredith Wadman. Check it out here: Have U.S. deaths from pregnancy complications tripled? | Science | AAAS
This past fall I was so excited to receive the National Communication Association’s Golden Monograph Award for an article I published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2022 entitled, “Re-envisioning fertility science: From J. Marion Sims’s invasive gynecology to Sophia Kleegman’s ‘conservative surgery’ hermeneutic.” I am so lucky to have a community of people…
Please check out this article featured in The Setonian about Madison’s recognition as recipient of a 2023 Cheris Kramerae Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender: Dr. Krall Wins Kramerae Dissertation Award – The Setonian Madison received this recognition for her fantastic dissertation, U.S. Medical Controversy and Its…
Last spring, my wonderful graduate student, Gia Almuaili, and I had the opportunity to contribute to a fantastic forum in the journal Women & Language on the overturning of Roe v. Wade and what the new legislative landscape may entail. It was an absolutely wonderful experience led by W&L editor, Siobhan E. Smith-Jones, and you…
My newest advisee, Olivia Webster, successfully (more than) passed her Program of Study Defense earlier this week. She is exploring the area of critical disability and race studies, as well as health and science communication and community-based methods. Her committee members were all so excited to see the progress that Olivia has made toward her…
On September 1st, I met with a group of awesome reproductive health students and researchers to begin a new collaboration on the communication of reproductive health information in the secondary-school sex education classroom. Dr. Madison Krall, Ph.D. student Gabby Garza, advanced undergraduate researchers Jasmine Aguilar Lopez and Miya Jordan, and I talked about coding and…
I’m thrilled to introduce Gabby Garza as a new PhD student in the Department of Communication here at the University of Utah and as a new advisee! Gabby’s research focuses on issues of reproductive health, health communication, and environmental communication. To say the least, Gabby’s expertise will be in high demand as we embark on…
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…
This week I’m looking forward to Dr. Hernandez’s colloquium talk on “Critical Health Communication, Reproductive Justice, and Intersectionality: Trends, Media, and Considerations Moving Forward.” What a treat to have Dr. Hernandez visiting and getting us talking and thinking about issues of reproductive justice.
I’m thrilled to report that Rhetoric Society Quarterly‘s special issue on “Global Black Rhetorics: A New Framework for Engaging African and Afro Diasporic Rhetorical Traditions” is now published. The Special Issue Editors, Ronisha Browdy and Esther Milu, wrote a wonderful introduction to the issue that you can read here–“Global Black Rhetorics: A New Framework for…
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…
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…
Several weeks ago, Madison entered a Zoom room with her Ph.D. Committee Members and, about two hours later, she left the room having earned a Doctorate of Philosophy (aka, a Ph.D.). She defended her dissertation research beautifully, and her excellent committee members (featured below) offered her amazing feedback and a double dose of CONGRATULATIONS because…
Whenever I teach feminist communication and history, I can’t help but introduce the second-wave of feminism with this photograph from some time in 1980 or so (mostly because I love the shag carpet and my mom’s glasses and flip-flops). I call it, “Me, My Mom, and Another Baby,” and I’m pretty sure it captures us…
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…
For the Spring 2020 semester, I’m teaching COMM 3115: Communicating Science, Health, and the Environment which focuses on the idea that communication plays a fundamental role in public perceptions of science, health, and the environment. This class provides students with an overview of how these topics tend to be communicated in contexts ranging from the…
The 2021 National Communication Association Conference was held in November in Seattle and members of the Chemical Rhetoric Group were there and busy. Dr. Megan Cullinan did a wonderful job presenting an analysis our group has been working on with artifacts we garnered from the Science History Institute’s Othmer Library of Chemical History Archives.
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…
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…
The Chemical Rhetoric group was incredibly honored this year to receive the Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine‘s Article of the Year Award for our article, “Mapping Nature’s Scientist: The posthumous demarcation of Rosalind Franklin’s Crystallographic Data.” Check out this beautiful plaque! Many thanks to ARSTM for the organization’s support.
On September 10, 2020, I was honored to give the keynote address for Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science’s 5th Annual Women in Science and Healthcare (WiSH) Symposium. This was especially exciting in this particular year because the symposium was celebrating what would have been crystallographer Rosalind Franklin’s 100th birthday, and Rosalind Franklin’s niece,…
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…
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.
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…
The ART of Infertility art exhibit visited Salt Lake City last month and featured the original art by Abigail Glass featured on the cover of my book. It was so amazing to see the work in person. I even got a Twitter shout-out from the Pennsylvania State University Press:). The exhibit’s showing was sponsored by…
Over the holiday break, Madison Krall found her way to the Mary Tyler Moore statue in Minneapolis. She was inspired to do so after reading Bonnie Dow’s fantastic book Primetime Feminism in my class on Strategic Feminist Communication. Props to Madison’s mom for taking this great photo in -10 degree weather!
