This summer I have the great pleasure of working with several excellent scholars accepted into the ASCENT Summer Training Program in Sexual and Reproductive Health: Abhilasha Khatri and Vedi Vekaria. Our research project involves identifying and analyzing historical artifacts housed in the University of Utah’s Marriott Library Special Collections that shed light on reproductive health…
Looking forward to this event! See information below: December’s First Friday Forum will explore how scholars collaborate to produce co-authored work in rhetoric, highlighting both the generative possibilities and the complexities of writing together. Join Dr. Robin Jensen (University of Utah), Dr. Madison Krall (Independent Scholar), Dr. Noor Ghazal Aswad (University of Alabama), Dr. Michael…
Last month I was lucky enough to get to join a table of my colleagues, students, and friends in the Department of Communication for the Lauren McCluskey Foundation Dinner and Auction. The Lauren McCluskey Foundation is a fantastic nonprofit dedicated to “transforming campus cultures across the nation by promoting awareness, research, and resources to effectively…
Miya Jordan is a recent graduate of our department and a smart, hard-working member of our research team. She worked with us to publish a recent article on teaching about fertility in sex education classes, and her eye toward the social determinants of health and the community based aspects of health were such a boon…
I can’t BELIEVE that it is already graduation season, but here we are and here are some of my favorite photos from the College of Humanities Convocation this morning at the University of Utah. The front image features wonderful colleagues Glen Feighery, Crystal Lumpkins, Kim Kaphingst, and me. Below, the fantastic Leandra Hernandez and I…
Our very own Gabby Garza has been named a 2025-2026 University Teaching Assistant by the University of Utah’s Office of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs. This is an extremely competitive award that will see her designing and teaching her own specialized undergraduate course in the new academic year. Way to go, Gabby–the undergraduate students in…
Our research team (consisting of me, Dr. Madison Krall, Gabrielle Yvonne Garza, Jasmine Aguilar Lopez, and Miya Jordan) recently published a research article in the American Journal of Sexuality Education. This past week the research was discussed in USA Today, and we are thrilled that our findings are being circulated to a larger audience. 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…
Our Rhetoric of Science seminar had the wonderful opportunity last week to talk with Dr. Aimee Roundtree about her fantastic book, Computer Simulation, Rhetoric, and the Scientific Imagination: How Virtual Evidence Shapes Science in the Making and in the News. Dr. Roundtree’s book offers a wonderful analysis illustrating how scientific knowledge creation is grounded in…
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…
In her first few days on the job as an assistant professor at Seton Hall University, Dr. Krall decided to join in with other faculty and staff to help the new students on move-in day. Here she is with the SHU Pirate and some of her new colleagues. Here’s wishing all the new college students,…
Our department was so excited to graduate an amazing group of Ph.D. (pictured above–photo credit to Avery Holton) and M.A. students this spring. Each and every one of those students has obtained a tenure-track position for the coming fall, and I am so excited to see them off into the next phase of their academic…
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…
My planner is one that goes for five years, so although it says 2019 on the front it covers all the way until 2023. If the post-it note situation I’m dealing with here is any indication, I may be trying to pack too much information into both my planner and my brain. But the end-of-the-semester…
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…
This fall has been a very successful one in terms of academic defenses for our group (please note that, although I used this image from a boxing correspondence course as a header for this post, I’m happy to report that none of our defenses ever turned to fisticuffs). At the end of October, Kourtney Maison…
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…
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,…
After working-from-home for a year and a half, this semester I will be back in my office and back on campus to teach classes (a graduate seminar on archival methods and an undergraduate capstone class entitled “strategic feminist communication”). This week, I went to campus to try and find the buildings where my classes will…
Starting this coming fall, Ben will join the faculty at Eastern Oregon University as an Assistant Professor of Communication in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences! Below, see Ben during a recent visit to the area enjoying the beautiful, wooded mountains of La Grande. I can’t wait to hear about the fantastic adventures…
you see this cross stitch pattern and think it is HILARIOUS because . . . it references the Toulmin Model of argumentation. Several hours later, you realize it probably refers to a search warrant. But you still use it in your classes (to teach the Toulmin Model) and laugh and laugh for the first reason,…
I received a surprise email from my former professor, Dr. Ruth Anne Clark, earlier this semester. Dr. Clark was in charge of teaching me how to be a teaching assistant and instructor when I first came to graduate school at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in (wait for it) 2001. That semester I had been…
The sneaky and awesome Emily Krebs caught me teaching my class in sunglasses last week because the lights wouldn’t dim. I don’t always teach about science, but when I do I like to look super cool.
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…
No? Just me then?