Theory Building with Participants in Rhetoric of Health & Medicine (RHM) Research
Please join us for the rescheduled 2020 Gibson Lecture with Dr. J. Blake Scott, titled, “Theory Building with Participants in Rhetoric of Health & Medicine (RHM) Research."
J. Blake Scott is Professor in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida. With Lisa Meloncon, he is a founding co-editor of the new scholarly journal Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, published by the University Press of Florida / University of Florida Press, which won the Council of Editors of Learned Journals 2019 Best New Journal Award. His scholarship in the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) includes the recently published collection, co-edited with Lisa Meloncon, Methodologies for the Rhetoric of Health & Medicine and his book Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing, which won the National Communication Association Health Communication Division 2017 Distinguished Book Award. His scholarship in professional and technical communication includes the collection, co-edited with Bernadette Longo and Katherine Wills, Critical Power Tools: Technical Communication and Cultural Studies and articles in College Composition and Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, and other places. Much of this scholarship has focused on advancing cultural, community-based, and social justice-oriented approaches to teaching professional and technical communication. He is also working on a book that brings together theories of rhetoric, risk, and transnational movement to analyze global risk conflicts around pharmaceutical access and regulation.
Earlier this week, J. Blake Scott, Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida, delivered the annual Walker Gibson lecture. His talk, titled, "T
heory Building with Participants in RHM" addressed how scholars in rhetoric, particularly those focused on the rhetorics of health and medicine (RHM), take up theory-building as a form of care. He also discussed these concepts in conversation with his project examining provider-enacted HIV stigma.
During his visit, Scott met with graduate students in Composition and Rhetoric, offering mentorship, advice, and insight about developing as scholars within the field and publishing their work. PhD student Jeremy Levine said, "It was wonderful to hear about how Dr. Scott is doing focused work to make the work of rhetoric both more applicable to those outside the academy, and creating more opportunities and structures for graduate students to participate in the work of the field. During his talks, I often found myself saying, 'I want to do something like that someday.'"
After Scott's lecture, Jeremy Levine was recognized as this year's winner of the Walker Gibson Prize. The Walker Gibson Prize is awarded annually to the best graduate student essay on a topic in composition and rhetoric written in an English Department seminar during the preceding year. He received the prize for his paper, “The College Board’s Composition Tests and the Rise of the Writing Sample, 1942-1964," which was composed in professor David Fleming's course, Writing in Colleges and Universities: Histories of Composition-Rhetoric in the U.S., in Spring 2019.