Nutritional Noise: Community Literacies and the Movement Against Foods Labeled as “Natural”

In the face of the $44 billion market—and rising—for foods labeled as “natural” (despite any formal regulatory oversight on the use of this term), this article examines multiple complex layers of community literacies and movements involving foods labeled as “natural,” including an increasing availability of “natural” foods and simultaneous rise in U.S. obesity rates, as well as grassroots movements that have challenged the use of “natural.” Then, using an online survey of 707 respondents in a localized community setting, I provide my own examination of literacies of “natural” foods by assessing specific consumer interpretations and regulatory knowledge of the word “natural” as it is found on food labels. Ultimately, I discuss what role these varying levels of literacies play in the rising U.S. movement to push back against the use of this claim in the face of an otherwise flourishing “natural” food market

RHM Author Interview: Liz Angeli, Ph.D. and Christina Norwood, M.S., authors of Persuasion Brief: The Internal Rhetorical Work of a Public Health Crisis Response

RHM Author Interview (Youtube video): Liz Angeli, Ph.D. and Christina Norwood, M.S., authors of Persuasion Brief: The Internal Rhetorical Work of a Public Health Crisis Response This persuasion brief suggests that the rhetorical concepts of techne and rhetorical work facilitate the creation of public health crisis communication. To illustrate this claim, we present findings from a case study with the Johns Hopkins Medicine Ebola Crisis Communications Team, a transdisciplinary group that collaborated with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the 2014 Ebola crisis. The team created multimodal documentation to support healthcare providers as they prepared to treat patients and crafted communication to alleviate the fear among health workers and the public caused by the threat of Ebola. Ultimately, we frame public health crisis communication as a rhetorical endeavor guided by a focus on failure, situated expertise, and techne. This focus pushes specialists to tend to the processes involved in creating a response, and it highlights how gut feelings factor into the process of designing and implementing a public health crisis intervention. Angeli, E., Norwood, C. (2019) The Internal Rhetorical Work of a Public Health Crisis Response. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine 2(2): 208-231

Assistant Editors\u27 Interview with Dr. David Gruber and Dr. Jason Kalin

RHM Assisant Editor Podcast Interview with Dr. David Gruber and Dr. Jason Kalin on their article, Gut Rhetorics: Towards Experiments in Living with Microbiot

Assistant Editors\u27 Interview with Dr. Berkeley Franz and Dr. Dan Skinner

RHM Assistant Editor Cathryn Molloy interviews Dr. Berkeley Franz (Ohio University) and Dr. Dan Skinner (Ohio University) on their article, From Patients to Populations: Rhetorical Considerations for a Post-Patient Compliance Medicin

RHM Author Interview (Youtube video): Cassandra (Casi) Kearney, Ph.D., author of “Mass Shootings and Mental Health: A Historical Perspective on the ‘Mental Illness as Motive’ Narrative”

RHM Author Interview (Youtube video): Cassandra (Casi) Kearney, Ph.D., author of “Mass Shootings and Mental Health: A Historical Perspective on the ‘Mental Illness as Motive’ Narrative” In an effort to better understand the historical significance of the mental illness as motive narrative, this essay investigates what has been recognized as the first mass shooting in the modern United States--Howard Unruh\u27s 1949 mass shooting in Camden, New Jersey. Given that mass shootings were an unprecedented phenomenon, the news media played an important role in explaining the event. As will be shown, many Americans felt uncertain about how mental illness manifested and who was vulnerable. Given the often undisclosed, albeit perceived threat of schizophrenia, the public needed reassurance that there would be some indicator of insanity. Accordingly, the media used evidence of religious fanaticism and unfavorable physical descriptions of Unruh to cast him as separate, outside, or an other. Ultimately, the media\u27s rhetorical choices differentiated Unruh and attempted to make mental illness easier to identify for an audience afraid of its influence

Tumbleweed Road: A Novel

Tumbleweed Road is a novel that began as a short story in a fiction workshop many years ago. The novel is set in the contemporary American South and traces one tumultuous summer in the life of a 14-year-old girl named Carolina Wells. The plot of the story is as follows: Carolina, a 14-year-old girl from Crow, Florida, does not understand her mother and remembers little about her past. In the story, we meet Carolina, her mother, Mama, and two brothers, Johnny and Austin. Carolina does not understand her mother and her wild nature. At home, Carolina is forced to care for her two younger brothers. Carolina\u27s father is long gone out of the picture, and Carolina was always told by her mother that she has no father - no one worth speaking of, anyway. Carolina can\u27t remember why her father is gone, but remembers the fight that caused him to leave, and she blames her mother entirely for his leaving when she was just a toddler. Carolina questions her Mama about the disappearance of her father, but she refuses to even speak his name. Carolina desperately wants normalcy, family, and love - through a series of life-changing events involving a range of characters, including a spiritual woman across Tumbleweed Road, a mysterious girl named West and an old friend named Cade, this novel is about Carolina\u27s quest to find her place in this world

Assistant Editors\u27 Interview with Dr. Lisa DeTora of Hofstra University

In issue 1.1 of RHM, Dr. Lisa DeTora, Assistant Professor and Director of STEM Writing at Hofstra University, contributes a research article titled: “The Dangers of Magical Thinking: Situating Right To Try Laws, Patient’s Rights, and the Language of Advocacy To download a transcription of this interview, (will open in a new window). See more on Dr. DeTora\u27s work at: https://www.hofstra.edu/faculty/fac_profiles.cfm?id=4710&t=/Academics/Colleges/HCLAS/WRITING

RHM Author Interview: Dr. Lisa Meloncon, RHM Editor, interviews Dr. Abby Dubisar and Sara Davis on their persuasion brief, “Communicating Elective Sterilization: A Feminist Perspective”

Download includes 1) Interview transcript and 2) Appendices A, B, and C from Dr. Abby Dubisar and Sara Davi

Interviews: Dr. Lisa Meloncon, RHM Editor, interviews Dr. Abby Dubisar and Sara Davis on their persuasion brief, “Communicating Elective Sterilization: A Feminist Perspective”

Download of the interview includes 1) transcript and 2) Appendices A, B, and C from Dr. Abby Dubisar and Sara DavisThis interview is published as Meloncon, Lisa; Trauth, Erin; and Molloy, Cathryn (2019) "RHM Author Interview: Dr. Lisa Meloncon, RHM Editor, interviews Dr. Abby Dubisar and Sara Davis on their persuasion brief, “Communicating Elective Sterilization: A Feminist Perspective”, Rhetoric of Health & Medicine: 2019, 2(1). Posted with permission. </p