Jenell Johnson

Current and Future Projects

• Communication about light pollution and the dark sky movement
• Claims of certainty in life detection experiments in the Viking mission to Mars in the late 1970s and their relation to public support of NASA

Expertise and Activities

My research interests include the rhetoric of health and medicine, science and technology studies, disability studies, bioethics, and environmental communication. My research focuses on the circulation of scientific and medical information in the public sphere, with an emphasis on the social and political dimensions of nonexpert engagement with science, medicine, and technology. Much of my work has explored the meaning of neuroscience, psychiatry, and mental disability in scientific and cultural contexts. These interests are best illustrated by my book American Lobotomy, which explores how representations of psychosurgery shaped the rise, fall, and return of lobotomy in US medicine, and the co-edited collection The Neuroscientific Turn, a collection of essays from humanists and scientists reflecting on the growth of the neuro-disciplines. More recently, my research focus has shifted from the brain to the ethics and politics of life. My most recent book, Every Living Thing, examines how life itself is used to create rhetorical and ethical connections between humans and other living creatures. I am currently working on a number of projects related to light pollution, public engagement with astronomy, and public support of the US space program.

In addition to my position in Communication Arts, I am the Director of the Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies, serve on the steering committee of the Health and Humanities certificate and I was one of the founding members UW’s Disability Studies Initiative. I am also a faculty affiliate in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and the Department of Life Sciences Communication

Education

• Ph.D. The Pennsylvania State University, 2008
• M.A. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2002
• B.A. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 1999

Honors/Awards

Books

• 2023. Every Living Thing: The Politics of Life in Common. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.
• 2020. The Rhetoric of Health and Medicine As/Is: Theories and Approaches for the Field (co-edited with Lisa Meloncon, S. Scott Graham, John A. Lynch, and Cynthia Ryan). Columbus, OH: OSU Press.
• 2018. Graphic Reproduction: A Comics Anthology. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.
• 2018. Biocitizenship: Lively Subjects, Embodied Action, and Posthuman Politics (co-edited with Kelly Happe and Marina Levina). New York: NYU Press.
• 2014. American Lobotomy: A Rhetorical History. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• 2012. The Neuroscientific Turn: Trandisciplinarity in the Age of the Brain (co-edited with Melissa Littlefield). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Selected Articles

Selected Book Chapters

• 2014. “The Golden Voice of Neuroscience: Fact Finding in Popular Buddhist Magazines.” Neuroscience and Media: New Understandings and Representations, Michael Grabowski, ed. New York: Routledge.
• 2014. “Symmetry.” The Object of Rhetoric: Assembling and Disassembling Bruno Latour, Nathaniel Rivers and Paul Lynch, eds. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press (with James J. Brown, Jr.).
• 2012. “Theorizing the Neuroscientific Turn: Critical Perspectives on a Translational Discipline.” The Neuroscientific Turn: Transdisciplinarity in the Age of the Brain, Melissa Littlefield and Jenell Johnson Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (with Melissa Littlefield), 1-30.
• 2011. “Lost and Found in Translation: Popular Neuroscience in the Emerging Neurodisciplines.” Advances in Medical Sociology, Martyn Pickersgill and Ira Van Keulen London: Emerald Insight (with Melissa Littlefield), In Press.

Selected Lectures/Keynotes

Courses

• CA 262 – Theory and Practice of Argumentation and Debate
• CA 310 – Rhetoric and Climate Change
• CA 310 – Environmental Rhetoric
• CA 310 – Comics as Visual Rhetoric
• CA 317 – Rhetoric and Health
• CA 472 – Rhetoric and Technology
• CA 570 – Classical Rhetorical Theory
• CA 610 – Limits of the Human
• CA 610 – Introduction to Disability Studies
• CA 969 – Rhetorical Historiography (grad seminar)
• CA 966 – Rhetoric and the Body (grad seminar)

For more on my books:

• Every Living Thing
• American Lobotomy
• The Neuroscientific Turn
• Graphic Reproduction
• Biocitizenship