Julia Ward Howe, Helene Deutsche, and Sophia Kleegman: 20th-Century Women Shaping the Science and Medicine of Fertility

FAIN: FT-264943-19

Robin E. Jensen
University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9049)

Research and writing leading to a book on Julia Ward Howe, Helene Deutsch, and Sophia Kleegman, 20^th-century doctors of reproductive and fertility medicine.

This rhetorical history project analyzes the scientific, public, and interpersonal communication of three women who were central to the development and implementation of fertility science as it is known today. Reformer Julia Ward Howe, psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch, and gynecologist Sophia Kleegman communicated from different social locations and time periods to push back against—and contribute to—scientific orthodoxy. I contend that the fissures they created in scholarly and mainstream discourses about reproductive health functioned to expand the scope of infertility diagnosis and treatment regimens, and to loosen long-held clinical beliefs about women as the central players in fertility related ills. This analysis identifies the discursive strategies that these actors employed to intervene in fertility studies and demonstrates how interventions in science often unfold not in terms of revolutions but in terms of multimodal, nonlinear, and longitudinal communicative negotiations.

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Theorizing chemical rhetoric: Toward an articulation of chemistry as a public vocabulary (Article)
Title: Theorizing chemical rhetoric: Toward an articulation of chemistry as a public vocabulary
Author: Robin E. Jensen
Abstract: Chemistry has been a pivotal part of scientific discovery and human life for centuries. This essay argues that chemical terms, tropes, figures, appeals, and narratives serve as powerful rhetorical features of public discourse. From affinities and atoms to dark matter and radioactivity, chemical rhetoric fulfills a central organizing function in contemporary society and shapes how people deliberate and delineate their identities, relationships, and communities. The present research demarcates chemical rhetoric as a form of non-expert, shared communication and explicates its association with chemistry’s disciplinary history, as well as with technical chemical language’s grounding in key focal concepts. More specifically, it maps out a framework for defining and theorizing chemical rhetoric through three, interconnected lenses: historical-ecological, conceptual articulation, and vernacular. The overarching goal in this essay is to create an infrastructure for conveying an increasingly comprehensive account of chemistry’s longitudinal circulation and emergence as a shared public vocabulary.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: http://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqab011
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Communication
Publisher: Oxford University Press

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