Healing Arts: Rhetorical Techne as Medical (Humanities) Intervention

ABSTRACT

To forge collaborative ties among the rhetoric of health and medicine, the medical humanities, and medicine itself, scholars need shared terms. We argue that techne can unite researchers from across these disciplines. To demonstrate, we discuss our interdisciplinary research study, Writing Diabetes. By learning about the techne of rhetoric and writing about diabetes, participants became more attentive to the techne of their health experience—or “health techne”—enabling them to invent new ways of “doing” diabetes.

KEYWORDS:

• Diabetes
• composition
• interdisciplinary
• rhetoric of health and medicine
• techne

Notes

^1. IRB approval #15-2483. Approved on 10/11/2016.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Edwell

Jennifer Edwell is a graduate student in the Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the rhetoric of health and medicine, the rhetoric of religion, and the medical/health humanities.

Sarah Ann Singer

Sarah Ann Singer is a PhD candidate in the Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research investigates the rhetoric of health and medicine, public and professional writing, and the medical/health humanities.

Jordynn Jack

Jordynn Jack is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she teaches rhetorical theory, rhetoric of science, health humanities and women’s rhetorics. Her books include Science on the Home Front: American Women Scientists in World War II (University of Illinois Press, 2009), Autism and Gender: From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer Geeks (University of Illinois Press, 2015; winner of the Rhetoric Society of America Book Award in 2016).