Jenell Johnson
My research interests include the rhetoric of science and medicine, rhetorical history, disability studies, and science and technology studies. 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 and medicine. Much of my work has been rooted in neuroscience, psychiatry, and mental disability. These interests are best illustrated by my book American Lobotomy, which explores how representations of psychosurgery shaped the rise and fall of lobotomy in American medicine, and the edited collection The Neuroscientific Turn, a collection of essays from humanists and scientists reflecting on the growth of the "neuro-disciplines." In the last couple of years, my research has shifted focus from the brain to the politics and ethics of life. I am working on two new book projects in this vein: a monograph on the rhetoric of bioethics, and an edited collection on biocitizenship.
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Papers by Jenell Johnson
study of a bitter public health controversy in a small midcentury
New England town. Proponents of fluoridation claimed that it
yielded significant positive health outcomes, while opponents
charged that the measure was politically suspect and physically
dangerous. In this essay, I analyze the controversy as it took shape
in letters to the editor and argue that the root of opposition to
fluoridation was not in political ideology, as scholars have often
claimed, but in a perceived threat to the body’s boundaries, which
created intense feelings. Although visceral publics are most clearly
observable in controversies over the boundaries of the human
body, the essay concludes by showing how the concept may be
applied to controversies over the boundaries of the national body
as well.
debate over the nonrepatriates was fundamentally a controversy over the limits of persuasion.
Books by Jenell Johnson
study of a bitter public health controversy in a small midcentury
New England town. Proponents of fluoridation claimed that it
yielded significant positive health outcomes, while opponents
charged that the measure was politically suspect and physically
dangerous. In this essay, I analyze the controversy as it took shape
in letters to the editor and argue that the root of opposition to
fluoridation was not in political ideology, as scholars have often
claimed, but in a perceived threat to the body’s boundaries, which
created intense feelings. Although visceral publics are most clearly
observable in controversies over the boundaries of the human
body, the essay concludes by showing how the concept may be
applied to controversies over the boundaries of the national body
as well.
debate over the nonrepatriates was fundamentally a controversy over the limits of persuasion.