CFP: Extension for The Rhetoric of Material Artifacts in Health and Medicine
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CFP: Chapter proposals for
“The Rhetoric of Material Artifacts in Health and Medicine”
Eds. Cynthia Ryan, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Lisa Melonçon, Clemson University
Cathryn Molloy, University of Delaware
Collection Overview
Health and medical artifacts are so ubiquitous in and integrated into health and medical contexts that they can be overlooked entirely, yet examining them critically can lend deep insight into the complexities of the human experience. While the term “artifact” has been operationalized differently across time and fields of study and has led to some debate, “artifacts” are largely considered to reveal the “tangible yield of human conduct,” according to cultural material theorist Henry Glassie (1999, p. 41).
In health and medical contexts specifically, physical objects have long been at the center of perceiving, tracking, and understanding states of health and illness (e.g., imaging devices and fitness trackers), discovering ways to measure the individual body against universal standards (e.g., BMI charts, pain scales, and thermometer readings), offering evidence for supporting diagnoses and treatments (e.g., blood tests for tumor markers), providing enhancements or corrections for perceived aesthetic flaws (e.g., saline implants, dental crowns, and dermatological lasers), and affording users prostheses and related tools that seek to accommodate disabilities (e.g., wheelchairs, eyeglasses, crutches, and running blades). In the biomedical sphere, artifacts must be examined in relation to the inevitability of corporeal fluctuations (Teston, 2017) and the dynamism of the ecological systems in which bodies are situated. Just as mainstream, Western health and medical artifacts align with the basic epistemological assumptions of biomedicine, in non-Western health and medical spaces and in those deemed alternative or complementary, artifacts like singing bowls, essential oils, meditation bolsters, and acupuncture mats and needles play operative roles in constructing the mind and body through more integrated frameworks.
Often, health and medical artifacts reinforce dominant narratives of seeing and knowing the inner workings of the body and, in so doing, promote healthist values (Crawford, 1980) alongside neoliberal assumptions (Lupton, 1995). At some point, it becomes difficult to extricate artifacts from the ways of thinking about and treating the body that coincide with their ubiquitous production and use. Scholars, including Cole (2022), Fountain (2014), Gangstad (2021), Kennedy et al. (2021), Kessler (2022), Maher (2020), and Wellhausen and Bivens (2022) have offered examples of how artifactual evidence can enrich rhetorical examinations of and knowledge-making in health and medical contexts and vice versa. This work, among other forays into artifactual study, suggests the promise of further scholarship focused on health and medical artifacts through rhetorical lenses.
Given the richly generative nature of thinking about and with health and medical artifacts, it is not surprising that interdisciplinary fields of study, such as material culture studies, medical humanities, and medical anthropology, have taken on health artifacts in all of their complexities. Such inquiries have grappled with the epistemological lineages, agencies, and forces of such objects—do the objects themselves predetermine and mandate the attitudes, opinions, and practices that they perpetuate, or do such dispositions lead to their creation? To what extent do artifacts have agency, to what degree do they require human intervention, and how do they augment human agency? The chapters in this collection will enter into the densities inherent in health and medical artifacts by relying on rhetorical theories, lenses, and methodologies to lend clarity to specific artifacts—their history, agency, ontology, and epistemological thrust.
Guiding Questions
Many questions guide this anticipated volume, including:
- How do the material objects that permeate health and medical spaces influence our beliefs about the body, disease, social ills, medical intervention, etc.?
- In what ways do health and medical artifacts emerge from specific gaps in knowledge, and from whose perspective/gaze do these gaps and situated artifacts enter health and medical contexts?
- What rhetorical tensions (e.g., political struggles, paradigm shifts) influence the creation and/or use of health and medical artifacts?
- How have health and medical artifacts been promoted at specific sociohistorical moments, and to what end?
- What do the tangible features of health and medical artifacts reveal about their intended use, cultural value, and assumed user compliance?
- In what ways are individuals and populations constructed around or in concert with health and medical artifacts? How do these constructions elevate or marginalize specific demographics?
- How are we, as scholars, health consumers, and practitioners of health and medical practices, affected by specific health and medical artifacts? What larger messages do these experiences lend perspective to?
Schedule and Editor Contacts
June 1, 2026: 600-word (including citations) chapter proposals due
June 25, 2026: Notifications of acceptance
November 1, 2026: Chapter drafts due (6500 words, including citations)
January 15, 2027: Editor feedback and suggestions for revisions
March 15, 2027: Revised chapters due
Queries are welcome. Please send all queries and proposals (by the stated deadline) to all three editors:
Cynthia Ryan (cyn...@uab.edu)
Lisa Melonçon (meloncon...@gmail.com)
Cathryn Molloy (csmo...@udel.edu)
References
Cole, Kristen. (2022). Selling a cure for chronicity: A layered narrative analysis of direct-to consumer Humira® advertisements. RHM, 5(2), 212-39.Crawford, Robert. (1980). Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International Journal of Health Services, 10(3), 365-88.
Fountain, T. Kenny. (2014). Rhetoric in the flesh: Trained vision, technical expertise, and the gross anatomy lab. Routledge.
Gangstad, Erin Nicole. (2021). Making present, making absent: Exploring medical fundraising imagery through the National Tuberculosis Association Christmas Seals. RHM, 4(3), 288-318.
Glassie, Henry. (1999). Material culture. Indiana University Press.
Kennedy, Krista, Wilson, Noah, and Tschider, Charlotte. (2021). Balancing the ‘halo’: Data surveillance disclosure and algorithmic opacity in smart hearing aids. RHM, 4(1), 33-74.
Kessler, Molly Margaret. (2022). Stigma stories: Rhetoric, lived experience, and chronic illness. Ohio State University Press.
Lupton, Deborah. (1995). The imperative of health: Public health and the regulated body. SAGE.
Maher, Jennifer Helene. (2020). Challenging racial disparities in and through public health campaigns: The advocacy of social justice. In Lisa Meloncon, S. Scott Graham, Jenell Johnson, John A. Lynch, and Cynthia Ryan (Eds.), Rhetoric of health and medicine as/is: Theories and approaches for the field (pp. ). Ohio State University Press.
Teston, Christa. Bodies in flux: Scientific methods for negotiating medical uncertainty. University of Chicago Press.
Wellhausen, Candace, and Bivens, Christa. (2022). Civilian responder mHealth apps, interface rhetoric, and amplified precarity. RHM, 5(1), 11-37.