Jenell Johnson
Biographic Data
| ID | 4078637 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jenell Johnson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jenell |
| FAMILY NAME | Johnson |
| SIGNATURE | JOHNSON J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
“The Most Challenging Argument to Make”: Feelings of Safety in Dark Sky Advocacy
This essay presents dark sky advocacy as an ideal subject for communication scholars, and it also extends research on the role of feeling in the practice and study of environmental communication. Light has long been equated with safety and darkness with danger, and these deep connections – and even deeper feelings – pose a challenge to advocates working to reduce light pollution. Drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews with dark sky advocate…
God's Eye: Decorum and Magnitude in the Apollo 8 Genesis Reading
This article investigates an event in which the crew of Apollo 8 read the first verses of the book of Genesis on Christmas Eve, 1968, to a television audience of half a billion people. Drawing from letters from a NASA official who provided detailed rhetorical advice for the event, letters to the editor and op-eds in local newspapers, and an interview with one of the crew, it examines how the planners and the public assessed the appropriateness of…
The End of the World, The Future of the Earth: Bioplurality and the Politics of Human Extinction
Using a comparative study of two social movements working against mass extinction, this essay examines how potential human extinction rhetorically creates connections between human life and other f
Biocitizenship: The Politics of Bodies, Governance, and Power
Bioethics as a Way of Life: The Radical Bioethos of Van Rensselaer Potter
Bioethics as a Way of Life: The Radical Bioethos of Van Rensselaer Potter Jenell Johnson (bio) The argument which is made by a man’s life is of more weight than that which is furnished by words. —Isocrates, “Antidosis” In recent years, bioethics has become the subject of intense criticism. According to Carl Elliott, “many bioethicists are no longer clearly scholars or clinicians, but a strange hybrid of policymaker, pundit, and bureaucrat, floati…
A man's mouth is his castle”: The midcentury fluoridation controversy and the visceral public
This essay forwards a theory of “visceral publics” through a case 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…
Rhetoric and Ethics Revisited: What Happens When Rhetorical Scholars Go Into the Field
As rhetorical scholars adopt field methods to complement traditional text-based criticism, it is necessary to reflect on the ethical standards that guide our practice of rhetorical criticism and analysis. In this essay, we highlight five points of ethical tension provoked when doing research that moves between texts and fields: responsibility, truth, power, relationships, and representation. Each section illustrates an ethical dilemma from the au…
Creating The Norbert Wiener Media Project [Opinion]
Discusses the significance and impact of the work of Dr. Norbert Wiener in the area of cybernetic. Discusses the consequencies of technology and human activity and explores rhe prospects for the future of humanity. The communications theorist Marshall McLuhan, clearly influenced by Wiener’s work, speaks of media extending the human nervous system into its environment in the electric age. This extension of electronic media into the human domain ca…
Eating drugs: Psychopharmaceutical pluralism in India
Eating Drugs opens with the story of Bengali psychiatrist Dr Roy, who describes psychopharmaceuticals to his patients as monerkhabar, “food (khabar) eaten by the mind (mon)” (2). Dr Roy explains th
The Limits of Persuasion: Rhetoric and Resistance in the Last Battle of the Korean War
This essay explores the case of twenty-three American POWs who refused to return to the United States at the end of the Korean War. It first highlights the role of resistance in liberal rhetorical theory and then uses resistance as a lens to analyze public discourse about the incident. She would especially like to thank David Hawkins (the youngest American nonrepatriate) who graciously shared memories of his experiences, even though he did not wi…
Thinking with the Thalamus: Lobotomy and the Rhetoric of Emotional Impairment
The article analyzes the role of emotion in discourse about lobotomy in the mid-twentieth century. It shows how the scientific justification for lobotomy relied on a general theory of psychopathology that identified emotion as the root impairment in mental illness, and also argues that a similar rhetoric surfaced in arguments against lobotomy's critics, who were dismissed as emotional and unreasonable when they voiced opposition to the operation.…
Patient Tales: Case Histories and the Uses of Narrative in Psychiatry , by Carol Berkenkotter
Carol Berkenkotter, Patient Tales: Case Histories and the Uses of Narrative in Psychiatry (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008), xvii+201 pp. $39.95 (cloth). Carol Berkenkotter's Pat
A man's mouth is his castle”: The midcentury fluoridation controversy and the visceral public
This essay forwards a theory of “visceral publics” through a case 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…
Rhetoric and Ethics Revisited: What Happens When Rhetorical Scholars Go Into the Field
As rhetorical scholars adopt field methods to complement traditional text-based criticism, it is necessary to reflect on the ethical standards that guide our practice of rhetorical criticism and analysis. In this essay, we highlight five points of ethical tension provoked when doing research that moves between texts and fields: responsibility, truth, power, relationships, and representation. Each section illustrates an ethical dilemma from the au…
Patient Tales: Case Histories and the Uses of Narrative in Psychiatry , by Carol Berkenkotter
Carol Berkenkotter, Patient Tales: Case Histories and the Uses of Narrative in Psychiatry (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008), xvii+201 pp. $39.95 (cloth). Carol Berkenkotter's Pat
Thinking with the Thalamus: Lobotomy and the Rhetoric of Emotional Impairment
The article analyzes the role of emotion in discourse about lobotomy in the mid-twentieth century. It shows how the scientific justification for lobotomy relied on a general theory of psychopathology that identified emotion as the root impairment in mental illness, and also argues that a similar rhetoric surfaced in arguments against lobotomy's critics, who were dismissed as emotional and unreasonable when they voiced opposition to the operation.…
The Limits of Persuasion: Rhetoric and Resistance in the Last Battle of the Korean War
This essay explores the case of twenty-three American POWs who refused to return to the United States at the end of the Korean War. It first highlights the role of resistance in liberal rhetorical theory and then uses resistance as a lens to analyze public discourse about the incident. She would especially like to thank David Hawkins (the youngest American nonrepatriate) who graciously shared memories of his experiences, even though he did not wi…
Creating The Norbert Wiener Media Project [Opinion]
Discusses the significance and impact of the work of Dr. Norbert Wiener in the area of cybernetic. Discusses the consequencies of technology and human activity and explores rhe prospects for the future of humanity. The communications theorist Marshall McLuhan, clearly influenced by Wiener’s work, speaks of media extending the human nervous system into its environment in the electric age. This extension of electronic media into the human domain ca…
Eating drugs: Psychopharmaceutical pluralism in India
Eating Drugs opens with the story of Bengali psychiatrist Dr Roy, who describes psychopharmaceuticals to his patients as monerkhabar, “food (khabar) eaten by the mind (mon)” (2). Dr Roy explains th
Bioethics as a Way of Life: The Radical Bioethos of Van Rensselaer Potter
Bioethics as a Way of Life: The Radical Bioethos of Van Rensselaer Potter Jenell Johnson (bio) The argument which is made by a man’s life is of more weight than that which is furnished by words. —Isocrates, “Antidosis” In recent years, bioethics has become the subject of intense criticism. According to Carl Elliott, “many bioethicists are no longer clearly scholars or clinicians, but a strange hybrid of policymaker, pundit, and bureaucrat, floati…
A man's mouth is his castle”: The midcentury fluoridation controversy and the visceral public
This essay forwards a theory of “visceral publics” through a case 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…
Rhetoric and Ethics Revisited: What Happens When Rhetorical Scholars Go Into the Field
As rhetorical scholars adopt field methods to complement traditional text-based criticism, it is necessary to reflect on the ethical standards that guide our practice of rhetorical criticism and analysis. In this essay, we highlight five points of ethical tension provoked when doing research that moves between texts and fields: responsibility, truth, power, relationships, and representation. Each section illustrates an ethical dilemma from the au…
Biocitizenship: The Politics of Bodies, Governance, and Power
The End of the World, The Future of the Earth: Bioplurality and the Politics of Human Extinction
Using a comparative study of two social movements working against mass extinction, this essay examines how potential human extinction rhetorically creates connections between human life and other f
God's Eye: Decorum and Magnitude in the Apollo 8 Genesis Reading
This article investigates an event in which the crew of Apollo 8 read the first verses of the book of Genesis on Christmas Eve, 1968, to a television audience of half a billion people. Drawing from letters from a NASA official who provided detailed rhetorical advice for the event, letters to the editor and op-eds in local newspapers, and an interview with one of the crew, it examines how the planners and the public assessed the appropriateness of…
“The Most Challenging Argument to Make”: Feelings of Safety in Dark Sky Advocacy
This essay presents dark sky advocacy as an ideal subject for communication scholars, and it also extends research on the role of feeling in the practice and study of environmental communication. Light has long been equated with safety and darkness with danger, and these deep connections – and even deeper feelings – pose a challenge to advocates working to reduce light pollution. Drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews with dark sky advocate…
Philosophy (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Politics (4 works) · Environmental ethics (3 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices (3 works) · Linguistics (3 works)