Robin Jensen

Photo of Robin E. Jensen

Robin E. Jensen is Professor of Communication at the University of Utah. She studies historical and contemporary discourses concerning health, science, sex, and gender. Much of her research, to date, focuses on the rhetoric of reproductive health as it plays out in the contexts of public sex education, (in)fertility, HIV/AIDS, and adolescent pregnancy. Her current research trajectory is dedicated to exploring the emergence, uses, and evolutions of chemical rhetoric among diverse disciplinary and lay communities in and over time. She is the author of Infertility: Tracing the History of a Transformative Term (2016; The Penn State University Press) and Dirty Words: The Rhetoric of Public Sex Education, 1870-1924 (2010; University of Illinois Press). In 2017, Infertility was awarded the Winans-Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address from the National Communication Association (NCA) and the Outstanding Book Award from the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language and Gender (OSCLG). Dr. Jensen is also the recipient of NCA’s Karl R. Wallace Memorial Award and the New Investigator Award from NCA’s Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division.


Save