Title: Assistant Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences
University: California State University, Chico
Email: JMalkowski@csuchico.edu
Twitter: JenMalkowski
Website: N/A
Description of Work:
My research focuses on the rhetorics of public health and medicine and pays particular attention to how collective understandings of risk, professionalism, and biotechnology influence U. S. healthcare practices and outcomes. In this regard, my areas of interest and specialty fall within two larger categories: (1) public perceptions of health and medicine in relation to risk management, and (2) medical professionalism in relation to public health security.
My most recent projects focus on the intersections of public health security policy and medical professionalism as represented in contemporary vaccination communication and debate. Across a series of projects (some published, some in progress), I have investigated vaccination controversy occurring within and outside of healthcare communities to consider how discussions of risk and responsibility focused on medical experts translate to public understandings of public health participation in a biotechnological era. Beyond vaccination, using the vocabularies and perspectives offered by theories of medical publics, rhetorical ethos, and policy communication, I have also examined discourse, promotion, and litigation surrounding similarly controversial public health debates. Research findings across a wide variety of recent U.S. public health controversies—such as mandatory vaccination, prenatal genetic screening, elective preventative surgery, antimicrobial resistance, and enhancement pharmaceuticals—have inspired a book length project focused on the rhetorics of responsible citizenship, everyday life, and risk management more generally, wherein I introduce a concept I call “bioanxiety,” a critical lens intended to describe and interpret collective anxieties accompanying everyday living in a biotechnological(ly) risk(y) society.
Symposium Submission: