Title: Associate Professor
University: Ryerson University
Email: derkatch@ryerson.ca
Twitter: @ColleenDerkatch
Website: www.colleenderkatch.com
Description of your work
The common thread in all of my work is an interest in mapping points of intersection between different perspectives, modes of practice, theoretical frameworks, values, and ideologies, both within medicine and beyond, in everyday life. Such points-of-intersection include those between medical research and practice, between mainstream and alternative models of health care, between doctors and patients, between expert and popular views of evidence, and among competing understandings of bodies, illness, and even the notion of health itself. My first book examined rhetorical-professional boundary work in scientific studies of alternative medicine. I’m currently writing a book about the language of “wellness” and natural health as a self-generating rhetoric—as a rhetoric that spirals and grows and essentially sells itself.