Title: Assistant Director of Composition/Senior Instructor
University: Virginia Tech
Email: jmengert@vt.edu
Description of your work
My focus as an RHM scholar is on issues pertaining to women; specifically, my research/dissertation is about the rhetoric that occurs in online breast cancer support groups and explores both what is said in these groups as well as what is not said. I want to examine what the rhetorics of invitation and silence offer as lenses to these conversations. Beyond my research on online breast cancer support groups, I am also interested in how pain is portrayed by and about women. My particular focus is on endometriosis and how women’s pain experiences are expressed by women and how their doctors then understand (or do not understand) these discussions.