Title(s): Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric, Co-Director of Health Humanities
University: Syracuse University
Email: lfgrant@syr.edu
Website: lennygrant.com
Description of your work
My research in rhetoric is committed to attenuating the stigmas attached to mental illness and improving mental health outcomes for those who have experienced atrocities and those who care for them. I attempt to do this by following in the tradition of mental health researchers who understand psychological trauma as an individual phenomenon rooted in the social world. To that end, I examine texts and actions in the public domain that influence psychiatric science, government policy, and public opinion.
Currently, I am working on a book project that weaves together my archival research on the public rhetorics of activist mental health professionals from the mid-nineteenth century to present with the advocacy research I am conducting as a member of the Onondaga Community Trauma Task Force (OCTTF) in Syracuse, New York. My archival research focuses on the ways that neurologists, nurses, and psychiatrists have communicated directly with the public and government to change social, legal, and scientific understandings of those who experience psychological trauma at different historical moments. Inspired by the examples of these pioneering activists, I joined the OCTTF, a group of concerned mental health workers and community organizers, in November 2017 to develop an on-demand psychological trauma response network that is activated through the Onondaga County’s 211 call system. As a teacher of Professional and Technical Communication, Science Writing, and Composition, I often incorporate assignments pertaining to the OCTTF and community trauma in my classes to connect students with the off-campus community and help them experience first-hand the transformative power of writing.
A generative offshoot of this project is my relatively newfound interest in non-allopathic therapies for psychological trauma. This research has lead me to an embodied and ethnographic exploration of treatments ranging from psychoanalysis to sensory deprivation chambers to shamanic rituals. It has also prompted research into the arguments state legislators have made to approve cannabis as a therapy for PTSD in the absence of medical research.