Lori Arnold

Texas A&M University

Description of Work:

I am new to the field of rhetoric of health and medicine because I trained first as a literature scholar (B.A. and M.A.) and then transitioned to a compositionist during my M.A. As I entered my PhD program, I intended to write a composition focused dissertation about communities of graduate student writers in the writing center. However, circumstances and a new interest have led me instead to study discourse communities formed by new mothers on the internet. My dissertation is a discourse analysis of narratives from four different websites two composed of primarily positive “natural” birth focused narratives and the other two are activist sites that allow women to share their traumatic experiences of giving birth. I am interested in women’s constructions of their interactions with the medical field through the experience of giving birth. I trace the influence of Neoliberalism on women’s experiences and perceptions of the choices they have available when giving birth throughout the narratives in my sample. I argue that in sharing their experiences on these websites that function as anthologies of births, women seek to form community with women who are able to validate their experiences. However, a secondary goal that these sites have is to publicize and attempt to change women’s maternal health care and I am only just beginning to explore whether or not the narratives help to achieve this goal. My approach to this area of study is informed by my own experiences of giving birth because I became a mother before I began to work as a scholar. My first child was born during my M.A. coursework and my last birth took place in the first semester of my PhD work and I am interested in exploring the challenges this presents to students in the field.