I consider myself a bit of a newcomer to RHM. My background is mostly in rhetoric, literacy studies, and disability studies. I completed my Ph.D. at Ohio State in 2019, where I worked with Drs. Christa Teston, Margaret Price, and Amy Shuman. What draws me to RHM is my interest in understanding how diversely abled communities navigate public deliberations about health and disability. This interest stretches back to my time as a staff generalist at a recovery program for people with psychiatric disabilities, where I worked for close to three years. I was struck by how members of the program positioned their voices as consumers and system survivors to claim authority in daily deliberations concerning the program’s mission, purpose, and future. For my dissertation project, “Intellectual/Developmental Disability, Rhetoric, and Self-Advocacy: A Case Study,” I continued to explore issues of stigma and ableism through interviews with students with intellectual/developmental disabilities and professional self-advocates about their self-advocacy strategies. Broadly, the project was a response to Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson’s (2003) call to reimagine rhetoric through the lens of intellectual disability, which I attempted to do by theorizing self-advocacy’s social and rhetorical dimensions, pushing back against officialized discourses that position self-advocacy as an individual responsibility. My current project, also based on this research, builds on interviews and field notes I gathered while shadowing a professional disability advocate in Columbus, Ohio. I am attempting to understand how she uses rhetorical framing techniques to advance her perspective as a person with disabilities in conversations with lawmakers and other power-brokers. I look forward to the Symposium as a chance to connect with other scholars who are working on similar projects, and to learn about new and exciting work in the field.

@SAKamperman