Priyanka Ganguly (Priya) (she/her/hers)

Graduate Teaching Assistant in Engineering Communication Program

Virginia Tech

Description of Work:

Being a person of color from India, where health injustice (specifically, reproductive injustice) for both women and transgender people is rampant, I have always been interested in producing scholarships on rhetoric of health and medicine from a feminist perspective. I am particularly interested in exploring women’s and transgender people’s agencies on their bodies and in their reproductive decision-making processes from a transnational and transcultural perspectives. While the notion, “women’s bodies have been/are/(most probably) will be under attack,” has become a commonplace in every culture and country, I intend to identify the places, format (for example, language and medium), and intent of oppression on both women’s and transgender people’s health. Additionally, I would like to investigate how women and transgender people (who are already marginalized or doubly marginalized), particularly, the people of color, are challenging or fighting against the dominant health narratives of society in various parts of the world through different online (for example, hashtag activism) and offline activisms. In this regard, my research interests lie at the intersection of rhetoric of health and medicine, racial injustice (CRT), feminist study, and technical communication.

At present, I am working on two projects: 1) investigation of a hashtag activism called “AbortionMeraHaq” (translating to “abortion is my right”) on Twitter to determine how the digital activists from India attempted to counteract the conventional Indian abortion rhetoric of stigma, shame, sin, crime, and disgust, and 2) exploration of the Inspire abortion blog forum to determine how the women who already experienced abortion and who want to choose abortion solicited and provided social support online for coalition and trust building.

Contact: priyankag@vt.edu