Shanna Cameron (she/her/hers)

PhD Candidate

University of Memphis

Description of Work:

I am a PhD student in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication program at the University of Memphis. My research interests include patient activism, as well as feminist methodologies and digital rhetorics. Specifically, my research focuses on the various ways that patients with rare illnesses share embodied health experiences to build expertise, make decisions, and transform health outcomes. I am particularly interested in how patients use rhetorical strategies to build solidarities over time and place in order to distribute agency, manage risk, and construct collective digital archives of illness.

For my dissertation project, I am working on an auto-praxiography of my experiences as a patient and member of an online health community for Asherman’s syndrome, a rare reproductive illness that occurs after surgery for miscarriage or C-section. For the symposium, I’m workshopping the first chapter of my dissertation, which constructs a mixed-methodological approach that combines praxiography with decolonial feminist approaches in order to build an intersectional and transnational approach to the study of lived experience.

Contact: slceron@memphis.edu