Strategies for Public Work

by: Lisa Meloncon

As some in the community are about to get together at the ATTW Conference and the CCCC conference, the Medical Rhetoric Standing Group will convene for its first meeting since the move from a special interest group to a standing group. Thus, we had to come up with a discussion topic for the evening’s business meeting.

We decided to talk about different strategies to make our work more public. Now, public can mean all sorts of things because each of us has different strengths and different goals for our careers. My public may not be your public and that’s ok. Public can be as simple as trying to write a blog post about your article or it can be volunteering at a local health clinic to re-write some of their handouts or informational materials. There’s also the route of writing more popular press pieces (see the work of Cynthia Ryan) or it can be pushing your research into more community-based or participatory research where part of the aims is helping the community.

So the discussion part of our meeting will be talking through some of these examples, and hopefully, we’ll have some tips on getting started to share in our resources section when we’re done.

If you’ll be going to Houston, join us Thursday, April, 7, 2016 @ 6:30 in GRB, Room 351 B, Level (which is in the convention center).

Our agenda will be
— Announcements about Standing Group Elections.
Since we are a CCCC Standing Group, we have to hold elections. Two position on the executive committee are up for election. Consider nomination yourself or someone else. More details will be discussed at the meeting.
— General Announcements (Standing Group Panel, publication opportunities, etc.)
— Topic for Discussion
Strategies for public work:dissemination, connections, and crossing boundaries
Several members will describe their approaches and then we will have an open discussion
— Networking
The last 10-15 minutes will be reserved to meet folks, to talk about possible panels for next year, to plan meet-ups for RSA, or in general just to get to know each other better

If you have questions or want to add something to the agenda, just email Lisa.

Sessions at the Cs

Session	Title	Schedule
A.05	Studying Action in Medicine through Surrogates, Simulations, and Other Shadow	Thursday 4/7 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM in Hilton, Room 329, Level Three
B.10	Labeling, Naming, and Visualizing Health and Illness: How Food Labels, FDA Reports, and Ebola Charts Can Help Teach Rhetorical Analysis	Thursday 4/7 12:15 PM – 1:30 PM in Hilton, Room 330, Level Three
B.24	Medical Rhetoric and Scientific Communication	Thursday 4/7 12:15 PM – 1:30 PM in Hilton, Room 344B, Level Three
D.06	Beyond the Helping or Hurting Binary: Examining Healthcare Rhetorics and Contexts	Thursday 4/7 3:15 PM – 4:30 PM in Hilton, Room 346A, Level Three
F.02	Rhetorics of Health and Medicine: A Roundtable Examining the Breadth and future actions of an Emerging Sub-Field	Friday 4/8 8:00 AM – 9:15 AM in GRB, Room 351B, Level Three
F.31	Challenging the Rhetoric of Non-Neurotypicality: Documents, Stories, Memories	Friday 4/8 8:00 AM – 9:15 AM in GRB, Room 351A, Level Three
H.31	“Stories That Change You”: Birth Stories as Rhetorical Action	Friday 4/8 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM in GRB, Room 351B, Level Three
POSTER	Keep Mad and Tumblr on: Neurodivergent Identity and Autistic Self-Advocacy in Social Media Based Counterpublics	Thursday 4/7 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM in Hilton, Ballroom of the Americas Prefunction, Level Two