Michelle Cowan

Title: PhD Student

University: Texas Tech University

Description of Work:

I am a PhD student in technical communication and rhetoric at Texas Tech University, where most of my current research focuses on the rhetoric of science and the rhetoric of health and medicine. I am currently working on an examination of eating disorder recovery narratives as the subject of my dissertation. That project emerged out of the work I did for the article I’m sharing at the symposium, which looks at addiction recovery narratives in multiple 12-step communities.

I am currently obsessed with narrative medicine and narratology but am also interested in performing computational and psycholinguistic analysis on narratives and conversations. I’ve done some preliminary semantic analysis of recovery narratives, and I’m planning to do more. I’d like to interrogate how qualitative approaches like interviewing and rhetorical analysis interact with quantitative approaches, particularly when working within an RHM framework.

My research has connections to scholarship on depression and chronic illness as well as to rhetoric around identity and the self. I also have a long-held interest in cognitive neuroscience that I have yet to adequately explore but that I see myself getting into more deeply over the next couple of years.

I am not yet an expert in RHM, so I am attending the symposium to learn and to build a firmer foundation for my research. As I move into the last part of my PhD work, I also want to make connections with others in this field.

Socials:

https://www.themichellecowan.com/