Jenell Johnson

Jenell Johnson is a professor in the Department of Communication Arts and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Life Sciences Communication. She researches and teaches courses on the rhetoric of science and the rhetoric of medicine, and her perspective is deeply inflected by the field of disability studies, which contributes social, ethical, and political implications to her work. Most of her research has focused on nonexpert engagement with neuroscience, psychiatry, and mental illness, which is best illustrated by her book “American Lobotomy: A Rhetorical History“ (U Michigan Press, 2014). The book explores how representations of psychosurgery in American popular culture have shaped past and present medical practice. Currently, Johnson is working on a book-length project on the intersections of bioethics, scientific controversy, and political action.

A list of her publications on Google Scholar can be found here.