[ATTW-L] Deadline Extended to 3/31: Special Issue of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine on Chronicity

[Rhetoric Healthmedicine]

Colleagues,


If you were intrigued by the *CFP for the 2021 special issue of the
Rhetoric of Health and Medicine* journal on *Chronicity *but did not have
time to pull together a proposal by the deadline, we have good news for you:


The *deadline* for proposals has been *extended!* 500 to 850 word proposals
(not including citations) are now due by *March 31, 2020* with decisions to
authors by *April 14, 2020. *


Full details are below as well as on the RHM blog
<http://medicalrhetoric.com/cfp-special-issue-of-rhm-chronicity/>.


Help us spread the word! Send in your ideas!


Most Sincerely,


RHM Assistant Editors


*Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) Special Issue on the Rhetoric of
Chronicity*

Guest Editors Lora Arduser and Jeff Bennett

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC, 2019), 6 in 10 adults in
the United States has a chronic disease and 4 in 10 have two or more
chronic conditions. By 2020, this number is projected to grow to an
estimated 157 million, with 81 million having multiple conditions (Lancet,
2009; National Health Council, 2014). These illnesses have become the
leading causes of death and disability in the U.S. and cost $3.3 trillion
annually in health care costs. As such, chronic illness is one of the major
health crises of the 21st century.

This exigence suggests that we’re not only at a pivotal point in how health
care is delivered—focusing on long-term rather than acute issues—but how
and when we communicate about health. These material and discursive
conditions surrounding chronic illness and chronic care are connected to
larger rhetorical concerns.

How chronic diseases and conditions get rhetorically defined as “chronic”
and who has the power to make these definitions have ramifications about
how both individuals with chronic illnesses and rhetorical scholars engage
with “chronicity.” These engagements--from personal healthcare management
to patient advocacy efforts to medical protocols and research--highlight
tensions around rhetorical definitions of agency, power, and identity.

Current scholarship in RHM has taken up chronic illness as a topic (see,
for example, Arduser, 2017; Bennett, 2019; Emmons, 2010; Graham, 2015), but
it has been distributed across a number of books and journals and typically
focused on single illnesses, such as HIV/AIDS (Bennet, 2009), diabetes
(Arduser, 2017; Bennet, 2019) or cancer (Teston, 2017). The special issue
editors see the publication as an opportunity to create a robust and
cohesive body of scholarship on the rhetoric of chronicity. The special
issue will build on this existing RHM scholarship as well as foundational
concepts in the field--such as ethics (Teston, 2017), rhetorical characters
(Keranen, 2010), and patient-provider communication (Segal, 2005)--to focus
on how chronic illness can help rhetoricians of health and medicine think
about theory building and methodologies in RHM, impacting healthcare
practices (e.g., through patient advocacy, clinical practice, personal
healthcare management, policy), and gaining a greater understanding of the
variety of texts and artifacts and sites that RHM scholars investigate.



The special issue editors are interested in work that examines a variety of
chronic illnesses, including but not limited to mental health, HIV/AIDS,
heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, asthma, auto-immune illnesses,
addiction issues, chronic pain, traumatic brain injury. Questions
contributors might address include the following.



*Building Theory*

·      What makes a health condition chronic? How do we talk about and “do”
chronic illness differently than acute medical conditions? What
ramifications do these differences have for rhetorical theories of health?

·      What theoretical openings are available to a rhetoric of chronic
health?

·      How does living with chronic illness or caring for chronic illness
influence rhetorical theories of risk?

·      How do narrative theories influence concepts of chronicity?

·      How does a rhetoric of chronic illness engage with/build
on/re-invent other rhetorical notions (e.g., rhetorical ecologies, metis,
etc.)?

·      How can a rhetoric of chronic illness build upon and inform theories
of embodiment?



*Examining Identity, Agency, and Power Relations*

·      What can insights gleaned from the rhetorical practices found in
specific illness communities help us expand or challenge our understanding
of distributed rhetorical agency, other specific illnesses, and chronic
illnesses more generally?

·      How does living with/caring for chronic illness challenge/build on
ideas about expertise and/or rhetorical agency and/or decision making in
health care settings?

·      How do the emotional situations of invisible suffering, such as
psychic disorders, trauma, autoimmune diseases or cancer, affect how we
re-interpret rhetorical in situations of chronic illness and care?

·      What assumptions about patienthood do online chronic patient
communities extend, challenge, or upend?



*Impacting Practices*

·      How do rhetorical practices in chronic illness settings
challenge/expand/change the medical language of compliance, shared decision
making and/or patient-centered care?

·      How does chronicity affect rhetorical practices from a patient, care
giver, doctor, and/or system perspective?

·      What are the implications of intersections between holistic health
rhetoric and the rhetoric of chronic illness?

·      How can RHM scholars impact health literacy practices of chronic
illness?

Other types of questions might involve the uneven impacts of chronic
illness among different groups and communities, access to healthcare, self-
and group advocacy (e.g., rhetorical care of self), variations of cultural
perceptions for different types of chronic illnesses, etc.



These themes are meant to be generative rather than exhaustive. The editors
and guest editors look forward to reading proposals for traditional
academic articles but are also eager to hear your ideas for other RHM
genres—persuasion briefs, dialogues, commentaries, and review essays.



This special issue will be co-edited by Lora Arduser and Jeff Bennett in
consultation with the RHM co-editors. Special issue proposals will be
reviewed and ranked by the journal’s editorial board, and manuscripts will
undergo the same rigorous peer review process as regular submissions.



Submissions (500 to 850 word proposals, not including citations) should be
made to rhm.journal.editors at gmail.com. Questions should be directed to the
special issue editors at lora.arduser at uc.edu or jeff.bennett at vanderbilt.edu.






*Schedule*



Proposals due: March 31, 2020



Decisions sent out to authors: April 14, 2020



Drafts due: September 7, 2020



Revisions due: February 2021



Publication: October 2021





Arduser, L. (2017). Living chronic: Agency and expertise in the rhetoric of
diabetes. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press



Bennett, J. (2009). *Banning queer blood: Rhetoric’s of citizenship,
contagion, and resistance*. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.



Centers for Disease Control (CDC). (2014). Chronic diseases in America.
*CDC*. Retried from:
https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/pdf/infographics/chronic-disease-H.pdf



Emmons, K. K. (2010). *Black dogs and blue words: Depression and gender in
the age of self-care*. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.



Graham, S.S. (2015). *The politics of pain medicine: A
rhetorical-ontological inquiry*. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press.



The Lancet. (2009) Tackling the burden of chronic diseases in the USA. *The
Lancet*, 373(9659):185.



Keranen, L. (2010). *Scientific characters: Rhetoric, politics, and trust
in breast cancer research*. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.



National Health Council (2014). About chronic diseases. *National Health
Council*. Retrieved from:
https://www.nationalhealthcouncil.org/sites/default/files/AboutChronicDisease.pdf



Segal, J. Z. (2005). *Heath and the rhetoric of medicine*. Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press.



Teston, C. (2017). *Bodies in flux: Scientific methods for negotiating
medical uncertainty*. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
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