jenell johnson

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Research Interests: Rhetoric of health and medicine, science and technology studies, disability studies, bioethics, and environmental communication.

Profile from Jenell Johnson's University of Wisconsin-Madison Profile Page

My research focuses on the circulation of scientific and medical information in the public sphere, with an emphasis on the social and political dimensions of nonexpert engagement with science, medicine, and technology. Much of my work has explored the meaning of neuroscience, psychiatry, and mental disability in scientific and cultural contexts. These interests are best illustrated by my book American Lobotomy, which explores how representations of psychosurgery shaped the rise, fall, and return of lobotomy in US medicine, and the co-edited collection The Neuroscientific Turn, a collection of essays from humanists and scientists reflecting on the growth of the neuro-disciplines. More recently, my research focus has shifted from the brain to the ethics and politics of life. My most recent book, Every Living Thing, examines how life itself is used to create rhetorical and ethical connections between humans and other living creatures.

In addition to my position in Communication Arts, I am affiliated faculty in Life Sciences Communication, Gender and Women’s Studies, and the Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies, serve on the steering committees of the Health and Humanities certificate and I am the director of UW’s Disability Studies Initiative. I am also one of the inaugural Mellon-Morgridge Professors in the Constellations program, a transdisciplinary initiative for undergraduates at UW-Madison.

College/University Profile: Jenell Johnson's University of Wisconsin-Madison Profile

GoogleScholar: Jenell Johnson

Wildcard: The U.S. Campaign Against Psychosurgery

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