Cristina Hanganu-Bresch | St. Joseph's University (original) (raw)

Papers by Cristina Hanganu-Bresch

Routledge eBooks, Jan 6, 2023

Across the Disciplines, 2022

In this article, we describe a multi-year writing intervention in a high-enrollment professional ... more In this article, we describe a multi-year writing intervention in a high-enrollment professional pharmacy course, implemented by a multidisciplinary team of pharmacy and writing instructors. Built around one capstone writing assignment, the “drug information question” paper, the intervention was designed to specifically improve students’ writing and health science reasoning skills and their overall scores in the course, since historically students scored low on this assignment. We provide a background of our pharmacy program and an overview of writing in pharmacy, describe the history of the intervention and collaboration between pharmacy and writing faculty, and explain the design and principles of the intervention, the results, and the implications of the study for STEM writing pedagogy. Over the course of four years, starting with a peer-review model, we have gradually added lectures, workshops, and optional and mandatory Writing Center sessions in an effort to improve students’ learning and health science reasoning skills. Over the same period of time, student scores on their written capstone in the course improved significantly, and survey results indicated that the students viewed the peer review process and the writing program interventions favorably.

Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 2022

Guest editor's introduction to the special issue on the rhetoric of food and health.

[From the Introduction]: Societal anxiety surrounding psychopharmaceuticals is at least partly du... more [From the Introduction]: Societal anxiety surrounding psychopharmaceuticals is at least partly due to our current perception of drugs as sites of cultural tension. As chemical “crutches,” drugs prompt debate on what constitutes illness and health, and ultimately, our humanity; as consumer products, they are economic units enmeshed in capitalist ideology. Thus, the function of antidepressant advertisements is to bridge a gulf, however precarious, between values found on opposite ends of the axiological spectrum: personal fulfillment or individual happiness, and industrial capitalism or economic success. To explore this chasm, this chapter focuses on four antidepressant ad campaigns that illustrate how depression has been marketed to physicians over a period of time during which societal response to psychotropic medication changed and the principles of psychiatric practice evolved. This analysis is both diachronic (spanning four decades of antidepressant advertising, from the 1960s to 2001) and cross-cultural, since psychopharmaceuticals found a particularly responsive market in both the US and Great Britain. The journals selected for this sample, the American and respectively British Journal of Psychiatry (AJP and BJP) are first tier publications in the field, distributed to all members of the American Psychiatric Association, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Two representative antidepressant drugs were selected: amitriptyline, marketed as Elavil in the US and Tryptizol in the UK throughout the 60s and 70s; and fluoxetine, marketed as Prozac in both the US and the UK between 1987 and 2001. Ads will be described in terms of content (topic, participants, scientific illustrations) as well as semiotic structure.

The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, 2021

Attached is the introduction to the volume.

Psychiatry in Great Britain at the turn of the 20th century underwent a nosological paradigm shif... more Psychiatry in Great Britain at the turn of the 20th century underwent a nosological paradigm shift strongly influenced by the systematic efforts of German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) to ‘carve nature at the joints’ by separating mental illnesses into two major categories, those of thought and those of mood disorders. In the English-speaking world, Kraepelin’s categories were first debated academically, but they eventually permeated psychiatric vocabulary and practice and took on legal and forensic implications as they became ensconced in regulatory literature. Asylums were still at the forefront of psychiatric practice in the early 20th century; thus, documenting the practices of asylum doctors can offer a window into the early process of adopting the new nosology. In this chapter we focus on one of the key terms of the Kraeplinian nosology ‒ Manic Depressive Insanity (MDI). We analyze its adoption in the clinical practice of one English asylum (Ticehurst) by looking in detail at the documented case history of the first patient formally diagnosed as ‘manic-depressive’ at that institution.

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 2019

The diagnosis of moral insanity was primarily used through the best part of the 19th century to d... more The diagnosis of moral insanity was primarily used through the best part of the 19th century to define and justify the psychiatric treatment of a particular type of conduct in which the patient seemed otherwise rational but displayed certain inexplicable and undesirable behaviors deemed socially perverse or "unfit." This article traces the history of this highly contested concept, which mirrors a historical arc in which psychiatry emerges as a discipline and stakes territorial claims on defining and regulating moral behavior. As illustration, I focus on the Hinchman Conspiracy Trial of 1849 as a less known case of wrongful confinement that hinged on proving the diagnosis of moral insanity in court. Moral insanity is a case study of the efforts to medicalize human ethical conduct, an effort starkly resisted by both the courts and the public. Some of the legacies of the term are the contemporary use of insanity as a legal defense, and the ability of patients to dispute psychiatric ward confinement orders in court.

Given current science-related crises facing the world such as climate change, the targeting and m... more Given current science-related crises facing the world such as climate change, the targeting and manipulation of DNA, GMO foods, and vaccine denial, the way in which we communicate science matters is vital for current and future generations of scientists and publics. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication scrutinizes what we value, prioritize, and grapple with in science as highlighted by the rhetorical choices of scientists, students, educators, science gatekeepers, and lay commentators. Drawing on contributions from leading thinkers in the field, this volume explores some of the most pressing questions in this growing field of study

Page 1. Faces of Depression: A Study of Antidepressant Advertisements in the American and British... more Page 1. Faces of Depression: A Study of Antidepressant Advertisements in the American and British Journals of Psychiatry, 1960-2004 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE ...

I want to thank the reviewers profusely for engaging so deeply and thoughtfully with our book, an... more I want to thank the reviewers profusely for engaging so deeply and thoughtfully with our book, and for offering both generous assessments and thorough, well informed critiques. It has been two years since the book was published and four since my mentor and co-author passed away; it is, perhaps, a good time to reflect on it and respond to those who in good faith have parsed its ideas and placed them in proper historical and theoretical context.

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2013

Patrick McDonagh, Idiocy: A Cultural History. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2008. isbn 978-1-84631-095... more Patrick McDonagh, Idiocy: A Cultural History. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2008. isbn 978-1-84631-095-9 hbk 95.00;ISBN978−1−84631−096−6paper95.00; ISBN 978-1-84631-096-6 paper 95.00;ISBN978−1−84631−096−6paper39.95. 369 pp.From the very beginning of his erudite, complex, and fascinating book, Patrick McDonagh acknowledges the slippery nature of the concept he explores. A social, cultural, and historical construct with multiple symbolic valences and performing multiple societal functions, idiocy is difficult, if not impossible to define, as its meaning shifts depending on the sociocultural context in which it exists. In that, idiocy shares a good deal of features with madness, perhaps a better studied liminal concept testing our self-definition as humans. Like madness, the concept of idiocy serves as a useful contrast to reason, the feature that we have universally come to accept as distinguishing us from beasts, thus helping discourse-makers in positions of power redefine what constitutes "human," who gets resources and who gets denied th...

Journal of Young Investigators, 2013

1 in 6 children and 1 in 3 adults in the United States are obese. Estimated costs in 2010 relatin... more 1 in 6 children and 1 in 3 adults in the United States are obese. Estimated costs in 2010 relating to obesity exceed $300 billion. Although the etiology of obesity may be well characterized, the advent of the epigenome has increased the complexity of pinpointing causes of obesity. Ovine and murine models show that maternal overnutrition and maternal undernutrition are implicated in epigenetic dysregulation of endogenous energy-balance mechanisms.

The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication, 2021

This handbook approaches the study of scientific communication from a primarily rhetorical perspe... more This handbook approaches the study of scientific communication from a primarily rhetorical perspective, though some chapters also contain some linguistic and narrative analysis as well. A rhetorical perspective is a form of textual analysis that focuses on the purpose(s) of a text, bearing in mind the text’s effectiveness with respect to one or more target audiences. A rhetorical perspective, like other forms of textual analysis, is informed and shaped by organizational, national, and cultural contexts. Additionally, this handbook largely considers scientific communication—communication among scientists, including, in some cases, citizen scientists who participate in the scientific process—rather than science communication—communication between scientists and nonscientists. Finally, this handbook considers science as the largely inductive, experimental process that is characterized in general by partition, measurement, and quantitative analysis and that has evolved since the Scientific Revolution, centered mostly in Europe, in the late 1600s. It is fair to say that today no rhetoric defines our lives more than scientific rhetoric. As the form of rhetoric most commonly perceived as a source of knowledge, reality, and truth, scientific rhetoric occupies a dominant, privileged position among the types of rhetorics that shape human experience. Scientific rhetoric creates and consumes vast amounts of discursive energy for issues from the monumental to the mundane. Given its enormous epistemological and ontological potential, then, scientific rhetoric deserves careful, continual analysis from scholars of rhetoric and communication. Additionally, scientists need to be aware of the powerful role that scientific rhetoric plays in our culture and attend to their work with this discourse assiduously and ethically.

Literature and Medicine, 2012

Medical Humanities

Orthorexia is a putative new eating disorder vying for a place in the DSM, roughly meaning “eatin... more Orthorexia is a putative new eating disorder vying for a place in the DSM, roughly meaning “eating right”. While a continuum can be drawn between anorexia and orthorexia, there are enough differences to make this disorder a distinct one. In this paper, I trace the origins of the term and its clinical career to date, employing Ian Hacking’s concept of “ecological niche” to establish the place of orthorexia as a contemporary cyberpathy, a digitally transmitted disorder inwardly and narrowly focused on health through the consumption of “pure” foods. I critique both the notions of “health” and “purity” in this context, showing that orthorexia can only be understood in the context of healthism, an individual preoccupation with health in the context of neoliberalism. Using Jordan Younger's Breaking Vegan memoir (2015) and “Balanced Blonde” blog as a case study, I argue that orthorexia replicates via a digital proliferation of entrepreneurship of the self. Ultimately, this excessive pr...

Routledge eBooks, Jan 6, 2023

Across the Disciplines, 2022

Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 2022

Guest editor's introduction to the special issue on the rhetoric of food and health.

The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, 2021

Attached is the introduction to the volume.

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 2019

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 2013

Journal of Young Investigators, 2013

The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication, 2021

Literature and Medicine, 2012

Medical Humanities

Veg(etari)an Arguments in Culture, History, and Practice: The V Word, 2021

This is the introduction to the volume "Veg(etari)an Arguments in Culture, History, and Practice:... more This is the introduction to the volume "Veg(etari)an Arguments in Culture, History, and Practice: The V Word," edited by Cristina Hanganu-Bresch and Kristin Kondrlik

Oxford University Press, 2020

Writing and the sciences are intricately linked. Without writing, science would not exist -- and ... more Writing and the sciences are intricately linked. Without writing, science would not exist -- and could not be funded, communicated, replicated, enhanced, or applied. Further, writing helps scientists (and students) understand the science, explain the results of research in a greater context, and develop new ideas. Working from this philosophy, this book primarily addresses undergraduate STEM majors and minors who want or need to improve their scientific writing skills.

Grounded in the basics of rhetorical research and scientific writing practices and guided by the authors' experiences in the classroom, this book makes the case that writing is an essential component of science regardless of the stage of the scientific process, and that it is in fact a component of thinking about science itself. Featuring student-centered stories that place each topic in context and suggestions for practice, Hanganu-Bresch and Flaherty arm STEM students with the skills to enhance critical thinking and cultivate good writing habits.

This collection explores the arguments related to veg(etari)anism as they play out in the public ... more This collection explores the arguments related to veg(etari)anism as they play out in the public sphere and across media, historical eras, and geographical areas. As vegan and vegetarian practices have gradually become part of mainstream culture, stemming from multiple shifts in the socio-political, cultural, and economic landscape, discursive attempts to both legitimize and delegitimize them have amplified. With 12 original chapters, this collection analyses a diverse array of these legitimating strategies, addressing the practice of veg(etari)anism through analytical methods used in rhetorical criticism and adjacent fields. Part I focuses on specific geo-cultural contexts, from early 20 th century Italy, Serbia and Israel, to Islam and foundational Yoga Sutras. In Part II, the authors explore embodied experiences and legitimation strategies, in particular the political identities and ontological consequences coming from consumption of, or abstention from, meat. Part III looks at the motives, purposes and implication of veg(etari)anism as a transformative practice, from ego to eco, that should revolutionise our value hierarchies, and by extension, our futures. Offering a unique focus on the arguments at the core of the veg(etari)an debate, this collection provides an invaluable resource to scholars across a multitude of disciplines.

"Diagnosing Madness" is a study of the linguistic negotiations at the heart of mental illness ide... more "Diagnosing Madness" is a study of the linguistic negotiations at the heart of mental illness identification and patient diagnosis. Through an examination of individual psychiatric case records from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cristina Hanganu-Bresch and Carol Berkenkotter show how the work of psychiatry was navigated by patients, families, doctors, the general public, and the legal system. The results of examining those involved and their interactions show that the psychiatrist's task became one of constant persuasion, producing arguments surrounding diagnosis and asylum confinement that attempted to reconcile shifting definitions of disease and to respond to sociocultural pressures. By studying patient cases, the emerging literature of confinement, and patient accounts viewed alongside institutional records, the authors trace the evolving rhetoric of psychiatric disease, its impact on the treatment of patients, its implications for our contemporary understanding of mental illness, and the identity of the psychiatric patient. Madness and Identity helps elucidate the larger rhetorical forces that contributed to the eventual decline of the asylum and highlights the struggle for the professionalization of psychiatry.