Jordynn Jack | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (original) (raw)

Books by Jordynn Jack

Neurorealism -- Neuroessentialism -- Neurorhetoric -- Neurosex -- Neuropolitics -- Neuroaffect.It... more Neurorealism -- Neuroessentialism -- Neurorhetoric -- Neurosex -- Neuropolitics -- Neuroaffect.Item embargoed for five year

The reasons behind the increase in autism diagnoses have become hotly contested in the media as w... more The reasons behind the increase in autism diagnoses have become hotly contested in the media as well as within the medical, scholarly, and autistic communities. Jordynn Jack suggests the proliferating number of discussions point to autism as a rhetorical phenomenon that engenders attempts to persuade through arguments, appeals to emotions, and representational strategies. In Autism and Gender: From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer Geeks, Jack focuses on the ways gender influences popular discussion and understanding of autism's causes and effects. She identifies gendered theories like the “refrigerator mother” theory, for example, which blames emotionally distant mothers for autism, and the “extreme male brain” theory, which links autism to the modes of systematic thinking found in male computer geeks. Jack's analysis reveals how people employ such highly gendered theories to craft rhetorical narratives around stock characters--fix-it dads, heroic mother warriors rescuing ch...

During World War II, women scientists responded to urgent calls for their participation in the wa... more During World War II, women scientists responded to urgent calls for their participation in the war effort. Even though newspapers, magazines, books, and films forecasted tremendous growth in scientific and technical jobs for women, the war produced few long-term gains in the percentage of women in the sciences or in their overall professional standing. In Science on the Home Front, Jordynn Jack argues that it was the very language of science--the discourses and genres of scientific communication--that helped to limit women's progress in science even as it provided opportunities for a small group of prominent female scientists to advance during the war. The book uses the experiences of individual women--from physicists Leona Marshall and Katharine Way, who worked on the Manhattan Project, to Lydia J. Roberts, who developed the Recommended Dietary Allowances--to illuminate the broader limitations of masculine scientific culture and its discourses of expertise, gender neutrality, t...

Articles: Rhetorical Theory by Jordynn Jack

Rhetoric Review, 2022

While current cognitive approaches to rhetorical figures portray them as internalized to the brai... more While current cognitive approaches to rhetorical figures portray them as internalized to the brain, rhetorical figures emerge through embo-died experiences within an environment, crystallizing material pat-terns and bringing elements of a cognitive ecology into relief. In particular, figures of repetition coordinate regularities in the environ-ment, linking repeated items into relational relationships. Figures of description such as enargeia enact sensory education, making salient aspects of the environment perceptible. A situated example involving a controversy over wind turbine installation in Canada shows how rural community members use these figures to coordinate sensory information and persuade others to understand the issue differently.

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2022

Rhetorical studies of water-related controversies highlight multiple interpretations of water at ... more Rhetorical studies of water-related controversies highlight multiple interpretations of water at stake. Yet nearly every dispute over water involves not just contested meanings but contested ontologies. This essay examines water ontologies in a controversy over water wells in Ontario, Canada, which residents claim were affected by pile driving for wind turbine installation. Drawing on Annemarie Mol’s theory of multiple ontologies and the Bakhtinian term, chronotope, I show how different water ontologies emerge from spatiotemporal orientations and shift how expertise is enacted. Common water ontologies, water-as-resource and water-as-chemical-entity, enshrine white settlers as experts, despite their different stances on the issue in question. Municipal leaders, corporate representatives, and community members enacted water as an entity knowable to technoscience and exploitable by humans. An alternative ontology introduced by First Nations leaders, water-as-lifeblood, emphasizes water as a sacred, life-giving force. Speakers authorize themselves as experts by enacting water differently.

Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2009

Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2004

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2008

College English, 2006

Page 1. 52 Chronotopes: Forms of Time in Rhetorical Argument Jordynn Jack ... Jordynn Jack is ass... more Page 1. 52 Chronotopes: Forms of Time in Rhetorical Argument Jordynn Jack ... Jordynn Jack is assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches courses in rhetoric and composition. Winner of the 2006 James Berlin Memorial ...

ACM Journal of Computer Documentation, 2002

Articles: Neurorhetorics by Jordynn Jack

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2010

Neuroscience research findings yield fascinating new insights into human cognition and communicat... more Neuroscience research findings yield fascinating new insights into human cognition and communication. Rhetoricians may be attracted to neuroscience research that uses imaging tools (such as fMRI) to draw inferences about rhetorical concepts, such as emotion, reason, or empathy. Yet this interdisciplinary effort poses challenges to rhetorical scholars. Accordingly, research in neurorhetorics should be two-sided: not only should researchers question the neuroscience of rhetoric (the brain functions related to persuasion and argument), but they should also inquire into the rhetoric of neuroscience (how neuroscience research findings are framed rhetorically). This two-sided approach can help rhetoric scholars to use neuroscience insights in a responsible manner, minimizing analytical pitfalls. These two approaches can be combined to examine neuroscience discussions about methodology, research, and emotion, and studies of autism and empathy, with a rhetorical as well as scientific lens. Such an approach yields productive insights into rhetoric while minimizing potential pitfalls of interdisciplinary work.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2014

Rhetoric Review, 2022

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2022

Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2009

Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2004

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2008

College English, 2006

ACM Journal of Computer Documentation, 2002

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2010

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2014

Disability Studies Quarterly, 2011

The rhetorical figure of the incrementum, or scale, can help to account for how autism spectrum d... more The rhetorical figure of the incrementum, or scale, can help to account for how autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been gendered as male, especially in Simon Baron-Cohen’s "Extreme Male Brain" theory. The incrementum occurs when female, male, and autistic brains are placed along a scale according to systemizing and empathizing abilities. This double hierarchy reinforces popular beliefs about sex and gender, drawing on the cultural resources of hi-tech culture, the service economy, and geekiness. In so doing, these theories overlook other important aspects of ASD, including alternative theories, the presence of autistic women and girls, and the needs and interests of autistic people themselves.

Many tools that neuroscientists use to trace the complex topography of the human brain draw on th... more Many tools that neuroscientists use to trace the complex topography of the human brain draw on the neuroscience literature to yield “metanalyses” or “syntheses of data.” These approaches conflate rhetorical connections in the literature with physical connections in the brain. By contrast, the model presented in this chapter seeks not a topography of the brain but a topology of neuroscience. A social network analysis of titles and abstracts for cognitive neuroscience articles yields a topology of brain regions and functions. This map can help researchers identify underresearched areas (e.g., the thalamus) or areas that are oversaturated (e.g., the amygdala). The map also helps researchers identify subdisciplines, such as “neuroeconomics,” that have not yet integrated with the broader field—“islands” where rhetorical work could yield benefits.

Women's Studies in Communication, 2012

The prevalence of nontraditional gender identities in many autistic people raises provocative que... more The prevalence of nontraditional gender identities in many autistic people raises provocative questions for feminist scholars. In particular, autistic writers often invite alternative understandings of sex/gender as a multiple, rhetorical phenomenon. Autobiographies, blogs, and Internet posts show how autistic individuals view gender as a copia, or tool for inventing multiple possibilities through available sex/gender discourses. Four particular discourses emerge through which autistic people understand gender: identification, neurodiversity, performance, and queer identity.

Rhetoric Review, 2009

While feminist scholars consider bodies, dress, and space central to inquiry into gendered rhetor... more While feminist scholars consider bodies, dress, and space central to inquiry into gendered rhetorics, we lack methodologies that situate these factors—and the additional factor of time—in an integrated system. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of “acts of institution” can help feminist rhetoricians to construct richer accounts of the gendering of the female body. The example of rhetorics surrounding women factory workers in World War II America demonstrates how rhetorical practices produce gender differences through embodied, spatiotemporal rhetorics. In this case wartime adjustments did not bring about long-term changes because they relied on a fundamental antithesis between men and women.

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2007

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2009

ABSTRACT This article examines nutritionist Lydia J. Roberts’s use of the “democratic approach” a... more ABSTRACT This article examines nutritionist Lydia J. Roberts’s use of the “democratic approach” as a rhetorical strategy both to build solidarity among scientists and to enact participatory research in a rural Puerto Rican community. This example suggests that participatory scientific methodologies are not necessarily democratic but may function rhetorically to serve nondemocratic purposes.

PMLA, 2019

During World War II, women were heavily recruited for scientific and technical jobs across the un... more During World War II, women were heavily recruited for scientific and technical jobs across the united states. Many assumed roles previously allotted to men, serving as welders, riveters, sheet metal workers, crane operators, ship fitters, and chauffeurs, to name just a few. Between 1941 and 1944, over 6.5 million women joined the workforce; over 10 million were already working outside the home in 1941 (Pidgeon vi). The Brooklyn Naval Yard, featured in Manhattan Beach as the workplace of Anna, Nell, and their friends, also saw an increase in women workers, albeit a somewhat modest one. By 1944, according to The New York Times, women represented 4,000 of the 65,000 workers at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, not counting office workers (“Women Help Build Carrier”). While women represented just 6% of the industrial labor force at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, women represented 11.5% of all shipyard workers in 1944, according to the United States Department of Labor (Hirshfield 481).

The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Science since 1660, 2022

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2016

In this essay, I develop a feminist framework for analyzing wearable technologies as embodied rhe... more In this essay, I develop a feminist framework for analyzing wearable technologies as embodied rhetorics, one that considers (1) how wearable technologies enable micro-performances of gender, status, and identity; (2) how wearable technologies are embedded in policy/political frameworks as well as scientific/medical ones; (3) how wearable technologies are embedded in spatiotemporal networks of actors, objects, and so on; and (4) how the design of technological objects themselves do or do not live up to the promises of wearability and mobility. Using an analysis of the breast pump as my case and drawing from interviews with women about their experiences, I show how the breast pump crystallizes a network of rhetorics that is both disruptive and productive of gendered differences. In particular, the breast pump presents rhetorical arguments for returning to work soon after childbirth while performing a professional role. At the same time, this technology makes an argument for including nursing bodies on college campuses, spaces that have not historically considered those bodies or their needs.

Technical Communication Quarterly, 2018

Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2010

Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 2002

Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2015

Rhetoric Review, 2022

ABSTRACT While current cognitive approaches to rhetorical figures portray them as internalized to... more ABSTRACT While current cognitive approaches to rhetorical figures portray them as internalized to the brain, rhetorical figures emerge through embodied experiences within an environment, crystallizing material patterns and bringing elements of a cognitive ecology into relief. In particular, figures of repetition coordinate regularities in the environment, linking repeated items into relational relationships. Figures of description such as enargeia enact sensory education, making salient aspects of the environment perceptible. A situated example involving a controversy over wind turbine installation in Canada shows how rural community members use these figures to coordinate sensory information and persuade others to understand the issue differently.

The Journal of medical humanities, 2017

This essay argues that pre-health humanities programs should focus on intensive research practice... more This essay argues that pre-health humanities programs should focus on intensive research practice for baccalaureate students and provides three guiding principles for implementing it. Although the interdisciplinary nature of health humanities permits baccalaureate students to use research methods from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, pre-health humanities coursework tends to force students to adopt only one of many disciplinary identities. Alternatively, an intensive research approach invites students to critically select and combine methods from multiple (and seemingly opposing) disciplines to ask and answer questions about health problems more innovatively. Using the authors' experiences with implementing health humanities baccalaureate research initiatives at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the authors contend that pre-health humanities programs should teach and study multiple disciplinary research methods and their values; examine how h...

Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 2016

Disability & Society, 2015

ABSTRACT The reasons behind the increase in autism diagnoses have become hotly contested in the m... more ABSTRACT The reasons behind the increase in autism diagnoses have become hotly contested in the media as well as within the medical, scholarly, and autistic communities. Jordynn Jack suggests the proliferating number of discussions point to autism as a rhetorical phenomenon that engenders attempts to persuade through arguments, appeals to emotions, and representational strategies. In Autism and Gender: From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer Geeks, Jack focuses on the ways gender influences popular discussion and understanding of autism's causes and effects. She identifies gendered theories like the “refrigerator mother” theory, for example, which blames emotionally distant mothers for autism, and the “extreme male brain” theory, which links autism to the modes of systematic thinking found in male computer geeks. Jack's analysis reveals how people employ such highly gendered theories to craft rhetorical narratives around stock characters--fix-it dads, heroic mother warriors rescuing children from autism--that advocate for ends beyond the story itself while also allowing the storyteller to gain authority, understand the disorder, and take part in debates. Autism and Gender reveals the ways we build narratives around controversial topics while offering new insights into the ways rhetorical inquiry can and does contribute to conversations about gender and disability.

We wrote this book to offer writing instruction to legal professionals based on our expertise in ... more We wrote this book to offer writing instruction to legal professionals based on our expertise in rhetorica discipline founded over 2500 years ago to help people plead their cases in court. Ancient Greek and Roman rhetoricians developed theories of how best to persuade ...