Dr. Emily Winderman specializes in the rhetorical study of health and medicine. Her research is attentive to a wide range of historical and contemporary discourses surrounding reproductive healthcare and infectious disease. Topics of study include including birth control, family planning, abortion care, and birthing practices. She generally approaches these topical areas through the theoretical affordances of feminist theory, affect theory, rhetorical history, public address, and the reproductive justice framework. 

Her book manuscript, Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History (under constract with Johns Hopkins University Press) draws upon numerous archival collections to investigate the history of the phrase "back-alley abortion" to better understand how it figured into abortion rights advocacy and anti-abortion efforts alike. 

Educational Background & Specialties
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Educational Background

  • Ph.D.: Communication Studies, University of Georgia, 2015
  • M.A.: Communication Studies, Eastern Michigan University, 2009
  • B.S.: Communication & Marketing, Eastern Michigan University, 2007

Specialties

  • reproductive justice
  • rhetoric of health and medicine
  • history of criminalized abortion
  • rhetoric of infectious disease
  • affect theory & the cultural politics of emotion
  • Covid-19 Rhetoric