For the Winter Quarter’s Writing & Rhetoric Across Borders Speaker Series, the WRD department has invited Dr. Kristen Bivins to speak on Wednesday, January 22.
Kristin Marie Bivens is a medical rhetorician and professional communication scholar. She teaches writing at Harold Washington College as an Associate Professor of English and is a member of the City Colleges of Chicago Institutional Review Board (IRB). She is also a Newberry Library scholar-in-residence for 2019-2020, has received several recent grants, and serves an associate editor for the Foundations and Innovations in Technical and Professional Communication book series.
Dr. Bivens’ scholarship is generally concerned with the rhetoricities and circulation of information from expert to non-expert audiences in critical care contexts (e.g., intensive care units and opioid overdose). Her evening presentation, “A Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) Soundscape: Physiological Monitors, Rhetorical Ventriloquism, and Earwitnessing,” Dr. Bivens will present findings from a larger qualitative field study in the southwestern United States and Denmark. In it, she will explain why considering aurality (hearing) and sonicity (sounds/noises) in research sites and their relationship with healthcare technologies promises much for rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) and rhetorical scholars. Refreshments will be provided.
Along with her evening talk at 4:30-6 p.m. in McGowan South Room 103, Dr. Bivens will also be hosting an afternoon workshop from 11:30-1 p.m in Arts & Letters Room 408. Her teaching workshop, titled “Designing Syllabi for Diverse Student Users: Content and Access,” will introduce attendees to “activist syllabi,” while providing hands-on experience in making their own teaching materials more accessible. She encourages attendees to bring their own syllabi or assignment sheets. After discussing “activist syllabi,” participants will examine several other accessibility resources.
To learn more about Dr. Biven’s research and teaching, check out her Twitter @KMBivens or her website!
