Amanda K. Booher is an assistant professor in technical communication and rhetoric in the English department at Texas Tech University. She earned her PhD in rhetorics, communication and information design from Clemson University in 2009. Booher specializes in the rhetorical, theoretical, and medical relationships of bodies and prostheses. Her research interests include medical and scientific rhetorics; medical humanities and bioethics; theories of bodies, genders, and (dis)abilities; cyborgs, somatechnics, and posthumanity; and popular culture.
Alicia A. Broderick is an assistant professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York. Much of her work explores the cultural politics of autism rhetoric and discourse, particularly the use of metaphor and other narrative devices therein.
Rick Carpenter is assistant professor of English at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, rhetorical theory, new media, and composition pedagogy. He has published in M/C Journal: A Journal of Media and Culture and Computers and Composition, and has chapters in the forthcoming collections New Media Literacies and Participatory Popular Culture Across Borders and Disrupting Pedagogies and Teaching the Knowledge Society: Countering Conservative Norms with Creative Approaches. His research interests include genre theory, new media studies, disability studies, and identity construction.
James L. Cherney (PhD, Indiana University, 2003) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University. His examination of ableist rhetoric includes studies of the politics of disability, disability issues in sport, and the presentation of disability in film. His work appears in such books as Screening Disability, Examining Identity in Sport Media, and Case Studies in Sport Communication. His reviews and articles appear in such journals as Argumentation and Advocacy, Western Journal of Communication, and Quarterly Journal of Speech. Correspondence may be sent to jlcherney@gmail.com or 585 Manoogian Hall, 906 West Warren, Detroit, MI 48201.
Joshua Diehl is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame. His current research focuses on harnessing individual strengths and intrinsic interests to facilitate growth in areas of difficulty for children with autism and developmental disabilities. In particular, Dr. Diehl uses cutting edge technology, such as interactive robots, to promote social skills development. He is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders and of the upcoming book The Encyclopedia of Autism and Related Disorders.
John Duffy is an associate professor of English and the Francis O'Malley Director of the University Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame. Duffy's scholarly work is concerned with the historical development of literacy and rhetoric in cross-cultural contexts. His most recent book, Writing from These Roots, was awarded the 2009 Outstanding Book Award by the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and he has published essays in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Written Communication, College Composition and Communication, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. He teaches courses in rhetoric, writing, and literature.
Morton Ann Gernsbacher, PhD, is the Vilas Research Professor and the Sir Frederic Bartlett Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a fellow of the Society for Experimental Psychologists, APA, APS, AERA, and AAAS. She has received a Research Career Development Award and a Senior Research Fellowship from NIH, a Professional Opportunities for Women Award from NSF, a Fulbright Research Scholar Award, a James McKeen Cattell Foundation Fellowship, and the George A. Miller Award. She has served as President of APS, Chair of APA's Board of Scientific Affairs, President of the Society for Text and Discourse, President of APA's Division of Experimental Psychology, and Member-at-Large of AAAS. She is currently President of the FABBS Foundation. An award-winning teacher who has received the Hilldale Award, the highest honor bestowed by the UW-Madison faculty, she has served as editor of numerous journals, served on over a dozen editorial boards, and published 10 books and over 120 journal articles.
Bev Harp is an autistic writer and speaker who believes that words matter. She is an MSW student at the University of Kentucky, and works for UK's Human Development Institute on the Supported Higher Education Project (SHEP) to promote inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in postsecondary settings. Bev has presented at national conferences including TASH and APSE, and most recently spoke at the Pacific Rim International Conference on Disabilities. From 2007 through 2010, she wrote the Square 8 autism blog. Random posting may still occur there from time to time. She often travels with an animatronic parrot assistant, Mr. Squawkers McCaw.
Lauren Herlihy is a PhD student in clinical psychology at the University of Connecticut, pursuing concentrations in child psychology and neuropsychology. Her research interests include parenting stress in parents of children with autism spectrum disorders, cultural and socioeconomic barriers to identification of and treatment for autism spectrum disorders, and executive functioning in children with autism spectrum disorders. She is currently a member of the American Psychological Association, the Connecticut Psychological Association, and the International Society for Autism Research.
Jordynn Jack is associate professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill. She is author of Science on the Home Front: American Women Scientists in World War II (2009), and her work has appeared in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, College English, the Quarterly Journal of Speech, and Rhetoric Review. She is currently preparing a book manuscript on the topic of how gender shapes historical and contemporary debates about autism.
Essaka Joshua is a concurrent teaching professor in the College Seminar and the English Department at the University of Notre Dame, and is director of the College Seminar. She was a senior lecturer at the Department of English, University of Birmingham, UK, until January 2008. Her BA, in English Literature and Language, is from Oxford University (1991), and her PhD is from the University of Birmingham (1995). She is the author of The Romantics and the May Day Tradition (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) and Pygmalion and Galatea: The History of a Narrative in English Literature (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). She is currently working on a monograph on romanticism and physical disability and is the director of the Disability Studies Forum at the University of Notre Dame.
Laura Milner, PhD, is associate professor in the Department of Writing and Linguistics at Georgia Southern University, where she teaches first-year composition, writing and healing, and addiction and recovery writing. She has led community-based writing workshops for people with HIV/AIDS and mothers whose sons were murdered. Her interdisciplinary research includes narrative medicine, grief writing, and the ways in which individual and collective trauma resides in the body and can be transformed through storytelling. Her academic narratives have appeared in Women's Studies Quarterly, Lore, Intertexts, The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning, UU Sangha, and the anthology Out in the South.
Arlen Moller is a research assistant professor at Northwestern University. His research concerns understanding human motivation as it relates to health and well-being. A primary theme is exploring how the provision of choice and financial incentives can either facilitate or undermine effective self-regulation in the context of healthy behavior change (e.g., eating healthier foods and being more physically active). A secondary theme of his research program involves leveraging technology (e.g., smartphones and the Web) in novel ways to facilitate more effective and scalable health behavior change interventions.
Gerald (Jerry) O'Brien is a social work professor whose practice experience and published research has pertained to various areas of disability studies. Among other issues, he has published on the Americans with Disabilities Act, Rosemary Kennedy, the Argument from Marginal Cases, and the minority group model of disabilities. His primary research interest is the American eugenics period, and he recently signed a contract with Manchester University Press to publish his book entitled Framing the Moron: The Social Construction of Feeble-Mindedness during the American Eugenics Era. A revised version of this article will be included within this book.
Paula Campos Pinto is a researcher at the Center for Administration and Public Policy in Lisbon, Portugal, and an invited faculty at the School for Social and Political Sciences, Technical University of Lisbon and at the Department of Sociology, New University of Lisbon. She holds a PhD in sociology from York University, Canada, and a Master's degree in family studies from University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been working in the disability field for over 20 years, as an activist, a researcher, and an academic, both in Portugal and internationally. Currently, her research focuses on policy analysis and disability rights monitoring. She chairs the Portuguese team in the Academic Network of European Disability Researchers. She is the author of a number of articles and book chapters on disability, inclusion, citizenship, and human rights, published in Portugal and abroad.
Katie Rose Guest Pryal is clinical assistant professor of law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, specializing in legal writing and rhetoric. She is the author of A Short Guide to Writing About Law (Pearson 2010), a book that teaches scholars how to incorporate legal sources into their research, and Core Grammar for Lawyers (Carolina Academic Press 2011), an interactive program to teach law students and lawyers effective written communication skills. She earned her law degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law and her doctorate in English from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, specializing in rhetoric and composition.
Nicole Quackenbush is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wyoming. Her research interests include rhetorics of the body, disability studies, composition pedagogy, and issues of difference and inequality in the academy. Her analysis of Michael J. Fox's rhetoric was initially inspired when she saw Fox's McCaskill ad in October of 2006, just as she was beginning to become aware of her own performativity of disabled identity as a person with multiple sclerosis.
Yvonne Stephens is a doctoral student and teaching fellow in Kent State University's Literacy, Rhetoric, & Social Practice program. She holds an MA in English and a BS in Journalism.
Jennifer L. Stevenson, PhD, is an assistant professor of psychology at Ursinus College in Collegeville, PA. She recently completed her dissertation, entitled Autistic Cognition: Effects of Test Domain and Reasoning Level, at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Her work has appeared in various journals including The Journal of Neuroscience, Child Development Perspectives, and Psychological Science.
Zosha Stuckey is an assistant professor at Towson University working in the areas of rhetoric, community engagement, professional writing, and disability studies. At Syracuse, she was awarded the Chancellor's Award for Community Engagement for her work connecting disability communities with undergraduates via oral histories and advocacy writing. Recent publications include an article on re-negotiation of the "normal" in composition classrooms in Open Words: Access and English Studies, a case study in campus activism in the Journal of Post-secondary Education and Disability, and a discussion of rhetorical facility in the production of life writing in a/b: Autobiography Studies.
Shannon Walters researches and teaches in the areas of rhetoric and composition and disability studies at Temple University. She has also written about autism and animals in JAC, disability studies and technical communication pedagogy in Technical Communication Quarterly, and race and gender in Feminist Media Studies.
Julie Wolf, PhD, is an associate research scientist at the Yale Child Study Center. Her research interests include social skills training for individuals with autism spectrum disorders and support for siblings of individuals with disabilities. Her most recent work includes a study on the effectiveness of a computer-based intervention (Let's Face It!), which targeted face-processing skills in children with autism spectrum disorders. Dr. Wolf currently conducts evaluations through the Developmental Disabilities Clinic at Yale as well as for various research projects.
Melanie Yergeau is an assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan. A recipient of the 2009 Kairos Best Webtext Award, she researches how disability studies and digital technologies complicate our understandings of writing and communication. She has published in Kairos, Computers and Composition Online, Disability Studies Quarterly, and College English. She is also an editor for Computers and Composition Digital Press, an imprint of Utah State University Press. Active in the neurodiversity movement, Melanie serves on the Board of Directors of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) and blogs semi-regularly at http://aspierhetor.com.
Sean Zdenek is an associate professor of technical communication and rhetoric at Texas Tech University. His research interests include disability studies, web accessibility, methods of rhetorical criticism, and animated software interfaces. He has published articles in Computers & Composition Online, Technical Communication Quarterly, Discourse & Society, among others. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in disability studies and web accessibility, sound studies, rhetorical criticism, document design, style, foundations of technical communication, developing instructional materials, and report writing. For more information, visit: http://seanzdenek.com.
