Peer-reviewed Publications by Kate Maddalena
Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, 2022
Link to full journal article: http://journalofmultimodalrhetorics.com/6-2-maddalena-and-jennings-... more Link to full journal article: http://journalofmultimodalrhetorics.com/6-2-maddalena-and-jennings-alexander
In this conversation, we talk about the invisible work that has to be done on university campuses in order to effect antiracist change in policy and pedagogy. We talk about how COVID made that work more challenging, especially in the writing classroom. Ultimately, we argue that the fact that social justice wasn’t given “bandwidth” shows that social justice is simply not central to the work of many universities. We argue that antiracist work has to be part of the most basic work of the institution, in policy and pedagogy, especially the writing classroom. We see a need to better articulate and make visible the antiracist carework that faculty do and to transform university policy to make that carework central to the goals of the university as a whole, not a marginalized project that suffers from bandwidth scarcity.
What Would Ursula Franklin Say? Reprising the Real World of Technology , 2022
In this essay, I describe the tradition of teaching quadrat sampling methods in the environmental... more In this essay, I describe the tradition of teaching quadrat sampling methods in the environmental sciences in Ursula Franklin's terms of the essential need for "[education] at the interface of biosphere and bitsphere." Because field sampling requires embodied training and practice on the part of the forester or scientist, Franklin would call sampling methods like the quadrat a technology at the "interface of the biosphere and the bitsphere" (Franklin, 2008). Like many technologies she describes, they emerged in practice holistically, but can now be seen as being deployed prescriptively. I propose an inventive pedagogy that engages humanities perspectives in environmental science knowledge-making. I consider the quadrat a medium by which other perspectives can reframe what has become a prescriptive technology as a holistic one. Specifically, I describe an undergraduate pilot project in which students read quadrats as poems, and then describe a method by which to map the poetics of a landscape. Such inventive practices "[rattle] the cages of space and time that [confine our] natural existence" (Franklin, 2008) and help us connect to, rather than alienate ourselves from, landscapes through knowledge-making technologies.
Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication, 2022
The teaching of science communication has evolved from traditional journalism and/or situation-sp... more The teaching of science communication has evolved from traditional journalism and/or situation-specific, on-the-job practices that were once seen as secondary to and in service of the sciences into an interdisciplinary, student-centered field of its own that helps to mediate the humanities’ conversation with the sciences. This entry, a treatment of science communication pedagogy, traces the growth of formalized approaches to the training of three distinct but interrelated types of student: (1) the academic scientist, (2) the science communicator or science journalist, and (3) the public science practitioner at a contemporary public-interfacing institution. The entry introduces and synthesizes publications that address each of these approaches. The major trend in contemporary approaches to science communication pedagogy is the importance of embedded work; science communication needs to be learned and practiced as an active part of the research it communicates. Finally, it posits several challenges for science communication pedagogy in the future, especially the post-critical turn in rhetoric of science, the increasing politicization of science, and the need for a pedagogy of health communication that prepares communicators for increasingly global and complex contexts.
Heliotrope, 2021
This essay applies Rosi Braidotti's (2019) concept of "posthuman predicament" to the situation of... more This essay applies Rosi Braidotti's (2019) concept of "posthuman predicament" to the situation of motherhood during the ongoing global environmental crisis.
Canadian Journal of Communication , 2021
This literature review and annotated bibliography uses the CJC archives to trace the concept of t... more This literature review and annotated bibliography uses the CJC archives to trace the concept of the ghost as a media-produced entity entangled with (here Canadian) identities and landscapes.
LEGOfied: Building Blocks as Media (Bloomsbury Press), 2020
This chapter synthesizes a working theory of the digital in order to argue that LEGO blocks are a... more This chapter synthesizes a working theory of the digital in order to argue that LEGO blocks are a three-dimensional digital medium for a largely screen-bound, two-dimensional digital age. Put simply, LEGO blocks are not Lincoln Logs; that is, LEGO are to the turn of the 21 st century what Lincoln Logs were to the early 20th Century. LEGO are a materially and epistemically digital medium and help to co-constitute a digital worldview.
Although contemporary scientists are becoming better public communicators , professional academic... more Although contemporary scientists are becoming better public communicators , professional academic genres like the research article remain difficult for non-expert audiences to grasp and use for important work in everyday living and policy-making. Good science writing takes those non-expert audiences into account, even in the context of a journal article or an academic conference. Indeed, scholarly articles that writing experts and scientists hold up as exemplary writing often come from top-tier, generalist journals such as Science and Nature, whose audiences are broad and disciplinarily diverse (Schimel, 2012). That writing for wider accessibility is commonly seen as better writing is no surprise—such writing's arguments and stories are more explicitly tied to bigger-picture impacts. we propose the advanced science writing classroom as one ideal context where we can address the problem of the public/expert audience divide by asking students to see professional science writing in the same ecology as the public communication of science. we begin our chapter by briefly reviewing the current literature related to defining the boundaries of science communication and training scientists to write in professional contexts. Next, we describe our recent experiences in designing several upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses specifically for emerging professional scientists and discuss detailed examples of assignments. Our example assignments include drafting research questions, writing literature reviews, and designing conference posters— three genres we see as prime places for rhetorically-minded interventions into the conventions of professional science communication. we include student-produced examples of and excerpts from each of these assignments in order to demonstrate how our approach informed the writing process and shaped submitted artifacts. In the final section, we reflect on our assignments and course constructs as we imagine a robust pedagogy of advanced professional science communication for the future, a pedagogy structured to produce rhetorically aware scientists with broad, not binary, conceptions of their professional contexts.
This article explores the intersection o f Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) and Actor-Network Theor... more This article explores the intersection o f Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). These two traditions are particularly im portant in the Canadian research context. We examine genre and A N T to uncover w hat we believe is a com plem entary relationship that promises m uch to the study o f science, especially in the age of the internet. Specifically, we see RGS as a w ay to account for how objects come to " be" as complex wholes and so act across/among levels of network configurations. Moreover, the na ture of these objects' (instrum ents') action is such th at we m ay attribute them to a kind of rhetorical agency. We look to the InFORM Network's grassroots, citizen science-oriented re sponse to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster as a case that exemplifies how a combined RGS and A N T perspective can articulate the complex wholes o f material/rhetorical networks. RESUME Cet article examine Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) et Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Ces deux modes d' etude sont importants dans les contextes de la recherche Canadienne. Nous prennons genre et ANT, pour retrouver une perspective que nous crayons puisse contribuer beaucoup aux etudes de la science dans I' age de l'internet On comprend les genres de textes comme une moyenne de rendre compte de lafaQon dont les objets deviennent des ensembles complexes et done agir entre les differents niveaux de configuration reseau. En plus, la nature des actions de ces objets (ou instruments scientifique) est telle qu' on puisse attribuer a eux une sorte d' agence rhetorique Nous voyons le citizen science reponse de llnFORM Network a la disastre au Fukushima Daiichi comme une example de la puissance d'un perspectif RGS/ANT pour arh.aA.ex les " entieres-complexes " des networks qui sont material/rhetorical au meme temps.
A discussion between Canadian media theorist Chris Russill, associate professor at Carleton Unive... more A discussion between Canadian media theorist Chris Russill, associate professor at Carleton University, and Kate Maddalena, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, articulates Russill’s work in terms of current conversations in media-related cultural studies. Russill uses media theory, particularly the intersecting lineages of Michel Foucault, Harold Innis, and Friedrich Kittler, to describe planetary media that record, store, and transmit light. He then discusses implications for the technical media apparatus being created, largely in earth systems sciences, to read, process, and deploy appropriate action in response to the same. The conception of earth as optical medium affords insight into the power politics of ozone holes, climate change, the photosynthetic machines of science fiction, and sunscreen. 
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Peer-reviewed Publications by Kate Maddalena
In this conversation, we talk about the invisible work that has to be done on university campuses in order to effect antiracist change in policy and pedagogy. We talk about how COVID made that work more challenging, especially in the writing classroom. Ultimately, we argue that the fact that social justice wasn’t given “bandwidth” shows that social justice is simply not central to the work of many universities. We argue that antiracist work has to be part of the most basic work of the institution, in policy and pedagogy, especially the writing classroom. We see a need to better articulate and make visible the antiracist carework that faculty do and to transform university policy to make that carework central to the goals of the university as a whole, not a marginalized project that suffers from bandwidth scarcity.