Interests and Information
Rhetoric and composition
Rhetoric of science
Women's rhetorics
Technical communication
Rhetoric of technology
Computers and writing
Rhetorical theory, particularly theories of time and memory, Kenneth Burke, and feminist rhetorical theories
History of rhetoric, feminist historiography, and archival research methods
Hire Date: 2005
PhD, Pennsylvania State University, 2005.
MA, Pennsylvania State University, 2002.
BA, Glendon College, York University (Toronto, Canada), 2000.
jjack@email.unc.edu
919-962-4009
Jordynn Jack
Assistant Professor, Department of English
My research and teaching interests focus on rhetoric and composition, specifically women’s rhetorics, the rhetoric of science, and rhetorical theory. I teach courses in science writing, feminist rhetorics, and the history of rhetoric.
My current book project, Science on the Homefront: The Rhetoric of Women Scientists in World War II, examines speeches, articles, pamphlets, books, and reports written by female scientists during World War II. I examine how four tropes, "the second line of defense," gender neutrality, objectivity, and technical rationality, shaped scientific rhetorics in on nutrition, psychology, anthropology, and physics. This project won a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada doctoral fellowship and the 2006 James Berlin Memorial Dissertation Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC).
I have also conducted research on Kenneth Burke, on rhetoric and public memory, and on women’s rhetorics. Recent publications include:
- “Kenneth Burke’s Constabulary Rhetoric: Socio-Rhetorical Critique in Attitudes Toward History.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly (accepted, forthcoming).
- “Lydia J. Roberts’ Nutrition Research and the Rhetoric of ‘Democratic’ Science.” College Composition and Communication (accepted, forthcoming).
- ‘We Have Brains’: Rhetoric and Resistance in a Feminist Weblog Community.” Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice: Communities, Pedagogies, and Social Action. Eds. Kris Blair, Radhika Gajjala, and Christine Tulley. Cresskill: Hampton Press (forthcoming, 2007).
- “Space, Time, Memory: Gendered Recollections of Wartime Los Alamos.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 37.3 (2007): 229-250.
- “Chronotopes: Forms of Time in Rhetorical Argument.” College English 69.1 (2006): 52-73.
- “‘The Piety of Degradation’: Kenneth Burke, the Bureau of Social Hygiene, and Permanence and Change.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 90.4 (2004): 446-468.