PhD, Rhetoric and Professional Communication
Iowa State University of Science & Technology, Ames IA, 2002

MA, English/Rhetoric & Composition
Iowa State University of Science & Technology, Ames IA, 1997

MA, English/Literature
University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia MO, 1993

At least until August, my “manic” interest will be in the rhetorical history of madness: how is madness defined/described in textbooks? how are the images of the mad, crazy, insane, lunatic, abnormal represented in popular culture? how do we explain the profound fear and fascination with madness? how is madness mapped onto genius? how does medicine manipulate madness? what is the boundary between madness and reason? how do we recognize our own madness?

My current book project, Manic Minds: Psychiatry’s Mad History and Its Neuro Future, argues that mania has never been stabilized as a modern medicalized disorder. Mania was once used interchangeably with such words as “lunatic” or “madman” to describe the agitated, furious, and sometimes rageful insane. But while lunacy and madness have disappeared from contemporary clinical discourse, "mania" remains in the vocabulary of psychiatric diagnosis. The International Neuropsychological Society, in its Dictionary (circa 2000), continues to use the Greek etymology of “mania” as “madness, from mainesthai, to rage.” The manifestation of “mania” in American psychiatry has emerged fluid from pre-professional to professional psychiatry and now persists frenzied into the neuro-future. This book charts a new direction in the ontological politics of mania, pointing not necessarily to something more disciplined and reasonable, but to something more neurologically radical–and (hopefully) better.

Other interests: Rhetoric and Science, Neuroethics, Disciplinarity,  and Writing in the Disciplines

Manic Minds: Psychiatry's Mad History and Its Neuro Future (forthcoming from Rutgers University Press).

 “Knights of the Seal, Or Mad Doctors and Maniacs: A.J.H. Duganne’s Romance of Reform” Illness and Disability in the Gothic Ed. Ruth A. Anolik. McFarland & Company Press, forthcoming 2009.

“Realizing a New Research Agenda for Writing-to-Learn: Embedding Process in Context” Cognitive Underpinnings of Learning. Ed. Marc Marshark and Peter C. Hauser. Oxford University Press, 2008. Lisa M. Hermsen and Scott V. Franklin.

“Take a WAC at Writing in Your Course.” ACM Special Interest Group for Information Technology Education Conference Proceedings, 2008. Steven Zilora and Lisa M. Hermsen.

“Writing in an Introductory Physics Lab: Correlating English Quality with Physics Content” Transactions of the Physics Education Research Conference (2006). Dedra Demaree, Cat Gubernatist, Jessica Hanzlik, Scott Franklin, Lisa Hermsen, and Gordon Aubrecht.

“Rhetoric of the Image: Issues of Disciplinary Integrity” Journal of the Humanities 1 (2003): 612-620.

A Review of Mary Stange Zeiss, Ed., “Heart Shots.” WSQ: Women and Sports. Spring/Summer (2005): 267-270.
 

That mental life is more than mental dreaming,

That earth is still no sham -- and heaven no seeming --

That untaught souls will find an untrue god:

For ignorance will worship stil its clod!

-----A. J. H. Duganne (1852)