Patients Making Meaning

Bryna Siegel Finer is Professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA, where she serves as the Director of Undergraduate Writing Programs. She is the co-editor of Writing Program Architecture and Women’s Health Advocacy. Cathryn Molloy is Professor of Writing Studies in the English department at the University of Delaware, USA. She is the author of Rhetorical Ethos in Health and Medicine: Patient Credibility, Stigma, and Misdiagnosis and is co-editor of the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine journal. Jamie White-Farnham is Professor in the Writing Program at University of Wisconsin-Superior, USA, where she serves as Director of Teaching & Learning. She is the co-editor of Writing Program Architecture and Women’s Health Advocacy.

Chapter 1: Starting from Friendship and Rhetoric: An Introduction to Patient Epistemology

Chapter 2: Toward a Theory of Patient Epistemologies: How Health Flashpoints Engender Cyclical Rhetorical and Identity Work

Chapter 3: Searching for Meaning and Support: What Women with Breast Cancer Say

Chapter 4: Entering the Conversation: Rhetorical Encounters with a Stagnated Menopause Discourse

Chapter 5: Making Sense of Sobriety as a Woman: Expanding Options for Patient Epistemologies

Chapter 6: A Rhetorical Autoethnographic Sketch of Patient Epistemology

Chapter 7: Afterword: Looking to the Future of Patient Epistemology