I am a Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Saint Joseph’s University (Philadelphia). I teach primarily scientific writing, graduate courses in rhetoric and writing, and multidisciplinary courses in the history of medicine, madness, and animal studies. I currently serve as Graduate Director of Writing Studies.

I am primarily interested in the rhetoric of health and medicine, in particular psychiatry and eating disorders. I’ve also become interested in food studies, in particular orthorexia, veganism/ vegetarianism, and critical animal studies.

I’ve recently co-edited, with Michael Zerbe and Gabriel Cutrufello, a Special Issue of Rhetoric Society Quarterly on “Rhetoric of Science in (times of) Crisis (Summer 2025). I am also the editor of The Rhetorical Construction of Vegetarianism (Routledge, 2023) and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication (2022), winner of WAC’s Best Edited Collection Award in 2023.

I also wrote a book on diagnosing madness in the 19th century (with Carol Berkenkotter; University of South Carolina Press, 2019), and a textbook on scientific writing (co-authored with Kelleen Flaherty, Oxford University Press, 2020). In 2021 I co-edited a collection on vegetarian arguments (Palgrave/Macmillan). I’m currently working to finish a co-authored book on the rhetoric of menopause, a book on orthorexia, and some animal studies/rhetoric projects.