I am an Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Saint Joseph’s University (Philadelphia). I teach primarily scientific writing and multidisciplinary courses in the history of medicine and animal studies.

I am primarily interested in the history and rhetoric of psychiatry and especially in how psychiatric illness is conceptualized. I’ve also become interested in food studies, in particular orthorexia, veganism/ vegetarianism, and critical animal studies.

I’ve recently edited The Rhetorical Construction of Vegetarianism (Routledge, 2023) and co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication (2022). 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 on a book on orthorexia and on some animal studies/rhetoric projects.