Research

“Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both the speaker and the hearer […].” – Ursula Le Guin

Major themes

• Rhetoric of health and medicine: Psychiatry, Wellness, Eating Disorders, Menopause
• Rhetoric of Science, Writing Research & Scientific Writing
• Animal Studies & Vegetarianism
• Translation, Poetry, and Other Interests

Rhetoric of health and medicine: Psychiatry, Wellness, Eating Disorders

How do words will realities into existence, thus affecting personal and institutional trajectories? At what point does the linguistic formulation of a concept rearrange the world–and, therefore, both social and disciplinary systems and individual destinies? Much of my research in the rhetoric of psychiatry has sought to deal with the issue of diagnosis: at what point does the naming of a disease, visible only behaviorally rather than through tissue lesions or cell mutations, transform the life path of a patient? Whether through linguistic analysis or employing the vocabulary of visual rhetoric, I have sought to capture and understand how mental illness is understood, represented, and embodied.

Archival research: Madness in the Asylum

In several articles co-authored with Carol Berkenkotter and in our book Diagnosing Madness: The Discursive Construction of the Psychiatric Patient, 1850–1920 (University of South Carolina Press, 2019; ACRL Outstanding Academic Title), we used archival research from Ticehurst Asylum (England) and asylum-related litigation (the U.S.) to pry apart how mental illness was negotiated between patient, families, asylum authorities, judicial and institutional forces, and public opinion. The act of diagnosing a mental illness would seal the fate of the patient committed to the asylum; consequently, many would take pains to dispute it, in an attempt to regain not only their freedom but their status and sense of identity.

Relevant publications:

• Hanganu-Bresch, C. & Berkenkotter, C. (2019). Diagnosing madness: The discursive construction of the psychiatric patient, 1850–1920. University of South Carolina Press.
• Hanganu-Bresch, C. (2019). Public perceptions of moral insanity in the 19th century. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 207(9): 805–814.
• Hanganu-Bresch, C. & Berkenkotter, C. (2012). Narrative survival: Personal and institutional accounts of asylum confinement. Literature and Medicine 30(1): 12–41.
• Berkenkotter, C. & Hanganu-Bresch, C. (2011). Occult genres and the certification of madness in a 19th-century Victorian asylum. Written Communication 28(2): 220–250.
• Berkenkotter, C., Hanganu-Bresch, C., & Dreher, K. (2015). Descriptive psychopathology in asylum case histories: The case of John Horatio Baldwin. In Insights into medical communication (pp. 91–110). Peter Lang.
• Hanganu-Bresch, C. (2012). Treat her with Prozac: Four decades of direct-to-physician antidepressant advertising. In Drugs & media: New perspectives on communication, consumption and consciousness (pp. 166–192). Continuum.

Wellness, healthism, and orthorexia nervosa

My most recent foray into the rhetoric of psychiatry concerns an emerging eating disorder, orthorexia nervosa (the obsession with eating right)–not yet in the DSM but an increasingly established diagnostic term. In my article in Medical Humanities, I trace the inception of this diagnosis and discuss it as a cultural construct, employing Ian Hacking’s concept of “ecological niche” to establish orthorexia as a contemporary cyberpathy — a digitally transmitted disorder narrowly focused on health through the consumption of “pure” foods. This excessive preoccupation with health, I argue, can only be understood in the context of healthism and neoliberalism. I am currently completing a book on orthorexia. A related interest in wellness culture led to my work on scientific ethos and biohacking podcasts (see the Huberman Lab chapter below), and to guest-editing a special issue of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine on Food as Medicine (2021).

Relevant publications:

• Hanganu-Bresch, C. (2019). Orthorexia: Eating right in the context of healthism. Medical Humanities 46: 311–322. Covered in The Times, National Post, Daily Mail, and elsewhere.
• Hanganu-Bresch, C. (2021). The rhetoric of food as medicine [Introduction to special issue]. Rhetoric of Health and Medicine 4(2).
• Hanganu-Bresch, C. (2018). Clean eating and orthorexia as technologies of the self. Hektoen International 11(1).

Menopause

With six co-authors, I have written Living Menopause: Rhetorics, Tensions, and Futures (Bloomsbury, 2026), a collaboratively authored monograph examining how menopause is framed, contested, and lived. My contribution includes a rhetorical history of the Women’s Health Initiative and its consequences for hormone therapy. A related creative collection on menopause is in early stages.

• De Hertogh, L. B., Green, A., Hanganu-Bresch, C., Micciche, L., Molloy, C., Siegel Finer, B., & White-Farnham, J. (2026). Living Menopause: Rhetorics, Tensions, and Futures. Bloomsbury.

Rhetoric of Science, Writing Research & Scientific Writing

Rhetoric of science and scientific communication

Scientific communication affects policy and personal decisions with lasting consequences; how we perform and communicate science matters in urgent ways. With Michael Zerbe, Gabriel Cutrufello, and Stefania Maci, I co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication (2022), winner of the Best WAC Edited Collection Award. In 2025, with Zerbe and Cutrufello, I co-edited a Special Issue of Rhetoric Society Quarterly on “Rhetoric of Science in (Times of) Crisis” — the journal’s first issue devoted to the rhetoric of science since 1996. A follow-up collection, After the Crisis: Make, Do, and Mend and/as Rhetoric of Science (with Ryan Mitchell and Lisa DeTora), is under contract with Bloomsbury.

Relevant publications:

• Zerbe, M., Hanganu-Bresch, C., & Cutrufello, G. (2025). The rhetoric of science in (times of) crisis. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 55(3): 207–222.
• Condit, C., Keränen, L., Miller, C., Hanganu-Bresch, C., Zerbe, M., & Cutrufello, G. (2025). Rhetoric of science: Reflections on the history and future of the field. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 55(3): 340–356.
• DeTora, L., Hanganu-Bresch, C., & Sarwar, M. (2026). From research to manuscript: Considering scientific writing in institutional contexts. Trends in Scholarly Publishing 5(1): 28–36.
• Hanganu-Bresch, C. (2025). The Huberman Lab: The role of ethos in communicating biohacking science. In Communicating medical science in the digital age (pp. 18–35). Cambridge Scholars.
• Hanganu-Bresch, C. & Flaherty, K. (2020). Effective scientific communication: The other half of science [Textbook]. Oxford University Press.

Writing programs and pedagogy

As (formerly) part of a small independent writing program at a STEM-oriented university, I helped innovate our curriculum, foster collaborations across campus, and design a Writing Across the Curriculum program. With Justin Everett, I co-edited a collection devoted to independent writing programs, and I have published on sustainable writing support in the health professions.

• Hanganu-Bresch, C., Everett, J., Egbert, P., Charneski, L., & Sloskey, G. (2022). Sustainable writing support in a second-year pharmacy course. Across the Disciplines 19(1/2).
• Everett, J. & Hanganu-Bresch, C. (Eds.) (2016). A minefield of dreams: Triumphs and travails of Independent Writing Programs. WAC Clearinghouse.

Animal Studies and Vegetarianism

We share the world with countless species of animals, many of which we ignore, some of which we love, and some of which we allow others to raise, slaughter, and sell to us for food. I am interested in the rhetoric of vegetarianism — how we talk about it, how vegans and vegetarians are vilified in the press, and how public discourse is shifting to accommodate meatlessness as a reasonable, sane, and visionary choice. I edited The Rhetorical Construction of Vegetarianism (Routledge, 2023) and co-edited The V Word (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). I am a founding member of the North American Association for Critical Animal Studies, teach a multidisciplinary Animal Studies course, and argue that rhetoric and composition should pay far more attention to non-human animals — a case I make programmatically in my 2026 Res Rhetorica article.

Relevant publications:

• Hanganu-Bresch, C. (2026). Deconstructing speciesism in writing and rhetoric studies: A programmatic agenda. Res Rhetorica 13(2): 18–38.
• Hanganu-Bresch, C. (Ed.) (2023). The Rhetorical Construction of Vegetarianism. Routledge.
• Hanganu-Bresch, C. & Kondrlik, K. (Eds.) (2021). Veg(etari)an arguments in culture, history, and practice: The V word. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Hanganu-Bresch, C. (2026). Omnivorous rhetorics and The Sophist’s Cookbook: The meat of the matter; Rhetorical tautology / Little honeybee cake. In The Sophist’s Cookbook. Parlor Press.

Translation, Poetry, and Other Interests

Life without poetry is dull, stale, like a tepid shower, an eternal suburbia, a valley without winds. I have always written poetry in Romanian (my native language) and eventually transitioned to English. For years I maintained a translation blog, translating beloved Romanian poets into English, which led to several published collaborations with Adam Sorkin translating Mircea Cărtărescu (in Poem, Glint Literary Journal, and Connotation Press). Among other things, I am also a woman, an immigrant, and an early adopter of digital culture, and I have written on memes and intellectual property (What’s in a meme?, 2017), mommy blogs, gender, and immigration — including a multimedia installation, Neitherfemme (Women and Language, 2018), and commentary on NPR’s Marketplace.

A full CV is available, along with my profiles on ORCID, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate.