My name is Maria Novotny, and I’m currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. As a scholar trained in writing, rhetoric, and professional communication, my interdisciplinary research agenda considers the nexus of reproductive loss and infertility, reproductive health technologies and data collection, health advocacy, and patient lived experience. Through community-engaged methods, my scholarship articulates a rhetorics of care framework that centers the knowledge-making practices of reproductive health communities in rhetorical research and identifies community-based methodologies to enhance the decision making and consent practices of research subjects and communities. An example of my community-engaged approach to reproductive health and rhetoric can be found on RSA’s Rhetorics for All webpage, which features my work with The ART of Infertility.
My focus on care is intentional given the prevalence of healthcare across my research paradigm. Three primary questions orient the inquiry that I conduct:
Headshot taken by Jen Prouty.
(1) How do persons use writing and rhetoric tools to navigate barriers to reproductive care?
(2) How may writing, rhetoric, and technical communication research effectuate care in reproductive health communities?
(3) What new method/olgies, practices, and/or forms of scholarship may be required to support care as an outcome in humanities-based research?
These guiding research questions informing my scholarship reflect the publications I have produced in the fields of rhetoric of health and medicine, cultural and feminist rhetorics, and technical and professional communication. Most recently I co-edited a collection of personal narratives, art, and creative writings representative of reproductive loss and infertility. This collection, Infertilities, A Curation, was published by Wayne State University Press in 2023.
Currently, I’m working on a project that considers the language used to describe families formed via embryo donation. By examining the various terms preferred, I argue that the linguistic variances have contributed to assisted reproductive health policymaking and legislative regulations and identify rhetorical approaches to counter the harmful effects of these policies. You can learn more about my interdisciplinary leadership and approach to community-engaged practices by downloading clicking on the page which hosts my CV.
