Research Statement

I am a rhetorical scholar and qualitative researcher, and my research projects constellate across the colonial intimacies of science, technology, and medicine. I interrogate the ways communication (broadly construed) and settler colonialism underpin contemporary experiences of public health, biomedicine, and digital infrastructure across the triptych of history, politics, and culture. As such, my research agenda begins from the notion that 1) medical and technological advancement within Western settings proceed from long histories of colonial enterprise, which implicate 2) the contemporary political machinations of science and technology and 3) the cultural imaginary that, in turn, underpins how people interface with medicine and technology in their daily lives.

For example, my current projects work to answer the following: “If contemporary public health practices were developed as part of colonial rule, then how do traditional health literacy definitions misalign with the cultural practices of queer, trans, and/or racialized communities?” and, “If digital infrastructure steers powerful corporate agendas and land grabbing, then how is it understood in the public imaginary?” To answer these and other questions, I zero in on mundane discourse practices among marginalized communities and how such rhetorical action pivots from Western models of scientific development, which likewise tarry the wicked problems of tech colonialism (or the ways technological development sets the pace for Big Tech to perpetuate colonial expansionism) and epistemic hubris (or the devaluing of embodied and community-based knowledge on behalf of so-called experts based on how Western science and medicine formed in the mid-to-late 20th century). 

My research foci stem from my five years working as a community organizer in the Midwest with communities of queer and trans people, Mexican and Mexican American communities, and Anishinaabe and other Indigenous peoples. As such, the critical edge of my work is tempered by my deep commitment to the lifeways, knowledges, and problems of such communities, and my theoretical orientation constellates across 1) theories of humanness from Indigenous and Black studies (that is, what corporealities and embodiments are allowed the full breadth of humanity and livability), 2) disability and debility theory (which seek to understand the ways that ability, capacity, and health are mired within colonial processes), 3) and alternative cosmological and epistemological approaches (such as foregrounding Indigenous cosmologies and epistemologies to understand the organizing principles of land). More critically, however, I implement this theoretical orientation to the ways theory appears in the world for the communities I serve. 

For example, in celebrating Día de Muertos and Queerceañeras among Mexican / Mexican American communities, we call into question the onto-epistemological assumptions around celebrating death and joy—throwing a party for the party’s sake and knowing that death is only metamorphosis. In collecting sap during late winter for Sugarbushing in Michigan, I slow down to be in community with friends as part of the Indigenous methodology of visiting—an approach that has much to do with slowing down within a research project as it does with learning from the land and other people. For these reasons, when I focus on mundane discourses within my scholarship, I am especially attentive to humor, joy, and thrivance amongst the communities I examine within my projects. In so doing, I develop and deploy rhetorical theory to render alternative vantages regarding biomedical and infrastructural development within colonial contexts, showcasing otherwise mundane and unremarkable rhetorical practices as rich sites for understanding the ways people navigate and counter complex colonial systems within their lives. I also ground the answers of my research questions to practicality and applicability, keeping a keen eye on translating theory into practice to build livable futures for those otherwise discarded and marginalized by colonial powers.