Throughout my time in graduate school and as an Assistant Professor of Professional Writing, I have developed a research trajectory that aligns with both my personal interests and social justice activism. My research agenda includes two primary areas: the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) and Technical and Professional Communication (TPC). My RHM research is meant to support and encourage social justice as I investigate the ways marginalized communities, particularly those that identify as queer, communicate. Specifically, I’m exploring how to advance community empowerment in juxtaposition to laws that attempt to medicalize minority communities, especially those in rural spaces and contexts. The research I conduct in TPC is both programmatic and specific to STEM service writing courses keyed to student learning outcomes. These research interests are connected to my personal and professional life and include the two following research practices: community-engaged health research in rural spaces and TPC programmatic research.
Health Disparities and Community Activism
In my dissertation, I investigated how a LGBTQIA+ community in South-Central Florida communicated with potential intimate partners in response to a long-standing required HIV disclosure law. This research led to an invitation by Oxford Communication Encyclopedia, for me and a colleague, to codify a robust overview of RHM for myriad readers. The manuscript, simply named, “Rhetoric of Health and Medicine,” reviews relevant books from 2016 to 2024 and makes visible the clear potential RHM has for addressing health disparities. Additionally, a manuscript I submitted to the Rhetoric of Health & Medicine journal is in second stage review. The article, aptly titled, “Collectivity and Community: Employing Collective Mētis to Empower Marginalized Communities in RHM,” lays out a new theoretical tool, collective mētis, and its potential as a community theory-building practice. This research emboldens my commitment to social justice in marginalized communities by working with communities to advance equitable changes, particularly around health advocacy.
One area of research that I am wholly invested in is health justice work in rural spaces. To this end, a colleague at another rural institution and I are currently co-editing a special issue in the Rhetoric of Health & Medicine titled, “‘Down Home, Down The Street’: Examining Rural Health In The Rhetoric Of Health And Medicine” that explores the possibilities of rhetoric and rural health and builds a new theoretical framework for engaging work in rural spaces. The intersections of rural health, rhetoric, and technical communication have not been robustly researched, which misses an opportunity to serve folx in rural spaces. I am currently researching and writing notes for a forecasted Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) federal grant titled, “Rural Health Care Services Outreach Program” which I intend to submit in 2025 with an interdisciplinary team that includes both graduate and undergraduate students that connects research, community-building, and social justice work.
Another area of research interest rests within an interdisciplinary approach to health and medicine is graphic medicine, or more specifically, graphics and the rhetoric of health and medicine (Graphic RHM). A current colleague and I were invited to submit a graphic design chapter for an upcoming book in Graphic RHM. Our submission, “Embodying & Memorializing End-of-Life Stories for Hospice AIDS Patients,” aims to highlight ethical methodological issues as well as empower patients’ narratives through witnessing. We are currently waiting to hear back from peer reviewers.
Programmatic Evaluation and Improvement
Most of the work I have done thus far has centered on aspects of programs, courses, and assignments. In a recently published collaborative book chapter, “Creating Assignments that Put Programmatic Inclusion and Diversity Work into Practice,” myself and colleagues investigate how DEI writing scenarios can help STEM students critically analyze DEI issues in workplace settings. The call for more equitable practice in TPC classrooms and scholarship is a dedication to teaching that I take seriously and aim to enact should I be given the opportunity at Utah State University. Another collaborative manuscript in the esteemed Journal of Technical and Writing Communication, “Implementing a Continuous Improvement Model for Assignment Evaluation at the Technical and Professional Communication Program Level,” advocates for assessing student products alongside departmental, course, and project learning outcomes. This publication ultimately argues that being able to meet students where they are in their learning is the first key to understanding how to better revise projects and the assignments scaffolded to them.
Moving forward, I have survey tools embedded in TPC courses at my current institution that collect programmatic data around revision practices and inclusive writing practices. My goal is to have enough data to start analyzing themes by the end of 2025.
I plan on continuing these research agendas in my future position because I find the research both invaluable to communities and myself. Through these two research areas, I ultimately aim to help communities and students underscore that community and personal activism is key to a more equitable future and mitigating health disparities.
My interests are seated in RHM methodological theory and how laws attempt to regulate queer bodies. To this end, I’m currently working on ideas of how corporeality may be disrupted by the classical rhetorical theories of mētis (the rhetorical art of cunning and wisdom) and phusiopoiesis (malleable nature of the body). In my dissertation I develop a theoretical framework, collective mētis as a way to examine communication in marginalized communities, particularly queer ones. With this research, my aim is to help communities such as the one in Central Florida fight against controlling medicalization of queer bodies while advocating for the withdrawal of HIV disclosure laws such as those in Florida.
Another research interest is where my RHM research interests align with writing program administrator (WPA) work in both first year composition (FYC) and TPC. I have collaborated with peers and published two manuscripts in TPC that, broadly, advocate for a continuous improvement model for service learning courses and suggest how to include issues of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in TPC service courses. By working through programmatic data from the R1 institution that I’m currently at, I have helped design and implement various writing scenarios as a graduate student program assistant. My goal throughout this program has been to continue these research interests in order to articulate my identity as a teacher-scholar.
Justiss Wilder Burry 