Kate Rich’s paper “DIY Technoliberalism for Future Bodies: Hacker Imaginaries of Corporeal Evolution” was selected as the winner of the 2021 Joanna Ploeger Memorial Essay Award for best student paper!
The reviewers all felt strongly that this is an exceptional paper making an important argument. One reviewer wrote that “a critical/rhetorical treatment of the biohacking subculture is long overdue, and I am glad that someone is reckoning with this.” The reviewers also praised Kate’s attention to “the intersection of masculinity and biohacking,” as well as your the use of prior theory from the rhetoric of science and technology.
The award will be announced at the virtual ARSTM Virtual Business Meeting prior to NCA on November 15, 2021 at 1:30pm Eastern.
Check out the other great submissions at the top student paper panel, which is scheduled for Fri, 11/19: 3:30 PM – 4:45 PM PST in Sheraton Room: Issaquah AB – Third Floor.
The other four top student papers on the panel are:
- “Anthropocentric Articulations of Bee-as-Medicine: A Rhetorical Ecology of Bee Venom Healing Performances on Netflix’s “(Un)Well” Docuseries” by Allison Blumling, University of Utah, and Kensey Dressler, University of Utah
- “Between Public Health and Privacy: A Critical Examination of Statewide Contact Tracing Apps as Boundary Objects of Pandemic Governance” by Eugene Jang, University of Southern California; Katrin Fischer, University of Southern California; and Jeeyun Sophia Baik, University of Southern California
- “The Constant Invader: Metaphors of War in the National Tuberculosis Association’s 1940s Public Health Radio Series” by Erin Nicole Gangstad, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- “Transforming Expertise Online: Expert Consultation Dialogues in Online Infertility Discourse” by Laura McCann, Carnegie Mellon University