Department of English

Colleen Derkatch
PhD, University of British Columbia

Office: JOR 1010
Phone: 416-979-5000, ext. 6131
Email: derkatch@ryerson.ca

Dr. Derkatch holds a BA in English from the University of British Columbia, an MA in English from Queen’s University, and a 2010 PhD in English from the University of British Columbia. Her research and teaching focus on rhetorical theory and criticism, particularly rhetorics of science, medicine, and health. Her dissertation, Rhetorical Boundaries in the ‘New Science’ of Alternative Medicine, won the 2011 Conference of College Composition and Communication Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication. This project, currently under revision as a book, examines how scientific studies of complementary and alternative medicine shift, and then seek to fix, the borders between what counts as proper medical science and what does not. Her other current research projects focus on rhetorics of “wellness” in contemporary Western culture, discourses surrounding dietary supplements, and science communication. In addition to rhetoric, her research draws on history and philosophy of science, science and technology studies, and medicine studies.

Selected publications:

Derkatch, Colleen. “Demarcating Medical Boundaries: Constituting and Categorizing in the Journals of the American Medical Association.” Technical Communication Quarterly 21.3 (forthcoming summer 2012).

Derkatch, Colleen. “Does Biomedicine Control for Rhetoric? Configuring Practitioner-Patient Interaction.” Rhetorical Questions in Health and Medicine. Eds. Joan Leach and Deborah Dysart-Gale. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010. 146-70.

Derkatch, Colleen. “Method as Argument: Boundary Work in Evidence-Based Medicine.” Social Epistemology 23.4 (2008): 371-88.