Margaret M. Quinlan

Margaret M. Quinlan

Professor

Education: 

  • B.S., Marist College, 2003
  • M.S., Illinois State University, 2005
  • PhD, Ohio University, 2008

Dr. Margaret Quinlan’s research and teaching explore how communication creates, resists and transforms knowledges about bodies. She critiques power structures in order to empower individuals who are marginalized inside and outside of healthcare systems. Dr. Quinlan examines the nexus of public perceptions of medicine, science, and technology, both historically and presently. She investigates the role communication plays in public understandings of medical expertise, illness, wellness, caring, treatment, health, and healing. Dr. Quinlan believes that science acquires meaning through public perceptions and social interactions, interactions situated within social, political, economic, and cultural structures. As such, she also critiques the interrelationships and inequities of these structures to facilitate empowering knowledge for those marginalized in traditional healthcare contexts by race, class, illness, ability, socioeconomic, and sexual and gender identity (LGTBQIA), etc., status.

Research Interests:

  • Health, Organizational and Performative Communication Ethnography
  • Narrative/Interpretive/Rhetorical/Feminist Analyses Social justice issues that affect marginalized populations include disability rights and gender inequalities
  • Women’s reproductive health
  • Social media Medical expertise
  • Motherhood Public Perceptions of Science, Medicine and Technology
  • Intersectional Feminism Practitioner-Patient Communication
  • “Sex-selection,” infertility, infant loss, childbirth, breastfeeding, postpartum issues, premature birth, maternal developmental milestones fat-shame

Courses Taught:

  • COMM 3115: Health Communication
  • COMM 3051/3052/HHUM 3020: Health & Media
  • CTCM 2530: Interdisciplinary Critical Thinking & Communication
  • COMM 6000: Gendered Bodies in Health Communication

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