Opening Keynote Research Methods, Lyric Theory, and Genres of Believability
Main Article Content
Abstract
The following article is a rendering of the opening keynote speech given by Dr. V. Jo Hsu at the 2025 Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) Symposium that took place in Minneapolis, MN on October 17–18, 2025.
Article Details
References
Anzaldúa, Gloria. (2012). Borderlands: La Frontera: the new Mestiza (4th ed). Aunt Lute Books.
Austin, J. L. (1975). How to do things with words (J. O. Urmson & M. Sbisà, Eds.; 2nd ed.). Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, Ruha. (2022). Viral justice: How we grow the world we want. Princeton University Press.
Bruce, La Marr Jurelle. (2021). How to go mad without losing your mind: Madness and Black radical creativity. Duke University Press.
Bui, Long T. (2022). Model machines: A history of the Asian as automaton. Temple University Press.
Carey, Tamika L. (2016). Rhetorical Healing: The reeducation of contemporary black womanhood. State University of New York Press.
Ceccarelli, Leah. (2013). On the frontier of science: An American rhetoric of exploration and exploitation. Michigan state university press.
Center for Asian Health Research and Education (CARE). (2025, October 7). Stanford University School of Medicine. https://asianhealth.stanford.edu/
Clare, Eli. (2017). Brilliant imperfection: Grappling with cure. Duke University Press.
Cram, Emerson. (2022). Violent inheritance: Sexuality, land, and energy in making the North American West. University of California Press.
DaFoe, Whitney. (2025). My Story. Whitney Dafoe. https://www.whitneydafoe.com/mecfs/mystory/index.html
Derkatch, Colleen. (2016). Bounding biomedicine: Evidence and rhetoric in the new science of alternative medicine. The University of Chicago Press.
Dutta, Mohan J. (2022). The Whiteness of the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM). Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, 11(1–2), 54–79. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2022.11.1-2.54
Engebretson, Julie. (2020, February 4). Faculty Find Human Trafficking Through Massage Parlors. TCU Magazine. https://magazine.tcu.edu/winter-2020/human-trafficking-massage-parlors-texas/
Equality Maps: Panic Defense Bans. (n.d.). Movement Advancement Project. Retrieved November 22, 2025, from https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/panic_defense_bans
Gays Against Groomers [@againstgrmrs]. (2023, August 31). The suicide rate for transgender people is nearly 8x higher than the general population. Knowing this, why would any adult push children to transition? It is time to address the real issue and actually help distressed youth, rather than rushing to medically “affirm” them. [Tweet]. Twitter. https://x.com/againstgrmrs/status/1697312903068541154
Goldhill, Olivia. (2023, February 21). How a depression test devised by a Zoloft marketer became a crutch for a failing mental health system. STAT News. https://www.statnews.com/2023/02/21/depression-test-phq9-zoloft-pfizer-mental-health/
Guo, Claire H., & Mui, Christine. (2021, April 2). Health services director Giang Nguyen apologizes for messages on CAMHS Anti-Asian racism resources page. The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/4/2/apology-for-cahms-anti-racism-message/
Hacking, Ian. (2006). Making up people. London Review of Books, 28(16). https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n16/ian-hacking/making-up-people
hooks, bell. (1991). Theory as Liberatory Practice. Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, 4(1), 1–12.
hooks, bell. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.
hooks, bell. (2001). All about Love: New visions. Harper Perennial.
Howe, Amy. (2025, May 6). Supreme Court allows Trump to ban transgender people from military. SCOTUSblog. https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/05/supreme-court-allows-trump-to-ban-transgender-people-from-military/
Howe, LeAnne. (2001). The Story of America: A Tribalography. In N. Shoemaker (Ed.), Clearing a Path: Theorizing the Past in Native American Studies (pp. 29–48). Routledge.
Hsu, V. Jo. (2022). Constellating home: Trans and queer Asian American rhetorics. The Ohio State University Press.
Hsu, V. Jo. (2023). Framing the activists: Gender, race, and rhetorical disability in contested illnesses. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2023.2291895
Hsu, V. Jo. (2024). Trans Tricksters, Looping Effects, and Gender Diagnoses as Containment. Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, 7(1), 17–45. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5744/rhm.2024.1002
Hughes, Landon., Shireman, Theresa. I., & Hughto, Jaclyn. (2021). Privately insured transgender people are at elevated risk for chronic conditions compared with cisgender counterparts: Study examines risks for chronic conditions among privately insured transgender people with their cisgender counterparts. Health Affairs, 40(9), 1440–1448. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.00546
Inboden, William. (2025). Restoring the academic social contract. National Affairs, (65). https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/restoring-academic-social-contract
James, Geoffrey. (2010, June 3). Steve Jobs Sez: “Let Them Eat Dim Sum.” CBS News. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505183_162-28550313-10391735/steve-jobs-sez-let-them-eat-dim-sum/
Jenkins, Wilhemina. (2019, April 15). Unseen: Black people living with ME. #MEAction. https://www.meaction.net/2019/04/15/unseen-black-people-living-with-me/
Jenn. (2015, May 20). Asian American student suicide rate at MIT is quadruple the national average. Reappropriate. https://reappropriate.co/2015/05/asian-american-student-suicide-rate-at-mit-is-quadruple-the-national-average/
Johnson, Jenell. (2010). The Skeleton on the Couch: The Eagleton Affair, Rhetorical Disability, and the Stigma of Mental Illness. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 40(5), 459–478. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2010.517234
Jones, Natasha N., Moore, Kristen R., & Walton, Rebecca. (2016). Disrupting the Past to Disrupt the Future: An Antenarrative of Technical Communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 25(4), 211–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2016.1224655
Kafer, Alison. (2013). Feminist, queer, crip. Indiana University Press.
Kessler, Molly M. (2022). Stigma stories: Rhetoric, lived experience, and chronic illness. The Ohio State University Press.
Kidd, Jeremy D., Tettamanti, Nicky A., Kaczmarkiewicz, Roma, Corbeil, Thomas E., Dworkin, Jordan D., Jackman, Kasey B., Hughes, Tonda L., Bockting, Walter O., & Meyer, Ilan H. (2023). Prevalence of substance use and mental health problems among transgender and cisgender U.S. adults: Results from a national probability sample. Psychiatry Research, 326, 115339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2023.115339
Killion, Ross. (2022, February 14). Fang Sihui dies in shootout during robbery of massage studio. AsAm News. https://asamnews.com/2022/02/14/chinese-american-enterpreneur-killed-in-attempted-robbery-in-albuquerque-new-mexico/
Kroenke, Kurt. (2021). PHQ‐9: Global uptake of a depression scale. World Psychiatry, 20(1), 135–136. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20821
Lam, Elaine. (2025). Asian Women Workers in Massage Parlours and the Sex Industry and Their Fight Against Anti-Asian Racism. Migration, Mobility, & Displacement, 7(1), 64–85.
Lee, Wilson Y., Hobbs, J. Nicholas, Hobaica, Steven., DeChants, Jonah P., Price, Myeshia N., & Nath, Ronita. (2024). State-level anti-transgender laws increase past-year suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary young people in the USA. Nature Human Behaviour, 8(11), 2096–2106. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01979-5
LeMaster, Loretta, Shultz, Danny, McNeill, Jayvien, Bowers, Graham (Gray), & Rust, Rursty. (2019). Unlearning cisheteronormativity at the intersections of difference: Performing queer worldmaking through collaged relational autoethnography. Text and Performance Quarterly, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462937.2019.1672885
Lorde, Audre. (1982). Zami, a new spelling of my name. Crossing Press.
Lorde, Audre. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches (2007 reprint edition). Crossing Press.
Malkowski, Jennifer, & Melonçon, Lisa (2019). The rhetoric of public health for RHM scholarship and beyond. Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, 2(2), iii–xiv.
Martin, Emily. (1991). The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 16(3), 485–501. https://doi.org/10.1086/494680
Martinez, Aja Y. (2020). Counterstory: The rhetoric and writing of critical race theory. Conference on College Composition and Communication ; National Council of Teachers of English.
McMaster, James. (2025). Racial care: On Asian American Suffering and Survival. Duke University Press.
Mendoza, Ruby. (2024). Toward a Queer and (Trans)Formative Methodology for Rhetoric of Health and Medicine: Institutional Critique. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 7(1), 76–95. https://doi.org/10.5744/rhm.2024.1004
Metzl, Jonathan. (2009). The protest psychosis: How schizophrenia became a Black disease. Beacon Press.
Nash, Jennifer C. (2019). Black feminism reimagined: After intersectionality. Duke University Press.
Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9)—Mental Health Screening. (n.d.). National HIV Curriculum. Retrieved October 17, 2025, from https://www.hiv.uw.edu/page/mental-health-screening/phq-9
Petersen, William. (1966). Success Story, Japanese-American Style. New York Times Magazine, 20–43.
Poole, Megan. (2025). Listening to Beauty: Rhetorics of Science in Sea and Sound (1st ed). University of Chicago Press.
Powell, Malea, Levy, Daisy, Riley-Mukavetz, Andrea, Brooks-Gillies, Marilee, Novotny, Maria, Fisch-Ferguson, Jennifer, & The Cultural Rhetorics Theory Lab. (2014). Our story begins here: constellating cultural rhetorics. Enculturation, (18). http://enculturation.net/our-story-begins-here
Price, Margaret. (2009). “Her pronouns wax and wane”: psychosocial disability, autobiography, and counter-diagnosis. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 3(1), 11–33.
Ramanujan, Krishna. (2006, April 19). Health expert explains Asian and Asian-American students’ unique pressures to succeed. Cornell Chronicle. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/04/health-expert-explains-asian-students-unique-pressures-succeed
Red Canary Song, Massage Parlor Outreach Project, & Butterfly Asian and Migrant Sex Worker’s Support Network. (2022). Un-Licensed: Asian Migrant Massage Licensure and the Racialized Policing of Poverty. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61b809cc1599c2368549b018/t/622001964c0ea93d1649303c/1646264732351/2022_Un-Licensed.pdf
Reisner, Sari L., Poteat, Tonia, Keatley, JoAnne, Cabral, Mauro, Mothopeng, Tampose, Dunham, E., Holland, Claire E., Max, Ryan, & Baral, Sstefan D. (2016). Global health burden and needs of transgender populations: A review. The Lancet, 388(10042), 412–436. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)00684-X
Riley-Mukavetz, Andrea. (2014). Towards a Cultural Rhetorics methodology: making research matter with multi-generational women from the Little Traverse Bay Band. Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization, 5(1).
Sackey, Donnie J. (2024). Trespassing natures: Species migration and the right to space. The Ohio State University Press.
Samuels, Ellen. (2017). Six ways of looking at crip time. Disability Studies Quarterly, 37(3). http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5824/4684
Samuels, Ellen. (2022). Slow time, slow futurity. Panorama, 8(1). https://journalpanorama.org/article/slow-time-slow-futurity/
SandyR-B. (2023, November 22). Guide to Preparation for Ketamine Sessions and Things to Know [Reddit Post]. R/TherapeuticKetamine. https://www.reddit.com/r/TherapeuticKetamine/comments/18133to/guide_to_preparation_for_ketamine_sessions_and/
Scott, J. Blake. (2002). The public policy debate over newborn HIV testing: A case study of the knowledge enthymeme. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 32(2), 57–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773940209391228
Sears, Brad, Mallory, Christy., Lin, Andy., & Castleberry, Neko Michelle. (2024). Workplace Experiences of Transgender Employees. Williams Institute. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Workplace-Discrimination-Nov-2024.pdf
Segal, Judy Z. (2005). Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine. Southern Illinois University Press. https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1354472
shuster, stef m. (2021). Trans medicine: The emergence and practice of treating gender (Kindle edition). New York University Press.
Simpson, Leanne. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance. University of Minnesota Press.
Singh, Parvati, Nawaz, Saira, Seiber, Eric E., Bryant, Ian, Moon, Kyle, Wastler, Heather, & Breitborde, Nicholas J. (2023). ED visits for schizophrenia spectrum disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic at 5 campus health systems. JAMA Network Open, 6(12), e2349305. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.49305
Suicide-hit Foxconn factory to increase wages. (2010, May 28). BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/10184186
Teston, Christa. (2017). Bodies in flux: Scientific methods for negotiating medical uncertainty. The University of Chicago Press.
The University of Texas at Austin. (n.d.). IRB Policies. Research at UT Austin. Retrieved November 25, 2025, from https://research.utexas.edu/resources/human-subjects/policies-and-guidance
Tung, Wei-Chen, & Li, Zhizhong. (2015). Pain beliefs and behaviors among Chinese. Home Health Care Management & Practice, 27(2), 95–97. https://doi.org/10.1177/1084822314547962
Washington Post Staff. (2025, October 3). Read the full text of Trump’s proposal for priority college funding. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/10/03/trump-college-funding-proposal-document-pdf/
Yam, Kimberly. (2019, March 1). Alex Jones Says Asian People “Sync Up And Are Robots” In Fights, Joe Rogan Agrees. Huffington Post. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-rogan-alex-jones-asians-robots_n_5c795df9e4b087c2f295a5a1
Yergeau, M. Remi. (2018). Authoring autism: On rhetoric and neurological queerness (Kindle Edition). Duke University Press.