Education
- B.A., English Literature and Language, University of Michigan, 2007
- M.A., Rhetoric, Carnegie Mellon University, 2018
- Ph.D., Rhetoric, Carnegie Mellon University, 2023
Bio
Dr. McCann is a jointly appointed lecturer in the Department of English and Department of Biomedical Engineering. Her research focuses on the intersection of science and medical discourse with a particular focus on the rhetorical and communicative problems accompanying acute and chronic medical diagnoses and treatments. Her courses teach undergraduate and graduate students across engineering and humanities programs to engage rhetorically informed skill sets to communicate technical knowledge to expert, expert-adjacent, and non-expert audiences.
McCann studies how humans navigate the associated communicative challenges that accompany medical diagnoses and interventions. Receiving a diagnosis brings known technical decision making, on the part of the providers and the patients. However, what is often underappreciated are the interconnected communicative problems that accompany technical decisions. Her work therefore investigates how humans navigate these communicative challenges as well as socio-cultural constructs with a particular emphasis in communicative strategies enacted in mediated, peer-to-peer spaces like Reddit and Instagram.
Research Interests: communications in healthcare, diagnosis communication, medical decision-making, socio-cultural aspects of communication, peer-to-peer health communication, social media and patient communication
Awards and Recognitions
- Recipient of the Edwina L. Sanders Award for Outstanding Work on The Rhetoric of Health Inequities, 2024