ONLINE: Bugs without Borders: Discursive Practices and the Making of Invasive Species

press release: We think of bed bugs as creatures whose invasion is propagated by travel and sanitation, but it is rhetorical practices across spaces that authorize their invasions. Instead, we should attend to how rhetorical acts in spaces work to prevent acts of disclosure and maintain conditions favorable to bed bugs’ identity.

In this presentation, Donnie Johnson Sackey will look at disclosure across three spaces to offer an idea of what possibilities for rhetorical engagement might exist to allow us to deal with bed bugs once and for all. The home, the public, and the state compose an archipelago of loosely linked spaces that frame how we experience bed bugs.

Donnie Johnson Sackey, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned a PhD in rhetoric and writing from Michigan State University in 2013. His work focuses on environmental rhetoric, risk communication, community-engaged research, community literacy, computers and writing, and research methods and methodology.