Kelly Pender

Kelly Pender, Chair and Professor of English

_{Department of English

303 Shanks Hall

180 Turner Street, NW

Blacksburg, VA 24061

540-231-7785 | pender@vt.edu}

Kelly Pender is the chair of and a professor in the Department of English and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society. She specializes in rhetorical theory and the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine, and she regularly teaches courses in these areas.

Pender is the author of Techne, From Neoclassicism to Postmodernism (Parlor Press, 2011) and Being at Genetic Risk: Toward a Rhetoric of Care (Penn State Press, 2018).

Principal Areas of Research Focus

Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Rhetorical Theory
History of Rhetoric

Education

Ph.D. in English, Purdue University, 2005
M.A. in English, North Carolina State University, 2000
B.A. in English, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1997

Professional Roles

Chair, Department of English

Publications

Books

Pender, Kelly. Being at Genetic Risk: Toward a Rhetoric of Care. Penn State University Press, 2018.
Pender, Kelly. Techne, From Neoclassicism to Postmodernism: Understanding Writing as a Useful, Teachable Art. Parlor Press, 2011.

Journal Articles

Pender, Kelly and Brooke Covington. “How Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy Does the Body, Or Why Epistemology Alone Cannot Explain This Controversial Breast Cancer Treatment.” Journal of Medical Humanities, 11 Feb. 2020. Springer Journals, doi: 10.007/s10912-020-09614-w.
Pender, Kelly. “Somatic Individuality in Context: A Comparative Case Study.” Public Understanding of Science, vol. 27, no. 3, 2018, pp. 5-18.
Pender, Kelly. “Genetic Subjectivity in situ: A Rhetorical Reading of Genetic Determinism and Genetic Opportunity in the Biosocial Community of FORCE.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs, vol. 15, no. 2, 2012, pp. 319-349.
Pender, Kelly. “Negation and Contradictory Technics of Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 1, 2008, pp. 2-24.