Craft as a Memorializing Rhetoric

Authors

  • Maria Novotny Michigan State University

Keywords:

(4) Keywords Craft, Rhetoric, Memorial, Death, Infertility

Abstract

This video essay functions as a reflective piece pondering the intersections between craft, family, and the act of memorializing. Specifically, this essay attempts to push beyond traditional assumptions of craft as a discourse related to home projects or food. Instead, suggesting that the craft is a practice that memorializes bodies that have passed away and/or pain and sorrow carried on our own bodies. To make these claims, the author narrates two personal stories of craft as a memorializing rhetoric. The first narrative recounts how she came to realize craft as an essential practice embedded in the passing away of relatives. The second narrative suggests that craft can also function as a counter culture. Diagnosed with infertility, she recounts how she participates in craft to challenge dominant norms of the family and motherhood. The video essay concludes suggesting that we also craft our scholarship. A video essay, like the one shown, begins to suggest how we can craft scholarship that honors and embodies how personal experiences are always influencing our professional scholarship.

Author Biography

Maria Novotny, Michigan State University

Maria Novotny is a PhD student in Rhetoric & Writing at Michigan State University. She studies cultural rhetorics, focusing on rhetorics of infertility, pregnancy and motherhood. Her scholarship resides at the intersections of medical and embodied rhetorics, examining the medicalization of infertility as a systematic, patriarchal structure denying embodied ontologies to the experience of infertility. She currently studies the rhetoric of NGOs that advocate for reproductive and adoption rights in DC.

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Published

2015-10-15

Issue

No. 14 (2015): Craft Rhetorics

Section

Issue #14: Craft Rhetoric

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