Madison Jones

Natural Resources Science faculty member, Madison Jones
  • Assistant Professor
  • Department of Natural Resources Science
  • Email: madisonjones@uri.edu
  • Office Location: Roosevelt Hall, Room 324
  • Website

Research

My research projects focus on the use of emerging technologies for environmental communication, science storytelling, public advocacy, and user-centered information design. Specifically, I examine how digital and visual design can combat the rhetorical problem of scale for communicating environmental problems. For example, this image is from the Ghost Bikes Project, a multimedia webtext and digital humanities project which uses augmented reality (or AR) to explore the connections between large-scale issues (car-centered urban design) and local advocacy.

An important feature of all location-based technologies—such as digital maps, mobile smartphone apps, analytics, and augmented reality—scale also detaches users from a sense of individual autonomy, such as in visualizations of climate change or sea-level rise, creating a disconnect between local action and global impact. By emphasizing the place-based affordances of mobile media, my research and digital projects demonstrate how emerging technologies like augmented reality can be used to combat the problem of scale in environmental communication and to promote advocacy within local communities.

Rather than approaching environmental communication through strictly top-down or bottom-up models, my work engages the place-based networks through which individuals, communities, companies, industries, and grassroots organizations advocate for environmental causes, more-than-human ethics, and sustainability. Below, you will find a selection of my published research, with brief abstracts. For a complete record of my academic work, visit my CV page and learn more about my teaching, grants/digital projects, creative writing, and industry work in my portfolio.

Education

Ph.D., Writing and Rhetoric, University of Florida, 2020
M.A., English, Auburn University, 2014
B.A., English, University of Montevallo, 2010

Selected Publications

Books

Writing the Environment in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: The Ecological Awareness of Early Scribes of Nature. Co-edited with Steven Petersheim. Lexington Books, 2015.

Articles and book chapters (selected)

  1. “A Counter-History of Rhetorical Ecologies.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Forthcoming 2022, vol.51.
  2. “Deep Mapping for Environmental Communication Design.” Co-authored with Shannon Butts. Communication Design Quarterly, January 2021.
  3. “Trees, Anti-Advocacy, and Visual Rhetoric in Truax (A Parody of The Lorax),” invited submission for EcoComix: Essays on the Environment in Comics and Graphic Novels. Ed. Sidney I. Dobrin. McFarland, 2020.
  4. “(Re)Placing the Rhetoric of Scale: Ecoliteracy, Networked Writing, and MEmorial Mapping.” Mediating Nature: The Role of Technology in Ecological Literacy. Eds. Sidney I. Dobrin and Sean Morey. Routledge, October, 2019.
  5. “Articulate Detroit: Augmenting Public Writing.” Co-authored with Jacob Greene. Computers & Composition Online, Spring 2019.
  6. “Sylvan Rhetorics: Roots and Branches of More-Than-Human Publics.” Rhetoric Review, February 2019, vol. 38 no. 1, pp. 63-78 [Awarded the 2020 CCCC Technical and Scientific Communication Award in the category of Best Article on Philosophy or Theory of Technical or Scientific Communication].
  7. “Writing Conditions: The Premises of Ecocomposition.” Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, Fall 2018, vol. 26, no. 1.
  8. “Augmented Vélorutionaries: Digital Rhetoric, Memorials, and Public Discourse.” Co-authored with Jacob Greene. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Fall 2017, vol. 22, no. 1.
  9. “Plato’s Apocalyptic Rhetoric: Interpreting Bioregionalism in the Critias–Timaeus Dialogues.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Summer 2016, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 548-563.

Brief essays and book reviews

  1. “Toward an Ecology of Chora and Topoi: A Review of Rhetoric as a Posthuman Practice by Casey Boyle.” Composition Forum (Fall 2019), vol. 42.
  2. “Advertising Poetry: Remix and Digital Invention.” Digital English. Eds. Naomi Milthorpe, Robert Clarke, Joanne Jones, and Robbie Moore (Spring 2019).
  3. “Environing Media, a Review of The Undersea Network” by Nicole Starosielski. Reviewed in Digital Humanities Quarterly (Spring 2018), vol. 11, iss, 3.
  4. “Review of Eco-Republic: What the Ancients Can Teach Us about Ethics, Virtue, and Sustainable Living” by Melissa Lane. Princeton UP, 2012. Reviewed in Journal of Ecocriticism (January 2018), vol. 7, iss. 2, pp. 14-15.

Courses

  • WRT 533: Graduate Writing in the Life Sciences
  • WRT 334: Science Writing
  • NRS 568: Visualizing Environmental Rhetoric
  • BES 521: Rhetorical Field Methods for Science Communication (this one is still pending committee review)