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Colleen Derkatch

Colleen Derkatch

Media & Culture
DepartmentEnglish (Toronto Metropolitan University)
Areas of ExpertiseCritical theory, Cultural studies, Science and technology studies, rhetoric
https://www.torontomu.ca/english/about-us/faculty-and-staff/faculty/derkatch-colleen/

My research aims to explain how language motivates and shapes human activity—how language produces, demarcates, and communicates systems of knowledge, expertise, and authority; how it organizes experience; and how it orients us toward certain beliefs and behaviours and away from others. I focus specifically on discourse in the realm of health and medicine, a rich site of inquiry shaped by various, often embodied, and sometimes conflicting forms of expertise about illness, treatment, and health. 

Recent publications:

Derkatch, C. (2018). The Self-Generating Language of Wellness and Natural Health. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 1(1), 132–160.

Derkatch, C., & Spoel, P. (2017). Public health promotion of “local food”: Constituting the self-governing citizen-consumer. Health (London, England : 1997), 21(2), 154–170.

Spoel, P., & Derkatch, C. (2020). Resilience and Self-Reliance in Canadian Food Charter Discourse. Poroi, 15(1). 

ComCult Teaching Activities

  • CC 8836 Selected Topics in Media and Culture - Rhetorics of Wellness