Teaching Assistant Professor
English
As a community-engaged researcher and writer, I seek ways to utilize my skills, resources, and areas of expertise to support local community initiatives for reproductive justice. My research interests include the rhetorics of reproductive justice, feminist and queer studies, and cultural rhetorics. In my research and writing, I focus on the development of research practices that nurture more ethical and careful engagement with marginalized stories of reproductive [in]justice so that the embodied experiences of storytellers are valued and honored. This is especially important for projects being shared in digital spaces. One ongoing public project I鈥檝e partnered on, Cuentos de Confianza: A Community Writing Project for Reproductive Justice, highlights the experiences of reproductive justice written by a group of local Latinx health promoters (promotores de salud). Part of larger coalitional work, Cuentos de Confianza is a collaborative and bilingual (Spanish-English) digital storytelling project with a primary use of supplementing the sexual and reproductive health education that the health promoters do in their communities.
As a teacher, I seek to draw inspiration from my community-engaged work and see each class as its own micro-community. I encourage students to not only build skills necessary for reading, writing, and research, but to also build skills necessary for living in community with others: respecting new or different perspectives, fostering a caring community atmosphere, actively responding to social problems, and ethically engaging with the world around them.
Education
- Ph.D., Public Rhetorics and Community Engagement | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
- Women and Gender Studies Certificate | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
- M.A., Rhetoric and Composition Studies | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
- B.A., Writing Intensive English | 向日葵视频
Courses Taught
- Foundations in Rhetoric
- Business Writing
- Public Writing for Social Action
- Health Science Writing
Research Interests
- Rhetoric of health and medicine
- Digital rhetorics and design justice
- Technical and professional communication
- Feminist and queer studies
- Reproductive justice
Publications
- Koepke, D. (In preparation). Authenticity soars: The role of a digital care ethics in sharing stories of reproductive injustice on social media. Bloomsbury Publishing, Plc.
- Novotny, M., Koepke, D., & Pearle, K. (In preparation). Should we be doing this?: Embodying cis whiteness & doing reproductive justice鈥 in Brooks-Gillies, M., Cedillo, C., & Hurig, A. (Eds.), Rhetorical approaches to critical embodiment: Diverse perspectives on academia, activism, and everyday life. University of Pittsburgh Press.
- Koepke, D. (Under review). Using Discord as a community space for human connection, story-sharing, and critical engagement with vulnerable topics. In Coad, D.T., Buck, A.M., Gupta, A., and Shivener, R. (Eds.), Digital literacies for human connection: An edited collection foucusing on AI, VR/AR, and social media. NCTE.
- Bloom-Pojar, R. & Koepke, D. (Forthcoming 2025). Creating Confianza and Caring for Stories in Digital Spaces. in E. E. Schell, K.J. Rawson, A. Long, C. J. Jewell, S. Turner, and G. Wilson (Eds.), Rhetorica in motion (second edition). University of South Carolina Press.
- Koepke, D. (Forthcoming 2024). A praxis of care for activist stories of reproductive justice in the digital classroom. In Frost, E., Partin Patterson, A., Blackmon, C.R., Allen, N., Bikmohammadi, M., Dighton, D., Eble, M., and Banks, W. (Eds.), Practicing digital activisms. Utah State University Press.
- Koepke, D. (Forthcoming 2024). 鈥淒esigning with care: A cultural rhetorics praxis of care for digital storytelling project about reproductive justice.鈥 In Jiang, J. & Tham, J. (Eds.), Designing for social justice: Community-engaged approaches in technical and professional communication, an ATTW series. Routledge Press.
- Frandsen, G., Koepke, D., & Novotny, M. (Forthcoming 2024). Constellating care: Fostering relationality to support the emotional labor of dissertation research. Radical Transparency: Perspectives on graduate education in rhetoric and composition. University Press of Colorado.
- Koepke, D., & Frandsen, G. (Forthcoming 2024). A feminist lens of care for GTA parents: Creating toolkits for collective survival.鈥 Parenting while PhDing: Surviving and improving the working conditions of graduate student parents. Rutgers Press.
- Bloom-Pojar, R. & Koepke, D. (2024). Caring for stories in community-engaged research and coalitional work for justice. In Taylor, J. (Editor), Preparing publicly engaged scholars: A guide for innovation in doctoral education. American Council of Learned Societies, 16-21.
- Koepke, D. & Perleberg, K. (2022). Guidance for humanities researchers in a post-Roe world: A panel discussion.鈥 Thinking C21 [blog post], Center For 21st Century Studies. .
- Jianfen, C. & Koepke, D., Eds (2021). The role of empathy in and after the pandemic. Digital Rhetoric Collaborative, blog carnival 18.
- Novotny, M., Edwards, C., Frandsen, G., Koepke, D., Marcum, J., Smith, C., Sommers, A., & Williams, M. (2021). Constellating community engagement in a cultural rhetorics seminar. Composition Studies, 49, 103-118.
- Novotny, M., Daughtry, D., Pawlyshyn Fitch, W., Frandsen, G., Kilb, S., Koepke, D., Hayward Marcum, J., Perleberg, K., Rahman, M. A., Reavey, A., Rodriguez, J., Sekhon, G. S., Smith, C., Sommers, A., Williams, M., & Zorea, E. (2021). [Collaborative and open-access bibliography].
Additional Information
Office Hours
Fall 2024
Teaching Schedule
Fall 2024
- 1001/125 TuTh 9:30-10:45 Lalumiere Hall 198
- 1001/126 TuTh 11:00-12:15 Lalumiere Hall 198
- HOPR 1955H/903 TuTh 12:30-1:45 Lalumiere Hall 198
- Honors First Year Seminar
- HOPR 1955H/904 TuTh 3:30-4:45 Straz Tower 106
- Honors First Year Seminar