Associate Professor of English Christa Teston has been awarded the 2019 CCCC Technical and Scientific Communication Award in the category of Best Book in Technical or Scientific Communication for Bodies in Flux: Scientific Methods for Negotiating Medical Uncertainty. The award is presented by the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the largest and most prestigious conference in the fields of Rhetoric and Composition.

Teston’s book explores how medical and scientific practitioners design and then use certain kinds of evidence to make difficult decisions about medical treatment and prevention plans. The book’s inception began early in her life –– she was raised by an oncologist mother and a Methodist minister father. In her household, there was no singular way to make sense of the word in all its complexity and uncertainty.

“I suppose,” Teston says, “in some ways, rhetorical theory is just another body of knowledge or tradition (in addition to religion or science) you can use to understand how humans negotiate and navigate such complexity and uncertainty — especially when these complexities and uncertainties collide in the corporeal body.”

The research for this book was painstaking and time consuming, so for Teston, winning this award conjures two dominant emotions: “validation and gratitude.”

“It’s nice to have all of the otherwise invisible labor associated with doing this kind of research recognized,” she says. “But this kind of validation also reminds me to thank all of the people who provided feedback along the way. I’m so grateful to my colleagues for their support.”