Lauren Cagle | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Lauren Cagle

Associate Professor

Director of the Tracy Farmer Institute for Sustainability & the Environment

I am an Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies and direct the Tracy Farmer Institute for Sustainability and the Environment at the University of Kentucky. I collaborate with scientific and environmental organizations to put engaged rhetoric to work in the world.

My research focuses on overlaps among digital rhetorics, research ethics, and scientific, environmental, and technical communication, frequently in collaboration with local and regional environmental and technical practitioners such as the Kentucky Division for Air Quality, the Kentucky Geological Survey, the UK Recycling Program, and The Arboretum, State Botanical Garden of Kentucky. My teaching includes courses on scientific, environmental, and technical communication, and I am affiliate faculty with the University of Kentucky Environmental and Sustainability Studies and Appalachian Studies programs.

Outside of the university, I am the co-founder and Director of the Kentucky Climate Consortium, a multi-institutional network of climate teachers and researchers in Kentucky higher education. I am also a member of the Kentucky Humanities Speakers Bureau.

My work has been published in Technical Communication Quarterly, the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Rhetoric Review, Computers & Composition, and others. I am currently writing a book on slide charts for the Parlor Press X-Series.

Contact Information

lauren.cagle@uky.edu

1351 Patterson Office Tower

302 Breckinridge

(859) 257-1115

Education

Ph.D. in Rhetoric & Composition, University of South Florida (2016)
Graduate Certificate in Technical & Professional Communication
Graduate Certificate in Gender & Women's Studies
M.A. in Literature & Composition, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (2011)
B.A. in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing, Rhodes College (2007)

Research Interests

Climate Change Communication
Disability Studies
Environmental Rhetoric
Feminist Ethics
Rhetoric of Science
science communication
Technical Communication

Affiliations

Appalachian Center
Environmental and Sustainability Studies
Association for Rhetoric of Science, Technology, & Medicine
Association of Teachers of Technical Writing
International Environmental Communication Association
University of Kentucky Tracy Farmer Center for Sustainability & the Environment

Curriculum Vitae (CV)
Website

Selected Publications

Selected Publications:

Journal Articles

Johnson, M. A., & Cagle, L. E. (2025). Designing accessible tables: When technical communication competencies come into conflict. Communication Design Quarterly.

Cagle, L. E. (2023). “A proficiency in what we call rhetoric”: A role for community-engaged technical communicators in interpretive planning processes. Technical Communication Quarterly.

Itchuaqiyaq, C. U., Bloom Pojar, R., Cagle, L. E., Druschke, C. G. (2022). To community with care: Enacting positive barriers to access as good relations. Community Literacy Journal 17(1), 93-115.

Cagle, L. E. (2021). The ethics of researching unethical images: A story of studying strangershots (or a story of trying to do good research without doing bad things). Computers & Composition, 61(1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2021.102651

Walker, K., & Cagle, L. E. (2020). Resilience rhetorics in science, technology, and medicine. Poroi, 15(1).

Cagle, L. E., & Herndl, C. G. (2019). Shades of denialism: Discovering possibilities for a more nuanced deliberation about climate change in online discussion forums. Communication Design Quarterly, 7(1), 22-39.

Cagle, L. E. (2019). Surveilling strangers: The disciplinary biopower of digital genre assemblages. Computers & Composition, 52, 67-78.

Cagle, L. E. (2018). Climate change and the virtue of civility: Cultivating productive deliberation around public scientific controversy. Rhetoric Review, 37(4), 370-379.

Cagle, L.E. (2017). Becoming 'forces of change': Making a case for engaged rhetoric of science, technology, engineering, and medicine. POROI, 12(2).

Browning, E. R., & Cagle, L. E. (2017). Teaching a ‘Critical Accessibility Case Study’: Developing disability studies curricula for the technical communication classroom. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 47(4), 440-463.

Cagle, L. E., & Tillery, D. (2015). Climate change research across disciplines: The value and uses of multidisciplinary research reviews for technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 24(2), 147–163.

Book Chapters

Cagle, L. E. (2023). “The New World Order behind the green mask”: A comparative rhetorical analysis of visual strategies used by far right and far left climate conspiracists in the U.S. In B. Forchtner (Ed.), Imaging Far-Right Environments: Visual Communication and the Politics of Nature, Manchester University Press, Global Studies of the Far Right Series.

Moore, K., Cagle, L. E., & Lowman, N. (2023). Afterword: Diversity, equity, and inclusion through citational practice. In H. Yu & J. Buehl (Eds.), Keywords in Technical and Professional Communication, WAC Clearinghouse.

Cagle, L. E., & Burnes, R. (2023). Collaborating for clean air: Virtue ethics and the cultivation of transformational service-learning partnerships. In S. Williams (Ed.), Technical Communication for Environmental Action, SUNY press.

Cagle, L. E. (2021). Doing science digitally: The role of interactive and multimedia representations in scientific rhetoric. In C. Hanganu-Bresch, S. Maci, M. Zerbe, & G. Cutrufello (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Scientific Communication.

Cagle, L. E., & Tillery, D. (2017). Tweeting the Anthropocene: #400ppm as networked event. In K. Northcut & H. Yu (Eds.), Scientific communication: Practices, theories, and pedagogies (pp. 131-148). Routledge Studies in Technical Communication, Rhetoric, and Culture Series.

Proceedings Papers

Cagle, L. E., Eble, M., Johnson, M., Johnson, N. R., Lane, L., Mckoy, T., Moore, K. R., Reynoso Jr., E., Rose, E. J., Patterson, G., Sánchez, F., Simmons, M., Stone, E., Tham, J., & Walton, R. (2021). Participatory coalition building: Creating an anti-racist scholarly reviewing practices heuristic. ACM Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication (SIGDOC) ’21.

Chua, M., & Cagle, L. E. (2017). You can change the world, but not this homework assignment: The contradictory rhetoric of engineering agency. 2017 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 1–4.

Edited Special Issue

Cagle, L.E., & Walker, K. (2020). Special issue on “Rhetorics of Resilience” including 10+ articles from scholars in rhetoric and communication. POROI.