October 24, 2025
Meet our new faculty: Jessie Cortez
Jessie Cortez, English | Photo by Rick Smith
My research focuses on: My research concerns practices in interactions between professional communication and public discourse. I’m particularly interested in how rhetorical framings of medicine and medical conditions impact public health efforts in the United States. Despite the bodily nature of disease, so much of what we understand about health happens outside the body, in language (whether written or spoken). My research thinks about the interplay between language, cultural values, and discursive practices as they guide efforts to control disease.
Recognizing that today’s college students are tomorrow’s professional communicators, I also conduct research in composition pedagogy. My aim in this area is to help improve the teaching of writing, making writing more accessible for all students.
This fall, I am teaching: Writing Seminar: Writing about Health and Intro to Writing and Rhetoric
What students can expect from me: I’ve been tutoring or teaching writing since 2013, so if there’s one thing I know, it’s that writing is not everyone’s favorite subject/activity (and there have been plenty of moments when I wasn’t writing’s biggest fan, either). With that in mind, I want my students to leave my class feeling writing is possible. In all my writing classes, my goal is to reframe writing from a product that must be perfect from conception to completion to an iterative process consisting of a series of small, manageable choices.
And if the reframing doesn’t fully dissipate the writing anxiety, I also include at least one picture of my cat with every lecture.
Getting to know me: I’m a first-generation college graduate, so I think a lot about making my classroom–and the college experience more generally–welcoming for students of all backgrounds. I’m from South Louisiana, so I also think a lot about making a good roux. I’m thrilled to have moved to a place with an extended gumbo season.
