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’ve 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 | Marquette University
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. (Under contract). 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. (Forthcoming 2026). Should we be doing this?: Embodying cis whiteness & doing reproductive justice” 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. (Forthcoming 2025). 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 focusing on AI, VR/AR, and social media.
- Koepke, D. (Forthcoming 2025). 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 2025). Designing with care: A cultural rhetorics praxis of care for digital storytelling project about reproductive justice. 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 2025). 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.
- Bloom-Pojar, R. & Koepke, D. (2025). Caring for cuentos of reproductive (in)justice: Feminist methods for confianza, curation, and care-ful digital design. in E. E. Schell, K.J. Rawson, A. Long, C. J. Jewell, S. Turner, and G. Wilson (Eds.), Rhetorica in motion (second edition).
- Koepke, D., & Frandsen, G. (2025). A feminist lens of care for GTA parents: Creating toolkits for collective survival. Parenting while PhDing: Surviving and improving the working conditions of graduate student parents.
- Banville, M., & Koepke, D. (2025). Seeking connectivity: Grappling with data privacy in digital social settings. 19-34. In Andrews, C. D. M, Kalodner-Martin, E., O’Connell, N., Wang, H., Wilkes, L., and Woods, C. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Computers and Writing Conference, 2024. WAC Clearing House.
- Koepke, D. (2024). Review of Feminist Technical Communication: Apparent Feminisms, Slow Crisis, and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster: Erin Clark, Utah State University Press, 2023. Technical Communication & Social Justice 2(2): 105-109.
- 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.” Thinking C21 [blog post], Center For 21st Century Studies. https://www.c21uwm.com/2022/12/07/guidance-for-humanities-researchers-in-a-post-roe-world-a-panel-discussion/.
- 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. https://compositionstudiesjournal.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/novotny.pdf
Additional Information
Office Hours
Fall 2025
- Wednesday 3pm-5pm and Friday 9am-11am (virtual on TEAMS)
Teaching Schedule
Spring 2025
- ENGL 1001/137 TuTh 2pm-3:15pm Gymnasium A104
- ENGL 1001/138 TuTh 12:30pm-1:45pm Gymnasium A104
- HOPR 1955H/903 TuTh 9:30am-10:45am Gymnasium A104
- Core Honors First-Year Seminar
- HOPR 1955H/904 TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm Gymnasium A104
- Core Honors First-Year Seminar
- ARSC 1953/701 Tu 4:00pm-4:50pm Gymnaisum A104
- Exploring Arts and Sciences
Dr. Danielle KoepkeMarquette University
