Scholarly Work
Publications
Journal Articles
2027
Psychotropic Medications and Foster Youth: A Narrative Review of State Policies and Bill of Rights (forthcoming)
Lauren Baker, Dominic Robin, and James M. DuBois
Pediatrics
2026
Delaying Pregnancy to Adopt (forthcoming)
Dominic Robin
Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics
2026
Narrative as Technology: The Role of the Medical Humanities in Responding to Emerging Biomedical Technologies
Dominic Robin
Medical Humanities (BMJ)
2026
Ritual Cleansings: Authoritarian Rhetoric, Paternalism, and Illicit Persuasion in J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey
Dominic Robin
South Central Review
2025
Ethics Found in Rhetoricity: Toward a Levinasian Vision of Bioethics
Dominic Robin
Christian Bioethics
2025
The Limits of Critique: Toward a Hermeneutics of Humility within the Medical Humanities
Dominic Robin
Monash Bioethics Review
2024
Let the Foxes Run Free: Arresting Bioethics' Inward Turn
Dominic Robin
Bioethics
2024
A Space to Be: Ability, Disability and the Inevitability of Corporeal Decline in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea
Dominic Robin
Disability Studies Quarterly
Book Chapters
2027
Ontogeny and Phylogeny: Darwinian Determinism, Sexual Selection, and the Rhetoric of Class in F. Scott Fitzgerald's"Presumption" (forthcoming)
Dominic Robin
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Popular Fiction: Studies in his Neglected Short Stories
2027
Toward a Loopier Logic: Magical Realism and The Great Gatsby”
Dominic Robin
F. Scott Fitzgerald: 100 Years After Gatsby
The Saint Louis Story
Under Review
ND
Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Transmediation: Why Generative AI and Insurance Authorization Don’t Mix
Dominic Robin
Submitted to Rhetoric Society Quarterly
ND
Technologies of Compliance: Enframement, Psychotropic Medication, and the Overmedication of Vulnerable Foster Youth
Dominic Robin
Submitted to AJOB: Neuroscience
Community Writing (public-facing):
2024
Confronting the Abuse of Disability Activist Language by the Maduro Administration in Venezuela
Dominic Robin
Bioethics Today
2024
Saint Louis, Human Subject Research, and the Tearoom Trade Study
Dominic Robin
The Saint Louis Story
2021
The Narcissism of Small Differences: Freud, Anger, and What Matters in the End
Dominic Robin
The Reuleaux
Current Projects
01 - Empirical Project (Primary Investigator)
The Panacousticon: A Discourse Analysis of Practitioner-Patient Discourse With and Without Ambient AI-Assisted Consultation Technology
This empirical discourse analysis investigates how ambient AI influences clinical communication by examining communication shifts in practitioner-patient interactions. By comparing conversations conducted with and without ambient AI recording devices present in the exam room, the project explores the "audience effect" on healthcare provider language, evaluating changes in tone, patient-centered phrasing, risk communication, and explanatory depth to determine whether clinicians and patients consciously or subconsciously alter their discourse when an algorithmic listener is present. The project is in the grant writing stage.
02 - Book Project
“Pushing Back the Frontier”: The Frontier Metaphor as Rhetorical Grounding for Biomedicine’s Technological Imperative
Drawing from philosophy of rhetoric and discourse analysis, I examine the integration of the frontier metaphor in biomedical discourse, focusing in particular on the metaphor’s introduction into the medical lexicon in the 1860s by figures like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and its subsequent expansion at the turn of the century into common medical parlance by William Osler, Simon Flexner, and others. Noting the metaphor’s ubiquity within modern biomedical discourse, I argue that the metaphor functions as a foundational mythology for medicine, one that frames biomedical progress in three ways: 1. as agonistic to nature, 2. as necessarily progressive, and 3. as technologically rendered—the act of “pushing back the frontier.” This shift is exemplified most vividly by the rise of the pharmaceutical industrial complex post-1910.
03 - Empirical Project (Research Assistant) - Bioethics Research Center at Washington University School of Medicine, PI: Lauren Baker
Psychotropic Medication Decision Making for Youth in Foster Care: Challenges, Barriers, and Facilitators to Informed Consent, Assent and Refusal
This 2-year, 3-phase study is funded by a grant from the Greenwall Foundation. Foster youth are prescribed psychotropic medications at significantly higher rates than the general population. In this study, we examine the challenges, barriers, and facilitators to informed consent, assent, and refusal in treatment decisions regarding psychotropic medications for youth in foster care. The project involves policy analysis of state child welfare policies and foster care bills of rights as well as qualitative interviews with foster care alumni, case workers, and clinicians. Our goal is to develop a set of best practice and policy recommendations to foster ethical decision-making related to psychotropic medication for foster care youth. have been involved in all three phases of this study, participating in policy analysis, data coding, participant interviews, and manuscript drafting.
04 - Empirical Project (Research Assistant) - Bioethics Research Center at Washington University School of Medicine, PI: James M. DuBois
Religion and Support for Genomic Healthcare: An Exploratory Study of the US Public and Faith Leaders
This 3-year study is funded by an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health, National Human Genome Research Institute (NIH NHGRI). In phase one, we conducted a national survey with 4800 adults in the US. The Healthcare, Values, and Spiritual Life Survey asks about personal religious and spiritual beliefs and attitudes toward important genetic and genomic healthcare activities. Building on what we learn from the HVS Survey, in phase two we will conduct 180 in-depth interviews with faith leaders from six major religious groups (Catholic, Evangelical, Mainline Protestant, Black Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim).
Awards, Fellowships, and Honors
Saint Louis University Dissertation Fellowship Award ($31,500) | 2026
Given competitively to a single graduate student across the entire university whose work “demonstrates outstanding academic achievement and whose dissertation will significantly extend the body of knowledge within their discipline.”
Georgia K. Johnston Summer Research Award ($2,500) | 2026
Awarded to support travel for archival research at McGill University Osler Library Collection
The Sara van den Berg Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Publication ($500) | 2025
Award for outstanding publication record by a graduate student.
Achieved Doctoral Candidacy with Distinction | 2025
Passed doctoral exams (written and oral) with distinction
John Kuehl Fellowship Award from the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society ($500) | 2023
Award for outstanding graduate research in the field of Fitzgerald studies.
Hinkle Grant recipient from the Hemingway Society ($1,000) | 2018
Given for research demonstrating “clarity, originality, and value in furthering Hemingway scholarship, criticism, and/or instruction.”
SAILS Study Abroad Grant from the University of North Florida ($1,000) | 2018
Given to enable research opportunities for master’s thesis in Spain.