Karen Foss, Ph.D.

University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM

Email: karenfoss4@gmail.com 
Tel: 505-379-0459

Karen A. Foss, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, Regents’ Professor, Presidential Teaching Fellow, and former chair of the Department of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico. Karen’s research centers on the ways gender and feminist perspectives are constructed and enacted in everyday life. Karen has studied the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo; Harvey Milk’s political campaigns; Garrison Keillor’s construction of a female spectatorship in A Prairie Home Companion; surrogacy, fertility travel, and the rhetorics of motherhood; and the ways feminist rhetorical scholars construct notions of feminism and strategies for enacting feminist change. Recent projects include women bullying women, graffiti about women in Cairo during Arab spring, and a comparison of traditional and social construction paradigms of change.

Karen is the coauthor of Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric, Inviting Transformation: Presentational Speaking for a Changing World, Feminist Rhetorical Theories, Gender Stories: Negotiating Identity in a Binary World, Theories of Human Communication, and Feminism in Practice: Communication Strategies for Making Change (all available from Waveland Press),and the Encyclopedia of Communication Theory, available from Sage Publications.

Karen also is involved in a project, with Ann Skinner-Jones, called Color Up, in which the metaphor of the color wheel is used as a vehicle for moving beyond binary thinking and constructing more and different options for making life decisions. Based on a model of colorful abundance, five interactive techniques are offered for working with life dilemmas differently. These techniques are captured in the acronym of COLORConnect, to make new space for change; Optimize, to identify new options; Lighten up, to focus on appreciation and the more playful side of life; Oops, to allow for a U-turn when you realize you want a different choice; and Radiate, to stay centered and aware of your Color-Full possibilities. COLOR Up to Create the Life you Want to Live is available from FriesenPress and Amazon.

Karen was awarded the Paul Boase prize for scholarship from Ohio University in 2015, The Robert J. Kibler Service Award from the National Communication Association in 2010, the Gender Scholar of the Year from the Southern States Communication Association in 2005, and the Francine Merritt Award in 2002 for contributions to the lives of women in communication.   

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