Karen E. Lovaas

Karen Lovaas (Ph.D. in American Studies, University of Hawaii) is Assistant Professor of Speech and Communication Studies at San Francisco State University. Recent publications underscore her interest in sexualities, gender, communication, and pedagogy. The contested terrain of LGBT studies and queer theory, with John Elia and Gust Yep, is in press; it is a follow-up volume to Queer theory and communication: From disciplining queers to queering the discipline(s) (Harrington Park Press, 2003). She authored encyclopedia entries on “gender roles” and “sexism” for The international encyclopedia of [homo] sexualities, education, and cultures (2005), and glossary entries on “cross-dressing,” “free love,” “liberation,” and “sexual assault” for Sexuality: The essential glossary (2004). “A critical appraisal of assimilationist and radical ideologies underlying same-sex marriage in LGBT communities in the United States” (2003), with Yep and Elia, and “Sexual practices, identification, and the paradoxes of identity in the era of AIDS: The case of ‘riding bareback’” (2002), Yep and Alex Pagonis, were published in Journal of Homosexuality. With former undergraduate students Lina Baroudi and S. Collins, Lovaas wrote “Transcending heteronormativity in the classroom: Using queer and critical pedagogies to alleviate trans-anxieties” for the Journal of Lesbian Studies (2002); it was simultaneously published in Addressing homophobia and heterosexism on college campuses (Haworth Press, 2003). “Communication in ‘Asian American’ families with queer members: A relational dialectics perspective,” with Yep and Philip Ho, appears in Queer families, queer politics: Challenging culture and the state (Columbia University Press, 2001). Her ongoing projects utilize critical, queer, and feminist approaches to communication research and pedagogy.