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.
Mercilee Jenkins (Ph. D in Speech Communication, University of Illinois) is a professor in the Department of Speech & Communication Studies at San Francisco State University. Her publications include her solo performance texts, poetry, and scholarly articles on women's small group communication, the performance of personal narratives, and communication in the college classroom. She was an Associate Editor for Queer Words , Queer Images edited by R. Jeffrey Ringer. Her ethnographic research on gender, sexuality and relationships has resulted in several produced plays, including A Credit to Her Country , based on the oral histories of lesbian in the U. S. military and She Rises Like a… Building to the Sky , about the founding of the San Francisco Women's Building. She received two Horizon Foundation grants for Credit and a San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grant for the development of She Rises . nbsp;Her solo performance piece, Menopause and Desire , premiered at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in September 2002 and was published in its entirety in Text and Performance Quarterly in July 2005. Dr. Jenkins received the Leslie Irene Coger Award for Distinguished Performance from the National Communication Association in 2004.