University of Colorado Denver College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Bio

Dr. Lisa Keränen studies and teaches rhetorical theory and criticism with an emphasis on the rhetoric of medicine, health care and bioethics. She has won numerous awards for her research, teaching and service. Most recently, she was the 2010 recipient of the Karl R. Wallace Memorial Research Award from the National Communication Association (NCA); she was a 2008-9 Faculty Fellow at the Center for Humanities and the Arts (CHA) at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Dr. Keränen researches the interface between science, publics and the state in biomedical controversies, end-of-life discourse and the international biodefense industry. Her first book, Scientific Characters: Rhetoric, Politics, and Trust in Breast Cancer Research (University of Alabama Press, 2010), chronicles the contests over trust, truth and character in a high-flying breast cancer research misconduct controversy. Dr. Keränen's essays concerning rhetoric, medicine and terrorism appear in places such as Academic Medicine, Accountability in Research, Argumentation & Advocacy, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Homeland Security & Emergency Management, Journal of Medical Humanities, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies and Communication Yearbook, and she has edited books about the rhetoric of science and medicine. She is hard at work on her second book, Envisioning Viral Apocalypse: A Rhetorical History of Biological Weapons from World War II to the War on Terror.

Dr. Keränen teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in rhetorical theory and criticism and in the rhetoric of science and medicine. As Director of Graduate Studies, she will be teaching the introduction to graduate study for the Communication Department starting in the Fall of 2010. Other recent course offerings include a seminar in rhetorics of health and medicine and one devoted to exploring rhetoric and biothreats. She has also begun to co-teach an intensive Maymester travel study course in Beijing, Narratives of the New China, which explores how China is crafting its identity in its post-Olympic era, and with J. Blake Scott, will be co-facilitating the Summer 2011 Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) Workshop on "Medicine and Its Publics."

From 2006-2009, Dr. Keränen served as a member of the clinical ethics committee and member of the consultancy committee at Boulder Community Hospital, and is past director of the National Communication Association Forum (NCA-F), an NCA-supported advisory group devoted to promoting high quality public discourse about salient social issues. She currently serves on the editorial boards of Health Communication, Western Journal of Communication, and the Journal of Medical Humanities and has been a long-time member of the board of governors of the Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology (ARST).

Select Publications

Refereed Book
Keränen, Lisa. 2010. Scientific Characters: Rhetoric, Politics, and Trust in Breast Cancer Research (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press).

Refereed Essays
Keränen, Lisa. 2011. "How Does a Pathogen Become a Terrorist? The Collective Transformation of Risk into Bio(in)security." In Rhetorical Questions in Health and Medicine, edited by Joan Leach and Deborah Dysart-Gale (New York: Lexington Books, in press): 85-120.

Bean, Hamilton, Lisa Keränen, and Margaret Durfy. 2011. "‘This is London’: Cosmopolitan Nationalism and the Discourse of Resilience in the 7/7 Terrorist Attacks". Rhetoric and Public Affairs: forthcoming.

Keränen, Lisa. 2010. "Competing Characters in Science-Based Controversy: A Framework for Analysis." Understanding Science: New Agendas in Communication, edited by LeeAnn Kahlor and Patricia Stout (New York: Routledge): 133-160.

Keränen, Lisa. 2008. "Bio(In)Security: Rhetoric, Scientists, and Citizens in the Age of Bioterrorism". Sizing Up Rhetoric, edited by David Zarefsky and Elizabeth Benacka (Long Grove, IL: Waveland): 227-249.

Keränen, Lisa, and Virginia Sanprie. 2008. “‘Oxygen of Publicity’ and ‘Lifeblood of Liberty’: Communication Scholarship on Mass Media Coverage of Terrorism for the Twenty-first Century.” Communication Yearbook 32: 231-275.

Keränen, Lisa, Jason Lesko, Alison Vogelaar, and Lisa Irvin. 2008. “Myth, Mask, Shield, and Sword: Dr. John H. Marburger III’s Rhetoric of Neutral Science for the Nation." Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies 7: 159-186.

Keränen, Lisa. 2007. “’Cause Someday We All Die”: Rhetoric, Agency, and the Case of the “Patient” Preferences Worksheet. Quarterly Journal of Speech 93: 179-211.

Keränen, Lisa. 2005. "Mapping Misconduct: Demarcating Legitimate Science from ‘Fraud’ in the B-06 Lumpectomy Controversy." Argumentation and Advocacy 42: 94-113.

Han, Paul K. J., Lisa B. Keränen, Dianne A. Lescisin, and Robert M. Arnold. 2005. "The Palliative Care Clinical Evaluation Exercise (CEX): An Experience-Based Intervention for Teaching End-of-Life Communication Skills." Academic Medicine 80: 669-676.

Courses Taught

COMM 5710: Rhetorics of Medicine and Health
COMM 6013: Introduction to Graduate Work in Communication
COMM 4995: Narratives of the New China
COMM 1011: Fundamentals of Communication