Skip to main content
Sign In

Resources For: Prospective Students | Current Students | Parents | Faculty & Staff | Alumni & Friends | Patients

University of Colorado Denver College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Communication Logo
 

Faculty & Staff Directory

Lisa Keränen, PhD

Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies

E-mail: Lisa Keranen
Web site: www.lisakeranen.com
Office Location: Plaza 102P
Phone: 303-556-5668
Fax: 303-556-6018
Areas of Expertise:
Rhetoric Studies, Rhetorics of Science, Medicine, Health Care, Bioethics, Qualitative Health Communication

Education & Degrees

PhD, Communication/Rhetoric of Science, University of Pittsburgh
MA, Bioethics, University of Pittsburgh
MA, Communication Studies, University of Maine

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 received numerous awards for her research, teaching and service. Most recently, she received the 2012 CLAS Teaching Excellence Award, the 2011 Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Public Address and the 2010 Karl R. Wallace Memorial Research Award from the National Communication Association (NCA). Dr. Keränen 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, Argumentation & Advocacy, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Journal of Medical Humanities, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies and Communication Yearbook, and in 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 the post-Cold War through 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 teaches the introduction to graduate study for the Communication Department. 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.
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). She currently serves as ARST’s First Vice President.

Select Publications

Refereed Book

Keränen, Lisa. 2010. Scientific Characters: Rhetoric, Politics, and Trust in Breast Cancer Research (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press). This book received the 2011 Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award for Outstanding Scholarship from the Public Address Division of the National Communication Association.

Edited Volume

Keränen, Lisa, ed. 2013. Medicine, Health, and Publics. Special issue of the Journal of Medical Humanities, forthcoming.

Articles and Book Chapters

Keränen, Lisa. 2013. Technologies of the Self at the End of Life: Pastoral Power and the Rhetoric of Advance Care Planning. The Language of our Biotechnological Future, edited by Michael Hyde and James Herrick (Baylor University Press): forthcoming.

Keränen, Lisa. 2012. "This Weird, Incurable Disease": Competing Diagnoses in the Rhetoric of Morgellons. Health Humanities Reader, edited by Therese Jones, Lester Friedman, and Delease Wear (Rutgers University Press, 2012): in press.

Keränen, Lisa. 2011. Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security. Western Journal of Communication 75.5: 451-472. Lead essay.

Keränen, Lisa. 2011. Addressing the Epidemic of Epidemics: Germs, Security, and a Call for Biocriticism (9,000 word review essay). Quarterly Journal of Speech 97.2: 224-244. Invited.

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): 85-120. Invited.

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 14.3: 427-464.

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