Dr. Lisa Foster
Position: Assistant Professor
Education: Ph.D., University of Texas, August 2006

Contact Information
email :	lfoster@ou.edu
phone :	(405) 325 - 4180
office :	Burton 227
office hours :	TR 10:15am-11:45pm

Classes this semester:
COMM 2413: MEDIA LITERACY
-TR 9:00-10:15 am
-Burton Hall, Rm. 119

COMM 3483: COMM/ARGUMENTATION
-TR 1:30-2:45 pm
-Burton Hall Rm. 229

Academic Interests: Public Sphere Theory, Political Media and Popular Culture, Rhetorics of Democracy and Social Change.

In my theoretical inquiry of the Public Sphere I advocate the role of traditional argumentation in the formation of democratic publics; question the constraints of class, gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality in access to publicness; highlight the privatization of marginalized concerns as a method of social control; and examine the relationship of vernacular voices to mass audiences. I rely upon textual analyses at the intersection of politics and popular culture to study the public sphere. Here I interrogate how we define ourselves rhetorically in relationship to our popular culture, how the circulation of many mediated texts (music, film, television, and accompanying web resources) shapes our political ideas and invites public deliberation and argument formation. In this realm I have specific interests in the relationship between political controversy and popular music. In writing about rhetorics of participatory democracies and social change, I examine the role of organizing ideologies (i.e. nationalism, patriotism, justice) as a base for democratic engagement, concurrences between social movement strategies of internal solidification and moments of broader public deliberation, and the direction and trajectory of rhetorical influence between social movements and popular culture.


Department of Communication
University of Oklahoma
610 Elm Avenue, Room 101
Norman, OK 73019
(405) 325-4180