Karen Libby Email and Phone Number

As a PhD Candidate at the University of Florida, my dissertation focuses on queer and feminist community-building and theorization of identity in the American mid-to-late twentieth century. I focus on artifacts of literature often disregarded by literary studies, such as popular fiction, small press and self-published media, and comics. Through this research, I focus on the diverse ways that queer and feminist identities have been developed, communicated, and challenged through literature. As an instructor at the University of Florida, I seek to help students develop the communication and literacy skills they need to thrive. In my literature classes, I encourage students to engage with new types of media beyond what they are used to in English classes by introducing them to self-published works, periodicals, and visual media. I embrace students' personal engagement with texts, and push them further into analysis in order to see how texts develop meaning. In doing so, my instruction provides students with the necessary skills of media literary and critical thinking. In my composition and communication classes, my instruction provides students with skills needed to communicate in the professional world. ENC3246: Professional Communication for Engineers, instructs engineering students on writing for job applications, emails and memorandums, research papers, experiments, proposals. ENC1101 and ENC1102 prepare students for the rigor of university classes by instructing them on creating persuasive arguments, performing and utilizing research, and writing for various audiences. In every class, I closely mentor my students and provide them with individual support. I also utilize frameworks of instructional design, user experience design, and Universal Design for Learning in creating my e-learning sites.