Associate Professor (Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences UWB)
Adjunct Professor, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (UWS)
B.A., Sociology, Pacific Lutheran University
Ph.D., Sociology, 2000, University of Washington
Office: UW2-328
Phone: 425-352-3588
Email: klerum@uwb.edu
Website: http://faculty.washington.edu/lerum
Blog: Founder and Co-Editor of Sexuality & Society
Mailing: Box 358530, 18115 Campus Way NE, Bothell, WA 98011-1713
Teaching
My teaching -- in both content and process -- is an extension of my critical interest in social inequality. My Ph.D. training is in sociology, but I have also had many years of experience in collaborative teaching/learning across a range of disciplines including cultural studies, sexuality studies, and media studies. I enjoy training students in critical, reflective, and creative scholarly practices & principles of community-based research. I also strive to create warm, open-minded classes where difficult issues are discussed with rigor, respect, and healthy dose of humor.
Recent Courses
BIS 219 The Politics of Sex Education
BIS 312 Approaches to Social Research
BIS 490 Senior Seminar: Multi-media Storytelling for Social Transformation
BIS 490 Senior Seminar: Commercial Sex Work, Sexual Health & Global Human Rights
BCULST 501 Cultural Studies Research Practices
Research/Scholarship
My research and scholarship centers on the critical study of social inequality, focusing on the relationship between sexuality, power, and context (including: organizational, institutional, cultural, and global contexts). In the past my research has included ethnographic research on sex work and other forms of service work; more recently I have applied my research to policies about sex work and trafficking. I am currently part of a U.S. team of human rights/sex worker activists and academics responding to the United Nation's Universal Periodic Review in Nov. 2010, where a number of human rights violations were reported including those against U.S. based sex workers. I am also currently working on a book called "Sexuality: the Basics" (Routledge press), and am a blogger for Ms. Magazine, Rh Reality Check, and Sexuality & Society.
In terms of professional service, I am the editor of the "MEDIAtions" section of Contexts Magazine, am a consulting editor for Archives of Sexual Behavior, and am on the editorial board of Sexuality & Culture. I have also worked with the Pat Graney Dance Company's Prison project as videographer and am on the board of directors for the Pat Graney Prison Transition program.
Selected Publications
Refereed Articles
Wahab, S., Baker, L., Smith, J. Cooper, K., Lerum, K.. 2010. "Exotic Dance Research: A Review of the Literature from 1970 to 2008." Sexuality & Culture.
Lerum, Kari, and Dworkin, Shari. “‘Bad Girls Rule’: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Commentary on the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls.” Journal of Sex Research 46 (4), Pp. 1-3, 2009.
Lerum, Kari, and Dworkin, Shari. “Toward an Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Youth, Sexualization, and Health.” Journal of Sex Research 46 (4), Pp. 1-14, 2009.
Lerum, Kari. “Sexuality, Power, and Camaraderie in Service Work.” Gender & Society 18 (6), Pp. 756-776, 2004.
Lerum, Kari. “Subjects of Desire: Academic Armor, Intimate Ethnography, & the Production of Critical Knowledge.” Qualitative Inquiry, 7 (4), Pp. 466-483, (Special issue on Critical Ethnography). 2001.
Lerum, Kari. "12-Step Feminism Makes Sex Workers Sick: How the State and the Recovery Movement Turn Radical Women into ‘Useless Citizens’." Sexuality & Culture, 2, Pp. 7-36 (Special issue on Sex Work and Sex Workers), 1998.
Book Chapters
(In press. Forthcoming Feb. 2012). Lerum, K. What's Love Got to Do with It?: Life Lessons from Multiracial Feminism. In Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. Salt Lake: University of Utah Press Lerum, K. 2008. Sexuality and Reproduction. Encyclopedia of Gender and Society, v. 2. Sage.
Lerum, Kari. "'Precarious Situations' in a Strip Club: Exotic Dancers and the Problem of Reality Maintenance." In The Production of Reality: Essays and Readings in Social Psychology (3rd edition), Pp. 279-287, edited by Peter Kollock and Jodi O'Brien. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2001. (REPRINTED in the 4th edition, 2006 edited by Jodi O'Brien and Peter Kollock).
Book Reviews
(In press, forthcoming) Lerum, K. The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex, and Sin in the New American Heartland. By Brents, B., Jackson, C., and Hausbeck, K. In Gender & Society.
Lerum, K. Strip Club: Gender, Power and Sex Work. By Price-Glynn, K. In American Journal of Sociology, 117, 1, pp.345-347. 2011.
Lerum, K. Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care. Edited by Boris, E. and Parrenas, R. In International Review of Modern Sociology, pp 150-153. 2011.
Lerum, Kari. Regulating Sex: The Politics of Intimacy & Identity, edited by Elizabeth Bernstein and Laurie Schaffner. In Contemporary Sociology, 36, 6, Pp. 559-561, 2007.
Lerum, Kari. “Defining the Emotional Contours of Exotic Dance.” A Review of G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire by Katherine Frank, and Bare: On Women, Sex, and Power by Elizabeth Eaves. Sexuality & Culture 8, 1, 2004.