معرفی
Dr. Karly Poyner-Smith serves as an Assistant Professor in the School of Arts & Sciences at Columbia College, teaching core communication courses including Introduction to Speech (COMM 110), Understanding Human Communication (COMM 203), and Interpersonal Communication (COMM 313). Outside academia, she participates in triathlons, trail running, and follows reality television.
Her academic credentials include:
- B.S. in Communication Studies and Public Relations from Grace College
- M.A. in Communication Studies with emphasis in Liberal Arts and Sciences Scholarship from Ball State University
- Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Memphis
Employing critical mixed methods, her research investigates intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and religion within political, identity, and health communication contexts. As a key member of the interdisciplinary Purity Culture Research Collective, she examines American evangelical politicism, U.S. purity culture, and mediated religious identity dialectics, revealing how purity discourse shapes personal and health-related communication practices.
The Purity Culture Research Collective serves as her primary collaborative platform, driving empirical investigations into the sociocultural impacts of religious purity frameworks across American communities.
