Office: Gaylord Hall 3510C
Email: mcarstarphen@ou.edu
Education:
PhD, Texas Woman's University
MA, Texas Woman's University
BA, Temple University
Meta G. Carstarphen, Ph.D., APR, professor, is a faculty member in the Strategic Communication area of the Gaylord College of Journalism and Communication. Her research interests are to explore the intentional use of mediated communication to create transformative, collaborative and diversified social change. She explores these themes through topics defined by rhetorical theory, historiography, race/gender/class inclusivity, and the intersection of tourism media and culture.
In 2016, Carstarphen received her second Gaylord Professorship, during which she will focus on projects that will focus on how organizations build influence, both historically and in contemporary settings, through diverse and non-traditional networks. She received the first Gaylord Professorship ever awarded in 2005 for her proposal to explore the legacy and cultural impact of 108 American Indian and African American newspapers published in the nineteenth century in what eventually became the state of Oklahoma. She subsequently published American Indians and the Mass Media (2012) with Penn State colleague Prof. John Sanchez, which was the only text about this subject that explored Indian media representation, history and law from both native and non-native contributors.
An award-winning magazine author, Carstarphen worked for the leading jewelry trade magazine, JC-K, where she earned awards for investigative reporting and feature writing as part of team reports about discrimination in the jewelry industry and the impact of digital technologies upon watches, respectively her books include Sexual Rhetoric: Media Perspectives on Sexuality, Gender and Identity, (Greenwood, 1999), Writing PR: A Multimedia Approach (Allyn & Bacon, 2004), American Indians and the Mass Media (University of Oklahoma Press, 2012 ), and Race, Gender Class and the Media (Kendall Hunt, 2012, 2014, and 3rd edition forthcoming in 2017). She teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in race/gender/class and the media, public relations and rhetoric.
Carstarphen joined the Gaylord faculty in 2002, becoming the first tenured African American professor in its history thus far. Over her tenure, she has served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Graduate Director. As a member of the OU community, Carstarphen has received notable recognitions for her public outreach to students and to other communities. These include the 2012 OU Award for Distinguished Public Service, selection as a Faculty-in-Residence member from 2006 to 2010, and being selected twice as a “Namesake” mentor for incoming freshmen as part of OU’s Camp Crimson. Her most recent selection for this honor came in June 2016 as part of Camp Crimson’s 20th anniversary celebrations. Carstarphen is married and has two sons, and lives in Norman, OK.
