February, 2010
Dr. Karner, a visual sociologist and the director of the Visual Studies Program at Universtiy of Houston, presented a talk about this new area of study. As a visual sociologist, Dr. Karner, uses visual technologies and resources to study the social construction and transformation of self and identity. She has explored these processes on the individual, social-cultural, organizational, and community levels in a variety of contexts, including hospitals, community service agencies, nationalist movements, and the mass media.
An award winning teacher and a nationally-known expert in the field of medical sociology, she is the recipient of an award from the American Sociological Association and of more than $2.7 million in grants to support her collaborative research projects. Dr. Karner has coauthored a textbook (with Carol Warren) titled “Discovering Qualitative Research: Field Methods, Interviews, and Analysis, 2nd Edition”, (Oxford University Press 2010) and the text for the book titled “Hard Knocks: Rolling with the Derby Girls” by photographer Shelley Calton (Kehrer Verlag, 2009).
