Kristen Hoerl

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Kristen Hoerl

Professor Communication Studies University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Contact

Address
LPH 357
Lincoln, NE 68588-0329
Phone
402-472-2070 On-campus 2-2070
Email
khoerl2@unl.edu

Dr. Hoerl looks at how popular film and television contribute to public knowledge about social activism responding to white supremacy, patriarchy, and neoliberalism. Her most recent book, The Impossible Woman: Television, Feminism and the Future argues that television programs featuring the struggles of talented female characters promote “sexist realism,” or the assumption that feminist activism is bound to fail. This project, like her other work, invites readers to consider what resources media culture provide for imagining more equitable, feminist, and antiracist futures. Her book The Bad Sixties won the 2018 Best Book award from the American Studies Division of the National Communication Association. Her work also appears in a variety of journals including the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Text and Performance Quarterly, The Review of Communication, and Communication, Culture, and Critique. She is a past editor of Women's Studies in Communication, a national, quarterly, peer reviewed journal for feminist communication scholarship; and past chair of the Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division of the National Communication Association.

For a copy of my CV, please contact the department office.

Representative Publications

Hoerl, Kristen. The Impossible Woman: Television, Feminism, and the Future. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2025.

Hoerl, Kristen. The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018.

Hoerl, Kristen, and Casey Ryan Kelly. “Monetizing failure: Fyre fraud, social media, and the normalization of crisis.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 49, no. 1 (2025): 27-43.

Sandras, Dakota and Kristen Hoerl. “The next [white] thing: Neocolonial white feminism in Disney’s Frozen II. Critical Studies in Media Communication 41, no. 2 (2024): 105-120.

Hoerl, Kristen. “Resisting white resilience in the academy.” Invited essay for the forum, "Check Yo' Stuff" Allies: A Forum on the Challenges of Coalition Building in Precarious Times. Women’s Studies in Communication 44, no. 2 (2021): 142-145.

Hoerl, Kristen. “Selective amnesia and racial transcendence in news coverage of President Obama’s inauguration.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98, no. 2 (2012); 178-202.

Teaching

Please email Dr. Hoerl for more information about these courses.

Graduate

  • COMM 981: Rhetorical Criticism
  • COMM 950D: Special Topics: Feminist Temporalities in Communication
  • COMM 982: Rhetoric of Social Movements and Counterpublics
  • COMM 850: Gender and Communication

Undergraduate

  • COMM 462: Feminist Media Studies
  • COMM 452: Media and Culture