Elizabeth Suter

Professor

Faculty

elizabeth.suter@du.edu

303-871-4492 (Office)

https://portfolio.du.edu/esuter

Personal

Sturm Hall, 2000 East Asbury Avenue Denver, CO 80208

Specialization(s)

communication, family, Adoption

Professional Biography

Elizabeth A. Suter (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Affiliated Faculty in the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Denver. She identifies as a feminist, social-justice-oriented interpersonal and family communication scholar. She views the family as a politicized institution animated by the broader discursive, material, and political environment. Primary contexts of study include transracial, international adoption and lesbian co-motherhood. Recently she developed the Critical Interpersonal and Family Communication (CIFC) heuristic, calling for the centering of power, praxis, and reflexivity in contemporary studies of relationships and families. This work appears in The Journal of Family Communication, Communication Monographs, and Communication Theory. She lives with her partner and two daughters in Denver, Colorado.

Degree(s)

Ph.D., Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001
MA, Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994
BA, Speech Communication , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1991

Professional Affiliations

National Communication Association
International Communication Association

Areas of Research

family communication

transracial adoption

international adoptions from China

family diversity

family identity

family names

interpersonal communication

relational communication

Featured Publications

Suter, E., Schoenbauer, K. V., & Qiu, P. (2022). Propagating superior-quality singleton children as anticipatory modernization: Contextualizing Western perspectives on Chinese transnational adoption. Journal of Family Communication, 22(3), 288-309. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2022.2097235

Suter, E., & Docan-Morgan, S. (2022). Setting the agenda: A family communication research agenda for examining birth family search and reunion in the transnational adoption context. Journal of Family Communication, 22(4), 387-395. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2022.2108429

Braithwaite, D. O., & Suter, E. (2022). Family communication. In K. Adamsons, A. L. Few-Demo, C. Proulx, & K. Roy (Eds.), Sourcebook of family theories and methodologies: A dynamic approach, 2nd ed. (pp. 531-548). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-92002-9

Loftus, M. C. M., Suter, E., Hanna, M. D., & Strasser, D. S. (2022). Parents' management of privacy turbulence surrounding private, adoption-related information in transracial, internationally adoptive families. Journal of Family Communication, 22(1), 55-70. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2021.2005068

Morr Loftus, M. C., Suter, E., Strasser, D. S., & Hanna, M. D. (2021). Catalysts and motivations for change in privacy coordination: Transracial, internationally adoptive parents' coordination of private, adoption-related information. Communication Quarterly, 69(1), 1-22. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2020.1864428

Suter, E. (2018). The promise of contrapuntal and intersectional methods for advancing critical interpersonal and family communication research. Communication Monographs, 85, 123-139. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2017.1375131

Suter, E., & Norwood, K. (2017). Critical theorizing in family communication studies: (Re)Reading relational dialectics theory. Communication Theory, 27, 290-308.

Suter, E. (2016). Introduction: Critical approaches to family communication research: Representation, critique, and praxis. Journal of Family Communication, 16(1), 1-8.