Lisbeth Lipari

Dr Lisbeth A. Lipari is a Professor in the Department of Communication at Denison University. She joined the faculty at Denison in 1998. and her research and teaching focus on the relationship between language, politics, and ethics. Central to her work are questions involving the role of public communication in the creation of equitable and just democratic political practices. As a scholar, Dr Lipari’s work on listening draws on both European phenomenological and dialogic philosophies and Indian Buddhist and language philosophies in order to develop a theoretical perspective on listening as an ethico-political communicative praxis. Among other things, her work centers of the interplay of alterity and ethics and the ways in which listening acts as a form of communicative conjuring that is nascent to the ethical relation. Much of her work is involved in developing new concepts and a theoretical vocabulary for understanding listening from humanistic perspectives. She has also published scholarship involving rhetorical history, which concerns the work of civil rights playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry, as well as critical political communication, which concerns the ideologies of public opinion polling. As a teacher, Dr Lipari approaches the classroom as a student-centered interactive learning community where students and professor work collaboratively to apply, analyze, create, critique, and extend knowledge. Her teaching is embedded in interdisciplinary perspectives that help students draw distinctions and make connections across a variety of epistemic frameworks. Because of the centrality of communication to all aspects of our shared social world, students are encouraged to develop the habits of mind needed to fulfill their many life goals. In short, Dr. Lipari’s courses invite students to recognize and cultivate their own intellectual abilities, values, and goals so that they may contribute meaningfully to the communities they inhabit.