Arts and Entertainment

Keifer-Boyd honored with NAEA Women’s Caucus June King McFee Award

Karen Keifer-Boyd, June King McFee Award Credit: Penn State. Creative Commons

The National Art Education Association (NAEA) Women’s Caucus has named Karen Keifer-Boyd, professor of art education and women’s studies at Penn State, recipient of the June King McFee Award, which honors an individual who has made distinguished contributions to the profession of art education with an exceptional and continuous record of achievement in scholarly writing, research, professional leadership, teaching or community service. She will receive the award during the NAEA National Convention in San Diego, March 29-31.

In his nomination letter, Graeme Sullivan, director of the Penn State School of Visual Arts, notes that Keifer-Boyd’s leadership and mentoring have greatly influenced many in art education, thus reflecting the spirit of June King McFee. “Professor Keifer-Boyd’s nomination comes at a timely moment when matters of local and global importance are very much part of the debate about the cultural economy, diversity, social justice and the necessity of educational outreach, and these are issues that permeate Karen’s writing, teaching and professional service. Furthermore, these are issues and matters of debate and action that characterized the career of June King McFee,” he wrote.

Elizabeth M. Delacruz, professor emerita in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and co-president of the NAEA Women’s Caucus, praises Keifer-Boyd for her recent collaboration with Judy Chicago. “This collaboration has resulted in professional development opportunities for educators and an amazing online repository of feminist educational materials for those not able to travel to a brick and mortar location for professional advancement. Her role as initiator and coordinator of the Judy Chicago Art Education Collection (available at http://judychicago.arted.psu.edu/) is nothing less than amazing.”

Keifer-Boyd worked with June King McFee while at the University of Oregon, where she earned her Ph.D. “My commitment is to an art education that builds on the legacy of June McFee, that is, on agency and empowerment for all through research-informed, content-based art and critical reflective transcultural dialogue.”

Keifer-Boyd’s articles on feminist pedagogy, Judy Chicago’s content-based art pedagogy, visual culture, intertextuality, cyberNet activism art pedagogy, arts-based and action research, transcultural dialogues, CyberHouse, and identity speculative fiction are in more than 45 peer-reviewed research publications, and translated into several languages. In 2005, she co-founded the international multimedia journal Visual Culture and Gender. She has presented at more than 50 international and national conferences, and at universities in Austria, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and Uganda. She has been honored with many leadership and teaching awards, including 2013 NAEA Distinguished Fellow, 2012 Fulbright Award as Distinguished Chair of Gender Studies at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt in Austria, 2006 Fulbright Award for research in Finland, and 2005 NAEA Women’s Caucus Connors Teaching Award. Keifer-Boyd served as president of the NAEA Women’s Caucus from 2010 to 2012. For more on Keifer-Boyd, visit her website at http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/k/t/ktk2/.

Last Updated January 9, 2015

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