Karla Danette Scott
(Ph.D., University of Illinois) a native of East St. Louis, Illinois, Dr. Karla Scott is especially interested in teaching and researching in the areas of culture, language, identity and feminist approaches to social theory. The recipient of three SLU teaching awards, Dr. Scott joined the communication faculty in 1994 and teaches courses including Communication across Racial Divisions and Language and Cultural Diversity. In 2000 Dr. Scott was appointed director of Saint Louis University's African American Studies Program where she teaches African American Culture and Black women and Society. Dr. Scott is the 1996 recipient of the Kramerae Outstanding Dissertation Award presented by the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language and Gender. She is also an experienced trainer, group facilitator and consultant.
Dr. Scott's research interest in culture and communication has led her to focus on issues related to race, gender and health in African American communities. She has worked as a consultant on federally funded projects focusing on cultural competence in HIV prevention programs and currently serves as project director for the Midwest Prevention Intervention Center of the African American Prevention Intervention Network (MPIC-APIN), a five-year federally funded AIDS prevention program that provides training for culturally specific HIV prevention education programs for African Americans.
"I am particularly interested in understanding more about the language use of Black women and how we use language to negotiate identities in the various worlds we inhabit. As a Black woman I am acutely aware of how race and gender identity influences our lives?for example the rates of HIV infection among Black women continues to rise and understanding the culture of Black women's lives and how to better communicate an identity as 'at risk' is key in reversing this deadly statistic".
Dr. Scott's scholarly publications on language use in the African American community appear in:
- Discourse and Society
- Women and Language
- Linguistics and Education
- Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity and Communication
- Centering Ourselves: African American Feminist and Womanist Studies of Discourse
- African American Communication and Identities
Dr. Scott's research on HIV prevention and culture appear in:
- Culturally competent HIV prevention strategies for women of color in the United States published January 2005, in Health Care for Women International.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-published research synthesis: Cultural Competence for Providing Technical Assistance Evaluation and Training for HIV Prevention Programs
Dr. Scott's conference presentations include:
- The National Communication Association
- The Organization for the Study of Language, Communication and Gender
- U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration National Conference on Women
- National Conference on Social Work and HIV/AIDS
- National Conference on Health Care and Domestic Violence
- U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, Capacity Building for HIV Prevention conference
- U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Center for Disease Control and Prevention/Association of Schools of Public Health HIV Leadership Institute
- U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, REACH 2010 Demonstration Project Grantee
- Evaluation Workshop
- The American Public Health Association
- The World AIDS Conference
