Karen Keifer-Boyd


Karen Keifer-Boyd is an American art educator. She has written articles, books, and has helped co-write articles and books as well. She has received many awards for leadership and teaching.

Education

Keifer-Boyd holds a bachelor's of fine art from the Kansas City Art Institute and a master's of science and doctorate in art education from the University of Oregon.

Career

Karen Keifer-Boyd is the current professor of art education and of women’s studies at Penn State University.
She wrote articles on feminist pedagogy. The articles are found in more than 45 peer-review research publications and translated into many different languages.
Her pedagogy articles include: Judy Chicago’s content-based art pedagogy, CyberNetculture, intertextuality, cyberNet activism art pedagogy, arts-based and action research, transcultural dialogues, CyberHouse and identity speculative fiction. She is also the co-author of InCITE, InSIGHT, InSITE, Engaging Visual Culture, and was the editor of the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, and guest editor for Visual Art Research. She has been the co-authors to other readings as well. Keifer-Boyd also co-founded the .

Artwork

Karen Keifer-Boyd created a piece in 2001 called, Write/Erase. This piece was an interactive watercolor installation. She used this piece to call attention to the erased culture memory of women’s contribution to society by filling the “hole” with water. The viewers could take a cloth and erase another's history written on the stones by her feet, and then write their own. Another work is Cyberhouse, created in 2013 with PHP, Flash, PhotoShop. Cyberhouse is a computer game of inquiry, it gives you reflections on self and possibilities to restore yourself. The players' identity changes constantly through cyborging.

Books

One of the books that Keifer-Boyd co-wrote is called, Including Difference, she co-wrote this book with Michelle Kraft and it was published in 2013. The book is about taking part in inclusive classroom communities for a range of different learners. The book starts out by talking about how to include special education into the art classrooms. It also talks about how you can include diversity, stereotypes, other cultures, etc. into a classroom in a safe education way.
Including Difference, state's ways to have the teachers, students, parents and community within the classrooms. The book assesses the techniques that art teachers use for an authentic understanding for the students in the class.

Awards

Karen Keifer-Boyd has been honored with leadership and teaching awards including the National Art Education Distinguished Fellow 2013. She is the 2005 recipient of the Kathy Connors Teaching Award from the National Art Education Association Womens Caucus. She received the 2013 National Ziegfeld Award from the United States Society for Education through Art. Keifer-Boyd became a Distinguished Fellow of the National Art Education Association in 2013.

Keifer-Boyd is a regional, national and international influence. She has one of the most important private collections of archival materials on feminist art education, she was the president of the Women’s Caucus and the co-founder of the annual conference.

An article on the Penn State webpage Keifer-Boyd states, “Ziegfeld’s work is a commitment to ideas of social justice, and that the visual arts can speak across borders: national, political, cultural, geographical, disciplinary, linguistic, and personal—a belief that I share and embed in all the work I do,”