Karen Stollznow

Karen Stollznow joined the CU department of linguistics as a CLASP visiting scholar in Spring 2025. Dr. Stollznow is an Australian-American linguist and researcher at the Griffith Center for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. During her time at CU, she will be working on two book projects for Cambridge University Press. Beyond Words: How we learn, use, and lose language is an introduction to psycholinguistics that traverses first and second language acquisition, language processing and production, and language disorders and disabilities. Her second project, Women versusWomen: Unpacking the Language of Internalized Sexism explores ingrained sexist and misogynistic beliefs, attitudes, and stereotypes, as they manifest in language.

Dr. Stollznow is the author of several other books with a focus on language and discrimination. Her latest book Bitch: The Journey of a Word (Cambridge University Press, 2024) examines the controversial history of the word, its meanings and uses, and its relationship to feminism. Missed Conceptions: How we make sense of infertility (Broadleaf Books, 2023) delves into women’s health and the ways that we talk about infertility in society. On the Offensive: Prejudice in language past and present (Cambridge University Press, 2020) investigates sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, and other -isms in language. Dr. Stollznow is a proponent of popularizing linguistics and is committed to communicating language science to the general public. She writes articles about language, meaning, and culture for a number of publications, including The Conversation and Psychology Today.