Profile:
Lynda Dee Dixon (Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, 1990) is a member of the Cherokee Nation (Her family survived the Trail of Tears from the South to Indian Territory in 1836.). She teaches undergraduate courses in intercultural communication, business and professional communication, interviewing, and interpersonal communication, courses in which she brings cultural perspectives to her students. She is a tenured professor in Communication, and her research began at the University of Oklahoma with studies on Native American women and their health care in an Indian Health Service clinic. Her research has continued focusing on health and health education of culturally diverse people in the US and internationally. Dixon’s ethnographic/language analysis continues on contemporary American Indian, African American, and international cultures’ social issues, health, and women’s other socio-cultural issues. Her travels to England, China, and Spain have informed her teaching and research on culture and health and have revealed that in the shrinking world, increasing numbers of people are without health care as the distance between privilege and poverty grows ever wider. Dixon’s and her co-authors’ research studies have appeared in books and journals (such as International/Intercultural Annual, Intercultural Communication Studies, Human Communication Studies, Women and Language, Health Communication, the Journal of Health Communication (with Drs. Rentner and Lengel from BGSU), and others). She is co-editor of a book on women prisoners and author of chapters about incarcerated women. Most recently Dixon worked on a committee with former Principal Chief of the Cherokees Wilma Mankiller and other Cherokee academics and activists supporting Cherokee research. A new initiative is in progress, and Dixon will be doing ethnographic fieldwork at the annual Cherokee Homecoming in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, fall of 2015 as a parallel to published research from the early 1990s.
Education:
Ph.D. University of Oklahoma
M.A. Missouri State University
Bs.ED. Missouri State University
Courses Taught:
Health (e.g., effects of diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease on families, cultural conflict, access to health care, physician/patient interaction, and access to and availability of health care, etc.).
Intercultural Communication
Native American Communication
Organizational Communication
Public Speaking
Business and Professional Communication
Interviewing
Organizational Communication
Interpersonal Communication
Select Representative Works:
Rentner, T.L., Tetteh, D. A., & Dixon, L. (2017). Culture, identity and spirituality in American Indians and native people of Alaska. In H.T. Neufeld & J. Cidro (Eds.), Indigenous experiences of pregnancy and birth. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press.
