Michaela Frischherz, Ph.D.

Biography

Dr. Michaela Frischherz earned her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa in 2015. She also holds a M.A. in Cultural Analysis from the Universiteit van Amsterdam and a B.A. in Diplomacy and Foreign Affairs from Miami University, Ohio. Michaela specializes in cultural and rhetorical criticism with an emphasis on feminist and queer ways of knowing. Her research focuses on the meaning-making practices forged by women and other historically disenfranchised genders communicating pleasure and sex in various public spheres.  Michaela believes we all deserve to feel pleasure and is guided by an ethic of pleasure activism, which prioritizes the pleasure of the most marginalized among us. Her latest article, published in Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, explores the agential possibilities of “sexual failure” with women in critical focus groups. Michaela teaches courses in rhetorical theory and criticism, sexual communication, research methods, queer/lgbt communication studies, and a study abroad experience in Amsterdam, Netherlands. When she’s not studying the communicative dimensions of sex, Michaela enjoys spending time with her community and a dog named Holly.  

Forthcoming Publications

Michaela Frischherz & Michael Tristano, "Queer Failures in the Gender Communication & Sexual Communication Classroom," in Kratzer, J. & Rowe, D. (Eds.) The Cruel and Reparative Possibilities of Failure. Lexington Books

Publications

Michaela Frischherz and Desirée Rowe, “Faking it, Finishing, and Ambivalence: Women’s Negotiations of (Sexual) Failure in Conversation,” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, 12:1 (2023), 27-49.  

Desirée Rowe and Michaela Frischherz, “Introducing the Anti Method Paradigm [Or, When Reviewer #2 Says Your Interdisciplinary Work is Vague, Messy, and Unrecognizable],” Review of Communication, 23:2 (2023) DOI: 10.1080/15358593.2022.2161833 

Desirée Rowe and Michaela Frischherz, “Focus Groups as Critical-Cultural Method within Communication Studies,” Western Journal of Communication, 86:5 (2022), 483-502.

Michaela Frischherz, “Pleasure and Queer Communication Studies,” in Oxford Encyclopedia of Queer Studies & Communication, eds. Isaac N. West and E Cram, 20 June, (2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.1158

Michaela Frischherz, “Pleasure and Anxiety in the Time of COVID-19,” QED: A Journal of Queer Worldmaking, 7:3 (2020): 179-184. 

Michaela Frischherz, “Bodies and Pleasures in Feminist Publics: The Rhetorical Effectivities of Fifty Shades of Grey,” in Communication in Kink: Understanding the Influence of the Fifty Shades of Grey Phenomenon, ed. Jessica M.W. Kratzer (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020), 155-176.

Michaela Frischherz, “Queer Adventures in the Forum and the Archive: Or, The Flood Made Immersion Possible,” Cultural Studies ßà Critical Methodologies 20:2 (2020): 167-175.

Michaela Frischherz, “Listening to Orgasm: Hearing Pleasure’s Affects in the Normative Noise,” Argumentation and Advocacy 54:4 (2018): 270-286. Lead Article.   

Michaela Frischherz, “A Slowness to Judge the Acronym’s Orientations: Objectum-Sexuality and the Rhetorical Politics of Giving an Account,” Women & Language 41:1 (2018): 62-78.

Michaela Frischherz, “Cosmo Complaints:  Reparative Reading and the Possibility of Pleasure in Cosmopolitan Magazine,” Sexualities 21:4 (2018): 552-568.

Michaela Frischherz, “Affective Agency and Transformative Shame: The Voices Behind The Great Wall of Vagina,” Women’s Studies in Communication 38:3 (2015): 251-272.  Lead Article.

Isaac West, Michaela Frischherz, Allison Panther, and Richard Brophy, “Queer Worldmaking in the ‘It Gets Better’ Campaign,” QED: A Journal of GLTBQ Worldmaking, Inaugural Issue (2013): 49-86.