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Elizabeth Suter

Professor

elizabeth.suter@du.edu

303-871-4492 (Office)

https://du.digication.com/esuter/home

Personal

Sturm Hall, 2000 East Asbury Avenue Denver, CO 80208

Specialization(s)

communication, family, Adoption

Professional Biography

Elizabeth A. Suter (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Affiliated Faculty in the Gender Women’s and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Denver. She identifies as a feminist, social-justice-oriented interpersonal and family communication scholar. She views the family as a politicized institution animated by the broader discursive, material, and political environment. Primary contexts of study include transracial, international adoption and lesbian co-motherhood. Recently she developed the Critical Interpersonal and Family Communication (CIFC) heuristic, calling for the centering of power, praxis, and reflexivity in contemporary studies of relationships and families. This work appears in The Journal of Family Communication, Communication Monographs, and Communication Theory. She lives with her partner and two daughters in Denver, Colorado.

Degree(s)

  • Ph.D., Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001
  • MA, Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994
  • BA, Speech Communication , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1991

Professional Affiliations

  • National Communication Association
  • National Council on Family Relations

Areas of Research

family communication
transracial adoption
international adoptions from China
family diversity
family identity
family names
interpersonal communication
relational communication

Featured Publications

Suter, E. A., & Floyd, K., Hintz, E. A., & Braithwaite, D. O. (Eds.) (2027). Engaging theories in family communication: Multiple perspectives (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 9781041013181. 

Suter, E. A, Floyd, K., Hintz, E. A., Braithwaite, D. O, & L. Romann, & K. Shalev (2027). Introduction: The landscape of paradigm and theory in family communication research. In E. A. Suter, K. Floyd, E. A. Hintz, & D. O. Braithwaite (Eds.), Engaging theories in family communication: Multiple perspectives (3rd ed., pp. 1-20). New York, NY: Routledge. 

Suter, E. A., Seurer, L. M., & Salhstein Parcell, E. (2027). Relational dialectics theory: Critically examining talk within and about family. In E. A. Suter, K. Floyd, E. A. Hintz, & D. O. Braithwaite (Eds.), Engaging theories in family communication: Multiple perspectives (3rd ed., pp. 291-303). New York, NY: Routledge. 

Schoenbauer, K. V., & Suter, E. (2026). Women’s eating disorder origins as responses to childhood trauma and negative social self: A qualitative study exploring lived experience perspectives. Journal of Eating Disorders, 14(1), Article 175. 

Suter, E. A., & Matthias, T. (2025). Transforming the paradigm of aging: Community engaged learning and critical interpersonal and family communication pedagogy. In M. B. Brewer & S. L. Faulkner (Eds.), Critical interpersonal and family communication pedagogy: Charting new futurities (pp. 173-179). Routledge. 

Suter, E. A., Salhstein Parcell, E., & Abedayo, C. T. (2024). Special issue on relational dialectics theory: The past, present, and future. Journal of Family Communication, 24(4), 171-176. https://doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2024.2404368 

Suter, E. A., Salhstein Parcell, E., & Abedayo, C. T., Weadock, C., Romo, D. (2024). Charting a research agenda for relational dialectics theory: Forwarding critical theorizing in interpersonal and family communication research. Journal of Family Communication, 24(4), 177-195. https://doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2024.2394027 

Suter, E., & Docan-Morgan, S. (2022). Setting the agenda: A family communication research agenda for examining birth family search and reunion in the transnational adoption context. Journal of Family Communication, 22(4), 387–395. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2022.2108429  

Suter, E., Schoenbauer, K. V., & Qiu, P. (2022). Propagating superior-quality singleton children as anticipatory modernization: Contextualizing Western perspectives on Chinese transnational adoption. Journal of Family Communication, 22(3), 288–309. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2022.2097235  

Loftus, M. C. M., Suter, E., Hanna, M. D., & Strasser, D. S. (2022). Parents’ management of privacy turbulence surrounding private, adoption-related information in transracial, internationally adoptive families. Journal of Family Communication, 22(1), 55–70. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2021.2005068