Amber Johnson

Biographic Data

ID3693970
NAMEAmber Johnson
GIVEN NAMESAmber
FAMILY NAMEJohnson
SIGNATUREJOHNSON A
AFFILIATIONSTruman State University
ORCID0000-0002-0012-1473
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS29
TOTAL CITATIONS70
AUTHOR COUNT28
EDITOR COUNT1
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1989
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX5

  • Bi The Way Things Pan Out

    Open AccessAmber Johnson, Amy B Mullens et al.ARTICLEJournal of Bisexuality2026

    This study aims to explore how plurisexual participants (i.e., those who experience attraction to multiple genders) understand their experiences during adolescence and early adulthood related to their sexual orientation, including their perspectives of societal influences on mental health. Utilizing the Life Story Interviewing technique, interviews were conducted in 2024 with 21 young adults (18–30 years old) who identify as plurisexual (e.g., Bi…

  • Pretty Bi for an Ally

    Open AccessAmber Johnson, Amy B Mullens et al.ARTICLEJournal of Bisexuality2024Cited by: 3References: 14

    Bisexual people experience negative messaging about their identity from broader society, as well as from within the LGBTIQA + community. The period of adolescence can be particularly tumultuous for those navigating their identity amongst this messaging. Drawing on Ozalas's (Citation2020) and Suarez's (Citation2022) studies, this study utilizes a critical autoethnographic approach and aims to explore cis-normative and heteronormative perspectives …

  • Abortion language, nesting dolls theory, and an autoethnographic plea for radical transformation

    Stephanie Tillman, Amber Johnson et al.ARTICLEQuarterly Journal of Speech2022

    Because of anti-abortion rhetoric, people must dedicate a lifetime to learning what decisions are one's own and how to talk about abortion socially, religiously, politically, secretly, and publicly. In this short article, we rely on the nesting doll theory to unpack the complex layers of rhetoric that control how people understand decision making processes regarding a body's reproductive potential. We use autoethnographic techniques to offer live…

  • Speculative fiction, criticality, and futurity

    Lore/tta Lemaster, Amber JohnsonARTICLECommunication and Critical/Cultural…2021

    This short essay introduces the reader to the special issue, Speculative Fiction, Criticality, Futurity, featuring original short speculative fiction, flash fiction, graphic novels, and visual art–each of which critically imagines liberatory futurities. Each submission contributes to a different component of futuristic world-making. Some of the pieces tend to the messy fight against neo-fascism by speaking to the various tactics to dismantle supr…

  • The dark matter(s) of Wakanda

    Amber Johnson, Amber L JohnsonARTICLEReview of Communication2020

    Black Panther (2018) uplifted and affirmed Blackness for many Black Americans and across the African diaspora; however, Black Panther's reimagining required a return to dark matter for bodies marginalized beyond race. This essay uses autopoetic and performative writing to unpack the moments of compulsory social identity expression that cloak non-normative narratives of existence as nonexistent, uninhabitable, and undesirable

  • Radical Imagination via play

    Amber JohnsonARTICLECommunication and Critical/Cultural…2020Cited by: 1

    This essay outlines a future research trajectory of critical cultural communication research as a practice in Radical Imagination. The author argues for institutionalizing play as a methodology that not only yields metadata regarding lived experiences but also trains the brain to think beyond constraints and radically imagine liberated communities we wish to inhabit

  • An Ode to Incoherent Canons

    Lore/tta Lemaster, Amber JohnsonARTICLEDepartures in Critical…2019

    In this collaborative response, we write and perform against the hegemony of academic canons. We draw on embodied, performative, and poetic means to interrogate canonical prejudice, canonical domination, and canonical exception as they emerge in and are adjacent to our own academic careers. In so doing, we seek to disrupt normative modes of knowledge production and argue for a futurity that is incoherent. And it should be—to the existing structur…

  • Comparative Study of Pastoral Property Regimes in Africa Offers No Support for Economic Defensibility Model

    M Moritz, Elizabeth Gardiner et al.ARTICLECurrent Anthropology2019Cited by: 4References: 98

    The economic defensibility model explains human territoriality by considering the costs and benefits of defending resources that vary in density and predictability. We conducted a comparative study of 30 pastoral societies in Africa to explain the variation in tenure systems using the economic defensibility model. In particular, we examined under what environmental conditions we find open property regimes versus common property regimes. In additi…

  • Engaging the Verbs of Social Justice as We Trace Our Legacies and Our Relevance

    Amber Johnson, Javon JohnsonARTICLEDepartures in Critical…2018

    This essay introduces the collected performances and responses presented during the Opening Session of the 2017 National Communication Association annual convention held in Dallas, TX

  • Breath, Breathe, Breathing

    Open AccessB K Alexander, Timothy Huffman et al.ARTICLECulture Studies ↔ Critical…2018References: 9

    This performative essay is a redrafting and extension of a critical dialogue following a public presentation on the nature and importance of communication studies. The dialogue is framed by using the metaphor of breathing, as it relates to particular links between human communication and communication activist research

  • From Academe, to the Theatre, to the Streets

    Open AccessAmber Johnson, Amber Lauren JohnsonARTICLEQualitative Inquiry2018References: 20

    Using autocritography, this essay acts as a critical performance of interracial communication, civil and academic unrest, and theatre during the Grand Jury Hearing for Darren Wilson a year after he murdered Michael Brown in the streets of Ferguson. On the second day of my interview for the intercultural communication professor position at Saint Louis University, the grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson. Protests erupted around the city.…

  • My History of History

    Amber JohnsonARTICLEDepartures in Critical…2017

    This autobiographical performance acts as a response to relevant historical moments laced within the performances of My History of History: Autobiographical Performance as Critical Pedagogy

  • Pulse

    Open AccessAmber Johnson, Amber E JohnsonARTICLEQualitative Inquiry2017Cited by: 1

    This autopoetic narrative centers on identity negotiation in a time of crisis and how we learn and unlearn to respond. After compartmentalizing my sensitivity to gun violence, the Orlando Pulse shooting resurrected in me a strong sense of grief, connection and suffering

  • Departures in Black Sexualities

    Amber Johnson, A DurhamARTICLEDepartures in Critical…2016

    Within communication studies, a central inquiry area of African American studies in the exploration of controlling images or power-laden stereotypes of racialized sexuality as they relate to systems of inequality. From historical caricatures of the stud and jezebel used to justify racial apartheid to contemporary images of the hip hop THOT, homo-thug, and video vixen, there is an extensive body of transdisciplinary work that fleshes out how black…

  • The Face of Civility

    Open AccessAmber Johnson, Amber E JohnsonARTICLEQualitative Inquiry2016References: 2

    Hypermodal pedagogy is a form of instruction that incorporates multiple modes of media, technology, and physical performance that link to course material and virtual spaces. In this essay and accompanying website, Amber Johnson explains the utility of hypermodal pedagogy, how it fosters civic engagement, and showcases student work across two courses, Photojournalism and Communication, Culture & Identity

  • Black Girl Strong(er)

    Amber JohnsonARTICLEDepartures in Critical…2015

    This autopoetic response to Sweetwater by Robin M. Boylorn offers praise and a critique of resilience as a an answer to adversity. The author argues that resilience is not enough for black women. Black women must be verbs and maintain a level of strength inn order to transform beyond her circumstances

  • Hierarchical method using ethnographic data sets to guide archaeological research

    Open AccessAmber Johnson, A F Gil et al.ARTICLEJournal of Anthropological…2015Cited by: 12References: 16

  • Doing It

    Amber JohnsonARTICLEDepartures in Critical…2014

    My sexual liberation did not occur until well into my twenties, post bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Between the temporal space of my first sexual experience and liberation is a moment of spiritual identity negotiation within an intraracial relationship with vast intercultural differences, specifically class and religion. In this autopoetic narrative that begins and ends in a church, I tell a story from my sexual past that troubles what it means…

  • Confessions of a Video Vixen

    Amber JohnsonARTICLEText and Performance Quarterly2014Cited by: 7References: 18

    The video vixen holds a special place in American society's underbelly. Good hair, firm breasts, round ass, slim waist, and pouty mouth, she is beautiful according to European and African American standards. She personifies sex. After seeing Case serenade and propose to Beyoncé in his music video “Happily Ever After,” I wanted to be the video vixen. I wanted my desirability memorialized in a video. Nelly was my chance, or so I thought. In this au…

  • Exploring Adaptive Variation among Hunter-gatherers with Binford’s Frames of Reference

    Open AccessAmber Johnson, Amber L JohnsonARTICLEJournal of Archaeological Research2013Cited by: 14References: 94

  • The Number of Sexual Partners and Health-Risking Sexual Behavior

    Open AccessMark J Van Ryzin, Amber B Johnson et al.ARTICLEArchives of Sexual Behavior2011Cited by: 2References: 35

  • Distinguishing environmental and density-dependent aspects of adaptation

    Amber Johnson, Amber E JohnsonARTICLEHunter Gatherer Research2008Cited by: 3References: 8

    The Middle Holocene was a period in which significant climate change and rapidly increasing population density are often both associated with dramatic changes in human subsistence and social organisation. Methodologically, it is interesting to ask: how can archaeologists learn to distinguish environmentally- and demographically-conditioned aspects of change in such strategies? Limiting the scope of the study to the Americas partially controls var…

  • Exploring Texas Archaeology with a Model of Intensification

    Amber Johnson, Amber L Johnson et al.ARTICLEPlains Anthropologist2008Cited by: 11References: 24

    A theoretically grounded model is used to map expectations for the locations of the earliest intensification across Texas. The absence of agriculture in much of prehistoric Texas versus the widespread adoption of farming in Mesoamerica is explored utilizing a theory of intensification recently proposed by Binford in Constructing Frames of Reference. Availability of either aquatic or high quality wild plant resources are expected to delay intensif…

  • Interpersonal chemistry through negativity

    Open AccessJennifer K Bosson, Amber B Johnson et al.ARTICLEPersonal Relationships2006

    We propose that sharing a negative—as compared to a positive—attitude about a third party is particularly effective in promoting closeness between people. Findings from two survey studies and an experiment support this idea. In Studies 1 and 2, participants’ open‐ended responses revealed a tendency to recall sharing with their closest friends more negative than positive attitudes about other people. Study 3 established that discovering a shared n…

  • Archaeology as a Process

    Amber Johnson, Amber L JohnsonARTICLEJournal of Anthropological Research2006