Karen Hall was born and raised in the central New York area. Her father is an SU alum and she remembers sitting beside him in all sorts of weather watching football games in Archbold Stadium. She remembers, as well, feeling very grown up while using the Sci Tech Library to gather books for her tenth grade term paper.

Karen left New York for Ohio after graduating from high school. There she completed a BA in English with minors in Women’s Studies and education at Denison University. After two years of various (tedious) jobs, Karen attended The Ohio State University where she earned her MA in English. In 1992, Karen returned to Syracuse and pursued a creatively diverse number of jobs, from computer programmer to loan officer to whole food grocery store manager to college professor to bookkeeper. In the midst of it all, Karen attended Syracuse University where she earned her doctorate in English. Karen’s dissertation explored the inter-relationships between American popular culture and militarism, and she loves to say that she is a G.I. Joe specialist. She knows almost all there is to know about the 12″ action figure introduced by Hasbro to the toy world in 1964 (the very year she was born!). She has published a scholarly article on G.I. Joe and was quoted in the New York Times after a reporter interviewed her on the topic!