Karen Berman, Ph.D., is Dean Emerita, College of Fellows of the American Theatre; Past President, Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE); and Past Chair and Artistic Director, Department of Theatre and Dance, Georgia College & State University (GCSU). Dr. Karen Berman’s extensive experience encompasses the direction of over 150 theatre productions from the Smithsonian to off-Broadway, administration at both universities and non-profit theatre organizations, and teaching and curriculum development in theatre for social change, theatre directing and acting. 

Prior to becoming Theatre and Dance Chair at GCSU, she taught at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Karen has been awarded the Georgia Governor’s Award for the Arts, the Hillel Heroes Award, four NEA grants, and numerous awards for her film, Giving Voice: A Black Lives Matter Musical including: Best Feature Film at the Canadian Diversity Film Festival; Best Social Justice Film at the Silk Road Film Awards Cannes; and Best Social Justice Feature at the Cannes World Film Festival. 

She directed and co-wrote four original plays about Czech heroes that GCSU students performed in Prague and at an international theatre festival in the Czech Republic. Karen co-founded and continues to serve as co-Artistic Director of Washington Women in Theatre and she has directed numerous plays with Holocaust and Jewish themes. She was a thought leader for the Lives Eliminated Dreams Illuminated multi-media exhibit on the Holocaust and was academic liaison for the inaugural Holocaust Remembrance Readings of the National Jewish Theater Foundation for which she mentored students for the past three years on the pilot program  

She recently published a two-volume work with over 40 international contributors that she co-edited with Dr. Gail Humphries titled Stories of the Holocaust: Art for Healing and Renewal. Volume I: Onstage and in Concert and On Screen and in the Gallery (International Psychoanalytic Books, 2025) IPBooks.net.