Carma Gorman (BA, Carleton College, 1991; MA and PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 1994 and 1998) is an Associate Professor in the School of Design and Creative Technologies at the University of Texas at Austin. She arrived at UT in 2013, after fifteen years on the faculty at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She regularly teaches courses on the history of industrial design, the history of graphic design, design theory and criticism, color theory, and research and writing.

A specialist in the history of US industrial design, Gorman edited the widely assigned primary-source anthology The Industrial Design Reader (2003); has published over two dozen articles and reviews in leading academic journals in the fields of design history, design, and American studies; and co-authored the 150-page+ annotated bibliography Decentering Whiteness in Design History. Her book project Exceptional: The Laws of Industrial Design in the USA reveals how the USA's idiosyncratic laws, regulations, and standards have shaped the distinctive national character of American products.

Gorman has served as president of the Design Studies Forum; worked for a decade as lead reviews editor and associate editor of the journal Design and Culture; served a four-year term on the board of directors of the College Art Association (aka CAA); chaired CAAs Committee on Design; and has owned and moderated the designstudiesforum-l list for more than twenty years, since founding it in 2001. At UT, she has served as an elected member of the Faculty Council, Faculty Council executive committee, and SDCT executive committee; as program head of the former Design Division; and on a half dozen other university-level committees, subcommittees, and task forces. She received the College of Fine Arts Distinguished Service Award in 2019.