Faculty Profiles


MICHAEL C. FLANIGAN. Professor, 1981-.
Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1969.

Professor Flanigan has published articles on rhetoric, composition, teaching composition, and preparing teachers of composition and language in NASSP Bulletin (1964), The Clearing House (1965), English Journal (1966), Association of Departments of English Bulletin (1972), Journal of General Psychology (1973), Arizona English Bulletin (1974), College Composition and Communication (1974), English Education (1974), Indiana Writes (1976), Teaching and Learning (1978), Journal of Writing Program Administrators (1979), College English (1980), Theory Into Practice (1980), Teaching Writing (1981), Journal of English Teaching (1982), Sooner Magazine (Fall 1982, Spring 1982, Fall 1989), Journal of Advanced Composition (1991). He has also published articles in other journals and in various collections: Options for Teaching Apprenticeship Programs in Language and Literature (MLA, 1981), Literacy, Society and Schooling (Cambridge U.P. 1986), Writers on Writing (1988); and has authored and edited five books for teachers at various levels. He also wrote and produced seventeen video tapes on teaching composition and coping with various issues that arise in college teaching: A Process-Centered Composition Program (9 tapes, 1976), Strategies in College Teaching (4 tapes, 1977), Critical Moments in College Teaching (4 tapes, 1977). He is presently completing a four-year (plus) study of undergraduate writing and its relationship to learning, and is interested in how assessment can help improve teaching and learning in the university. He teaches courses on teaching college composition, on research and theory in composition and rhetoric, and on creative writing--he has published some short stories and humor. He especially enjoys teaching cross-disciplinary courses with other faculty members, and has team taught courses in art and writing, women studies and writing, history and writing, literature and writing. In most of his teaching he strives to show how theory and research can inform and improve practice in the classroom.
mflanigan@ou.edu






CATHERINE HOBBS. Associate Professor. 1992-.
Ph.D. Purdue University, 1989.


Professor Hobbs works in rhetoric/cultural studies in the Composition/Rhetoric/Literacy Program. She is also a member of the Women's Studies and Liberal Studies faculties. She is the editor of Nineteenth-Century Women Learn to Write (Virginia, 1995). Her essays on the history of rhetoric, language, and literacy have appeared in a special feminist issue of Rhetoric Society Quarterly as well as in journals including Rhetorica and Historical Reflections. She is completing a book on modernism and eighteenth-century theories of language, rhetoric, and writing instruction and planning more historical work in literacy. She teaches writing and women's studies at the undergraduate level and theory, history, and methodology at the graduate level. She especially enjoys her work with the Neopolitan professor of rhetoric Giambattista Vico and plans to teach a seminar on Vico and rhetoric in the near future. She also likes making connections to cognitive science and technology and information studies.
chobbs@ou.edu






SUSAN KATES. Assistant Professor, 1995-
Assistant Professor, Women's Studies Program.
Ph.D., Ohio State University, 1995.


Professor Kates has an article on Hallie Quinn Brown forthcoming in College English. Her poems have appeared in The Ohio Journal, West Branch, and Wind. She is currently writing an historical study of politicized rhetoric courses designed for African Americans, women, and labor workers in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. Professor Kates teaches rhetorical theory and creative writing at the undergraduate level; and modern rhetoric and composition theory at the graduate level. She believes that language philosophy is a powerful vehicle for exploring how discourse functions in a wide variety of rhetorical situations; consequently, she is committed to helping her students to analyze their own writing and the writing of others through an extensive range of rhetorical theorists.
skates@ou.edu






DAVID MAIR. Associate Professor, 1979-.
Director, First-Year Composition Program.
Ph.D., University of Utah, 1979.


Professor Mair has co-authored Strategies for Technical Communication (Little Brown, 1985) and Writing and Reading Mental Health Records (Sage, 1992). He has published articles on technical writing and scientific discourse in Journal of Advanced Composition and Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. His work-in-progress includes an ethnographic study of written communication by a mental health team and a study of how institutional practices shape patient records. His teaching interests include research design, pedagogy, and discourse theory. His pedagogy is informed by postmodern and collaborative theories.
dmair@ou.edu






KATHLEEN E. WELCH. Professor, 1982-.
Ph.D., University of Iowa, 1982.

Professor Welch is the author of The Contemporary Reception of Classical Rhetoric: Appropriations of Ancient Discourse (Erlbaum, 1990). Her articles on classical rhetoric and contemporary rhetoric and composition theory have appeared in Written Communication (1988), Journal of Advanced Composition (1988), Browning Institute Studies (1988), College Composition and Communication (1987), Rhetoric Society Quarterly (1987, 1986), and Rhetoric Review (1987), and in various collections of essays. She is completing a book on Classical Rhetoric, Orality, and a New Literacy, which deals with classical Greek rhetoric and composition theory and their application to current theorizing about rhetoric and composition. Professor Welch teaches writing and literacy at the undergraduate level; and classical rhetorical theory, modern rhetoric and composition theory, current literacy studies, feminist theory, and historicized rhetoric at the graduate level. Her teaching "centers on privileging the production of student writing and then working through histories and theories of discourse that enable students to write more powerfully in an expanded repertoire."
kwelch@ou.edu





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