Lori Ostergaard

Professor and Director of the Embedded Writing Specialist Program
Office: 304 O'Dowd Hall
Phone: 248-370-2075
Fax: 248-370-4208
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://comp-rhet.net
Vita: http://comp-rhet.net/vita.htm

Biography

Lori Ostergaard is a Professor and the former Chair of the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, former Director of First-Year Writing, and the current co-editor of WPA: Writing Program Administration. Her archival research examines the history of composition-rhetoric at Midwestern normal schools and high schools. Lori focuses primarily on the research, theories, and practices of educators working during the first three decades of the twentieth century.

Lori's research has appeared in College English,  Rhetoric Review, Composition Studies,  Composition Forum,  Journal of Teaching Writing,  Studies in the Humanities, and  Peitho. She has also co-edited three collections since 2009, including Transforming English Studies: New Voices in an Emerging Genre, which she co-edited with Jim Nugent and Jeff Ludwig and which is available from Parlor Press. 

Lori co-authored, with Greg Giberson and Marshall Kitchens, the proposal for the Writing and Rhetoric Major at Oakland, and her research has investigated the various formations and implications of our undergraduate degree programs. She co-edited Writing Majors: Eighteen Program Profiles with Greg Giberson and Jim Nugent. This collection examines writing majors at a variety of institutional sites around the country.

Lori's collection of archival histories, In the Archives of Composition: Writing and Rhetoric at High Schools and Normal Schools, which she co-edited with Henrietta Rix Wood,  offers new and revisionary narratives of composition and rhetoric’s history. This collection examines composition instruction and practice at secondary schools and normal colleges, the two institutions that trained the majority of U.S. composition teachers and students during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The chapters provide accounts of writing instruction within contexts often overlooked by current historical scholarship.

Education

Ph.D. in English Studies. Illinois State University (Normal, IL). June 2006.
M.A. in English. Bridgewater State University (Bridgewater, MA).
B.A. in English. Wheaton College (Norton, MA).

Courses

WRT 1020: Basic Writing
WRT 1050: Composition I
WRT 1060: Composition II
WRT 2060: Introduction to Composition Studies
WRT 3010: Contemporary Issues in Writing and Rhetoric Studies
WRT 3062: Writing Center Studies and Peer Tutoring in Composition
WRT 3070: Digital Identity and Culture
WRT 3073: Digital Storytelling
WRT 3086: Workshop in Creative Nonfiction
WRT 3900: Special Topics: Persuasive Writing
WRT 5140: Teaching Writing
WRT 5160: Teaching Writing with New Media