Carolyn Skinner

Carolyn  Skinner

Carolyn Skinner

Associate Professor
She/her/hers

skinner.139@osu.edu

(740) 755-7792

145 Adena Hall
1159 University Dr, Newark, OH 43055

Google Map

Areas of Expertise

  • Rhetoric and Writing Studies
  • Women's Rhetoric
  • 19th-Century US Rhetoric
  • Historical Scientific, Medical, and Professional Rhetoric
  • Rhetorical Reception

Education

  • PhD, Rhetoric and Composition, University of Louisville, 2006
  • MA, English (Writing and Rhetoric), Virginia Commonwealth University
  • BA, English, University of Evansville, 2000

Carolyn Skinner teaches courses in rhetoric (the study of how people use messages to influence others, build community and shape worldviews), including Arts of Persuasion; Rhetorics of Health, Illness and Wellness; and Methods for the Study of Writing, Rhetoric and Literacy. Her research focuses on historical scientific, professional and medical writing in the 19th-century United States, especially that by and about women. She has examined how early women physicians claimed the authority and expertise to write persuasively as doctors at a time when “woman” and “medical professional” were believed to be incompatible. She has also explored how 19th-century men and women used medical/scientific arguments in the debate over women's rights. Most recently, she has investigated rhetorical reception (how audiences use a text that they read to inform, support or inspire their own persuasive writing) as an important form of communicative activity. Throughout her rhetorical research, Skinner seeks to understand how medical/scientific/professional discourses affected women’s social position and how women themselves used those discourses to affect the world around them.

Skinner is also studying how different methods of assigning incoming students to first-year writing courses affect student success.

Selected Publications

Curriculum Vitae

People Filters: