Donald Ross, Jr.
Professor
Ph.D. English, University of Michigan, 1967
202B Wesbrook
(612) 625-5585
rossj001@umn.edu
Snapshots from Abroad: A Conference on American and British Travel Writers and Writing
Donald Ross received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Lehigh University, and his Ph. D. from the University of Michigan. After teaching at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia for four years, he came to Minnesota in 1971 as an assistant professor and became an associate professor in 1976 and a full professor in 1983.
His work is divided between the Composition Program and the English Department. He teaches courses in American literature, techniques of literary study, and an assortment of other topics on the form and style of literature. He served as the director of advanced composition since 1972 in which capacity he developed and nurtured the curriculum of ten courses until the requirement was changed in favor of writing-intensive courses.
He has been at various times the Director of the Composition Program, of Graduate Studies, of Undergraduate Studies, and of Curriculum in the English Department, and the Director of University College.
In 1982, he and Professor Lillian Bridwell-Bowles received a major grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) to study the ways computers can be used in improving student writing. That led to several studies, conference papers, and the like on how best to use the new technology at a time when it was quite rare. By the end of the 80's so many students used word processors routinely that its value was no longer remarkable. On the other hand they poked around for programs that could assist grading, evaluate style, or simply find errors reliably-they couldn't find any then, and they still can't.
More recently he has been working on a couple of themes in American literature, especially in the nineteenth century. This led to a study, conducted with graduate students Capper Nichols and Stephanie Athey on Transportation through the Lens of Literature (looking for a publisher), and to his work with James Schramer (a former graduate student) on American Travel Writers from 1789 to 1864 and American Travel Writers from 1850 and 1915 which have been published.
He is Executive Secretary of the International Society for Travel Writing, which you are welcome to join - just send him an e-mail to the above address.
His latest book is American History and Culture from the Explorers to Cable TV, Peter Lang, 2000. It would be an excellent companion to courses in literature, art, or American Studies.
Finally, two graduate students and he wrote a brief guide How to Write and Publish Articles on Literatures in English for graduate students and others.
Department Affiliations
English; Writing Studies
Areas of Expertise
composition, writing in the disciplines, American literature of the 19th century, travel writing, romantic literature, victorian literature
Selected Publications
American History and Culture from the Explorers to Cable TV. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.
"What are we Doing Here? Scenarios for Early English Colonies in North America." Largeness of Nature: American Travel and Empire. Ed. Susan Castillo and David Seed. Submitted, January 2007.
"Sunny Memories and Serious Proposals: Harriet Beecher Stowe in England." Transatlantic Stowe: Harriet Beecher Stowe and European Culture. Ed. Denise Kohn, Sarah Meer, and Emily B. Todd. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006.
"American Travel Writers, 1850-1915." Dictionary of Literary Biography, No. 189. Ed. Donald Ross and James Schramer. Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman; Gale, 1998.
"American Travel Writers, 1776-1864." Dictionary of Literary Biography, No. 183. Ed. Donald Ross and James Schramer. Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman; Gale, 1997.
"Differences, Genres, and Influences." Style 11 (1977). Reprinted in Literary Computing and Literary Criticism: Theoretical Essays on Theme and Rhetoric. Ed. R. Potter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989.
Revising Mythologies: The Composition of Thoreau's Major Works. with Stephen Adams. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988.
The Word Processor and the Writing Process: An Annotated Bibliography. with Paula Reed Nancarrow and Lillian S. Bridwell. Westport: Greenwood, 1984.
"The Writing Process and the Writing Machine: Current Research on Word Processors Relevant to the Teaching of Composition." with Lillian Bridwell and Paula Reed Nancarrow. New Directions in Coposition Research. Ed. R. Beach and L.S. Bridwell. New York: Guilford, 1984.
"Who's Talking? How Characters Become Narrators in Fiction." Modern Language Notes 91 (1976).
Graduate Courses
Writing in America, 1850-1860
Emerson, Thoreau and Romanticism
American Transcendentalism
Anglo-American Romanticisms
How 19th-Century American Authors Learned their Trade
Nineteenth Century American Travel Writing
Technologies and Writing for Publication
Reader-response Criticism and Ordinary Texts
Practicum in the Teaching of Writing
Undergraduate Courses
Survey of American Literatures and Cultures I
American Transcendentalism
American Novel to 1900
Hawthorne and the Brontës
Writing and Social Change
Textual Analysis: Methods
Advanced Expository Writing
University Writing (First-Year Composition)