Official-sounding Biography

Steven D. Krause is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Most of his teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate level focuses on the connections between writing and technology. Recent scholarship has appeared in the journals Computers and Composition, College Composition and Communication Online, and The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, and he has also presented papers at numerous national conferences.

A more detailed and "real life" biography

My name is Steven Daniel Krause and I was born on March 25, 1966 in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin called West Allis. My parents are both originally from a little town called Algoma, Wisconsin near Door County (the peninsula of Wisconsin), but my family has lived in Iowa since I was in the second grade, mostly in a town called Cedar Falls, Iowa.

I majored in English as an undergraduate at the University of Iowa, and I went on to earn an MFA in Fiction Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. I lived in Richmond for five interesting and ultimately happy years, teaching part-time at VCU and working full-time as temp office worker and then as a public relations representative for a state agency that had to do with student loans (I did a lot of technical documentation and newsletters and such). The best thing about my time in Richmond is it's where I met my wife, Annette Wannamaker.

In 1993, Annette and I went off to Bowling Green State University where we both earned PhDs-- mine in Rhetoric and Writing, hers in English Literature with an emphasis in contemporary drama. My dissertation was called "The Immediacy of Rhetoric: Defintions, Illustrations, and Implications." When I finished, I became an Assistant Professor at Southern Oregon University in beautiful Ashland, Oregon. That's where our son William Steven Wannamaker Krause (or Will for short) was born on September 1, 1997.

In 1998, I became an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan; in 2002, I earned tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. Ypsilanti is sort of a working class/car factory town more or less connected to Ann Arbor (literally, the University of Michigan's central campus is a fifteen minute drive from EMU's campus) and about 35 miles west of Detroit.

Scholarship and Teaching
When it comes to academic work, I think of myself as a writing teacher who uses computers in his teaching, not a "computer expert" who happens to do writing. I spend a lot of time using computers and I think it's important to consider the role of technology in our creation and understanding of texts of all sorts. But I'm not a "computer expert" in the sense that people in computer science departments are "computer experts," and I don't have any experience at all with computer languages (other than HTML, which isn't really a computer language). Rather, my interests in computers in particular and technology in general are as tools and contexts of rhetorical practices: how do computers effect what and how we write? What happens to writing when it is electrified? How does word processing change our concepts of revision? Questions like that.

I teach writing classes at all levels, everything from first year composition and rhetoric to graduate courses (check out my teaching page to see what I am up to currently). Besides writing pedagogy (particularly the teaching of writing with computer technology), I'm interested in rhetorical theory and history, the rhetoric and discourse practices of the Internet, and the teaching and practice of research writing. I've been very interested in the history and application of technologies other than computers in the writing classroom for some time now (pens, chalkboards, correspondence, television, etc.), and I'm in the beginning stages of a book project about these things. Before I took on PhD studies, I earned an MFA in fiction writing and I am still interested in writing fiction, the craft of creative writing, and creative writing pedagogy. You can learn more about my professional side from my On-line CV.

Other Things About Me
As you can tell from the pictures above, my favorite things to do are writing, fiddling around/working on my computer (that's me in my kitchen on my iBook), hanging around with my wife and son, and playing with our son Will. Will is our first and so far only child and is the coolest kid in the world. Among other things, Will has taught me a great deal about the children's offerings on public television, about Spongebob Squarepants, and (lately) about Japanese anime.

I love to cook, especially when it involves elaborate ingredients and preparations. The food channel is on at our house a lot. My wife and I bought our first house in April 1999, and I have discovered that I enjoy gardening, generally fixing the house up, etc. So the home and garden channel (HGTV) is on at our house a lot too. Actually, I have to admit that the TV in general is on at our house a lot. I know that English professors aren't supposed to admit that, are supposed to say that they spend all their free time reading great literature and appreciating art, but there you have it.

I do like to read though too (it's taken me years after completing the PhD to go back and read fiction and poetry "for fun--" anyone who has been through graduate school in English probably knows what I mean!), watch movies, go to the gym, spend time with friends, and so forth.