Gordon Thomas

College of Letters, Arts & Social Sciences
Department of English
Associate Professor, Director of Writing and Adviser for Writing Minors

Office: Brink Hall 213
Phone: (208) 885-6384
Email: thomas@uidaho.edu
Mailing Address:
English Department - University of Idaho
P.O Box 441102
Moscow, Idaho 83844-1102

Ph.D., University of Minnesota - Minneapolis, 1985
M.A., University of Minnesota - Minneapolis, 1984
B.A., Emory University - Atlanta, 1974

Gordon Thomas was born in Marquette, Michigan and grew up in Iron Mountain, Michigan (in the Upper Peninsula). His family later moved to Alabama, where he graduated from high school in 1970. He attended Emory University, graduating in 1974, and went on to spend almost four years in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, Africa. There Gordon taught English to French-speaking high school students. After the Peace Corps he went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota, and earned a Master of Arts degree in 1982 and his Ph.D. in 1985.

He met his wife, Dene Thomas, in grad school, and they both got jobs at the University of Idaho in 1984. Since then, she has moved on to become president of Lewis-Clark State College. They live in Lewiston. When he's not working at the UI, he is often occupied with his duties as the president's spouse at LCSC and as president of the Idaho-Washington Concert Chorale.

I currently have two significant research projects. The first is a book, originally designed for teachers, about using the Holocaust in the teaching of writing. The second is a reader for first-year composition classes based a set of readings about American Studies.

I have used the Holocaust as subject in my writing courses for years. In 1999 I was part of group of teachers who offered a workshop before the Annual Convention of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in Atlanta. You can read more about that workshop here. You can read an annotated table of contents of my Holocaust book here.

The American Studies reader is a group project: my two co-editors are Sheila O'Brien and Walter Hesford. This book is under contract by Mayfield, which has recently been sold to McGraw-Hill.

Some examples of my work:

	"Transcending Classroom Boundaries: Constructing Internet 'Home Pages' for Writing Courses," Paper delivered at the Annual Convention of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, March 29, 1996.
	"Graphic Autobiography: Using Maus in a Composition Class," article that argues that Art Spiegelman's Maus would be a good choice as a book on which to base writing assignments.