Douglas Reichert Powell

Writing, Literature, and Cultural Studies
Coordinator, Professional Writing

Doug Reichert Powell has received degrees from Northeastern University (Ph.D. ’99), East Tennessee State University (M.A. ’92) and Washington and Lee University (B.A. ’90).  His interest in social constructions of place and region (especially the southern Appalachian mountains) underwrites his research and writing in popular culture, landscape, literature, composition studies, and critical pedagogy. His publications and presentations cover subjects ranging from the 1998 manhunt for Eric Rudolph to the 1916 hanging of a circus elephant.  In addition to publishing essays and reviews in Appalachian Journal, Historical Geography, and Southern Exposure, he has served as co-editor (with Anthony Harkins and Katherine Ledford) of the Media section of The Encyclopedia of Appalachia (University of Tennessee Press, 2006).  Doug's book, Critical Regionalism: Connecting Politics and Culture in the American Landscape, was published in 2007 by the University of North Carolina Press, while Composing Other Spaces, a collection of essays about place and writing pedagogy Doug co-edited with John Paul Tassoni, appeared in Hampton Press’s “Research and Teaching in Composition and Rhetoric” series in 2008.  Doug is currently at work on a documentary writing project about commercial caverns (or "show caves," as they are known in the trade) and other “geology tourism” sites—rock formations, mineral springs, and other landscape oddities—in the valley-and-ridge province of the Appalachian Mountains.

In addition to directing the Professional Writing program, Doug regularly teaches English courses such as Writing and Rhetoric I and II, Reviewing the Arts, American novel, and topical courses in American literature such as “Literature & Environment,” as well as courses in New Millennium Studies.  Prior to joining the faculty of Columbia College Chicago English department, Doug was associate director of the University Writing Program at Duke University, and has also taught at Miami University of Ohio, Northeastern, East Tennessee State, and Northeast State Community College (Tenn.).  

Office Location: English Department, suite 300-WW, 33 E. Congress

Office telephone: 312-369-8122

Email: dpowell@colum.edu

Mailing Address: 
Doug Reichert Powell 
Department of English 
Columbia College of Chicago 
600 So. Michigan Avenue 
Chicago, IL 60605