William K. Rawlins, Ph.D.

Stocker Professor of Communication Studies
Ohio University
Lasher Hall 215
Athens, OH 45701-2979

Email: rawlins@ohio.edu
Phone: 740-593-4823
Fax: 740-593-4810
Web: http://www.ohiocommstudies.com/people/rawlins/

William K. Rawlins (Ph.D., Temple University) is Stocker Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University. He has published extensively about the unique challenges and dialectical tensions of communicating in friendships across the life course. His ongoing research addresses the role of friendships in accomplishing the well-lived life for individuals and communities, and the role of dialogue and narrative in co-authoring viable and edifying identities with others. Lately, Bill also has been embodying musical performances and compositions to address the aesthetics of interpersonal and relational communication, music as communication, and the musicality of social life and interpretive inquiry. 

His book, The Compass of Friendship: Narratives, Identities, and Dialogues (2009), received the Gerald R. Miller Book Award for 2012 from the Interpersonal Communication Division of the National Communication Association, and the 2009 David R. Maines Narrative Research Award from the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research. His book, Friendship Matters: Communication, Dialectics, and the Life Course (1992), was selected as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1993 by the editors of Choice, and received the Gerald R. Miller Book Award in 1994 from the Interpersonal and Small Group Interaction Division of the National Communication Association. In 2002 Professor Rawlins received The Theory That Has Left a Legacy Award: “The Dialectical Perspective” from the Communication Theory Interest Group of the Central States Communication Association. 

Bill teaches courses in interpersonal and relational communication; communication theory; embodied, ethical and aesthetic perspectives on human communication; dialogue, performance, and experience; interpretive and ethnographic inquiry; communication and narrative; Gregory Bateson and communication theory; and communication in friendships across the life course. While at Ohio University, he has received the 2013 Julia T. Wood Teacher/Scholar Award from the Pennsylvania Communication Association; the Outstanding Faculty Teacher Award for 2012-2013, as well as the Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award for 2012-2013 from the Ohio University School of Communication Studies. He also received the Outstanding Faculty Teacher Award for 2010-2011 from the Ohio University School of Communication Studies. While at Purdue University, he received the W. Charles Redding Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Department of Communication five times, the School of Liberal Arts Departmental Educational Excellence Award for 2000-2001, and the School of Liberal Arts Educational Excellence Award for 2002-2003. 

Here is a link to “Sample.” (http://liminalities.net/9-3/sample.html) “Sample” is a 17-minute, multi-genre, multi-format performance piece written, composed, and performed as an author, reader, singer, and guitarist by William K. Rawlins. It is published in Vimeo form, accompanied by an “Artist Statement: Framing ‘Sample’”, and a script, each rendered in written form.