Dr. Michael Kearns was born in Ohio but grew up on army bases. After finishing public school in Oklahoma, he went to M.I.T. for his undergraduate degree (S.B. Humanities and Engineering, 1971) and to the University of California, Davis, for his graduate work (M.A. 1975, Ph.D. 1980). He's taught at Ohio Wesleyan University, at the University of Mainz (Germany), and at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin (Odessa, Texas), where he held the endowed position of Dunagan Professor in Humanities.

Dr. Kearns' publications include Metaphors of Mind in Fiction and Psychology (Kentucky, 1987) and Rhetorical Narratology (Nebraska, 1999), as well as many articles on 19th-century writers, rhetoric and composition, and narrative theory; he's also published some poetry.

His older daughter, Monika, is starting a PhD program this year in rhetoric at Ohio State; younger daughter Shannon is studying Bioengineering at IU. He and his wife, Amy, have a five-year-old son, Aidan Michael.  Dr. Kearns is currently completing a book, "Writing for the Street, Writing in the Garret," that compares how Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson constructed themselves as both writers and authors within the literary economies of their time and that compares as well their posthumous "careers."

Kearns' hobbies include fitness (running, biking, swimming), cooking, and losing himself in the spy novels of John Le Carre.

Phone:  464-1748

Office:  LA3043

Email:  mkearns@usi.edu