Communication & Journalism Department

Professors

DR. TRACEY OWENS PATTON, PH.D.

Education 

2000    Ph.D., in Communication, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT.

            Dissertation: “Mixed Messages and Complicitous Policy: Reconstructing Diversity

            Requirements Through Coherence”

1996    M.A., in Speech Communication, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

            Thesis: “The Effect of ethnicity and Gender on Instructor Credibility in the University

            Classroom”

1993    B.A., in Speech Communication and German, Colorado State University, Fort Collins,

            CO

            Thesis: “The Neo-Nazis of Germany: A Rhetorical Study”

1988    Certificate, in German, Lessing Kolleg, Marburg, Germany

Download Dr. Tracey Owens Patton's CV here

Courses

COJO 3190 Cross Cultural Communication

ENGL 4061-5061 Rhetorical Theory & Criticism 

AAST 4160-5160 African American Rhetoric 

COJO/WMST 4233-5233 Race, Gender, Ethnicity, & the Media

AAST 4260-5260 Rhetoric & Social Justice 

COJO 5080 Qualitative Research Methods

Background and Research Focus

Prof./Dr. Tracey Owens Patton is Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism and adjunct Professor in African American & Diaspora Studies in the School of Culture, Gender, and Social Justice at The University of Wyoming. She also served as the Director of the African American & Diaspora Studies Program from 2009-2017 at the University of Wyoming. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication at the University of Utah. Her area of specialization is critical cultural communication, rhetorical studies, and transnational studies. Her work is strongly influenced by critical theory, cultural studies, womanist theory, and rhetorical theory. She has authored a number of academic articles on topics involving the interdependence between race, gender, and power and how these issues interrelate culturally and rhetorically in education, media, memory, myth, and speeches. She places strong emphasis on the interconnection between research and teaching, thus the courses she teaches involve issues concerning cross cultural communication, rhetoric, and social justice. Dr. Patton has presented her research at nearly 80 different academic conferences, has published a co-authored book titled, Gender, Whiteness, and Power in Rodeo: Breaking Away from the Ties of Sexism and Racism (2012) and is working on a second book involving race, memory, rejection, and World War II.