Department of Communication

Emeritus Faculty

Emeritus Faculty

Cynthia-Lou Coleman, PhD.

Professor Emerita
Email: ccoleman@pdx.edu

Dr. Coleman’s areas of inquiry focused on the social construction of science in mainstream discourse and the effects of framing on biopolitical policies that impact American Indian communities, which is distilled in new book, “Environmental Clashes on Native American Lands” (Palgrave-Springer press, 2020). She held fellowships with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. She was awarded the Fulbright-Canada Jarislowsky Foundation Visiting Research Chair in Aboriginal Studies in 2019, when she worked with faculty and Indigenous communities in British Columbia.

Leslie Good, PhD.

Professor Emerita
Email: goodl@pdx.edu

Degrees
PhD | Stanford University
MS | University of Oregon
BS | University of Oregon

After Dr. Good earned her Ph.D. in Communication at Stanford University in 1986, she served as a member of the Communication faculty at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst for three years before joining the PSU faculty in 1989. She retired in 2008. Her work within media studies has focused on the politics of the image and the central relationship between power and communication. Dr. Good’s interests include the influence of photography on the history of media studies, the role of the image in collective memory, empowering uses of media, and the intersection of art and media criticism. She has published and presented essays on issues of power, and edited a book series, Critical Studies in Communication, for Hampton Press. She is also a documentary photographer. Her photographs appeared in both the U.S. and Chinese editions of the book, The Portland Edge.

Susan Poulsen, PhD.

Professor Emerita
Email: poulses@pdx.edu

Degrees
PhD | University of Washington
MS | University of Maryland at Baltimore
BS | University of Washington

David Ritchie, PhD.

Professor Emerita
Email: cgrd@pdx.edu

Degrees
PhD | Stanford University
MUP | University of Oregon
BA | Reed College

Dr. Ritchie taught and conducted research on the use of language in social interaction. His primary research focus was metaphor use, story-telling, story-metaphors, and humor in naturally-occurring discourse, with emphasis on urban communities and cultural institutions. 

Highlighted Works

  • Ritchie, L. D. (2022). Feeling, Thinking and Talking: How the Embodied Brain Shapes Everyday Communication. Cambridge University Press.
  • Ritchie, L. D.. (2022). “Decoding information”: The abuse of personification and machine metaphor. In S. Wuppuluri and A C Grayling, Eds., Words and Worlds, pp. 239-251. Springer Nature.
  • Ritchie, L. D. (2107). Metaphorical Stories in Discourse. Cambridge University Press.
  • Ritchie, L. D., Feliciano, A., and Sparks, A. (2018). Rhetorical confinement, contrasting metaphors, and cultural polarities: “Yes we can” meets “carnage in the cities.” Metaphor and the Social World, 8(2), 248-267.