William K. Rawlins

William K. Rawlins (Ph.D., Temple University) is Stocker Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University. His book, Friendship Matters: Communication, Dialectics, and the Life Course, 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 he received The Theory That Has Left a Legacy Award: “The Dialectical Perspective” from the Communication Theory Interest Group of the Central States Communication Association. Over the past 25 years, Professor Rawlins has published extensively about the unique challenges and dialectical tensions of communicating in friendships.

Bill teaches courses in communication in friendships across the life course, interpersonal and relational communication, communication theory, dialogue and experience, interpretive and ethnographic inquiry, communication and narrative, and Gregory Bateson and communication theory. 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.