Alyssa J. O'Brien, Ph.D.
Stanford University

Teaching in Wallenberg Hall

 

Teaching and Current Courses

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Research and Publications

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C.V. and Contact

 

Alyssa J. O'Brien, Ph.D. is a writer and lecturer at Stanford University, where she teaches writing, public speaking, and cross-cultural communication in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric and as a regular instructor in Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program.  

 

Since arriving at Stanford in 2001, Alyssa has written or co-authored seven textbooks as well as many articles and conference papers.  She’s been an invited speaker in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East on subjects such as global learning, communication for leadership, visual rhetoric, and “mapping a change in writing.”

 

Over the past three years, she’s directed the Cross-Cultural Rhetoric project (or CCR), a research and teaching endeavor originally funded by the Wallenberg Global Learning Network.  CCR now connects students across five continents and involves universities from ten countries through video-conference technology and blogs. Read the latest news about CCR through the Instructor’s Blog.

 

When she’s not working with students at Stanford University, Alyssa makes time to participate in two Bay Area creative writing groups, and she's working on a creative nonfiction collection.  She has taught creative writing for the past three years at Stanford's “Write Retreat” on Fallen Leaf Lake, as well as in the Stanford Continuing Studies Program’s Online Writing Studio, at the University of Rochester, the Eastman School of Music, and Cornell University.  She also articles writes for her community paper, Coastviews Magazines, as a way to give back; selections from her writing are available here.

 

Alyssa won the Phi Beta Kappa Outstanding Teaching Award in 2006, and what she enjoys most is helping people discover their voices in writing of all kinds.