Deborah Israel
Deborah Israel received her B.A. in English, with a minor in secondary education, at S.U.N.Y. at Stony Brook in 1970. She received her M.A. in English at the then Central State University in 1975. In 2000, she received her Ph.D. in Literature at Oklahoma State University, with concentrations in Nineteenth Century American Literature and American Modernism. Her doctoral dissertation, The Days of Awe: Three Jewish Women’s Autobiographical Entrance into America, combined her interests in autobiographical and ethnic/immigrant studies.
Before coming to UCO, Dr. Israel taught at Oklahoma City Community College with service as Coordinator of Freshman Composition, Director of the Communications Laboratory, and Technical Writing Specialist. In 1977, she participated in the Oklahoma Writing Project at the University of Oklahoma, which led to teaching seminars at public school in-services across the state of Oklahoma in “Evaluating Student Writing.”
Dr. Israel’s practical experience includes a position as writer/education specialist at the U.S. Coast Guard Institute with duties in planning, writing, and editing correspondence courses and service wide examinations as well as teaching seminars in grammar, writing, and course development.
Dr. Israel has been at the University of Central Oklahoma since 1988 where she has taught a variety of courses in composition and American and British literature. Recent upper-division classes include 19th Century British Women Writers, American Autobiography, and Early American Ghost Stories. She is also a co-editor of the Red Dirt Reader and Speak Your Mind, the UCO freshman composition textbooks.
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