Dr. Michael Lukas

Dr. Lukas has been teaching at UVic since 2012, and the University of Montana before that. He mainly teaches academic and technical writing courses but has taught advanced rhetoric, cultural studies and theory, poetry, literature, and early American letters. Dr. Lukas's research is in rhetoric and discourse analysis, particularly around environmental issues and human/non-human dimensions of wildlife management, and especially as it relates to wolves—the focus of his Ph.d and current book project.

He grew up along a small creek in rural Wisconsin, on the edge of The Northwoods--that great boreal forest that extends up through Canada. Dr. Lukas teaches, writes, loves the outdoors, and has held all kinds of jobs outside academia that contribute to his approach--from a fishing guide in Montana, to a nanny in the Alaskan bush.

Dr. Lukas draws from his background in philosophy and political and cultural theory in my teaching, which means you might find him animatedly connecting Socratic dialogues with popular culture. Above all, his classes are dialogue driven, even online, and he likes to encourage students to draw from their own lives and interests. Indeed, he finds the best essays, proposals, and articles are written when writers answer questions they're curious about.