Crispin Thurlow

Crispin Thurlow

Associate Professor

Adjunct Associate Professor, Linguistics, Anthropology and Communication, UW Seattle

Ph.D., Language and Communication, Cardiff University, Wales
M.A., Communication Studies, Sheffield Hallam University, England
M.Ed., Educational Psychology, University of Natal, South Africa
B.Soc. Sc. (Hons), Psychology, University of Natal, South Africa

Email: thurlow@uw.edu
Website: faculty.washington.edu/thurlow
Mailing: Box 358530, 18115 Campus Way NE, Bothell, WA 98011-8246

Teaching

I joined the IAS faculty in 2011 after teaching for eight years in the Department of Communication at UW Seattle and for three years before that at Cardiff University in Wales (UK). In 2007, I was honored to receive the UW’s Distinguished Teaching Award. I’ve always really enjoyed both the theatrics and the “politics” of pedagogy. What this means for me is that it's my social and professional responsibility to help create opportunities for students to discover different ways of thinking and new ways of being critical. And being critical means more than simply identifying the pros and cons; it means searching for "hidden agendas", interrogating the taken-for-granted and doubting anyone who tells us something's good for us. My job as a teacher is therefore not just to pump knowledge into students - although knowledge is clearly important - but to challenge students and to help them challenge others.

Recent Courses Taught

BCUSP 178 Introduction to Communication
BIS 300 Interdisciplinary Inquiry
BISMCS 471 Advanced Topics in Media and Communication Studies: Visual Communication
BCULST 593 Topics in Cultural Studies: Discourse & Sex/uality
BCULST 581 Approaches to Textural Research: Critical Discourse Studies

Research/Scholarship

I am interested in the ways people use language and other semiotic modes to make sense of social difference in everyday communication. Specifically, I am keen to understand how identities of privilege and ideologies of inequality are discursively organized and sustained; this may be achieved through face-to-face exchanges, in mediatized representations (e.g. newspapers, magazines) or in the contexts of "new" media. My work draws on a range of academic traditions concerned with language and communication: sociolinguistics, discourse studies, linguistic anthropology and cultural studies. More broadly, it is framed by critical discourse studies and critical intercultural studies, two academic traditions that embrace more contemporary views of culture and cultural identity (see Thurlow, 2010). The two main topics at the centre of my research agenda are Tourism Discourse and Global Mobility and Young People and New Media Discourse (see recent publications below). As a member of the University of Washington's Graduate Faculty, I am always interested in working with graduate students who share an interest in my main areas of interest.

Selected Publications

Thurlow, C & Mroczek, K. (eds). (2011). Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media. New York & London: Oxford University Press.

Thurlow, C. & Jaworski, A. (2010). Tourism Discourse: Language and Global Mobility. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Jaworski, A. & Thurlow, C. (eds). (2010). Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London & New York: Continuum.