Thom Swiss
Professor
M.F.A., University of Iowa
152A Peik Hall
612-625-7509
swiss@umn.edu
Office hours: by appointment
Preferred method of contact: e-mail
I am always delighted to meet with students who believe I might
be useful to their course of study.
My writing and teaching focus on interdisciplinary subjects, particularly the cultural studies of education. Like other members of the Culture and Teaching (CaT) faculty here at the University, I'm dedicated to issues pertaining to equity and social justice in both research and teaching.
Cultural studies in education—collection of interdisciplinary texts, theories, and practices—can help us understand many of the things we do in the field of education, starting with the ideological production of "education" as a concept. Said another way, I'm always interested in the question: what are we talking about when we talk about education? And how does the answer to that question shape how we think about our everyday lives, about teaching and learning?
Many of my masters and Ph.D. students are involved in questioning (and writing about) how pedagogy works within and across a variety of sites—not only the formal spaces of education (the classroom), but sites that are embedded in popular culture in general, including, for example, museums and other non-profit institutions, dot.orgs, community centers, and so on. My students tend to have an investment in how pedagogical practices emerge out of specific historical struggles, concrete projects, and particular relations of power. One of the leading journals in this field is The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies.
I write and publish across disciplinary boundaries (digital media, popular music, cultural journalism, and the discourses of education) and encourage my graduate students to do so—that is, I encourage them to read materials from a range of fields and perspectives. I'm also a poet and I teach a course on teaching creative writing for graduate students. My most recent book of poems is Rough Cut, published by the University of Illinois Press.
I joined the education faculty in 2006; I'm chair of C&I's Diversity Committee. Previously I taught at a private university emphasizing the arts, humanities, and education, and at the University of Iowa in an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program.
Selected publications:
Anson, C., Beach, R., Breuch, L., & Swiss,T. (2009). Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.
Sheehy, C., & Swiss, T. (2009). Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Morris, A., &
Swiss, T. (Ed.). (2001). Unspun: Key concepts for understanding the World Wide Web. New York: New York University Press.
Swiss, T. New media collaborative poems.
Featured research and outreach
Revised November 2009
