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Picture of Jordan Frith at a TEDX talk. He is a bald man with a beard wearing a sports coat over a t-shirt.
Me giving a TEDX talk

My name is Jordan Frith. I’m an endowed professor at Clemson University who specializes in technical communication, writing studies, and mobile communication studies. I have published 5 books and ~40 articles on a topics ranging from locative media studies to infrastructure studies to writing pedagogy, and you can find full text of most of my articles on my publications page . I also have taught a lot of different classes, and I’ve consciously reworked my teaching to embrace an anti-racist pedagogy and move away from some more canonic traditions I was trained in (see my teaching page for details). Oh, and if you’re just here to learn as much about me as possible, here’s a copy of my CV and here’s a link to my Google Scholar profile.

I figure professional webpages are pretty rote and standardized, so instead of going down that route, I’ll start with a bit about my background not many people know that I’ve begun reflecting upon more as I age: Only one of my four grandparents was born in the US. My paternal grandmother was Brazilian, and my mom and her parents are all from Canada. Also,  neither of my parents were born in the US (my dad was born in Panama). I have two passports and, if I’d played my cards right, could have had four passports (there was an age window on two of the countries). So yeah…I’m half Canadian and a quarter Brazilian, but I was born and grew up in the US. I do think that background is maybe what inspired my love of travel, and in recent years I’ve been reflecting more and more on how we are forced to categorize ourselves and how we can either get away from those categorizations or work to somehow make them more productive.

Like I mentioned above, one of the loves of my life is travel. I’ve been to 30+ countries, and my big dream for turning 40 in a few months is to finally take a trip to Uzbekistan in 2023. I’ve always been  fascinated by Central Asia, and Uzbekistan is my number one dream destination. Oh, and besides travel and work, I have varied interests,  though it feels like work is maybe drowning them out a bit too much in Fall 2022. One of my huge loves, which is impossible not to notice on this site, is my love for rescue dogs. I’ve rescued a bunch of dogs, and I currently have three rescues: Daisy, Tinkerbell, and Peaches, and my dogs get their own acknowledgment paragraph in all my books :). I’m also an avid sci-fi reader, a political junkie, super into hiking and biking, a big NBA fan, and someone who loves cooking. Oh, and maybe my biggest hobby is that I’m a big movie nerd, especially East Asian movies. If you ever want to chat about South Korean neo-noirs, send me a message. Alternatively, I’ll talk John Carpenter with you for hours (I think the theme is I’m a talker).

Beyond my academic life and hobbies, I also enjoy volunteering. I volunteered as part of the Mentor Denton program for six years, and I followed my amazing mentee from elementary school to middle school to high school before I moved from Texas. We’re still in touch to this day.  In 2016, I trained as a deputy registrar and registered (not enough) people to vote. Maybe most notably, I went through training and certification at CASA Denton in 2017. I then became the court appointed Guardian Ad Litem for a teenage boy in the group home system who has had it pretty rough. I stayed in that position until I moved from Texas. When I moved to Clemson, I planned to pursue volunteer opportunities, but I was only here for 5 months before COVID hit. I did volunteer as a poll worker in multiple elections, including the 2020 election.

three dogs in Christmas sweaters, and two of them have Elf hats on
My three dogs

I hope you find what you need on my site. I figure that, even if you don’t, you’ll at least find cute pictures of my dogs. Please don’t hesitate to email me if you want to chat about anything. I’m always happy to meet, share my work, and collaborate. I do hope you check out the rest of my site, and I appreciate you visiting.