Craig Pinkerton

“Students hone their public speaking and argumentation skills by doing dynamic in-class speaking activities, games, and impromptu debates. We engage in lively conversation and discussion in small groups and as a whole class on issues and topics that matter to the course and the modern public sphere.”

Craig Pinkerton is an educator and researcher of communication with a focus on rhetoric and public culture.

Since 2007, he has taught over 20 courses on a wide variety of subjects on communication, including public speaking and presentation communication, mediated speaking, argumentation, rhetoric, public advocacy and activism, narrative and storytelling, marketing and public relations, organizational development, interpersonal conflict management, and the dark side of media. His mission as an educator is to nurture students’ growth in thinking well, speaking well, and writing well and to facilitate growth and experience that engages students in good faith communication across differences.

Broadly, his research explores communication practices across differences and the way language and communication shape how we know what we know. His research examines humanizing and dehumanizing communication practices in public discourse, how narrative persuades and shapes our view of the world, and how rhetoric carves the functions and dysfunctions of the modern public sphere. He employs interdisciplinary inquiry in Southeast Asian Studies and Buddhist Studies. He specializes in qualitative methods of inquiry.

He has won over fifteen academic awards and honors, including the prestigious Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS) for the study of Thai language.