Christof B. Demont-Heinrich
Associate Professor
christof.demont-heinrich@du.edu
303-871-4699 (Office)
Mass Communications Building, 2490 S. Gaylord St. Denver, CO 80208
What I do
My research focuses on the intersections between language, power, culture, media, identity and globalization. I am especially interested in cultural and linguistic flows and power relations. Even more specifically, I am interested in the comparative cultural and linguistic insularity of middle and upper middle class Americans, many of whom are monolingual (in a multilingual world), and, with the exception of food, seem very unlikely to explore cultural products made outside the USA, that are not produced in/dubbed into in English, etc. This seems particularly true vis-a-vis film, television, and music consumption patterns of this group. This contrasts sharply with the same class of people in countries outside of the USA who are quite likely to consume many American cultural products and are likely to be multilingual as well as more multicultural in their cultural consumption patterns.
Professional Biography
A lifelong interest in language and writing motivated in large part by a desire to learn my father's mother tongue, German, has played a large role in my professional and educational trajectory. I spent my junior year of college studying in Freiburg, Germany. After graduating from Allegheny College with a B.A. in German, I worked as a print journalist for eight years in the Boston area.
I moved to Colorado in August of 1996 so that I could attend Colorado State University where I earned an M.A. in English (1998). After a couple years of working as an adjunct faculty member at CSU and the University of Northern Colorado, I began a Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado, Boulder School of Journalism and Mass Communication in the fall of 2000. I completed my dissertation in December of 2005. I started a tenure-track position at the University of Denver in the fall of 2005.
In 2009, I created a new advocacy web site -- SolarChargedDriving.Com -- devoted to covering and promoting the synergy between solar energy and electric cars, a synergy that could result in the near total elimination of air pollution.
I am committed to multilingual living and am raising my two daughters as German-English bilinguals.
Degree(s)
- Ph.D., Communication, University of Colorado, Boulder, 2006
- MA, English & Communication Development, Colorado State University, 1998
- BA, German, Allegheny College, 1988
Research
My research focuses on the intersections between language, power, culture, media, identity and globalization. I am especially interested in cultural and linguistic flows and power relations as these related to "globalization", and, even more specifically, American cultural hegemony.
Featured Publications
- New global music distribution system, same old linguistic hegemony? Analyzing English on Spotify
- Debating English’s hegemony: American, Australian and Slovenian students discuss the global language.
- Cultural imperialism vs. globalization of culture: Riding the structure-agency dialectic in global communication and media studies.
- The death of cultural imperialism -- and power too? A critical analysis of American prestige press representations of the hegemony of English.
- American triumphalism and the “offensive” defensiveness of the French: French as a foil for English in U.S. prestige press coverage of the global hegemony of English.
