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 Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004
Research and Interests: politics of language, language ideologies, multilingualism, translation, verbal arts, Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, postcolonialism, ethnicity, popular cultures, Swahili, Shona
10244 Bunche Hall
P.O. Box 951310
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Campus mailcode: 131003
Tel: 310-794-1972
Fax: 310-206-2250
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Personal Website
Professor Thompson's interest in African languages began in 1996 in Zimbabwe, where she began learning Shona during an undergraduate semester abroad. Returning to Grinnell College, where she majored in English, she focused on African and African American literatures. She went on to pursue a Master's degree and a Ph.D. from the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, focusing on the use and representation of African languages in the verbal arts and gradually moving from literature to popular cultures, and from textual analysis to ethnographic work. During graduate school, she mastered Swahili alongside Shona. She has taught Swahili at the African-American Ethnic Academy, the University of Wisconsin - Madison, Middlebury College, and at UCLA, as well as to groups of volunteers preparing to work in East Africa. Because of her expertise in language pedagogy, Professor Thompson was asked to coordinate UCLA's African languages program, training and supervising instructors of various languages as well as supervising self-instructional tutorials on languages not currently offered.
Professor Thompson has conducted research on translation, postcolonial language problems, language use in African film and television, language attitudes in Tanzanian comics, the use of technology in advanced-level second language instruction, and representations of ethnicity in Tanzanian hip-hop music. She serves on the Steering Board of the University of California Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching (UCCLLT), as a consultant in language pedagogy and Swahili assessment to the African Language Teachers Association (ALTA), and as Vice President of the Tanzania Studies Association. Her current research focuses on the administration of less commonly taught languages (LCTL) programs and on language attitudes among consumers of African music.
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