Photo by Jade Craigen
Matt Tedrow received his Ph.D. from the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin in December 2015. He received his M.A. in journalism from UT-Austin in August 2009, and his B.A. in English from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in May 2006. Between 2006 and 2010, he founded and published Turning the Tide, later renamed The New Texas Radical, a movement publication by and for left-progressive Texans. He also served as an assistant editor for InCite, an alternative publication produced by students at UT-Austin. More recently, he has worked off and on with the Austin Indymedia editorial collective.
As an activist, Tedrow was one of the main organizers behind Portside Books, a now-defunct radical bookstore in downtown Corpus Christi, TX. He sometimes contributes to the Texas anti-death penalty movement by working with abolitionist organizations such as Campaign to End the Death Penalty and Texas Students Against the Death Penalty. He was also a member of Campus Antiwar Movement to End the Occupations (CAMEO), UT-Austin’s chapter of Campus Antiwar Network, when the group dissolved in 2010.
As an emerging media scholar, Tedrow’s research interests include critical and radical theory, media framing, political economy of news media, and alternative or activist media. His Master’s thesis focused on how the New York Times framed Colombia’s internal conflict and U.S. military involvement in the country for the years 1997-2008, an important era in U.S.-Colombia relations; his thesis adviser was Dustin Harp. His doctoral dissertation examines the relationships between anarchism, critical media theories, and activist strategy. His dissertation advisor and mentor was Mercedes de Uriarte.
Tedrow also has strong interests in U.S. foreign policy, labor history, analytic philosophy, and radical political theories such as anarchism and autonomism.