Kristin Arola
288 Bessey Hall
434 Farm Ln
East Lansing, MI 48824
arola.kuurola.com
kristinarola
FacultyWriting, Rhetoric, and CulturesAmerican Indian and Indigenous StudiesRhetoric and WritingFirst Year WritingProfessional and Public Writing
Associate Professor
Gillmor Endowed Professor in Professional and Public Writing
Director, AIIS
Biography
In addition to the Karen L. Gillmor, Ph.D Endowed Professorship in Professional Writing, Kristin Arola is an Associate Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures as well as Interim Chair of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program at MSU.
Arola’s research and teaching focuses on composing as culturing. Specifically, she explores the act of writing/designing/making and the relations that bring forth these texts. By looking to the relations between land, histories, and cultures, she considers how the words, designs, and images we compose evoke the past while opening up possible futures. To do this work, she brings together composition theory, making culture, digital rhetoric, and cultural rhetoric.
Research Areas
Multimodal Composition, Cultural Rhetorics, American Indian Studies
Education
PhD., Michigan Technological University, 2006
B.A., University of Michigan, 1998
Research and Academic Affiliation
Affiliate Faculty, American Indian & Indigenous Studies Program
Affiliate Faculty, Digital Humanities Program
Member, Multimodal Working Group
Projects
Villanueva, Victor and Kristin L. Arola. CrossTalk in Comp Theory. 3rd Edition. National Council of Teachers of English, 2011.
Arola, Kristin L. and Anne Frances Wysocki, Eds. Composing (Media) = Composing (Embodiment). Utah State University Press, 2012.
Ball, Cheryl E., Jennifer Sheppard, and Kristin L. Arola. Writer/Designer: Making Multimodal Projects, 2nd Edition. Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2018.
Arola, Kristin L. “A Land-Based Digital Design Rhetoric.” Routledge Companion to Digital Writing & Rhetoric. Eds. Jonathan Alexander & Jacqueline Rhodes. New York: Routledge. 2018.
Arola, Kristin L. “Composing as Culturing: An American Indian Approach to Digital Ethics.” Handbook of Digital Writing and Literacies Research. Eds. Kathy Mills, Amy Stornaiuolo, Anna Smith & Jessica Zacher Pandya. New York: Routledge. 2018.
Arola, Kristin L. “Indigenous Interfaces.” Social Writing/Social Media: Pedagogy, Presentation, and Publics. Eds. Douglas Walls and Stephanie Vie. WAC Clearinghouse Perspectives on Writing Series, University of Colorado Press. 2017.
Arola, Kristin L. and Adam C. Arola “An Ethics of Assemblage: Creative Repetition and the Electric Pow Wow.” Assembling Composition. Eds. Kathleen Blake Yancey and Stephen J. McElroy. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. 2017.
Winner of the 2017 Computers and Composition Ellen Nold Best Essay or Article Award, awarded Spring 2018
Arola, Kristin L. “It’s My Revolution: Learning to See the Mixedblood.” Composing (Media) = Composing (Embodiment). Eds. Kristin L. Arola and Anne Frances Wysocki. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2012. 115-142.
Sackey, Donnie Johnson, Casey Boyle, Mai Nou Xiong, Gabriela Raquel Ríos, Kristin L. Arola, Scot Barnett. “Perspectives on Cultural and Posthumanist Rhetorics.” Rhetoric Review, 38.4, 375-401. (2019).
Johnson, Lucy and Kristin L. Arola. “Tracing the Turn: The Rise of Multimodal Composition in the U.S.” Res Rhetorica. No.1 (2016).
Courses
WRA 260 (Rhetoric, Persuasion & Culture)
WRA 325 (Writing & Multimodality)
WRA 860 Multimodal Composing
WRA 891 (American Indian) Rhetorics
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