Kristin Arola
Assistant Professor
Biography
Kristin Arola is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Composition and Technology and the Director of the Digital Technology and Culture Program. She earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University in 2006. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on multimedia authoring, rhetoric, composition, design, and technology studies.
Publications
Villanueva, Victor and Kristin L. Arola. CrossTalk in Comp Theory. 3rd Edition. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2011.
Arola, Kristin L. "Family Christmas Cards, Rhetoric, and Infertility: A Season of Silence." Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion. 6.1 (April 2011). http://harlotofthearts.org/
Arola, Kristin L. "Listening to See: A Feminist Approach to Design Literacy." The Journal of Literacy and Technology. 12.1 (March 2011): 65-105.
Ball, Cheryl E. and Kristin L. Arola. Visualizing Composition 2.0 (2nd revised edition of ix: Visual Exercises). http://ix.bedfordstmartins.com/ Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. [requires password].
Arola, Kristin L.. "The Design of Web 2.0: The Rise of the Template, The Fall of Design." Computers and Composition. 27.1 (March 2010). 4-14.
Arola, Kristin L. and Cheryl E. Ball. "A Conversation: From ‘They Call Me Doctor?' to Tenure." Computers and Composition Online. Spring 2007. http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/prodev.htm.
Research Interests
Kristin is interested in the ways that the design and functionality of online spaces encourage particular uses for particular groups of people (particularly American Indians), and works on ways of teaching students to be more critical of the online spaces within which they work and live. To these ends, she writes about design, identity, and agency, and how best to incorporate multimodal practices into the composition classroom. Her work includes ix: Visualizing Composition (co-authored with Cheryl E. Ball, Bedford/St.Martin's), "The Design of Web 2.0: The Rise of the Template, the Fall of Design" (Computers & Composition), and the 3rd edition of Cross-Talk in Comp Theory (co-edited with Victor Villanueva).
Learn more about Professor Arola at http://arola.kuurola.com