Christa Olson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Center for Writing Studies in the English Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

:: Contact Information
315 English Building| MC-718
333-1335
cjolson2@uiuc.edu

:: Biographical Statement
My academic and professional background is in the arts, specifically performance. On the academic side, I have a self-designed B.A. from St. Olaf College's Paracollege entitled "Finding Voice: Creative Expression as a Tool for Social Justice" and an M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University. From 2002 – 2005 I taught undergraduate art students in an off-campus, experiential education program called City Arts that focuses on the roles that art and artists play in society. In addition, I have worked as a theater technician in the New York and Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN arts communities, most recently as Production Manager at Minneapolis’Southern Theater.

:: Research Interests
At the U of I, my areas of interest include cultural rhetorics, pedagogy, social movements, democratic participation, and creative expression. My current work focuses on the roles of art and artists in Ecuador’s Indigenous people’s movement.

:: Course Taught
RHET 100
RHET 101
RHET 102

:: Webpage
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/cjolson2/Website/Index.htm