EFL Welcomes New Faculty Member Kristin Prins
This September, Kristin Prins joined our department as Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition. Specializing in multi-modal, digital, and craft rhetorics, Dr. Prins will not only help integrate new technologies into the rhet/comp curriculum; she will also add a hands-on DIY touch. Her commitment to the physical labor of writing is evident in her dissertation, “Materiality, Craft, Identity, and Embodiment: Reworking Digital Writing,” made and approved last June at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In addition to the Ph.D., Dr. Prins holds two Master’s degrees (one in Literature, one in Rhetoric/Composition) and a BA in Literature—a degree informed by quite a bit of philosophy and history, a foundation for her craft histories of ancient Greece, 14th century India, medieval and early modern Europe, early industrial Canada, and contemporary DIY movements. These histories add to our knowledge of how material and social relations are built through traditional and digital craft production. They also serve as reminders that digital-craft production and traditional hands-on production are not unrelated and should not be imagined as such.
Some of Dr. Prins’ work has already been, or is about to be, published. “Doing Digital: A Production-Focused Pedagogy” has appeared as a scholarly article in Kairos: A[n online] Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy—a journal for which she has also worked as assistant editor. “Crafting New Approaches to Composition” has appeared as a chapter in Composing (Media) = Composing (Embodiment): Bodies,Technologies, Writing, the Teaching of Writing—a book published by Utah State University Press. Appearing sometime this fall will be a special issue of Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion (a self-described “interactive digital magazine dedicated to exploring rhetoric in everyday life”). The theme of this special issue, for which Dr. Prins is most fittingly Guest Editor, is “Craft & DIY Rhetorics.” She is active giving thematically related professional workshops, most recently at the March 2015 Conference of College Composition and Communication: “Handcrafted Rhetorics: DIY and the Public Power of Made Things.” There is more in the works, and we are pleased that Dr. Prins has chosen to make that stuff here.