Kristi Wilson

Kristi Wilson, PhD

Faculty - Undergraduate
Headshot of Kristi Wilson
Professor of Rhetoric and Composition
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Dr. Wilson received her PhD from the University of California, San Diego, in 1999 in Comparative Literature and has since then authored many publications among them Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema (co-edited by Laura E. Ruberto, Wayne State University Press, 2007), Film and Genocide (co-edited by Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), Political Documentary Cinema in Latin America (Routledge, 2014), an Introduction to The Satyricon of Petronius (Barnes and Nobles, 2006), and several articles and reviews for academic journals such as Screen, the Yearbook of Comparative and General LiteratureSignsLiterature/Film Quarterly, and others. Most recently, she co-edited a book in Spanish entitled Documental: teorías, praxis, tecnologías (Documentary: theory, praxis, technologies) with Promoteo Editorial Press in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2019.

Shortly after earning her PhD, Wilson was the recipient of a University of California, Berkeley Summer Research Institute Fellowship and a University of California, Irvine, Humanities Research Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship. She then went to Stanford University as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities in the Introduction to the Humanities Program in 2000 where she taught several interdisciplinary humanities courses. She joined the Stanford Program in Writing and Rhetoric faculty in 2004 where she taught and served as Assistant Director of the Hume Writing Center, until coming to Soka University of America in 2008. In 2017 Dr. Wilson was the co-recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship for the organization of the 24th Visible Evidence Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Dr. Wilson holds an MA in Classics from San Francisco State University and a BA in Theater Arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her teaching and research interests in rhetoric include classics (Greek tragedy, comedy, oratory, satire, epic poetry), gender studies, philosophy, literature, theater, and film studies. While at San Francisco State University, she wrote and directed a musical adaptation of Euripides’s little known tragedy The Phoenician Women Called Tanguedia. Lyrics for the songs were set to “golden age” tango classics and the play was set in 1930s Buenos Aires. The musical was performed in two different productions at SF State University and in the Castro district of San Francisco. Dr. Wilson is a member of the editorial collective and is also the film and media editor for Latin American Perspectives (a SAGE Publications academic journal).

  • PhD, University of California, San Diego 1999 (Comparative Literature)
  • MA, San Francisco State University, 1994 (Classics)
  • BA, University of California, Santa Cruz 1991 (Theater Arts)
  • Writing and Communication Skills 101
  • Advanced Communication Skills 300
  • Advanced Communication Skills 305 (The Rhetoric of Performance, The Politics of Visual Rhetoric)
  • Writing About Film
  • Core: Enduring Questions
  • Writing New Media
  • Comparative Literature (Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Film Theory, Philosophy, Orientalism)
  • Classics (Rhetoric, Old Comedy, Euripidean Tragedy, Roman Satire, Plato, 2nd Sophistic period)
  • Gender Studies

Books and Book Chapters

  • Wilson, Kristi. “‘The Hour of the Furnaces’, May 1968, and the Pesaro International Film Festival,” co-written with Laura E. Ruberto in A Trail of Fire for Political Cinema, edited by Javier Campo and Humberto Perez-Blanco. Intellect /University of Chicago Press, 2019.
  • Caldwell, Ryan, and Kristi M. Wilson. “Trans-identity: Theory, Politics, and Identity Across the Pacific Basin.” In The Pacific Basin: An Introduction, edited by Shane J. Barter and Michael Weiner, 177-85. New York: Routledge, 2017.
  • Ruberto, Laura E., and Kristi M. Wilson. “Italian Neorealism.” In A Companion to Italian Cinema, edited by Frank Burke, 139-56. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2017.
  • Crowder-Taraborrelli, Tomas, and Kristi Wilson. “ITVS (Independent Film and Video Service) Community-Cinema: State-sponsored Documentary Film Festivals, Community Engagement and Pedagogy.” In Activist Film Festivals, edited by Sonia Tascón and Tyson Wils, 59-78. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
  • Wilson, Kristi. "Narración disociada y final abierto: el genero de la Resistencia en Los Rubios de Albertina Carri." In El documental politico en Argentina, Chile, y Uruguay: de los anos cincuenta a la decada de! dos mil, edited by Antonio Traverso and Tomas Crowder-Taraborrelli. Santiago, Chile: LOM ediciones, 2015.
  • Traverso, Antonio, and Kristi Wilson. Political Documentary Cinema in Latin America. edited by Antonio Traverso and Kristi Wilson, 1-12. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2014.
  • Wilson, Kristi. “Ecce Homo Novus: Snapshots, the 'New Man', and Iconic Montage in the Work of Santiago Alvarez.” In Political Documentary Cinema in Latin America, edited by Antonio Traverso and Kristi Wilson, 136-48. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2014.
  • Journal Articles:
  • Wilson, Kristi. "Building Memory: Museums, Trauma, and the Aesthetics of Confrontation in Argentina." Essay. Latin American Perspectives. Vol. 43 .No. 5 (SAGE Publications, September 2016).
  • 2008-present, Soka University of America 
  • 2009-2012, Director of the Writing Program, SUA
  • 2007-2008, Assistant Director Hume Writing Center, Stanford University
  • 2005-2008, Founder, Director The Stanford Film Lab
  • 2005-2008, Lecturer Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Stanford University
  • 2000-2004, Fellow in the Humanities, Stanford University (IHUM Program) 
  • Stanford Institute for Creative Arts (SiCa) Curricular Innovation Grant for "The Multimedia Literacies Project," 2008
  • Stanford Institute for Creative Arts (SiCa) Grant for "The Storytelling Project," 2007
  • Fellowship in the Humanities, Stanford University, 2000-2004
  • Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of California, Irvine, Humanities Research Institute. Theme: "Race in Early - modern and Ancient Contexts" 2000
  • Summer Research Institute Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley. Theme: "Antigone, Gender and Kinship" (led by Judith Butler) 1999
  • Horst Fenz Prize. Best Graduate Student Paper. The American Comparative Literature Association. (1999)
  • Player's Club Choice Award for "Tanguedia" (a musical adaptation of Euripides" Phoenicae). San Francisco State University Drama Department 1997