As a first-generation American from a multi-cultural family where three languages—English, Spanish, and Slovene—were routinely spoken around the dinner table, I approach my work with an eye on the cross-pollination that occurs when cultures clash. I’ve observed over time that—in the literature I study and the students and faculty with whom I work—clashes of languages and values are constantly happening around us. (This might be truer in our current socio-political climate than ever.) But I’ve also come to realize that these clashes are often the result of people and texts talking past, rather than to, each other. I’ve thus come to think of myself as a mediator first, and critic and educator second.
I mediate between texts, cultures, languages, faculty and students. I mean this in a sense that is both literal (I am a trained mediator) and metaphorical (I know texts can’t actually speak… though when I heard Virginia Woolf’s voice for the first time when her only surviving recording was made public in 2016, I got chills and admit I rethought the metaphor).
What do I mean when I say I’m a mediator above all? Well, I translate texts from Spanish and Slovene into English regularly for literary magazines. It’s what won me an NEA Translation Grant, a Fulbright grant to Slovenia and a Tinker Foundation grant to Argentina. I translate complex rhetorical concepts into language my students can understand as I teach courses in first-year writing and advanced composition theory at the College of the Holy Cross. And I teach my most advanced students—the tutors in the writing center—to do the same for their peers. I translate the differences between texts written in the U.K., Spain, Slovenia, Italy, and other European countries in my dissertation project that considers diverse fictional perspectives on World War I. And, as I work on a composition studies manuscript that draws teaching writing and translation theory together, I translate between my diverse academic interests.
Write to Kristina at: kristina.reardon@gmail.com.
Kristina Reardon 
Your blog is so professional looking. You inspire me :)
Thanks, Tanya! :)
Wait, you live in Ljubljana or in MA? Im from Ljubljana but Ive just spend a year in Worcester MA. I came across your blog by pure chance:-)
I live in MA now (near Worcester), but I titled my blog while I was living in Ljubljana. How funny that you found it; it seems we’ve switched places!
This is just gettin really funny:-) A year or so ago I wrote the comment above. I have just found your blog again while looking for places where to get Chai Latte in Ljubljana. I have a similar obsession with it as you. Of course it has been triggered with Starbucks’ chai while I was in the US last year. So I will check out your tips where to get it here. Hopefully the situation has improved since you were in Ljubljana.
Mojca,
You’ll have to tell me if things have improved chai-wise since I left Ljubljana! I haven’t been back in a year. I used to buy chai mix at Müller…
Hoping all is well! :)
Kristina
Stumbled across your blog in planning my trip back to Ljubljana for October ’14. I lived there is 92-93, attended Slovene language classes and wrote my undergraduate thesis – a chapbook of poems and translations from Slovene. It would be great to chat with someone who has been, and lived, there more recently.
Feel free to send me an email, Victoria! kristina.reardon@gmail.com