LACIS
Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program

Christa Olson

  1. Olson, Christa. “The Democratic Hemisphere.” In Rhetorics of Democracy in the Americas, edited by Adriana Angel, Nancy Gómez, and Michael L. Butterworth. Under contract with Pennsylvania State University Press. 
    • This chapter examines post-colonial American texts that presume and contest the idea that the Americas provide a particularly fertile ground for democracy, arguing that land isn’t just a metaphor for democracy but is, rather, a crucial site and element in democratic practice.
  2. Olson, Christa. “How Climate Change is and isn’t Fueling the U.S. Border Crisis: These Pictures aren’t that Simple.” Reading the Picture. April 29, 2019. 
  3. Olson, Christa (Guest Ed.). “The Visual Representation of the US/Mexico Border Wall in the Media.” Reading the Picture. December 6, 2018.
  4. Olson, Christa. “Slow Violence, Slow Photography: Chris Gregory’s Portrait of Puerto Rico after Maria.” Reading the Picture. December 2, 2018. 
  5. Olson, Christa. “American Magnitude: Frederic Church, Hiram Bingham, and Hemispheric Vision.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 48, no. 4 (2018). 
    • This article introduces the idea of “American magnitude,” a pattern of argument by which image makers in the United States lay claim to American grandeur and consequence throughout the hemisphere and position the United States as particularly American among Americans. It focuses on two specific image makers, the 19th century painter, Frederic Edwin Church, who visited Ecuador and Colombia in the 1850s and the early 20th century adventurer and academic, Hiram Bingham, frequently credited with the “discovery” of Machu Picchu.