Karlissa is Karma Waltonen and Melissa Bender.
Karlissa* met in Spring of 2000, when they were both invited to come to UC Davis to do their PhDs. After deciding that Davis was the place for them, they drove around Davis looking for “the bad side” of town. There wasn’t one. From far away, they arranged to move into the same apartment complex, started their grad classes, and began a deep and enduring friendship over wine on a balcony overlooking the train tracks.
After completing their degrees, they both decided to stay in Davis, where they teach in the University Writing Program. They also teach freshman seminars and for study abroad.
In addition to teaching, they share interests in writing about popular culture, seeing plays, traveling, trying new food and cocktails, and taking on way more projects than they’ll ever be able to finish. They do much of this together.
Professionally (to give papers at conferences), Karlissa has traveled to four continents–Australia, North America, South America, and Europe–their favorite countries (so far) are Britain, Spain, and Iceland.**
Karlissa has also published Twenty Writing Assignments in Context and is finishing a textbook on evaluating sources.
If you’re here, you’ve reached Karlissa’s blog on museums and monuments, which comes out of a fascination with how we tell the stories of ourselves–our victories and defeats, our high and low art, our fabulous and mundane–our history and our now.
*Karlissa is the name when things are going well. When in a three hour line to try to get out of the Barcelona airport with no staff in sight on a cripplingly hot day, we are Melma.
**Bonus: Karlissa’s Travel Tips:
- Travel with someone who pees at the same rate as you. Karlissa has to pee a lot.
- Travel with someone who is so fun to be around that you don’t mind when things go terribly wrong–someone flexible enough to say, “let’s rent a car and take the tour ourselves” when you realize you have missed the hell out of that tour bus.
- When in doubt, go with Sauvignon Blanc or Verdejo.