Adina Arvatu was trained in literary studies and completed a PhD in philosophy at Monash University (Australia). Before joining the Writing Center at Nazarbayev University, she served as a Teaching Associate for courses in the humanities and social sciences at Monash University and the University of Western Ontario (Canada).

Adina’s main research interest lies in the pragmatic and rhetorical conditions of cultural criticism. Her PhD dissertation explores the methodological significance of the ‘archival turn’ in Western humanities and social sciences between the late 1970s and early 2000s. This turn roughly coincided with the rise of interdisciplinary research in the natural and social sciences. Her thesis shows that the wide appeal of the idea of ‘archive’ during this time—as distinct from the modern concept we normally use to designate an institution of collective memory such as the Archives Nationales in France—can be explained by the methodological efforts of thinkers like Michel Foucault, who sought to devise a logic of interdisciplinarity. These efforts were grounded in a rhetorical and pragmatic conception of what it means to ‘theorise’ about the social world. Adina is currently working on turning this body of research into a book.

Teaching

Adina has extensive experience teaching writing for majors in humanities and social sciences. She has also taught applied ethics, sociology, comparative literature, media and film studies.

1. Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasion (with Andrew Aberdein, Florida Institute of Technology). Glastonbury: Wooden Books, 2015.
2. Reprinted as Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasion (with Andrew Aberdein). New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.
3. Reprinted in Trivium: The Classical Liberal Arts of Grammar, Logic & Rhetoric. Ed. John Martineau. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. 233-291.
4. “Secret Passages, Memory Works: On Some Benjaminian Motifs in Matei Calinescu.” The Yearbook of Comparative Literature 59 (2015): 7-33.
5. “Spectres of Freud: The Figure of the Archive in Derrida and Foucault.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 44.4 (December 2011): 141-159.

Advanced Rhetoric and Composition, From Genre to Style and Back: Writing for PhD Students