Joelle Renstrom

Lecturer of Rhetoric, College of General Studies

Joelle Renstrom is a Senior Lecturer of Rhetoric at BU’s College of General Studies and a writing instructor in BU’s College of Arts & Sciences Writing Program.

She writes intersectional essays that explore travel, writing, literature, teaching, and science and technology. In her 2015 collection of essays, Closing the Book: Travels in Life, Loss, and Literature, each chapter’s narrative arc is formed and informed by the act of reading literature that seems specifically written for the exact moment and place in which it is read. She is the recipient of two Somerville Arts Council fellowships, a Solas travel writing award, and a fellowship from the Writers’ Room of Boston. She has also spoken at local events such as Boston’s HUBweek, and in multiple WGBU radio programs like “BostonTalks: Robots” and Great American Read PBS Facebook Live.

Joelle’s work often explores the effects of technology on humans’ perceptions of and experiences in the world and her science writing considers the future as a place, inhabited perhaps by humans and perhaps by something else. She maintains an award-winning blog, Could This Happen, about the relationship between science and science fiction. She’s the robot columnist at the Daily Beast, a frequent contributor to Slate, and a contributing writer for Panorama, the Journal of Intelligent Travel. Her other work has appeared in The Guardian, Cognoscenti, LitHub, Guernica, and others.

Joelle teaches writing and research at Boston University, and her classes focus on science fiction, space, and artificial intelligence.