Dr. Carolin Aronis (she/her/היא) is a scholar of critical media studies and antisemitism. Her work uses interdisciplinary methodologies to focus on technology, rhetoric, identity, and memory. She studies systems of hate, violence, and exclusion, usually related to race, ethnicity, and gender, as well as the phenomenology of media/communication within challenging or impossible settings. Many of her research projects combine “touched” matters and built environments with the textual and the symbolic. Her sites of study and points of view are often unique/uncommon in the fields she studies. These allow her to reveal elemental essences of phenomena otherwise left hidden.

As a biracial Jewish woman, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, immigrant, first-generation graduate, a third-generation Holocaust survivor, and an Ethnic Studies faculty, Dr. Aronis is committed to responsible justice for those oppressed and othered. She strongly believes in scholarly and social justice coalitional work. Her research, community engagement, and teaching reside within systems of oppression, mostly in the U.S., using interdisciplinary methodologies and developing discourses across cultures, religions, and struggles, often in collaboration with others.

Dr. Aronis's research on contemporary antisemitism and anti-Black racism, the exclusionary reconstruction of Jewish motherhood, the politics of liminal architecture, and the communicative practice of writing to the dead via public media has appeared in journals like Quarterly Journal of Speech, Cultural Studies, Journal of Communication, Discourse & Communication, Israel Studies,  Explorations in Media Ecology, ETC: A Review of General Semantics, ALCEU: Revista de Comunicação, Cultura e Política, and soon in Howard Journal of Communications (see a full list of publications below), and has been translated to Portuguese, Hebrew, and soon to Spanish.

Dr. Aronis’ current research projects include the violence of swastikas and nooses on U.S. campuses (with Dr. Eric Aoki); the manifestations of racism in the 170-year journey of Sojourner Truth’s speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?,” from print to YouTube (with Dr. Natasha Shrikant and Dr. Tori Arthur); the establishment of Jewish memory and Holocaust remembering by non-Jews; and the rhetorical (dis)positioning of antisemitism within the discourse on race and racism. She is also working on a monograph that theorizes urban liminal architecture (windows, balconies, doors, etc.) through media theory and decolonial lens, where marginalized and racialized communities enact their in-between identities and sense of belonging. Her work has been recognized by the National Communication Association, the International Communication Association, and the Western States Communication Association with Top Paper Awards and honors.

Before joining the Race, Gender, and Ethnic Studies Department, and since 2017, Dr. Aronis had taught extensively at Colorado State University and the University of Colorado Boulder in Communication Studies. Among others, she taught 'Visual Communication', 'Gender & Communication', 'Discourse, Culture, and Identities', and 'Communication, Technology, and Society'. From 2019 to 2021, she held a postdoctoral position in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Since 2018, she has been actively addressing the situation of the Jewish community on the CSU campus. In 2019, she wrote an action plan for tackling campus Antisemitism, which the university administration has followed. In the summer of 2020, she was appointed the university's Special Advisor on the Prevention of Antisemitism as well as the Co-Chair of the Presidential Task Force on Jewish Inclusion and the Prevention of Antisemitism, which later delivered its recommendations and transitioned into an Advisory Council for Jewish Inclusion under the University’s DEI office, the Office of Inclusive Excellence. With Dr. Mica Glantz, Dr. Aronis co-chaired this Council for three years, and in the Fall of 2024, they transitioned the leadership to new co-chairs, which she still supports. Currently, Dr. Aronis works with Dr. Peter Erickson on developing a Jewish Studies program at the university. Throughout the last several years, she has given workshops and counseled administrators at other universities on addressing antisemitism as well as an international German leaders' delegation visiting the U.S. State Department. In 2023, she contributed to the U.S. Department of Education’s Antisemitism Awareness Campaign of the Biden-Harris administration, creating national policy recommendations.

Dr. Aronis continuously works on establishing spaces for dialogue and listening across cultures, including a reading group and a special issue. She has co-organized outside speakers about Jews of color, Muslims and Arabs in media, a grassroots initiative of Israelis and Palestinians, and (scheduled) a Mizrachi poet. Between 2018 and 2021, she served on the Media Ecology Association executive board, where she was in charge of all communication and media outlets and led strategic planning and efforts on behalf of the association and field. She holds a PhD in Media and Communication Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2015) and worked in Israel as a lecturer at three academic institutions, journalist, and biographer for Holocaust survivors.

Teaching: Dr. Aronis currently teaches the courses 'Ethnicity and the Media' (ETST 205), 'Introduction to Ethnic Studies' (ETST 100), 'Antisemitism Uncovered: From Rhetoric to Violence' (ETST 257), and 'Technology, Race, and Gender' (ETST 492).