ABOUT CK

Corina Kesler was born, raised, and educated in Romania where she lived till 1994. She received training as a dental technician, horticulturist, foreign language specialist, and fashion designer. After moving to United States in 1994, she got her AA with honors in Fashion Design, Fashion Merchandising and Personal Image Consultant from Fullerton College in 1999, and her BA with honors in Comparative Literature and English from California State University, Fullerton in 2002.

Since 2003 she is pursuing a Phd in Comparative Literature at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her present utopian interests have been shaped by her growing up in a communist country self-declared "utopian," and from spending extended time in a Romanian Orthodox monastery. Her dissertation project's premise is that the utopian impulse has disguised itself in late forming nations of the world and that in these cases, the utopian impulse took mystical, mythological and temporal form much more often than in the case of the canonical tradition that favors rational constructs, dialectical approaches and spatial forms. To test her hypothesis Corina has read extensively on various utopian traditions, participated actively in national and international utopian conferences, visited and volunteered at several international utopian projects in England, Romania and Israel.

She loves teaching and seeing her students excel, acquiring new critical skills and then applying them in the real world. Her students from "Great Books" and "Build Your Own Utopia" have participated in prestigious national and international summer programs and are continuing the tradition started in class. Corina believes in the applicability of utopian theoretical knowledge in initiating everyday changes and encourages all her students to learn constantly, courageously travel, and volunteer generously.

In her spare time, Corina reads, works on her novel,takes Bikram Yoga, Argentinean Tango, and self-defense/kick boxing classes, paints murals and volunteers with her dog Yuki at local hospitals and nursing homes. In the near future, she wants to visit the Federation of Damanhur, an utopian project in Italy, and to learn how to build her "green" house.