Alana Felton

Alana Felton is assistant director of college writing at Pomona College, where she oversees the Center for Speaking, Writing, and Information Media (CSWIM) and supports the College’s students through writing and communication instruction.

Her interdisciplinary research explores how digital technologies shape political imagination, resistance and communication practices. Her current book project, Futurecraft: Technologies of Belarusian Resistance, examines how oppositional actors—IT workers, activists, artists and hackers—use digital tools to organize dissent and envision alternative political futures under authoritarian rule. Drawing on cultural texts such as Telegram posts, mobile apps and underground zines, her work introduces the concept of “futurecraft” to describe how speculative aesthetics and digital infrastructures function as forms of world-making. This research has been supported by a Fulbright Schuman European Union Research Grant (2024–25). Her future research will examine the intersection of AI, IT culture and political expression in East Europe and Russia, as well as connections between technology, religious expression and power in post-socialist contexts.

Alana’s commitment to understanding how technology mediates human expression extends to her pedagogical work in writing studies, where she researches the implications of generative AI for writing instruction and writing processes more generally.

Alana holds a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literatures from Yale University, where she served as the first graduate assistant director of the Yale College Writing Center, as a graduate fellow at the Graduate Writing Lab, and as a graduate assistant in the Fellowships Office.