Laura A. Greenfield

Coordinator of the Speaking, Arguing, and Writing Program Associate Director of the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts Lecturer in English

Specialization
Writing center studies; critical pedagogy; socio-linguistics; race studies; 20th-century and contemporary American multicultural literature; composition/rhetoric 

Laura Greenfield, coordinator of the SAW program and lecturer in English, earned her bachelor's degree in English from Washington University in St. Louis, and her Ph.D. in English from The George Washington University in DC. Her doctoral dissertation, “Towards a Revolutionary Praxis: The Ethics of Teaching Standardized English,” was devised as a result of her explorations of the relationships among language, identity,and citizenship in the interdisciplinary fields of American literature, composition studies, and writing center studies.

After studying 20th-century and contemporary American minoritized and immigrant writers whose fiction and memoires explore how assimilation and identity-formation is deeply affected by language use, Greenfield became concerned with the pedagogical implications for teaching (standardized) English raised by these texts. Recognizing that language discrimination is intimately linked with other form of systemic discrimination (namely, racism), her dissertation, in response, argues for ways in which educators in writing classrooms and writing centers can participate in reflective practices to eradicate systemic language discrimination in the United States. Greenfield received a Bedford/St. Martin's Press Award for Scholarship from the University of Michigan for work based on this research.

Greenfield's current scholarship focuses on institutionalized racism within the education system. Her most recent projects include an article on “Racism in the Discourses of Writing Studies: A Rhetorical Analysis”; a co-edited book collection, The Other Sides of Silence: Negotiating Race in Writing Center Discourse and Practice; a book based on her dissertation; and a postcolonial critique and research project on writing center missions in the U.S. context.

Greenfield is a member of the International Writing Centers Association, a board member of the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, the Massachusetts state representative for the North East Writing Centers Association, and a reviewer for the longest-running academic journal for writing center studies, The Writing Lab Newsletter. She has published pieces on topics including productive questioning strategies in writing tutorials as well transferable methodologies between writing center tutoring and classroom-based teaching. Greenfield regularly presents her work at regional, national, and international conferences, including the International Writing Centers Association Conference, The European Writing Centers Association Conference, The National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, The National Council of Teachers of English Conference, The Conference on College Composition and Communication, The Thomas R. Watson Conference on Composition and Rhetoric, and the College English Association Caribbean Chapter conference. Greenfield looks forward to bringing Mount Holyoke and the SAW program further into the national spotlight by serving as the host of the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing in fall 2009.

Greenfield teaches courses in Peer Mentoring: Theory and Practice, Advanced Peer Mentoring: Research and Publication on Mentoring ESOL Students, and First Year Seminars in English. Her most recent First-Year Seminar was titled “I Am My Language: Exploring Language Diversity in Contemporary America.” Prior to joining the faculty at MHC, Greenfield taught courses in pre-college writing, first year writing, intermediate expository writing, advanced writing, and American literature at The George Washington University for high school- through graduate-level students. The themes for her courses often focused on constructions of American identities, rhetoric and audience negotiation, and linguistic diversity. Greenfield has also taught middle school and high school creative writing and English as a Second Language at the Hawaii Preparatory Academy in Kamuela, HI.

An enthusiast of peer mentoring and collaborative learning, Greenfield worked as an undergraduate peer tutor at the Washington University Writing Center, as a graduate student tutor and later Assistant Director of The George Washington University Writing Center, and as a Coordinator of an on-line writing tutoring program between graduate student tutors and non-traditional students at The George Washington University. Having joined the MHC community in 2007 as the Coordinator of the Speaking, Arguing, and Writing Program, Greenfield works with undergraduates and faculty to provide collaborative learning opportunities that empower students as leaders through their development as speakers and writers.

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