Laura Greenfield is the founding director of the Transformative Speaking Program and a faculty associate in communication and education in the School of Critical Social Inquiry. She earned her B.A. in English from Washington University in St. Louis and her Ph.D. in English from the George Washington University, where her scholarship focused on anti-oppression education and language diversity.
Her research and teaching interests include speaking and writing program administration, with a particular focus on social justice frameworks; critical pedagogy and anti-oppression education, with a particular focus on race and gender; public speaking, composition, and rhetoric; sociolinguistics, with a particular focus on ESOL and racially stigmatized language use in the United States; and contemporary multicultural American literatures, with a particular focus on “hybrid” or borderland identities.
She has taught public speaking, writing, American literature, English language, and peer mentoring theory through these various lenses to students spanning elementary school through college and professional levels. At Hampshire, she teaches introductory public speaking courses and a theory and practice course for students preparing to work as peer speaking mentors with the Transformative Speaking Program.
Her recent book Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change(Utah State University Press, 2011), with Dr. Karen Rowan, was the winner of the International Writing Centers Association Outstanding Book Award in 2012. She is currently working on her second book, titled A College Women’s Guide to Powerful Speaking: How to Transform Yourself and the World One Word at a Time. Dr. Greenfield also frequently collaborates with her students on producing scholarship, including conference presentations and articles. She is currently writing a co-authored essay with two Hampshire students addressing opportunities for speaking and writing programs to facilitate transformative change within global systems of gender-based violence.
Working for over a decade as a leader in speaking and writing centers, she most recently served as the associate director of the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts at Mount Holyoke College, where she brought its Speaking, Arguing, and Writing Program into international prominence.
Dr. Greenfield took her vision for empowered communication to the global stage in 2012 when she founded Women’s Voices Worldwide, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting social justice around the globe by educating women and girls to be powerful speakers in all areas of personal, academic, professional, and civic life, regardless of financial means. She continues to direct this organization outside of her work at Hampshire. (www.womensvoicesworldwide.org)
Dr. Greenfield has served on the board of directors of regional and national writing center organizations, and as chair or co-chair of national and international writing center conferences. From Massachusetts to Saudi Arabia, she has provided consultation for institutions of higher education around the world seeking guidance in establishing their own speaking and writing programs.
She is thrilled have joined the Hampshire College community to realize a vision of making speaking a hallmark of a Hampshire education.
