With Laura Greenfield
This interactive seminar for students selected to work as peer mentors with Hampshire’s Transformative Speaking Program will provide an opportunity to help shape the work of a new discipline emerging at the intersections of education, politics, communications, philosophy, anthropology, and critical social thought: peer mentoring in speaking. Students will grapple with questions about the political function of peer mentoring as it relates to academic institutions and broader society-from assimilationist interpretations to revolutionary agendas-paying particular attention to the negotiation of power and difference (racial, cultural, gender, linguistic, etc.) in mentoring sessions. Students will explore related research and juxtapose competing arguments about what makes for powerful speaking and how it should best be taught, participate in a mentoring practicum, strengthen their own speaking skills, and form their own philosophies-in-progress in response. Students are expected to spend at least 6-8 hours per week on work outside of class, including reading, writing, speech preparation, and practicum activities.