Laura Greenfield

Laura Greenfield (she/her) is a writing instructor and the interim learning specialist and tutorial services coordinator at the Jacobson Center and the Office of Disability Services.

Laura’s interdisciplinary teaching and scholarship critically examines the intersections of language, power, and education, with a particular focus on race and gender. She has taught courses in writing, public speaking, American literature, critical pedagogy, peer mentoring, social change theory, radical listening, sociolinguistics, and more.

Prior to coming to Smith, her most recent academic appointment was as a faculty associate of communication and education in the School of Critical Social Inquiry at Hampshire College, where she founded and directed the Transformative Speaking Program. Laura has also served as the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Women’s Voices Worldwide, Inc. and as the associate director of the Weissman Center for Leadership & the Liberal Arts at Mount Holyoke College where she brought its Speaking, Arguing, and Writing Program into international prominence.

Her first book, Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change (Utah State University Press, 2011) with Dr. Karen Rowan, and her second book, Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement (Utah State University Press, 2019) were awarded the 2012 and 2020 International Writing Centers Association’s Outstanding Book Awards. In 2018 she was honored by the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing with the Ron Maxwell Award for Distinguished Leadership.