Mara Lee Grayson, Ph.D.
Title: Associate Professor
Department: English
Email: mgrayson@csudh.edu
Phone: (310) 243-3942
Contact Preference: Email
Areas of Expertise
Racism and Antisemitism in Education, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education, Media Rhetorics, Rhetoric and Composition, Antiracist Faculty Professional Development, Poetry
Professional Background
Dr. Grayson is a researcher, writer, and consultant on rhetorics of racism, antisemitism, and whiteness in higher education, with emphases on faculty professional development and writing program administration. She is the author of the books Teaching Racial Literacy: Reflective Practices for Critical Writing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), Race Talk in the Age of the Trigger Warning: Recognizing and Challenging Classroom Cultures of Silence (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), and Antisemitism and the White Supremacist Imaginary: Conflations and Contradictions in Composition and Rhetoric (Peter Lang, 2023), as well as scholarship in College Composition and Communication, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Pedagogy, English Education, Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, JAEPL, Writing on the Edge, and other journals and edited collections. Her awards include the 2018 Mark Reynolds TETYC Best Article Award and a CCCC Emergent Researcher Grant.
Dr. Grayson speaks regularly at national and international conferences in education and writing studies and has worked with the Urban Scholars, Poetry Outreach, and Teaching Fellows organizations, as well as the professional organizations NCTE, CCCC, TYCA, and NJCEA. She has also consulted with numerous educational and nonprofit institutions about diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education.
Also a poet, Dr. Grayson has published work in such esteemed journals as Poetry Northwest, Nimrod, and Pedestal, among other journals, has been nominated for the Best of the Net, and twice has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She has been interviewed for various podcasts and radio programs, was formerly a columnist for the newspaper Show Business Weekly, and has been a regular guest on the renowned education blog Classroom Q&A. In addition to being available for media appearances, Dr. Grayson can be booked as a consultant by companies, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions in the Southern California area and across the United States.
Education
Ph.D., English Education, Columbia University
M.F.A., Creative Writing, The City College of New York
Related News Stories
Trigger Warnings, BBC, 2022
CSUDH Professor’s New Book Set to Trigger Conversations on Race, Trauma, CSUDH Campus News Center, 2020
Trigger Warnings in the Classroom, The Academic Minute, 2019
