Metropolitan State University of Denver

Dr Elizabeth Anne Kleinfeld

Personal Biography Statement

If you listen carefully, you’ll catch just a bit of my Long Island roots in the way I say “peanut butter” and “orange.” I grew up just a short walk from the beach in Northport, NY, and then moved to the Washington, D.C. metro area when I was 9, where I learned the proper way to use the word “y’all.” I moved to Illinois for college, earning a Bachelor’s degree in Latin American history from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, and Master’s and doctoral degrees in English Studies from Illinois State University.

After earning my Master’s, I moved to Denver on a whim and began teaching at the Community College of Aurora and Red Rocks Community College. I eventually joined the full-time faculty at Red Rocks Community College, where I taught until 2008, when I joined the MSU Denver faculty.

My hobbies include – of course – reading and writing. Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, e.e. cummings, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood, Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace, and Michael Chabon are some of my favorite authors. I also like to cook and bake. Desserts are my specialty (some might say obsession) – my family and friends like to play “stump the dessert chef” with me. Other hobbies include traveling (especially to Mayan ruins in Central America or any place with plentiful water); camping, rafting, and other outdoor pursuits; yoga, running, and working out; and lounging outside with smart companions and a tall glass of almost anything.

I live with my husband and daughter in Denver.

Current Projects

You can find information about my current projects here: http://elizabethkleinfeld.com/current-projects/.

Educational Biography

Ph.D. in English Studies. Emphasis: Composition. Illinois State University. 2006.

Dissertation: Dissonance and Excess: Four Students’ Experiences of Revision In a Composition Classroom. Using grounded theory methodology and teacher research, my dissertation studies four community college students’ experiences of revision in a composition classroom in which the primary work of the class is engaged reading and discussion of student-produced texts. I suggest that students may revise productively when they are taught to engage, rather than suppress, the conflict and dissonance that can arise when reader response is thoughtful and critical. I argue that an emphasis on revision as exploratory can encourage students to take responsibility for making decisions about their writing, and that an emphasis on peer response, rather than instructor response, helps students become less dependent on directive instructor response. Ultimately, I propose a pedagogy that recognizes and respects student experience rather than a pedagogy that calls itself student-centered but privileges the instructor’s experiences and response.

Directed by Janice Neuleib. Committee members: Bob Broad, Ron Fortune.

M.S. in English. Emphasis: Literature. Illinois State University. 1994.

B.S. in History. Emphasis: Latin American History. Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois. 1992.

Research Areas/Interests

academic rhetorics, authorship studies, composition pedagogy and theory, digital rhetorics, qualitative research methods, humor studies (particularly satire & parody), multigenre and multimodal composition, revision theory and practice, Writing Across the Curriculum, writing center theory and practice

Professional Affiliations

I am Secretary of the eLearning Consortium of Colorado and Treasurer of the Rocky Mountain Writing Center Association.

Selected Presentations

A list of recent presentations is here: http://elizabethkleinfeld.com/recent-presentations-and-workshops/.

Selected Publications

A list of recent publications is here: http://elizabethkleinfeld.com/recent-publications/.

Courses Taught

ENG-1010,ENG-1020,ENG-2500,ENG-3510,ENG-3670,ENG-382N,ENG-390A,ENG-3980
,ENG-4520

Office Hours

Tuesday - [02:00 to 03:00]
[08:30 to 09:30]
Thursday - [02:00 to 03:00]
[08:30 to 09:30]

Current Semester Schedule