Naomi Greyser is associate professor of American Studies, English and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa, as well as executive director of POROI, Iowa’s Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry.  Greyser examines the emotional dimensions of human expression – in popular culture, art, language and daily life – with a focus on people’s experiences of intimacy and belonging in North America. She also likes to think about what it feels like to write and conduct research, how information travels, and the emotional dimensions of knowledge and creativity.

Her research and teaching specializations include

• the rhetorical arts
• affect and emotion
• American literatures and cultures
• cultural geography
• critical race and gender studies
• knowledge cultures and university studies

On Sympathetic Grounds: Race, Gender, and Affective Geographies in Nineteenth-Century North America, Greyser’s first book, came out at Oxford University Press in 2017. Her research has also appeared, among other places, in American Quarterly, Feminist Studies, American Literature and MELUS (Multiethnic Literatures in the U.S.).

As part of a second book project, Greyser also works as a head writing coach at the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, where she supports especially under-represented faculty with writing, research and work-life balance. In Writing Through Writer’s Block, she argues that heightened efficiency culture and productivity imperatives at the American university are foreclosing knowledge as they increasingly block scholars’ writing and thinking. Writing Through Writer’s Block unwinds this paradox of productivity, mapping unjust distributions of block and flow across the raced, classed and gendered terrain of the settler academy.

Undergraduate Courses:

• sex & popular culture in America
• diversity & power: examining gender, race, and class in America
• love and romance in America
• chick lit in America

Graduate Courses:

• writing for learned journals
• foundations in feminist inquiry

In the classroom, Greyser strives to cultivate learning communities that are both pleasurable and challenging, where students learn fresh ways to think about the art, power and limits of representation as well as about gender, race, class and nation. Students are always welcome to visit her office hours to talk about course material and their interests and aims at the university and beyond.