Catherine Fairfield

Catherine Fairfield is a teacher-scholar with a PhD in English & Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan. Her passion is building inclusive and accessible classroom communities through Social Emotional Learning and collaborative and active learning methods. Whether a class is in-person or online, she believes that making writing social by prioritizing peer-to-peer connections during everyday learning can remove barriers to learning and teach students to communicate about challenging issues across their differences. Catherine empowers students to develop sustainable and intentional writing practices that they can use to shape their futures in a way that is responsible and responsive to emerging generative AI technologies.

At Northeastern University, Catherine teaches writing, pop culture studies, and literary studies. She has extensive experience teaching introductory, multilingual, and advanced writing in/across the disciplines, including writing for business and health professions students, and she has taught several pre-college programs for high school students. Her writing has been recognized by the Dorothy McGuigan Prize and Clarence D. Thorpe Dissertation Prize and published in ISLE and Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine. Her research interests include the scholarship of teaching and learning, life writing, feminist theory, and disability studies. She also teaches, researches, and gives lectures on Taylor Swift’s writing and career. She is always excited to connect with the university community (and beyond) over a shared love of Swift’s storytelling.