Mara Lee Grayson

Background

About Mara Lee Grayson

Researcher and educator of rhetorics of racism and antisemitism in higher education. Award-winning author, scholar, and poet. Former tenured associate professor now working in nonprofit. Frequent guest speaker and consultant. See bio below. Mara Lee Grayson, Ph.D. is a writer, researcher, and educator specializing in rhetorics of antisemitism and racism in higher education. Grayson is the author or editor of five books, including Antisemitism and the White Supremacist Imaginary: Conflations and Contradictions in Composition and Rhetoric (Peter Lang, 2023) and Teaching Racial Literacy: Reflective Practices for Critical Writing (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). Her research has appeared in Modern Judaism, Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, College Composition and Communication, English Education, Journal of Literacy Research, and Pedagogy, among other publications, and has been featured on popular and academic podcasts. Her 2017 article “Race Talk in the Composition Classroom: Narrative Song Lyrics as Texts for Racial Literacy” was awarded the 2018 Mark Reynolds Teaching English in the Two-Year College Best Article Award, and she has received awards and grants for her work on racial literacy, trigger warnings, and media rhetoric from Columbia University, the California State University, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Grayson has also published creative work in Nimrod, Poetry Northwest, Fiction, Pedestal, and other literary journals; her poetry has been nominated for the Best of the Net and multiple Pushcart Prizes. She received the 2025 Poetry of Courage and Crisis Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. Grayson holds a PhD in English Education from Columbia University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. She was previously a tenured associate professor of English at California State University, Dominguez Hills, where she co-founded and directed the university writing center and taught courses in rhetoric, composition, the teaching of writing, and creative writing. She now works as the director of education for the Campus Climate Initiative at Hillel International. As an antisemitism educator and antiracism consultant, Grayson has designed and facilitated workshops for administrators, faculty, and students at academic institutions throughout North America and has led initiatives within multiple professional organizations to improve the experiences of marginalized students and educators.