Margot Hennessy

Dr. C. Margot Hennessy became the Coordinator of the Multicultural and Ethnic Studies Program at Westfield State in 2002. Before coming to Westfield she taught at Clark University in English and Women’s Studies as well as the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has led the development of Ethnic Studies and Gender studies along with many colleagues to its present exciting state as a department with a proposed major. Her research is in African American and postcolonial literature, theory, history, and culture, with particular attention to the works of women of color in the U.S. and globally. She has also written and presented extensively on anti-oppressive pedagogies and the construction of whiteness. She is very interested in the current debate about interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary educational practices and is forever fascinated by the relationship between theory and practice. She has taught courses focusing on postcolonial literature and theory, whiteness studies, African American studies, Gay and Lesbian and Queer Studies, and the School to Prison Pipeline.