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Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Laura Krystal Porterfield on engaging with difficult conversations as opportunities for growth.

Updated: 8 hours ago

Laura K. Porterfield, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Urban Education at Rutgers University-Newark. Her research attends to the intersection(s) of visuality, affect, and social life, particularly for, by and about Black women and girls. Her scholarship (see below) focuses on how youth learn about human difference from visual texts and everyday spaces, along with how notions of affect and visuality impact diversity, equity, and inclusion endeavors in K-16 spaces.


“I think of what I do in the classroom as an extension of my research insomuch that it allows me to model the kinds of thinking and intellectual curiosity that keep me engaged in my scholarship.”
“I think of what I do in the classroom as an extension of my research insomuch that it allows me to model the kinds of thinking and intellectual curiosity that keep me engaged in my scholarship.”

How does your research, scholarship or professional experience inspire your teaching? 

I often think about teaching-about-teaching as the ultimate meta exercise. As a critical race feminist and education scholar, I find that there is no neat separation between my research, scholarship, or professional endeavors and my classroom practices. In fact, I think of what I do in the classroom as an extension of my research insomuch that it allows me to model the kinds of thinking and intellectual curiosity that keep me engaged in my scholarship. 


What is one innovative or unique teaching practice you’d like to share? 

A few of my colleagues and myself developed a definition for and set of guidelines on engaging racial discomfort in 2017 that I still use in all of my classes to structure our conversations around race and other social construct students often find difficult to openly discuss. Over the last eight years, I’ve found it incredibly helpful to engage in discussing a variety of topics and their intersections with the politics of race and education, from elections, to the passage of anti-DEIJ legislation, and to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The definition of racial discomfort, along with the 11 Guidelines for Engaging in Civil Discourse and Racial Discomfort, give both me and my students a place to start and return to as we name and process what is happening outside of the classroom inside of it.

Note: See the archival materials for Dr. Porterfield’s workshop “Leaning Into Discomfort through Civil Discourse Workshop” (From October 15th, 2025) on the P3’s Canvas Site.


How does this work advance the university's mission as a publicly engaged anchor institution?  

Given that our students and communities rarely have the opportunity to deeply engage with one another – across diverse thought traditions, cultural backgrounds, and religious beliefs – using our classrooms as laboratories for this kind of engagement with discomfort increases our potential for impact tenfold. I am struck by the urgency of collaborating with others and designing impactful learning opportunities around engaging discomfort and across difference given the current national and global political climate. We can enact our commitment to deliberately fostering “dialogues across difference” – without necessarily achieving consensus or resolving those differences – by demystifying the how and building a methodological framework using the 11 guidelines, designing opportunities for using, experimenting, and revising these guidelines ad nauseam. 


Also from or about Laura:


Reader Bonus! Laura’s Favorite Books About Pedagogy, Afrofuturism (my first literary love), visuality, and photography:


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