Connie Griffin

Ph.D., UMass Amherst

Connie Griffin is a senior lecturer and honors program coordinator for UMass Amherst's University Without Walls, and she teaches our Honors Project Seminar. 

Connie Griffin has committed her career to the exploration of self, story and society. She is particularly devoted to mentoring the process of creative self-expression, cross-cultural understandings and narrative self-representation. 

Prior to joining UWW, Connie taught for many years in Boston College's Creative Nonfiction Writing Program, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, the Capstone Reflection Program and the Woods College of Advancing Studies. She has also taught in Curry College's Blue Hills Writing Institute, as well as more recently on the faculty of Commonwealth Honors College.

She came to UWW with a particular interest in teaching and advising adult learners, as she was a nontraditional student herself, beginning her academic studies at Tulsa Junior College and transferring those credits to the University of Tulsa, where she supported her studies by working full-time as a college administrator in the University Relations Department until receiving a full scholarship her senior year. At that point she spent one semester in a college dorm, just to have the undergraduate experience. Connie says one semester was sufficient to provide all she needed to know about that.

Connie’s teaching and research interests include autobiographical, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies. Her research explores representations of marginalized identities within multicultural contexts and the tension that exists between self and social representations of cultural identities. She is interested in storytelling in its many forms and in the role of narrative in furthering self-understanding, cultural literacy and cross-cultural dialogue in a globalized world.