Dr. Joel Goldfield is Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures (in French) at Fairfield University. He has served the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (DMLL) as the founding director of the Charles E. Culpeper Language Resource Center (1994-2008) and as Chair (2004-7).

A graduate of Dartmouth College, Brandeis University and the Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier III (Ph.D., 1986), Dr. Goldfield has published numerous articles and reviews on computer-assisted language learning and methods of computer-assisted literary research. A representative book chapter, “Computational Thematics…,” appears in Literary Computing and Literary Criticism: Theoretical and Practical Essays on Theme and Rhetoric (ed. R. G. Potter, U. Penn, 1989, pp. 97-122). He has also published annotated hypermedia short stories from 19th-century French literature. His research into the transforming role of technology in the profession appears in "Technology Trends in Faculty Development, Preprofessional Training, and the Support of Language and Literature Departments" in the MLA/ADFL's Chairing the Foreign Language and Literature Department, Part 2 (Spring 2001).

Prof. Goldfield currently teaches courses on French language/culture, French/English translation, French Commercial Culture, foreign language methodology and technology. In 2013 he implemented a new course to help introduce undergraduate students to the language teaching profession and to facilitate prospective teachers’ interweaving of methodology and technology: Second Language Teaching and Technology (MLL 289). He has also co-taught a New Media course for the University's Honors Program. Entitled "The Future of the Book," it presents a history of challenges faced by Western societies with the advent of new technologies and their resulting zigzag effects on civilization. Related research focuses on the digital humanities, particularly on corpus stylistics or on the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in language teaching.

Dr. Goldfield directs the Dept. of Modern Languages and Literatures’ Assistant Teacher/Oral Practice Session (AT/OPS) Program for several faculty members and their student assistants, many of whom have decided on a career in teaching as a result and received Fulbright teaching assistantships. Some of his research on the impact of the Rassias Method and Dartmouth Intensive Language Model on effectively raising oral proficiency levels appears in “From Study Abroad to the Rassias Method” in Breakthrough: Essays and Vignettes in Honor of John A. Rassias, ed. Mel B. Yoken (New York: Peter Lang) 2007, pp. 57-61. He conducts workshops and seminars on oral proficiency testing and the Rassias Method for Worldfund’s Inter-American Partnership in Education (IAPE) in Mexico and the U.S.

Professor Goldfield devotes a significant portion of his research time—at Fairfield and in workshops or program reviews for other educational institutions—to faculty development involving foreign language standards, assessment, methodology and integration of technology into the language and literature curriculum. He served as an associate principal investigator for the Critical Languages Eurasia Initiative funded by a grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education (2007-2010). He has also served as a reviewer on language and technology topics for the CALICO Journal and the Association for Computers and the Humanities, also serving as Assistant Editor for its journal from 1989-1994. With two other colleagues, he was a co-principal investigator for the International Studies/Language Technology Initiative funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Culpeper Foundation and the Archbold Charitable Trust (1999-2002). This unique project enabled both faculty and students from Modern Languages and the social sciences to collaborate on projects involving foreign languages across the curriculum and GIS. Further information can be found at http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jgoldfield/ISLT-Webpg0201.htm and at the GIS projects’ website. Dr. Goldfield is currently Managing Editor of The Ram's Horn, a peer-reviewed journal on experiential language learning published by The Rassias Center at Dartmouth College.