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https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/5504d1ab0fea08172dd610c41e24b1c4.mp3
ee9a5337a1bdc2dd49dfbc231660dfd7
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Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews
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LGBT population; Alumni and alumnae; Oral history; Women's studies; Feminism and higher education; Homophobia in higher education; Gays in higher education
Description
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This collection contains oral histories of alumni and faculty who are/were involved with the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the College of Wooster. Interviewees include alumni of the program, faculty, former faculty, invited speakers.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
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Unpublished
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Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Sound
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Interviewee
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Johnson, Hans
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College of Wooster Digital Studio
Transcription
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<p><strong>Hans Johnson Interview</strong></p>
<p><strong>Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and Hans Johnson for clarity</strong></p>
<p>[00:00:00] MHR: Alright. So I'm here with Hans Johnson. It is May 15th. Hi Hans. </p>
<p>[00:00:07] HJ: Hi Matt. </p>
<p>[00:00:08] MHR: All Right so I guess to begin just can you tell us where you're from and why did you choose to go to College of Wooster. </p>
<p>[00:00:15] HJ: I'm Hans Johnson. I am a 1992 graduate of the college. I'm originally from Kalamazoo Michigan. Technically between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, a rural area between those two southern Michigan cities. I now live in Los Angeles California and I am very glad to be back at campus in part for the retirement of a good friend of mine and a longstanding leader in the WGSS Program and in Women's Studies, its predecessor, and some ways its progenitor, Nancy Grace who retired this week from the college after 31 years. I am also a non-major in the Program. I minored in the Program just after the major had been instituted in 1989 I believe on its 10th anniversary. So I was a very engaged minor in the Program and actually served on the Women's Studies curriculum committee in the 1990 to 91 year. I decided to become a Women's Studies minor and I became very attached to the Program in part because of the level of scholarship that I felt from many of the leaders of the Women's Studies Program in that period, and also because of the magnetism of political involvement that was associated with feminism in that period. In 1989 the period when I was awakening both politically and intellectually I had come to the college with what I think almost a full years credit based on AP courses from my high school days.</p>
<p>[00:02:20] And I had a little bit of flexibility as a result of that and because of the college scholarship that I was lucky to receive. The college began its college scholarship Program I think shortly before my senior year, and it was a wonderful incentive that actually offered full tuition scholarship for college scholars. I took the exam. I remember doing an interview during my college visit here back in the fall of 87 and I was struck by the relaxed and welcoming environment of a campus. That was a big draw to me. And then when I learned that I had earned the college scholarship it was a very important incentive for coming here. I think to be honest I had a very fleeting sense of my own sexuality when I was a senior in high school and something about the removal of parental authority over the purse strings of my college education resonated, I think, very deeply with me. And it was a major criterion in my deciding to come to Wooster that I had my tuition paid for and that my parents' responsibilities and my parents' imprimatur over the direction of my studies, and over the continuation of my studies, was that much lessened. That all being said I was the fourth of four kids. I had followed my brothers and sisters through their own college searches and had gleaned a great deal of subtle signals about what kind of campuses I liked and also about the parental-child interactions that go along with financing of liberal arts educations. And mind you, this was in 1988 when the costs of a Wooster education were approximately a third to a half of what tuition runs today. </p>
<p>[00:04:39] But in any case I came to Wooster in part because of the college scholarship Program and I became involved in Women's Studies in the course of the 1989 academic school year. Much more intensely during that my sophomore year and decided by that point accruing so many course credits that I would minor in the area.</p>
<p>[00:05:06] MHR: Awesome, so you were talking about how you chose to become a student in the WGSS minor, what drew you to that area of study?</p>
<p>[00:05:17] HJ: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster_v._Reproductive_Health_Services" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Well in the spring of 1989 the Supreme Court came down with the Webster ruling around abortion rights which essentially threw the question of reproductive health access back to state level government</a>. It was a significant erosion of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Roe v. Wade</a> and it awakened a wave of feminist activism throughout the country that was quite palpable including here in Ohio. And the invitation, the not so subtle invitation from majority Supreme Court for state lawmakers to reengage in increasingly onerous restrictions on abortion rights, awakened not just students here but also faculty. And given my emerging sensibility about autonomy, about authority, about the dimensions of control that government could exert, and stigma that was quite palpable upon even men involved in feminism that I was already quite aware of but also certainly coming to reckon with firsthand in my interaction with fellow students with people who had seen me in my first iteration in as incoming first year and who saw a transformation starting to occur. It was very significant.</p>
<p>[00:06:52] I became very involved in women's rights activism which created a peer group of very welcoming women friends and also put me in touch with women faculty active in the Women's Studies Program at the time and I was also increasingly involved as a teaching assistant starting I think immediately my sophomore year. So, that combination of activities of academic involvement and being involved in the advising of incoming first years and the responsibilities and subtleties of those relationships of mentorship of peer grading, of supporting faculty, and being initiated into some of those faculty relationships that T.A.s are regularly can be invited into, along with student activism. Organizing marches to both Washington D.C. and to Columbus where a very large rally for abortion rights happened in October of 1989. That started to give me experience both in organizing and in the practical dimensions of feminist scholarship that I was increasingly gravitating towards. So those were some of the reasons. That cauldron of activism in 1989 and into 1990 really shaped my determination to be a Women's Studies minor and to be very active in the WGSS Program. Such that by that fall my junior year upon my return from Spain, where I went as a second semester sophomore, I was able to really burrow in as a member of the Women's Studies curriculum committee and start to learn from the inside some of the deliberation and strategy about the course composition and content and also to deepen my relationships with faculty members during that period. </p>
<p>[00:09:02] MHR: Yeah, that's really interesting to hear about, like, all the activism going on during that time because this year we actually had a whole bunch of activism stuff happening on campus. </p>
<p>[00:09:12] HJ: Like what?</p>
<p>[00:09:13] MHR: Wooster, the town, had a <a href="http://www.the-daily-record.com/news/20170119/wooster-women-rally-locally-and-in-other-cities-paralleling-womens-march-in-washington-dc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Women's March</a> this year. And so a lot of students were involved with that. And then there was, we called it the "<a href="http://thewoostervoice.spaces.wooster.edu/2018/02/02/campus-climate-motivates-student-leaders-to-organize-sit-in-protest/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Galpin Call-In</a>" this year. </p>
<p>[00:09:24] HJ: Right, right. In which you participated in both? </p>
<p>[00:09:27] MHR: Yes I did.</p>
<p>[00:09:28] HJ: Good for you.</p>
<p>[00:09:28] MHR: I went to the Women's March and I sat in on, sat in Galpin.</p>
<p>[00:09:32] HJ: Good. </p>
<p>[00:10:12] MHR: It was very cool, yeah. So, on that note, you were talking about how during that time there was a bunch if activism going on. So, what was the climate like on campus? In general was there that same sense of organizing?</p>
<p>[00:10:13] HJ: It was a very, very tumultuous time on campus for a series of other factors. One of which was a pattern of racial racist attacks that occurred on campus. Another was the onset of a pattern and a wave of sexual assaults that caught the attention of students and drew attention to the threadbare policies of the college with regard to sexual harassment and sexual assault. The combination of those two dynamics and of firsthand experiences by a number of students with the impotence of the college disciplinary process and of the college communications process which many found wanting, helped catalyze protests among students aimed at administration. At the same time as we were going through some large scale political awakenings to the perils of the Bush administration at the federal level including the attempt to roll back abortion rights. Also, into that mix throw the rise of a form of LGBT politics which was increasingly feisty and in your face around the AIDS crisis which was a very intense tarp if you will over gay identity and LGBT politics at the time. Two movements in which I was tangentially involved,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_UP" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> ACT UP</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_Nation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Queer Nation</a> direct action protest groups of the late 80s and early 90s, had a presence in Ohio and also was a was an outlet for much more confrontational activism than the mere kind of lobbying activity and reform oriented politics that I was starting to develop skills in through feminism.</p>
<p>[00:12:07] So the combination of on campus activism around injustices and injuries that colleagues or classmates of mine and those a year or two older were experiencing in the context of an awakening of progressive activism, principally around gender and sexuality, in American politics at that point, were, set the stage for<a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1209&context=voice1981-1990" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> the take over of Galpin Hall in the spring of 1989</a> at a point when I was not yet a student leader in my own right, it was the spring of my first year. And some of the residue from that takeover which had some very concrete demands around protection of student health and safety and respect for diversity on campus did have much resonance throughout the ensuing years. And that spirit of defiance and of multidisciplinary work of coalition building among students that led to and helped, I think, bear fruit in the Galpin take over of the spring of 1989 did carry over into subsequent years of student activism. And I was very much a disciple of that form of coalition politics. I was a <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1241&context=voice1981-1990" target="_blank" rel="noopener">viewpoints</a> editor at <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1242&context=voice1981-1990" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Voice</a> at the time. I was in a position to both <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1239&context=voice1981-1990" target="_blank" rel="noopener">write about</a>, bring in voices to write about, and then do a coming out section of the voice in, I think 1990, that in which I participated myself in the fall of 1990 right National Coming Out Day. So, that was… there were many on ramps into activism but there was a particular welcoming to multipronged organizing and coalition politics. </p>
<p>[00:14:23] From my standpoint that ended up expressing itself through bringing speakers to campus and starting to amass different budget lines through which I could cobble together 100 250 maybe 500 dollars from a budget line to bring a speaker, like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/18/us/disabled-woman-s-care-given-to-lesbian-partner.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Karen Thompson</a> the author of a groundbreaking book about disability rights and lesbian partnership recognition and the plight of same sex partners trying to seek recognition of our spousal relationships in 1990 after her partner was injured in an automobile accident in Minnesota I believe. Karen was teaching there, we brought her to campus, she did a teaching based on I believe six or seven different budget lines, I think I cobbled together including a P.E. contribution because of her service in that area in her professorship in Minnesota. But that was the kind of concrete way in which I was bringing in some of the lessons and inspiration of coalition politics that I was feeling in political work and in organizing work around LGBT rights and women's rights into curricular work. And, I think the lessons of WGSS at the time was one of high quality scholarship that could bear fruit in social and cultural change, to quote the words of Joanne Frye who was a mentor and a significant influence on my time at Wooster, but which one did not see itself as training activists or encouraging political activism. They did not do that. They did not discourage it, but they did not see that as their mission. Their mission was scholarship, but yet the invitations to extracurricular activism were ones that I found very ripe and put them to use through things like bringing speakers to campus and trying to share some of those voices as a columnist in <em>The Blade</em>. Er, in <em>The Blade</em>, <em>The Voice</em>.</p>
<p>[00:16:37] MHR: <em>The Voice</em>. Wow, Yeah. No that sounds like, that sounds like an exciting time on campus too, yeah?</p>
<p>[00:16:47] MHR: Indeed it was. It was a period where it was also very raw to be either to be gay or lesbian or to be and certainly to be out. I did have an experience of that time that was very, I would say searing. In the fall of 1990, shortly after I had helped write the coming out day composite for <em>The Voice</em>. That was the period in which the hate crimes, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_Crime_Statistics_Act" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Federal Hate Crime Statistics Act</a>, was being debated in the Senate and was also a period when there was a vicious antigay crackdown on national endowment for the arts funding, and there was also, in Ohio, a very high profile case involving the photography of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Robert Mapplethorpe</a> and his exhibit “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perfect_Moment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Perfect Moment</a>” which was shown in Cincinnati at the Contemporary Arts Center. And the director of the Center, Dennis Barrie, was brought up on charges of obscenity in Cincinnati which of course had a symbolic role as both the center of anti-pornography activism and the center of anti-abortion activism throughout the 1980s. So this case that crystallized in 1990 was also part of a backdrop to a backlash to the emergence and the presence of LGBT people in Ohio and in American culture. That trial I think lasted throughout the late fall of 1990 around that period. I was walking from my dorm, which I think was Wagner at the time, [00:18:41] down to this library where we record this interview today to make photocopies of a letter that I was sending to Ohio's then two Democratic senators, John Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum, in favor of passing the hate crime statistics act which would have been, and ultimately did become, the first federal legislation to recognize gay people as victims of hate attacks not coincidentally. And even that was a mighty struggle. But what happened while I was on my way walking down Beall Avenue was I was harassed by a car-load, truck-load, of local passersby who shouted epithets at me and threw some objects at me from the vehicle as I was walking down the western side of Beall Avenue coming down to the library to make photocopies of these letters to send off. And it turned out that at least one of them was a quarter which I actually found as it bounced off the sidewalk into the grass, I located it, and brought it with me and I will never forget the, the anger and the, the sense of wrong and how raw it was. In that moment to be able to write a post-it note to senators Metzenbaum and Glenn and say, “the coin with which I am making the copy of this letter to send you about the Federal Hate Crime Statistics Act was made with money thrown at me like a weapon as I went to go make that copy here in small town Ohio.” It was a very dramatic moment but it also dramatized the lack of protections that we felt. And I think the rawness of experience of homophobia and the vulnerability to some of its most vicious and even violent manifestations here in, here on campus. So that was a, in some ways, a defining moment for my early activism around LGBT rights, but I'm grateful for both the fact that Dennis Barrie was ultimately acquitted, in almost a miraculous ruling. Some of us cheered and actually had a hall party. </p>
<p>[00:21:13] I remember I think I threw a hall party in my room in Wagner that fall of 1990 when the verdict came down. I put a big banner on my door. I don't know if people still do this, but I had a big roll of newsprint and I wrote “we won!” And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/06/us/cincinnati-jury-acquits-museum-in-mapplethorpe-obscenity-case.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I tacked the article from <em>The New York Times</em></a> on the middle of that big paper over my door because it really was a moment of triumph against the forces of censorship, and in its own way showed that the tools that we used to fight for liberation and for openness and for access to the same levels of protection and institutional enforcement of basic standards of dignity and respect. The tools were not explicitly those of civil rights all the time. They were often around free expression and the First Amendment. And that even those could be invoked based on the strength of community relationships and the ability to summon allies to your cause who, in the heat of a moment or when you were under scrutiny or under threat, could come to your defense and vocalize solidarity on your behalf. So, that was a very important crucible in which some of my activism was formed and which really defined my period of Wooster. </p>
<p>[00:22:40] MHR: So, with that rawness and the stuff going on in history, did you face any, like, challenges being a student in the WGSS Discipline? And also to, like, was there any stigma surrounding students in the Discipline?</p>
<p>[00:22:56] HJ: No I would say not. And some of that owes to the climate of coalition politics that we were trying to practice on campus. </p>
<p>[00:23:08] The attempts to remove stigma for gay men and lesbians on campus at a time. Trans students at that point were not in the equation and it was not on the radar of the LGB movement at that point. But what created, what helped eradicate stigma for men in the WGSS major or minor at the time was the diversity amongst faculty teaching the Program, the interdisciplinary aspect of the Program at that time, which was very important you had experts in their field whether it be political science like <a href="http://politicalscience.case.edu/faculty/karen-beckwith/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Karen Beckwith</a> and <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/bios/mweaver/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mark Weaver</a>, a male teaching women's studies courses at the time without apology and with great expertise. International Scholars like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/contributor/Dijana-Plestina/4086" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Djana Plestina</a> and <a href="https://liberalarts.iupui.edu/about/directory/nnaemeka-obioma-g.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Obi Nnaemeka</a>, who went on to be a scholar of African studies and Women's Studies at Indiana University and Purdue University in Indianapolis whom I stayed in touch with after graduation. We had economists like Barb Burnell active in the Program. We had Joanne and Carolyn Durham, <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/academics/areas/wgss/emeriti/jfrye/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joanne Frye</a> and <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/_media/files/academics/areas/french/durham-cv.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Carolyn Durham</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_McCampbell_Grace" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nancy Grace</a> from the English Department, <a href="https://barnard.edu/profiles/elizabeth-castelli" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elizabeth Castelli</a>, Jennifer Ward from the religious studies Department. A high level, high caliber intellectuals who were participating in the Program bringing their own, their own disciplinary expertise and the Program really was, it had a high level of academic caliber, I would say to it. Plus several of the faculty members were just really cool and were very respected by students who were serious readers and thinkers of that time. So that didn't hurt. There was a high academic pedigree I would say to the Women's Studies Program at the time, so that made it all the more alluring to be aligned with the program. <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/academics/areas/wgss/emeriti/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Susan Figge</a> certainly deserves credit for her scholarship both in Women's Studies and in German, top rate.</p>
<p>[00:25:36] So there was a kind of academic seriousness and prestige to the WGSS Program. I personally did not feel the, any stigma or opprobrium for being involved in the Program. In that, in part, the cohesion among students in the Program was so strong that it, it defrayed and almost rendered insignificant whatever forms of judgment might have been cast on it. And, as it relates to my parents at the time. By that point, by the time of my junior year even when I came out when I was back from Spain, where I had started to come out think more fully in a place that was a little easier to come out than being on it even in a campus environment which was undergoing change and was a crucible for a lot of activism and increasingly hints of welcoming, being able to come back and do that. I was very enmeshed in a peer group of scholars and it helped. And there were other men involved in the Women's Studies Program, including non-gay men, that helped I think create a sense of permission. Which is a concept that really came to inform a lot of my subsequent activism and my career that creating permission for people to bring themselves to the table and to bring their imaginations and skill sets to collaboration and campaigns was something that I really learned at Wooster and in the WGSS Program I think in particular, and I took that message to heart. </p>
<p>[00:27:33] MHR: That's awesome to hear. Yeah, because I asked that question because I know sometimes the Women's Studies Programs, or WGSS Programs, are sometimes to delegitimized, so it's awesome to hear that it was, seems like a legitimate thing to be a part of. </p>
<p>[00:27:51] HJ: So while you were a student at the college did you see any like changes within the Program at all? Like, were, did different courses start being offered? Or was it very much just focused on women's rights? </p>
<p>[00:28:07] HJ: The course offerings in the WGSS Program then, to my knowledge, were framed by the interdisciplinarity of the Program and there was a standard set of courses. The <em>Intro to Women's Studies</em>, the <em>Women's Studies Seminar</em> which was I think a 300 level course at the time. And then overlaid on some of that framework were a whole series of other offerings which were intermittent. <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/academics/areas/history/emeriti/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Karen Taylor</a> taught in the Program at the time and did a course on LGBT history and visiting faculty, and faculty who would rotate in because of course that they liked to teach was crossed listed in the Women's Studies Program at the time regularly rotated back in. So, the emphasis on interdisciplinarity was a real draw for faculty members who had a passion in their scholarship and as a result as a student you were able to draw on really high level of interdisciplinary syllabi and reading and instructional ancillary readings and lectures that, and other and increasingly video was making its way into the curriculum at that point too back in the days of VHS tapes before just as DVDs and CDs were becoming incorporated into music and multimedia. So there was that emphasis pervaded my time at Wooster. I think in the years since, as the Program crystallized and began to have its own faculty members who were in WGSS lines and it began to have an accepted form of scholarship within its own boundaries, that changed the texture of the WGSS major. </p>
<p>[00:30:26] That was after my time but it was a marked transition away from the rich interdisciplinary that defined my, my time in the Program. I was fortunate to have a scholar like Karen Beckwith who ended up becoming, is now still teaching at Case Western, but a real leading light of Feminist Political Science. To have her as my first year seminar professor and then see the way in which Karen, I think sometimes uncomfortable fit within the Women's Studies rubric, but she brought her political science regimen to her teaching of feminist politics and of a female politics, a distinction that can happen to fasten onto, and find a very rich and almost defining aspect of some of her scholarship. But any case that was what set Women's Studies apart was its interdisciplinary. And I think some of that real richness, to be frank, has been lost in subsequent years. Even as the Discipline has defined itself and planted its flag more firmly, a theme that <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/adrienne-rich" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Adrienne Rich</a> talked about and some of her essays about Women's Studies colleagues in the 1970s and the felt obligation to plant a flag very firmly in academe. But I think the security of some of the scholars that I was dealing with, and some of the students in the Program at the time, was not in any way jeopardized by the fact that it was an interdisciplinary Program that drew on some of the best of the participating Disciplines. </p>
<p>[00:32:17] MHR: Awesome. So you were talking a little bit about post your time at Wooster, so that leads me to my next question about <a href="https://www.woosteralumni.org/s/1090/index.aspx?sid=1090&gid=1&pgid=1861" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Going True</a>. So just for the people who are listening and don't know what Going True is, can you tell us what it is and also how do you see it relating to mission of WGSS? </p>
<p>[00:32:35] HJ: Great question, Going True is finally a recognized LGBT alumni organization at the college which established itself in 2009-2010 shortly after we began the <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/students/diversity/sgi/plummer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Plummer Memorial Scholarship</a> in 2007-2008 which is now an endowed scholarship at the college which we give every year on or around <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Coming_Out_Day" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Coming Out Day</a> and in conjunction with homecoming <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/students/dean/black-gold/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Black and Gold weekend</a> festivities here. We do that ceremony every year on Sunday of Black and Gold weekend. But the Plummer Scholarship predated the Going True formation and in some ways, I think, helped create the permission for its establishment which really did take as its, which found a season to bloom in during the presidency of Grant Cornwell. We had a series of setbacks to basic respect for LGBT people at the college through the 1990s into the aughts into this century, which some of us had to fight very, very doggedly and perspicaciously in order to overcome. We faced a huge setback to the college in the summer of 1995 when <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1118&context=voice1991-2000">Suzanne Woods</a> who had be selected to become President of the College through the search leading up to the retirement of Henry Copeland, was forced out of the position of president the day before she was due to assume authority in on July 1st of 1995. </p>
<p>[00:34:35] That episode that embarrassment that blow to basic non-discrimination and respect for diversity at the college and a real stigmatizing setback to our presence in the life of the college, to use a phrase that the late Deb Hilty was fond of using, was indelible and lasting and some of us tried to form an alumni association of LGBT alumns at that time. We were barred from doing so and we were discouraged, actively, from several people in the administration. Those were not good years for LGBT students or alumni. It fell to me and to many of the people that I enlisted in the project of forming a network of LGBT alumni to create a sense of welcome on campus and to push the administration in the direction of recognizing LGBT students, faculty, staff, and alumni at the college. However, the, we were benefited by a couple of different dynamics during that long period leading up to Going True's emergence which, again, I would say was in many ways galvanized by the formation of the scholarship, the successful organizing and endowing of the scholarship through the money that we raised privately throughout 2007 into 2008 for the initial awarding of the scholarship. To people who were I would say really indispensable to the success of the scholarship and to getting the alumni association formed were the late John Plummer who was, became the namesake for the scholarship upon his suicide in the summer of 2006 following his retirement from college in 2002.</p>
<p>[00:37:06] John was a mentor to two plus generations of students and faculty who whom he helped walk through the hoops of managing spreadsheets and accounting for academic purposes at the college, but was a very singular openly gay presence on staff throughout about 30 years at college. When I came out during the difficult days around my doing that in the newspaper, John sent me little post-it notes on my campus paychecks saying hang in there. In its own way a great gesture of solidarity and kindness that I never forgot. And John's presence was, I would say, really significant to the ultimate ability to secure recognition of an LGBT alumni association. And another person who I would say was key was Nancy Grace. Nancy, in the English Department, had a network of former students whom she kept in touch with and I think Nancy always saw herself as being an ally for LGBT rights in the strongest sense of the word. Plus Nancy had a great deal of standing amongst faculty and had lots of positive relationships with colleagues so that she could keep me apprised of developments on campus and also help to move conversations forward that advanced LGBT rights in small and subtle ways through faculty and staff awareness if not in concrete programming, which she also did. She ended up becoming director of the <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/students/diversity/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Center for Diversity and Inclusion</a>, formally this <a href="http://thewoostervoice.spaces.wooster.edu/2009/10/02/center-for-diversity-and-global-engagement-makes-its-debut/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Center for Diversity and Global Engagement</a>, between 2013 and 2016. So Nancy's service as an ally actually gained, I would say, an official role when she became director of, what do you call it...CD... CDI where ultimately the Plummer Scholarship lodged. So that's a long way of saying that the Plummer Scholarship was, I think, a can opener, a metaphor I often resort to describing the role that the scholarship played on campus between the idea for its formation. </p>
<p>[00:40:01] When I sat with <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1141&context=voice1991-2000" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Plummer</a> in the Fall of 1995 here on campus after the Susanne Woods fiasco and said John what can we do to open up this environment for LGBT people. He says well someday you ought to think about a scholarship. And finally, regrettably, John didn't live to see it but those many people close to John, some of whom still serve on the board of the scholarship or the steering committee with me, have carried on his memory in its, in its continuity. And then Going True as an LGBT alumni association, which has gone through its ups and downs over the last eight years as some of it's some of the initial LGBT alumni leaders have moved on their careers or moved on geographically. It has remained a presence amongst the diversity alumni associations which was something that we argued for all along. If we have, if we have these different African-American and other alumni clusters and affinity groups we need one certainly for LGBT rights. In part for LGBT alumni, in part because of the strong cohesion that living in Wooster has helped inculcate over the last 40 years. And in getting the scholarship started, I did a lot of the organizing reaching back to find alumni into the 40s and 50s and into the 60s who were out or who came out later and who contributed, often in many cases, nominal amounts to help get the scholarship off the ground and as a result. I think we showed one thing that's very important and an important theme, I've come to learn in organizing of any kind, whether it be for an institution or for a campaign or for a cause, is that you can bring up a base of dollars to the table especially when you're forging institutional change, [00:42:22] if you can bring dollars to the table and show that you have a cluster or a corral of donors then you can start to win recognition for the themes and the priorities that you're moving forward. One of the things that we had to do between 1995 and 2008 was reconnect people with the campus. The Susanne Woods episode was a searing and stinging rebuke for people who respected LGBT rights and met for many of us who were LGBT ourselves. It wasn't just us, but a whole network of allies was deeply offended by that move and by the signal that Wooster would discriminate in such a high, and such a highly exposed way in its expression of values. And one of the tasks that fell to us was encouraging very upset alumni who are not necessarily LGB or T, but because of the dynamics of coalition that we built through what at that point a decade of activism around a coalition of conscience and of a progressive sensibility that we had to give people a reason and a hook for reengaging with their alma mater and to certainly to donate to to the school. So the Plummer Scholarship became an acceptable way for many deeply offended people to give to the campus for the purpose of institutional change, and I think we succeeded in that. And it became a conduit for the formation of Going True. </p>
<p>[00:44:22] MHR: Wow. No, that's... trying to think of the right word but, like, very interesting history. </p>
<p>[00:44:29] HJ: Well it had a lot of impact. </p>
<p>[00:44:31] MHR: Yeah, impactful! That's the word I was looking for.</p>
<p>[00:44:33] HJ: And it had, its shown staying power. And I think the Plummer Scholarship is still something of a can opener in an environment where permission is often lacking for talking about LGBT people's presence on campus in a variety of ways. The scholarship and its continuity provide an anchor for other conversations and other forms of openness for the contributions that allumni and students, and staff and faculty, make to the campus. </p>
<p>[00:45:16] MHR: I'm just curious have you heard of the <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/students/diversity/sgi/lavender/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lavender Ceremony</a> that Wooster does now? </p>
<p>[00:45:29] HJ: No. </p>
<p>[00:45:33] MHR: Yeah, so I actually went to it this year to support some friends. I think it was the 3rd annual, or 2nd annual. Well it's, the Lavender Ceremony has now apparently being used on campuses across America where they recognize the LGBTQ+ students on campus before graduation. So this whole recognition ceremony where they bring back speakers and they hand out lavender, not sashes but...</p>
<p>[00:45:49] HJ: Stoles?</p>
<p>[00:45:49] MHR: Stoles! To wear at graduation. Yeah it was a really cool ceremony.</p>
<p>[00:45:53] HJ: That's really wonderful and when does it happen during graduation weekend?</p>
<p>[00:45:57] MHR: Yeah it happened around symposium this year! You talking about how LGBTQ students from your time, and staff and people involved on campus wanting to get more recognition that popped into my head about what's happening on campus now.</p>
<p>[00:46:11] HJ: That's great. Did you go to the ceremony? </p>
<p>[00:46:13] MHR: Yeah I went to the ceremony this year and it was very impactful. There was a huge turn out too which was very…</p>
<p>[00:46:19] HJ: that's great.</p>
<p>[00:46:20] MHR: … Awesome. </p>
<p>[00:46:20] HJ: I'm so glad it's happening.</p>
<p>[00:46:22] MHR: Yeah.</p>
<p>[00:46:22] HJ: And I look forward to coming back for it down the road. </p>
<p>[00:46:26] MHR: You talked a lot about the scholarship, about organizing, about social justice that you learned from WGSS, but, I guess do you have anything else you want to say about, like, what you learned in the WGSS Department that you use in your everyday life now? </p>
<p>[00:46:44] HJ: Yeah I went on to… I moved to Washington in 1992 immediately after graduating. And I went to work as an advocate in national politics, but deeply imbued by my experience of grassroots organizing here in Ohio. And of coalition building which I learned at Wooster and in working in Ohio and the Midwest during the period of my junior and senior years. Whether that was antiwar organizing, women's rights organizing, LGBT equality organizing, fair housing organizing, and experience with labor union organizing which, as a result of being in Ohio and being around progressive people, you start to develop fluency in policy areas and with cohorts that you wouldn't ordinarily necessarily gravitate to. But politics becomes its own cauldron for connecting you with other people. African-American leaders who might begin to work within the course of fighting Bush administration efforts to rein in affirmative action in 1990 and 91 as Bush was getting ready for his re-election campaign which is ultimately a landmark victory for a progressive coalition and Bill Clinton's campaign which I was not in Wooster to experience but I was in Washington D.C. for. Latino activists that my Spanish degree… my Women's Studies minor and my Spanish and English double majors ended up providing some skills in Spanish, Spanish translation which I put to use, and I was fortunate to have a number of great educators who actually helped give me concrete skills that I put to use in my coalition works. </p>
<p>[00:48:56] I went to Washington worked in advocacy with <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">People For the American Way</a> and went on to start my own consulting firm in 2002, work that I've done for the last 15 plus years, to train activists and to help build 501(c)(3) organizations to help them start 501(c)(4) counterparts that can do lobbying and much more engaged work on policies and, up to a certain amount, of electoral campaign activity as part of their C4 mission. And then for those organizations to take the next step, to help them form political action committees. So for the last 20 years, I have been involved in organizational development strategic planning and political strategy for nonprofit advocates, for those that do lobbying, and for those that take the next step into direct political and campaign support. And what has stayed with me through all that is an appreciation for coalition politics which, if there's any through line to the course of my work over the last 20 25 years, it is referendum work helping organizations be able to fully fulfill their role as advocates in the context of ballot measures. My experience at Wooster, again, provided a searing example of the importance of involvement in ballot measure campaigns in the fall of my junior year. That very formative fall 1990, while I was in Spain the semester before, Wooster had passed a fair housing ordinance and a group of religious right activists fastened onto the sexual orientation provisions in that fair housing ordinance and were intent on repealing them. This is at a period when antigay referenda were starting to proliferate and would then later take the form of a statewide antigay ballot measures in Oregon and Colorado in the fall of 1992 just as Bill Clinton was winning that election that </p>
<p>[00:51:16] I was in Washington to help work on those ballot measures, but I'd already been privy to a fight over LGBT rights here in Wooster and some of them, again, the very raw dynamics that surfaced in that fight by religious right activists here to repeal the sections of the Fair Housing Ordinance dealing with sexual orientation. And, unfortunately, following some debates, one of which we actually held in Lowry Pit between myself and a member of the faculty <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/news/releases/2016/april/obituary-perley/index.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jim Perley</a> whom I would go on to work with and my time in Washington when he was president of the <a href="https://www.aaup.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">American Association of University Professors</a>. Jim was a biology professor here and very active in the AAUP and very skilled in civil liberties and academic freedom arguments and was my partner on the panel defending the Fair Housing Ordinance and urging voters to uphold it. We were met with activists who were legitimately arguing Leviticus and the Old Testament as the basis for political choices in that debate. And it was eye opening for all parties involved. Whereas people probably didn't go into that debate with a very strong sense of kinship to the repeal campaign. Many people walked out of it quite passionately opposed to the repeal and seeing the stakes for essentially rolling back nondiscrimination protections here in Wooster. That was a, again, a defining experience for me in that I saw the value of referenda and the importance of being able to marshal coalitions to be able to defeat referenda when issues of social justice and basic fairness are thrown open to the peanut gallery of ordinary voters to decide important policy questions. And at the same time that if you muster a coalition to pass legislation it can be thrown open to a referendum, given the provisions of prevailing municipal or state law, so you better be in a position to have moved hearts and minds to defend any gain that you win through a legislature or through a court ruling. You have to be in a position to back it up with a "small d" Democratic base of people who will have your back at the ballot box if needed because we saw on Wooster then with the repeal of the Fair Housing Ordinance. Sadly, I learned a lesson that you have to be able to build coalitions as you go in moving policy issues forward, and that has been a major catalyst in my career for work with local coalitions and non-profit groups to build the kinds of coalition relationships that can bear fruit when you are under the gun of having to defend a gain that you've worked years to pass, sometimes through legislative or litigation strategies. You have to be in a position to win it on the ballot when necessary and that has been something that's carried me through the last 20 years of, of writing about state trends and state national politics but also helping to equip local activists with the skills, and boards, and state level leaders with the ability to interact with national organizations, and for all of that rich ecosystem of progressive organizations to have the wherewithal and the know how to build coalitions when necessary to fight back ballot measures or to win on policy issues that can be sustained with public opinion and coalition relationships coming along to back it up. </p>
<p>[00:55:15] That has been a defining aspect of my work through <a href="http://www.progressivevictory.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Progressive Victory</a> and on the boards that I've served on including the <a href="http://www.thetaskforce.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Gay and Lesbian Task Force</a> board, the <a href="https://ballot.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ballot Initiative Strategy Center Foundation Board</a> which I chaired, and other nonprofits and political involvement that I've had in the ensuing 25 years.</p>
<p>[00:55:35] MHR: You're doing a lot of great work. </p>
<p>[00:55:36] HJ: Well Thank you. It's the fight for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergefell_v._Hodges" target="_blank" rel="noopener">marriage equality</a>, and the victory that we finally won three years ago at the Supreme Court really was set in motion by years and years of grassroots activism and state level organizing both to win at the state level, sometimes through court victories, a few times through legislation, and then to back that up to be able to defend those gains at the ballot box when needed. And we've had setbacks in that regard but we've also had a number of victories that especially in the referenda of to 2012, which was I think by all accounts the turning point. Being able to defeat four state referenda in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington state aimed at rolling back marriage equality or forbidding it was a signal victory in the fight to achieve that nationwide protection and being involved in that movement, to be able to equip state coalitions to win referenda like that, is a very rewarding aspect of my career post Wooster. </p>
<p>[00:57:00] MHR: We covered a whole bunch here, which is awesome to hear all your stories and your insight. But I guess I want to finish off this interview with asking you if there any other topics you would want to bring up or that you think are important.</p>
<p>[00:57:15] HJ: Well one thing I think does need to go on the record is that the WGSS Program has been a forum and has been an important platform and an important training ground in recognizing and bringing to light both the shameful, painful history of LGBT oppression at Wooster going back… even to the case of <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1211&context=voice1951-1960" target="_blank" rel="noopener">George Bradford,</a> who was a faculty member who committed suicide in 1961 following a Federal Police raid on his home on the putative basis of pornographic material. But the fact that so many LGBT people in the past of so many liberal arts institutions, and universities, and Ohio institutions has been disappeared means that the permission to explore that history has needed both the forums and the resources that could furnish the opportunities to explore it and to bring that history to the surface. And to digest and assess its lessons for our own time, and for our own lives, and our own scholarship and the WGSS Program has been that conduit for years for I would say more than a generation. It was for me, it was a place in which I could both learn and also become more fully myself. In the course of my time as a Wooster student. But it also created the relationships with faculty, with staff, with a network of scholars around the country, and some cases around the world, that continued to nourish exploration scholarship and activism that created the permission for further celebration and recognition of LGBT lives and history in our own presence. So for me, I want, I feel a responsibility to continue that process of exploring, of developing coalition relationships across the curriculum and across identity groups in Wooster, on campus, and amongst alumni through things like the John Plummer scholarship and through participation in WGSS Programs going forward. That is a very noble and I would say crucial aspect of WGSS scholarship, and participation, that it provides permission to explore the past even the very painful aspects of the past. </p>
<p>[01:00:46] Whether that be the Susanne Woods episode, whether that be George Bradford's death, whether that be the career and passing of John Plummer, and whether that be the continuing experiences of immigrant students, students of color, trans students, and LGBT students who come to Wooster seeking that friendly and welcoming learning environment in which to become more fully themselves. </p>
<p>[01:01:22] MHR: Well, that is all I have. Thank you so much for coming and talking. </p>
<p>[01:01:27] HJ: Thank you Matt. Thank you for asking the questions. It's important to ask questions and to create a forum like this where voices, textured experiences, histories can be properly protected and saved.</p>
<p>[01:01:42] MHR: Yeah, thank you so much. This has been very nice.</p>
Original Format
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Sound
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01:01:42
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Title
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Interview with Hans Johnson
Subject
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Women studies; Feminism; Gender; Student activism; LGBTQ people; Scholarships; Homophobia; Homophobia in higher education; Interdisciplinary approach in education
Description
An account of the resource
This is an interview with College of Wooster alum Hans Johnson. Hans talks about his experience at the college as well as his experience being in the Women's Studies discipline. Hans discusses the history of the Women's Studies discipline at Wooster as well as what historical moments of the time inspired his interest in the discipline. Hans also discusses what he has been up to after graduating Wooster and how what he learned in Women's Studies has inspired him outside of Wooster. Hans also goes in depth about his student activism while at Wooster.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Johnson, Hans
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Unpublished
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2018-05-15
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OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries
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Presented with permission from Hans Johnson<br /><br /><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Sound
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Kalamazoo; Battle Creek; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Columbus; Minnesota; Cincinnati; Wooster; Maine; Maryland; Washington
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Johnson_Hans_Interview_Edited_Version.mp3
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This <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/woosters-president-to-be-bows-out-amid-talk-of-relationship/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chronicle article</a> covers the hiring and withdrawl of Suzanne Woods, which is an event discussed in this interview.
-
https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/dec938a3d7cd1f1e944a45ad9b285aa8.mp3
4401e96d15e7fcdc56517685af4a7dc7
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Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews
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LGBT population; Alumni and alumnae; Oral history; Women's studies; Feminism and higher education; Homophobia in higher education; Gays in higher education
Description
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This collection contains oral histories of alumni and faculty who are/were involved with the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the College of Wooster. Interviewees include alumni of the program, faculty, former faculty, invited speakers.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
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Unpublished
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Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Sound
Oral History
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Interviewee
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Sherry, Will
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Virtual Interview
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<p><strong>Will Sherry Interview</strong><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and Will Sherry for clarity</strong> </p>
<p>[00:00:01] MHR: All right. So I'm here with Will Sherry. It is June 19. Hello Will!</p>
<p>WS: Hello.</p>
<p>[00:00:07] MHR: Thank you for being a part of this... OK. So to start off I'm going to ask you where are you from, and how did you end up at the College of Wooster?</p>
<p>[00:00:18] WS: I'm originally from New York. I looked in a lot of small liberal arts colleges. I played soccer at Wooster and so I looked a bunch of different Division 3 schools and then just visited. And I really... I kind of took to it felt really like home. It felt really... well very different from home! But very comfortable. Yeah, that's what I would say. </p>
<p>[00:00:40] MHR: Very nice. When did you graduate? </p>
<p>[00:00:43] WS: I graduated in... let's see... in 05.</p>
<p>[00:00:46] MHR: 05? Awesome. So my next question is what made you interested in the WGSS Discipline and what inspired you to, sort of, take your first WGSS class at Wooster? </p>
<p>[00:01:01] WS: I think I was inspired particularly by the examination of culture. So I was really interested in looking at just sort of, like, how things look within different cultures and sort of contextualizing those differences. I was really interested in, sort of, those Anthropology courses that looked at culture. I was the Sociology major. But really I think it was that, sort of, in-depth look at, like, what is... what is culture, how does it impact, sort of, people's perceptions of who they are. </p>
<p>[00:01:32] MHR: What was the first WGSS class you took? Was it just the <em>Intro</em> class? </p>
<p>[00:01:35] WS: Yes. </p>
<p>[00:01:36] MHR: Ok!</p>
<p>[00:01:36] WS: I think it was... yeah I'm trying to think back. I think it was just the <em>Intro</em> class, yeah. </p>
<p>[00:01:42] MHR: Ok, cool. So what was the state of the Program when you were a student there, and, like, what were some pros and cons you had of it? </p>
<p>[00:01:50] WS: Yeah, and so I think part of it is that it wasn't... it wasn't really, like, a Program like it is now. So I would say it was just more of a major. So you... so I was a Sociology major. You could take Anthropology classes, like women and gender classes. But it wasn't like there was a Program and you were a part of it. It was more like you were a part of that, sort of, cohort of Disciplines that, like, look at things like culture, like Anthropology, Sociology and so that's, like, the first thing I would say. Like the term WGSS wasn't... we didn't use that term. And so... as far as that. And so I think it was a lot less of a cohort, sort of, experience than it was just like an interest academically and some similar things. </p>
<p>[00:02:40] MHR: That's interesting. In the classes you took, and how you saw the Program, what were some, like, pros and cons you saw? Like... </p>
<p>[00:02:50] WS: Yeah I felt like the theory was really strong. So I left Wooster with a really really strong grasp on, like, contemporary social theories, classical social theories. I was a teaching assistant for classical social theory for two years, which is a really I think an experience too many times the liberal arts school you don't get to really T.A., at least then. And so that was a really good experience. So I felt like the theory was really really strong. I think that had a lot to do with, like, the strength of the independent study. </p>
<p>[00:03:26] So working with faculty directly on a research interest I think is a really really strong element of the Program. But we didn't really delve as much into it, like, race as my work does today. So like what I know about, sort of, gender and sexuality work today is that's sort of the core of that work is the, sort of, intersectional experiences that people have. I didn't leave with as much a grounding in my understanding of those things as I gained later. But I had a really really strong sense of, like, where the field came from a traditional perspective. I would say I wasn't looking at a historical black feminist work. That... that wasn't the work that I was being exposed to. Again, most of my courses were at the intersection of Sociology. So I was looking at Marx and Durkheim and, like, lots of classical theorists. I know I did not leave with the knowledge I needed at the, sort of, intersection of experiences that I gained at my master's Program in much more detail. </p>
<p>[00:04:36] MHR: Gotcha. Yeah that sort of seems to be a trend that students... </p>
<p>[00:04:41] WS: Yes.</p>
<p>[00:04:43] MHR: are critiquing. </p>
<p>[00:04:44] WS: Ok. </p>
<p>[00:04:44] MHR: Currently Wooster is looking for a tenure track professor for the WGSS Department... </p>
<p>[00:04:50] WS: Ok.</p>
<p>[00:04:50] MHR: ...and they're really trying hard to make... or to make an effort to hire somebody who is really knowledgeable in those areas.</p>
<p>[00:04:59] WS: Yes! </p>
<p>[00:05:01] MHR: So hopefully will become better in the future.</p>
<p>[00:05:05] WS: I'm sure.</p>
<p>[00:05:05] MHR: Yeah. [00:05:05] So my next question is, what were some of your favorite classes you took in the WGSS Discipline at Wooster, and what were the most valuable things you learned from those classes?</p>
<p>[00:05:17] WS: I would say that some of the most valuable classes that I took... oh let's think back... I would say some of the most valuable classes I took were in qualitative research. I think that that's definitely a strength of the Program. </p>
<p>[00:05:34] I think that the quantitative course was strong. I happened to take it when the main faculty was on sabbatical. So I had a visiting faculty and they were not as strong, but what I knew of it was that it was really strong. So I would feel like the research methods courses were incredibly helpful for me in going on to get more education. And even in just my work now, like I can... I can do a lot around qualitative research. I know a lot, I can move a lot within that field because of the classes that I took. So I think those were some of the strongest classes, probably was in some of, like, with the research methods. Especially in, like, a WGSS Discipline. How to do qualitative research in a way that isn't just getting what you want, but is, like, contributing and taking into account, sort of, the effort and energy that people are giving to you. For you to have that kind of learning. So I would say those are some of the things that I've probably utilized the most. And that...that were the most meaningful were some of the research methods courses.</p>
<p>[00:06:39] MHR: No, that's awesome. I just finished <em>Junior I.S.</em> [class] and I think I have a better grasp on things, but we'll see next year. </p>
<p>[00:06:47] WS: I know!</p>
<p>[00:06:50] MHR: Not one hundred percent sure.</p>
<p>[00:06:50] WS: It's an ongoing battle I think. But they do.... they bring you through it. I mean I still... I still am learning a ton. I do a lot of assessment work in my position and I feel like I'm always learning from people who that's like their main thing. And I don't think it'll ever be my main thing, but is it's really helpful and valuable to have those skills, for sure. </p>
<p>[00:07:12] MHR: Yeah. So going more on, sort of, your experiences with classes in the WGSS Discipline, how did what you learn in your WGSS classes at Wooster, sort of, differ from your other classes that you were taking? Like, was there anything unique that you learned from those classes in particular? </p>
<p>[00:07:32] WS: I think in particular there was a lot of discourse. And so I think that is something that differed... Was, like, I felt like I had really great faculty. I felt like my faculty had the ability to facilitate discourse and it seems like that can be rare. But I work at a big college at the University of Michigan, and that is a constant criticism of the classroom experience is that there are not faculty [00:08:02] that can facilitate difficult conversation with, like, really different opinions and differing beliefs on one's experiences. And I felt like there was a really good skill set that faculty had in those courses in particular. In being able to engage difference, and, sort of, bring people along in learning, and value peoples' different opinions without it being an argument. And so I think that that was really valuable, and something that differed, I think.</p>
<p>[00:08:45] MHR: Yeah I agree with that too. I would say we have, in my WGSS classes especially, we answer some really, like, controversial topics that... </p>
<p>[00:08:52] WS: Absolutely! </p>
<p>[00:08:52] MHR: ...I think have been... that the conversations have been really meaningful and... </p>
<p>[00:08:55] WS: Yeah! </p>
<p>[00:08:55] MHR: And everyone was able to say what they thought without judgment from the professors, especially. So I agree with that. </p>
<p>[00:08:58] WS: It's hard. That is really hard to do. It's hard facilitation. And, yeah, I do, I think they do that well which is really cool. </p>
<p>[00:09:04] MHR: Yeah. So my next question is, if this question applies because I know you're Soc, but is there anything you learned in your WGSS classes that, sort of, inspired for what you did for your <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5397&context=independentstudy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I.S.</a>? </p>
<p>[00:09:21] WS: Yeah! So my independent study was on gender in a lot of ways. It was on the performance of gender through waitressing. Yeah, at different... comparatively at different, like, social status restaurants. So at, like, a high end restaurant, at more like Pub kind of bar restaurant, and then at more, like, a diner type of restaurants. And so I was definitely, like, super interested in performative gender. I was really interested in how class influences gender. And especially when you're in a position that requires like... I studied emotional labor. So that requires you to, sort of, be performative in order to excel and be successful. And so I think a lot, I mean there is a lot of intersection in the classes that I took around, you know, meaning making or around gender and how it's both something that we make meaning of for ourselves and that is consistently being made meaning of by others. And, sort of, that cycle and that relationship of gender to sort of social life was a big part of my... of my coursework and a big part of my Junior I.S., it was the same as my Senior I.S. it was just... as many do the beginning parts of it. And I studied the topic abroad in Jamaica. I went in an abroad Program that was also focused on gender in Jamaica, Gender and Economic Development. And so I studied the same topic at different hotels. So from like a Ritz Carlton to a much less expensive motel. And so, kind of, all of that was really of interest to me and taking classes that, kind of, fed that topic around performative gender and around class... were things that I was interested in. </p>
<p>[00:11:17] MHR: Yeah! </p>
<p>[00:11:17] WS: It had a huge influence. You know, my topic really, like, centering on that. </p>
<p>[00:11:22] MHR: That sounds very interesting! </p>
<p>[00:11:22] WS: It was! It was, it feels like...</p>
<p>[00:11:25] MHR: I'd like to read that actually!</p>
<p>[00:11:25] WS: ...Yeah! it feels like years ago, light years ago, I should say. But it was it was super interesting. It was all qualitative and it was really... it was a very good experience. I mostly did work within the community at Wooster. And I also worked in the community all four years. I worked at a place called The Spot which is an after school Program at Cornerstone Elementary. And so I really like wanting to, sort of, be... live within that community and doing work within the community. And so that was also I think part of... part of a, sort of, a WGSS Discipline mindset of, like, really being... being within and getting to know the participants in the region. </p>
<p>[00:12:06] MHR: Yeah. What were, like, some of the conclusions you came to in your I.S.? </p>
<p>[00:12:10] WS: Yeah, yeah for sure! So a lot of what I looked at was, and sort of some of the conclusion, was the way in which the social status of a restaurant really pushes people toward the more masculine presentation of feminine gender. So the idea of, sort of, like black tie service, tuxedo. We looked at in the, sort of, middle range restaurants a ability to, sort of, utilize hyper femininity on whether that was a choice or an expectation, I think varied. But this, like, experience of, like, hyper femininity as success... so an over sexualized type of environment. </p>
<p>[00:12:55] And then in the more diner settings, some of the most interesting, and I think in some ways... there was a lot of bias and that a lot of the waitresses I worked with in the more diners and had been in those places for so long that a lot of their... their gender performance came from that, sort of, status of being like...like an owner in a place. And even though they weren't. So this... this idea of like the way in which power sort of can be shifted in a place based on, sort of, longevity and how that allows you to sort of take back that sexualization in a way that you can sort of own it through a... almost like a lot of times also age, like an elder lens. And so those were some of the things that we looked at. But very different performances of gender and different, sort of, understandings of the expectation of gender at each restaurant. But a lot... a lot of gendered language in a diner. A lot of, sort of, what many people would say was consented banter. Whereas like at a higher end restaurant you actually it's much... it's much more underground. Sort of you masculinize everything and call in neutral. </p>
<p>[00:14:19] MHR: Yeah.</p>
<p>[00:14:21] WS: And that is... that that is the neutral. And so you make it sort of invisible. Whereas in like a diner it's all out there in a way that others might feel it as non-consented, really biased. "Hey sweetie, hey honey." But the experience of the people was from a place of more power as a waitress.</p>
<p>[00:14:45] MHR: Yeah. </p>
<p>[00:14:45] WS: But those were, sort of, interesting pieces.</p>
<p>[00:14:47] MHR: Very Nice! Yeah I'm really liking asking all, like, previous students about what they're different I.S. topics have been and just...they're all so interesting. </p>
<p>[00:14:56] WS: What are you studying? </p>
<p>[00:14:58] MHR: For me, in WGSS, I am looking at... I want to look at the AIDS crisis era and, sort of, where the stigmatization of that it, sort of, becoming a gay plague. Like where... like where that came from and like what in our American culture made that become the, like stigma, surrounding it. And then hopefully I'm going to do something where I give a survey to people at Wooster to see, like, what stigmas still apply today.</p>
<p>[00:15:28] WS: Oh cool, yeah! </p>
<p>[00:15:30] MHR: So, we'll see. </p>
<p>[00:15:32] WS: Yeah, that's cool!</p>
<p>[00:15:34] MHR: Thank you! Well speaking of stigma, actually, did you face any sort of stigma being a student in any of the WGSS classes? Like was the campus community like.... Did they stigmatize students taking those classes? </p>
<p>[00:15:51] WS: Great question. I feel like I was fairly ignorant to stigmas that existed because I was not out in any way. So I just... and I probably, like, was sort of a part of this majority that... I don't recall having stigmas around that. But I do know there was, I mean there was a lot of stigma around gender and sexuality, and so anywhere where people are congregating that have sort of... you know, non-normative, as some people would use that word, gender and sexual identity is there was stigma, for sure. And so I think to the extent to which that is a place people congregated, yes. But again it wasn't really like a Department in that way. And so it wasn't... it wasn't really the same. But certainly there was stigma around any sort of place people are congregating. It was not an easy, I'm sure you're hearing it's probably not easy now, but it was not... at that point I really did not consider being out at Wooster. It, for me, was not worth the cost...</p>
<p>[00:22:18] MHR: Yeah. </p>
<p>[00:22:18] WS: ...at the time. Yeah, and that was, sort of, not even around but like not regarding a transition at all. Just as, sort of, regarding like who I dated and who I spent time with. And so it wasn't necessary to hide that for me until junior year at which point... I mean I can, sort of, in the work I do now I would give myself much different advice of course, but I can also, you know, understand that for me that just wasn't... well not a possibility but would have been really... it would have been really challenging... I think for me. So I... what I know is there was a lot of stigma. I mean there was a lot of stigma, I think, just in general around gender and sexuality and certainly... I don't know maybe I felt, like, safer exploring in the, like, an academic way. So I felt less stigma in sort of saying like, "this is an academic interest or Discipline!" I didn't make the connection between, like, an interest in gender expression in an I.S. and myself when I was doing it. And so it was just like an academic interest not like a personal interest. Now clearly, you know, I see things differently. But then it really wasn't about me in that way. And so I was able to kind of, like, distance from it.</p>
<p>[00:23:25] MHR: Yeah, yeah. I've been asking many people, because I've been interviewing people from...</p>
<p>[00:23:29] WS: Yeah! </p>
<p>[00:23:29] MHR: ... the beginning of the Program to... and tomorrow I'm interviewing somebody who just graduated last year and it's really interesting to hear how, like, the flow of, like, the culture at Wooster as well as the change in the academic perception of the WGSS Department has changed. So...</p>
<p>[00:23:44] WS: Yeah! </p>
<p>[00:23:44] MHR: ...I think it's very interesting to see how, like, that all is flowing.</p>
<p>WS: Yeah!</p>
<p>[00:23:49] MHR: So my final question actually is how have you used what you learned in the WGSS Discipline in your life after Wooster?</p>
<p>[00:24:00] WS: Well, definitely my career is sort of front and center in that work. So I'm a senior administrator at the University of Michigan. I direct the gender and sexuality center, but to, sort of, be more specific I direct a center but that center six full time staff. So I don't actually and much of my time, at this point, in <a href="https://spectrumcenter.umich.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Spectrum Center</a> or, sort of, doing that work because there are five other people and that's what they do. And so most of my work is diversity and inclusion work across the University of Michigan. So strategic planning and assessment around... particularly around educational intervention for students, staff, and faculty that increase inclusive community. My specialty, my expertise is in gender and sexuality. I mean I use a lot of what... I think foundationally I use a lot of what I learned all the time. So I think my work requires, like, a deep respect for understanding what I don't know. And I think that that's something that Women and Gender Studies Programs, you know, have as foundational. That like the minute you think you understand another person's experience you're sort of not living the work. And so I think that, like, as a foundational set of words I use it all the time. </p>
<p>[00:25:07] The basis of my work, I think, on a, sort of, more obvious level I think and talk about gender and sexuality constantly in my work, as the director of the Center; The first center on a college campus in the country. We opened in 1971. We're expected to, sort of, be leading and be leaders nationally for this work. We made a big change to add pronouns on class rosters across the institution of forty thousand people is like a major initiative. And it came down to, like, do we have a drop-down of pronouns only or do we have an open box? </p>
<p>[00:25:40] MHR: Yeah.</p>
<p>[00:25:40] WS: And it's like a critical question, right? I mean, most people are going to pick something on the drop-down. Hands down, Of course. And those that don't have an option are the ones that never do. You know, I bring that framework and I think that is a lot of what I learned. Even through an I.S. process, like not even about content. The process of I.S. is, sort of, uncovering how to learn. What does it actually mean to, like, learn from others and to engage in your own learning, and to take critique from faculty, and to disagree, and to, you know, be sort of active in your own learning? And I think that's what my job requires. That to be a leader of many many different staff across the institution, to lead a major initiatives around ability, around race you have to enter, sort of, in there not knowing, and be active in your learning. How do you fill gaps that you have? When is it appropriate to learn from other people and when is it more appropriate to go online or to get books or to go to an event? So I think, like, the process of seeking out learning versus how... how some people that haven't had those experiences come to the work with, like, an expectation of being taught. I think that's like a critical thing and the latter pisses people off.</p>
<p>[00:26:49] And then... so yeah... you know you can't come expecting someone is just going to teach you who they or about their work. And I think that's true of our students. As a student that's not your job. You know you should be as involved in that as you want to be because it's beneficial for you whether that means, like, because it's giving to others or because you're getting something from it. But I think that's a lot of what Wooster and, like, the process of learning taught me. And what I take with me is how to be a learner in a community. And that's I think a real strength.</p>
<p>MHR: Yeah, that sounds like very important work!</p>
<p>[00:27:16] WS: Yeah</p>
<p>[00:27:16] MHR: So thank you!</p>
<p>[00:27:16] WS: Yeah.</p>
<p>[00:27:16] MHR: So those are all my questions. But before I end, I want to just ask you if you have any questions or anything else you would like to say about WGSS at Wooster?</p>
<p>[00:27:25] WS: I mean... I've been really impressed just in sort of, like, the campus's growth of, like, their... I'm going to get the name wrong... it's like an intercultural center...</p>
<p>[00:27:31] MHR: Center for Diversity and Inclusion?</p>
<p>[00:27:31] WS: Yes, along those lines! There wasn't... there really was nothing, like, anything like that... at all. And so I think that, you know, the growth of, like, academic Programs and student support is really critical. I have no doubt there's lots of work to do. But certainly I think that there has been like a vested interest in creating more depth and more safety on campus. More comfort. And I think that that is in part, like, increasing academic opportunities and, like, knowledge. That's been exciting.</p>
<p>[00:28:02] I think I left, you know, in a place of like, "this was a great college experience." I academically learned a ton, got into my top masters Program, like, I'm feeling really good to go. But socially left a lot to be desired I think around inclusivity and just like being able to be who you are. And I feel like since I've left when I've been reached out to you it's been about really positive things that are, like, growing and changing. So I think that that is super important.</p>
<p>[00:28:29] MHR: Yeah!</p>
<p>[00:28:29] WS: It seems like it's moving in a good direction.</p>
<p>[00:28:30] MHR: Yeah I agree! I think we're in a very exciting stage where it's like... there's so much interest in these topics and these issues and I think the college and the WGSS Discipline and Department are really trying to, like, ride that wave to really create...</p>
<p>[00:28:47] WS: Take the opportunity!</p>
<p>[00:28:47] MHR: ...and inclusive environment. Yeah!</p>
<p>[00:28:48] WS: That's what we do! The minute there's an opening we're like, "it's now or never! So, yeah let's get it done!"</p>
<p>[00:28:56] MHR: Exactly! Thank you so much for being a part of this.</p>
<p>[00:28:59] WS: Yeah!</p>
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00:28:59
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Title
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Interview with Will Sherry
Subject
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Women's studies; Discourse analysis; LGBT people; Gender; Gender identity; Gays in higher education; Independent study; Sociology; Waitresses; Qualitative research
Description
An account of the resource
This is an interview with Will Sherry who is a 2005 graduate of the College of Wooster. Will talks about his experience being in WGSS classes at Wooster and how WGSS intersected with his studies in Sociology. Will discusses what the state of the WGSS discipline was like when he was a student and how what he learned in WGSS classes differed from his other classes especially with qualitative research. Will also talks about what his Senior Independent Study was on and how he is using what he learned from the College of Wooster's WGSS discipline in life after graduating.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Sherry, Will
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Unpublished
Date
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2018-06-19
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OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries
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Presented with permission from Will Sherry<br /><br /><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Will_Sherry_Interview.mp3
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New York; Wooster; Michigan
-
https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/128147c2ceb88f6747be663b15e9506c.mp3
85b4af4b77a6e0b3a87345eece6e1811
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Title
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Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews
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LGBT population; Alumni and alumnae; Oral history; Women's studies; Feminism and higher education; Homophobia in higher education; Gays in higher education
Description
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This collection contains oral histories of alumni and faculty who are/were involved with the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the College of Wooster. Interviewees include alumni of the program, faculty, former faculty, invited speakers.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
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Unpublished
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Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Sound
Oral History
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Interviewee
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Bonhomme, Isabel
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Virtual Interview
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Isabel Bonhomme Interview
Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and Isabel Bonhomme for clarity
[00:00:00] MHR: Ok I am here with Isabel Bonhomme. It is June 29 [2018]. Hello Isabel!
[00:00:06] IB: Hello!
[00:00:07] MHR: Thank you for being a part of this. I'm excited to interview someone who's in the my generation of Wooster! To start off my first question is, where are you from and how did you end up at The College of Worcester?
[00:00:20] IB: So I'm originally from New York City. I've lived in Ohio for a lot of my life and I end up at Wooster because I wanted a liberal arts education. And it was close enough to home. And... I don't know when I visited I really just absolutely loved everything to had to offer so...
[00:00:38] MHR: Awesome. When do you graduate?
[00:00:40] IB: In May of 2019. So I'm going to be a Senior.
[00:00:44] MHR: Awesome! All right so my next question is, what made you interested in the WGSS of Discipline and did you know you wanted to be in the WGSS Discipline when you came into Wooster?
[00:00:54] IB: I did not know. I originally came in thinking I was going to be an Anthropology major, which I also am with WGSS. And originally what interested me was I took an Intro to WGSS class my freshman year just because it was something that interested me. And the professor was amazing, the class was amazing and I thought, "OK, I need to try and add this to my major!"
[00:01:15] MHR: You were saying that the class was amazing, the professor was amazing but was there anything in particular, or any moment, where you were just like, "I have to do this.".
[00:01:24] IB: I guess coming out of high school you don't really talk about a lot of the things that we talk about in WGSS classes in a college setting. And so that was al just very new to me, it was very exciting and I could finally, sort of, talk openly, we could all talk openly, about anything within that realm. And that was just really exciting for me and I could see myself in that kind of atmosphere.
[00:01:44] MHR: So you're current student right now of the program, so how would you describe the current state of the program right now?
[00:01:51] IB: The current state... I guess the first thing that comes to mind is it is a program and not a full on Department which is something that, sort of, is unfortunate to me. It's a little bit upsetting because it's a really important Discipline and I wish that it had a fuller backing by the college itself. So because it is only a program there's a lack of faculty that's a core faculty. There's a lot of cross-listed classes because of the same reasons. Not enough core classes in my opinion. And it's also... because of all that I can have a completely different... you know we can both have WGSS majors degrees and I can come out with a completely different course load than yourself. And I think that's something that needs to be worked on within the Department.
[00:02:34] MHR: Yeah it's funny because I feel like people will say like, "I'm in the WGSS Department!" But, like, we forget that it's, like, not actually a full blown Department, you know?
[00:02:44] IB: Right.
[00:02:44] MHR: So my next question is, as a current student at The College of Wooster do you face any challenges being a student in the Discipline, or any stigma from other students, or other Departments?
[00:02:58] IB: I guess one thing that sort of jumps out at me immediately is, sort of, religious and ethnic background being Jewish. It kind of causes some problems both the students in my class and the faculty sometimes in my WGSS classes just because, sort of, we bump heads on some of the issues there. So at times just within my time at Wooster I felt a little bit uncomfortable. I've had to miss some of my classes which I think is not something I should have to do. So that's probably the main thing.
[00:03:31] MHR: Yeah I ask that because I know a lot of times as I've been talking to students who were first in the program and the faculty who've helped bring the program up, I know that though WGSS Discipline has, sort of, faced, sort of like stigma of not being, like, a legitimate thing to study or... just like it doesn't matter. Like it's too easy. Have you ever experienced any of that?
[00:03:58] IB: Yeah, yeah I have.
[00:03:59] MHR: Like in the school setting. It could be outside of the school setting.
[00:04:02] IB: Right, right. I think people that are sort of college students within the Liberal Arts setting think that it's an interesting thing to do, think that it's very valid. Outside of that, probably less so. And they think it's just sort of a superfluous, frivolous like, "oh we're just kind of talking about feminism. What are you going to do with that?" I think the career question is a larger question because it's not sort of a straight forward concrete study in a lot of people's minds. And so it is... even for myself sometimes it's easy, you know, because I am double major in Anthro which is another sort of liberal arts social science. It is easy for me to sometimes fall into that rut of thinking, "am I doing something that's sort of legitimate enough? Am I sort of, you know, smart? As smart as some of the other students who are doing these STEM programs?" But I think it's extremely important that we sort of try and negate that stigma.
[00:04:55] MHR: Yeah, yeah for sure. I think WGSS is a really cool Discipline in the way of it does open so many doors...
[00:05:02] IB: Right!
[00:05:02] MHR: ...to all these different...
[00:05:04] IB: Exactly!
[00:05:05] MHR: ...career paths! And I think people don't realize that what we're learning is actually really important and really relevant.
[00:05:14] IB: And it's applicable to everything! Exactly!
[00:05:18] MHR: So my next question is how do you see the current issues regarding women's rights and LGBTQ+ rights on the campus? Like what's the campus climate like?
[00:05:28] IB: Sure. So I think overall it's pretty positive because we are on the left leaning liberal arts campus. So there are a lot of initiatives pushing forward for LGBTQ events and rights, women's rights and all these kinds of things. We have groups on campus that I'm involved with myself as well. And just things like that. And we do, you know, get that support, but however there are always going to be, sort of, more right leaning groups and more conservative people that don't see us as legitimate and don't think that what we're doing is... you know, like, "oh feminism isn't for equality, it's for women's rights." Like, that kind of thing. So I think there's definitely some of that on our campus which brings it down, but I think overall it's pretty positive.
[00:06:10] MHR: Yeah I would agree with that. In relation to that question, do you see the currents issues regarding women's rights and LGBTQ rights on campus and in America right now having an influence on what is taught in the WGSS Department at all? Or, like, what topics are brought up?
[00:06:28] IB: Sure. I think to a degree, but not so much. I know some other Departments. Some that come to mind are, sort of, history, political science that sort of thing. I know that they have courses every semester that I've been on campus. Especially since the recent president... well, not so recent presidential election, that they have tailored these courses towards current events, political events. And I think that's really really interesting and beneficial to students. I think we have less of that in the WGSS Department. I'm sure the faculty would love to have more of that but there is a faculty shortage in our Department which I'm sure adds to that. But I think where that plays out more is maybe in speakers and events more so than courses.
[00:07:08] MHR: Yeah, because I think the WGSS Program does a good job of bringing in people but I don't feel like we have much of a space to really discuss...
[00:07:16] IB: Right, exactly.
[00:07:16] MHR: ...in classes as much...
[00:07:18] IB: Right.
[00:07:18] MHR: ... or if we do it's only briefly. So that leads me to my next question which is, would you like to see more of current events being brought into the classroom?
[00:07:30] IB: I would. I'm going to say sort of a hesitant yes because I think it is very beneficial. I think that at the moment we don't bring that in with, like, having a class about a certain event. I think it's more of... it sort of comes into certain discussions within a class. However I wouldn't want a current events class to overshadow our needs for core classes and these things that are sort of overarching things that we need to be learning about in our Discipline. So I think there's a space for them but they shouldn't overshadow the core.
[00:08:01] MHR: Yeah. Yeah I agree. I think with the, sort of, shortage with staff we aren't completely getting the full main things we should be getting.
[00:08:18] IB: Definitely, yeah.
[00:08:18] MHR: I think it'd be awesome if this tenure track professor that's coming in will help bring more of that so you can have more openness to learn...
[00:08:28] IB: Yeah, definitely!
[00:08:28] MHR: ...about these other things as well. Speaking of classes my next question is, what are some of your favorite classes that you took in the WGSS Discipline and what would you say were the most valuable things you learned from those classes.
[00:08:41] IB: So one that immediately comes to mind is a cross-listed class with Philosophy that was called Race, Gender and Justice. That was first ever Philosophy class that I took. And I think that obviously is the space to do a lot of critical thinking and examining of things which was just really important to our Discipline and just to myself. But I think one of the main things that I took away from that is I realized I never really learned, within sort of more traditional WGSS classes, the beginnings of women's rights movement, of sexist thought, of like any of those things. Queer thought. And so within that class we did! We went all the way back to sort of very very early times. With, like, the classic philosophers and sort of learned about, "OK where does sexism stem from? Where does this thought stem from?" and instead of just jumping straight to sort of more current times which was really helpful and eye opening for me. Another one that comes to mind is Religion and Sexuality which I took about a year ago which was just incredibly interesting and really just got to see how our country is based on, sort of, Christian thought and how it all kind of intersects. So yeah!
[00:09:52] MHR: That's awesome. So my next question is, what is your favorite thing about the WGSS Program at Wooster and what are some things you wish could be improved in the coming years? Or you wish to see continued in the coming years?
[00:10:10] IB: Sure! So some favorite things, and I think this goes for just the college in general, is the faculty. The connection that you get with them because we are a small campus and we are a very small Program. It's just wonderful and you really get to know each other. And they're very supportive. And it's just... it's a great community. And I think in general the WGSS Discipline is a space to foster a some really critical discussion. And it's not just someone lecturing at you. It's really a space for you all to sort of work through your thoughts which is really great. Something I wish that could be improved would probably be, once again, the Department and faculty class situation I was talking about a bit earlier. We need more core classes. We need less of these, sort of, fringe classes that you get from cross-listed. Which I absolutely love and I think they need to be there but we need more of a stable track that all of us need to take before branching out into the cross-listed classes. So I think that will be my main thing.
[00:11:08] MHR: Do you wish, like, you got more theory do you wish you got...
[00:11:11] IB: Sure. I think there is a definite lack of certain, I guess, intersections. To my knowledge we don't have that many of any classes on, sort of, like Asian feminist you know transactional things, on Native American on... They're just like a lot of intersections that are missing. I haven't taken a class on, sort of, black women, which I know there's some I think in the English Department. So it's like there are a lot of these classes are cross-listed and I'm just not getting them. And I need them because it's important. I took Transnational Feminisms this last semester and that was my first and only class that had really sort of head-on dealt with some of the other ethnicities and other people around the world. And I think especially within WGSS we recognize that it's important to have this intersectional approach and we shouldn't just be learning about American, you know, WGSS Disciplines.
[00:12:06] MHR: Because I was in Intro with you. And I feel like we covered a lot and it was so brief for each of them and I wish we could have more of, like, the intro class that sort of expanded on those more. So it's more than just, like, Intro and Transnational Feminisms.
[00:12:25] IB: Right, yeah.
[00:12:26] MHR: Like there should be more that goes more in-depth. Instead of...
[00:12:28] IB: Right!
[00:12:30] MHR: ... talking about each of them and having those be the core courses as well.
[00:12:34] IB: Right. Right.
[00:12:35] MHR: Because I agree with your whole statement about, like, there are so many cross-listed and it's awesome, but we take so many of those courses but they're not giving us fully what we need.
[00:12:48] IB: Exactly! And I think something else that I want to say to that question is I parallel my WGSS experience with my Anthro experience, and so that's my other major. And within Anthro obviously it's a different Discipline and I recognize that, but we do get theory classes, method classes, like separate classes for all of these. And you really get to learn what is Anthropology as a field, as a Discipline and then you get to learn about the other peoples and cultures. And that is really really really missing from the WGSS Discipline in my opinion. We have one class, which is our Junior I.S. class, mixed with methods mixed with theory. But in general I don't think that it should all be mushed into one class because it's just not enough space for us to learn all of that material.
[00:13:26] MHR: Yeah I agree. What about some more like positive things just we don't end it...
[00:13:31] IB: No, no you're fine! Yeah.
[00:13:33] MHR: ... negative note there.
[00:13:34] IB: Sorry! I think the faculty, as I said, is just fantastic. I think it's really great to, you know you can go to college and study, I don't know, biology and never, like, really you know learn about some of these other things and I think it's really great that I am studying WGSS because it's incredibly intersectional within other Disciplines. And all these cross-listed classes I think are a huge plus because you get to go into all these other majors and see, "OK how does a queer approach or a feminist approach, you know ,intersect with art history, with philosophy, with anthropology with anything else?" And I think that's a really really really great thing that I got to do in my undergraduate experience.
[00:14:17] MHR: Yeah. Yeah I guess like keep all the great classes all the great opportunities, but sort of... I would agree with that too. So my question is that, how does what you learn in your WGSS classes differ from what you learn in your other classes? Like what are you getting out of them that you're not getting out of, like, even Anthro for instance?
[00:14:38] IB: Right. I think the structure of the class itself affects how I'm learning and what I'm learning. Because within WGSS it's so much dialogue and discussion and sort of we're all critically thinking together and bouncing our thoughts off each other and sort of building upon that instead of a straightforward lecture where the professors like, "OK we're learning about X today. Let me tell you about it." And I think that's super important especially for a college education that we nurture our own understanding with a professor there to sort of guide us along. And obviously you don't get that in all Disciplines just for obvious reasons. But I think that's really important within WGSS to come to those conclusions and understandings and thought process yourself. Something that being in the WGSS Department has given me for other classes as well is a more intersectional approach. I've always thought of myself, like, when I was back in grade school to be a pretty open person and to be pretty sort of understanding and everything and conscientious. But being within the WGSS Department as a college student has absolutely made me grow a hundred times over in that respect. And I think I definitely bring that to all my other classes. "OK what are we missing here? What should you be talking about? What about this group of people? You know? And I think that's very helpful just in life to have that skill.
[00:15:59] MHR: Yeah that makes it... I'm like thinking back, it's like making me laugh a little, because I remember in Social Stats we were doing some sort of like example problem and then we're like, "we're going to use gender as like one specific category!" And then she was like, "who here is like knowledgeable on all the different gender, like, identities?" And then me and you were just like, "we know!"
[00:16:19] IB: Yeah!
[00:16:20] MHR: But yeah I definitely see the whole intersectional approach. Like it gives me sort of like I can understand what a professor in another topic is talking about. But then I can ask questions that sort of broaden it more. And like...
[00:16:35] IB: Exactly! Yeah!
[00:16:35] MHR: ... because of WGSS I know how to ask those questions.
[00:16:37] IB: Exactly.
[00:16:38] MHR: Yeah!
[00:16:40] IB: I agree.
[00:16:40] MHR: And also with all the group discussions, too, like that's like life. Like you're just going to have to work with people. Do you ever feel like in the class and like how we're all working together within the classroom is sort of like... helps you, like, working with people outside of the classroom too?
[00:16:57] IB: Yeah I think so because we all work off of each other and with each other to sort of develop our thoughts and questions. You know those things that we're not going to think about just because of our positionally and our backgrounds and whatever. And that's okay, but I think it's great that we do have these discussion based classes most of the time where we kind of add things in, you know, from each perspective. So it's like, "OK I didn't think about this." It's, like, a really good thing. And that's absolutely something that's applicable to real world situations.
[00:17:31] MHR: Yeah for sure. Ok so my final question, we touched upon this briefly, but how have you used what you learned in your WGSS Discipline in your other classes or other activities at Wooster? I mean we briefly talked about how you use it in other classes but I know you're very involved in campus but like...
[00:17:49] IB: Yeah!
[00:17:49] MHR: ... a bunch of groups that sort of have a connection to WGSS-y stuff.
[00:17:53] IB: Yeah, definitely! Very briefly I mean the intersectional aspect just is an obvious, you know, a given for that kind of thing. But I think something personally is I've really learned to be self-critical and, you know, I've learned it's okay to sort of, not "be wrong," but it's okay, you know, and it's good to be called out sometimes. And it's not some sort of horrible thing that someone's saying "Oh you're bad, you're wrong," it's just, "hey by the way, like, maybe we should say it like this instead of like that." And I think that's really really important. And I think that's so good that people are doing that in our Discipline. And... yeah I think that's like such a positive aspect that comes from specifically the WGSS Department. And... yeah I guess two of the groups that I'm involved with that jump out as sort of being hand-in-hand with the WGSS Department is k(no)w, which is a group for anti-rape culture and sexual respect advocacy in which I'm co-the president. And then also Vox, which is also called Generation Action. And that is a Planned Parenthood affiliate group for, sort of, sexual health and education items. And so I think especially within k(no)w it's a very collaborative group. There's sort of an executive board and we are very active within, sort of, campus culture within the students and within policy and new initiatives and things. And I have really really seen within my last three years of being in this group how being a WGSS major, and being within that Discipline, and taking these classes has really nurtured me. And it's grown how I interact with that group and the ideas that I bring up and sort of things that I add to our ideas. And that's actually been really interesting for me to see because, you know, as a freshman I wouldn't have thought about a lot of these things. And I would see, sort of, the upperclassmen talking about some things. And now I'm, sort of, in their position and I'm thinking, "oh wow! Like being in this Discipline has really had me grow. I've really grown from it and learned a lot from it!" And it will absolutely, you know, carry on through my life.
[00:19:56] MHR: Yeah I agree. And I really resonate with what you said about being able to sort of call people out but not in a negative way when you hear them...
[00:20:05] IB: Right!
[00:20:06] MHR: ... not saying something correctly.
[00:20:08] IB: Right!
[00:20:09] MHR: And it's not because they're necessarily, like, don't agree with it. It's just they might not be knowledgeable. And WGSS, I think, lets us know that we all come from different backgrounds but we come together to learn to make the world a better place. Actually before we finish I started asking previous students what they did for their I.S. And of course you're the first person I've talked to who's still at Wooster, so you want to tell listeners...
[00:20:34] IB: Oh boy!
[00:20:34] MHR: ...A little bit...
[00:20:34] IB: OK.
[00:20:35] MHR: ...about what you're planning on doing?
[00:20:36] IB: Sure, sure... I haven't talked about this in a few months. So since I'm a double major with Anthro I've kind of a two-part project. So I'm first looking at generally host parents and.... a sort of cultural acquisition with host parents and foreign exchange students within the U.S. setting. And I'm looking at specifically how food is all intertwined in that and the cultural acquisition. So how do host parents sort of understand their role in how the students learn about American culture through food. Specifically, how does their knowledge of that sort of shape what food they are/or not giving to them. But that's sort of the more anthropological aspect, the component. The WGSS component is looking at the host parents specifically and their gender roles within the domestic sphere, within the kitchens specifically because that's where the food preparation is happening and the eating. So I'm really interested in looking at that and seeing, "okay men versus women versus any other type person versus single married parent. How does that shift what they're cooking, what they're serving, what they understand." All of that kind of thing. So...
[00:21:48] MHR: Is there anything in particular in a certain WGSS class that, sort of, gave you inspiration to do this project at all?
[00:21:56] IB: I think it was more my study abroad Program that did that for me. But just being with a host family and food became something really important to communication and for me to understand what the culture was. And I mean I definitely drew from a lot of my classes but I don't think it was a particular class that did it for me.
[00:22:14] MHR: So those are all the questions I have, but before I and I always like to ask the person I'm talking to if you have anything else you want to say about WGSS at Wooster that we haven't talked about, or do you have any questions for me or about the project?
[00:22:28] IB: I don't have any questions for you. I guess I just want to say I'm really happy that Wooster has this Program and we've had it for quite some time which I think is... I mean I don't know how long other Programs from other universities have been around, but I think that's great that we've had for as long as we have. And I'm really thankful that we do have it even though it's still sort of an up and coming growing Program and it's really... Like I feel like I would not be the same person that I am today without being a WGSS major, so I'm really thankful that I'm involved in it. So...
[00:22:55] MHR: Yeah, yeah for sure!
[00:22:56] IB: ... Yeah.
[00:22:57] MHR: I think it's... at times it can be frustrating because it's up and coming and tiny, but it's also exciting because I feel like...
[00:23:03] IB: Yeah!
[00:23:05] MHR: ... every time students take a class we're helping to build it and give it more legitimacy. And I... so thank you for being in the Program! Alright, well thank you so much and I'll see you in the fall!
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00:23:05
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Title
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Interview with Isabel Bonhomme
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Women's studies; Anthropology; Human sexuality; Independent study; Study abroad; Gender; Extra-curricular activities
Description
An account of the resource
This is an interview with class of 2019 student Isabel Bonhomme. In this interview, Isabel describes what her experience has been like in the WGSS department at Wooster and how she uses her Anthropology studies to complement her WGSS study. Isabel describes what she has learned from her WGSS classes as well as what she hopes to see change with the program in the future. Isabel finishes by talking about how she uses what she has learned in WGSS in her extracurricular activities at Wooster and how she is planning on incorporating WGSS in her Senior Independent Study in the coming year.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Bonhomme, Isabel
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Unpublished
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2018-06-29
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OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries
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Presented with permission from Isabel Bonhomme<br /><br /><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Isabel Bonhomme Interview.mp3
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New York; Wooster
-
https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/b14c391e4f00108616bfc4671b6c034d.mp3
891efa63543a1052e2a53a273c296ddd
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Title
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Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews
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LGBT population; Alumni and alumnae; Oral history; Women's studies; Feminism and higher education; Homophobia in higher education; Gays in higher education
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This collection contains oral histories of alumni and faculty who are/were involved with the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the College of Wooster. Interviewees include alumni of the program, faculty, former faculty, invited speakers.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
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Unpublished
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Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Sound
Oral History
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Interviewee
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Atay, Ahmet
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Virtual Interview
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<p><strong>Ahmet Atay Interview</strong></p>
<p><strong>Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and Ahmet Atay for clarity</strong> </p>
<p>[00:00:02] MHR: Ok, I'm here where Ahmet Atay. It is June 13 [2018]. Hello Dr. Atay! </p>
<p>[00:00:08] AA: Hello! Hi. </p>
<p>[00:00:09] MHR: Thank you for being a part of this!</p>
<p>[00:00:13] AA: Of course! It's my pleasure! </p>
<p>[00:00:14] MHR: Alright so to start off this interview, can you tell me where you are from and how you ended up as a professor at the College of Wooster. </p>
<p>[00:00:23] AA: Sure! I am originally... I was born in Cyprus but I've been in the U.S. about twenty years now, so I guess I'm there and here simultaneously. I was looking for jobs as soon as I got my PhD. And it was the recession, so there wasn't that many jobs. So I took a job University of Louisville for a year and then the following year. This position opened up in the Department of Communications so I applied and I took this job and I had been here since then. Was I planning to be here? No. I didn't know anything about College of Wooster until I applied to the job. I did not even hear about it. But now I know quite a lot about it and it's fun to be here. </p>
<p>[00:01:10] MHR: So what got you interested in the WGSS Discipline and what was your experience with WGSS before coming to Wooster? </p>
<p>[00:01:19] AA: Sure, I'm always interested in the gender issues but I did not take my first class until my second year in the Masters Program, which I took the <em>Feminist Theory</em> class. And after that I started to take more gender classes in the Masters Program and continue to do so in the PhD Program. I think I completed probably eight-nine courses in either gender or queer related issues. In my dissertation, looked at queer... the queer body is using the cyber space. So even my research was... ended up being in the gender/queer related issues. So as soon as I graduated and took my first job at University of Louisville, I was asked to be part of the Women’s and Gender Studies Department as an affiliate faculty and I taught a course, Gender and Communication, through that Program. And once I arrived here I wanted to keep going with the WGSS and gender related work. So I contacted, back then, the chair of the Program, Nancy Grace, and said, "you'll be great! We would like to have you to contribute classes." So I proposed some classes, now they're cross listed and, you know, down the road I'd formulize my relationship with the Program. </p>
<p>[00:02:36] MHR: Very nice! So what was it like being, I guess, a male professor in a largely female Department or also a student when you were taking classes? </p>
<p>[00:02:46] AA: Sure. It is very very different because... I had a similar thought when I took the <em>Feminist Theory</em> class. It was a large lecture class, we had 150 people in it and there were only two men. So, a hundred and forty eight woman and two men. The ratio was outstandingly completely different. So I filled a similar vein here that I am the first male chair of the Program. I am the first international person who is chairing the Program. So it comes with responsibility. It's also odd that I'm chairing a Department, or a Program, that is inherently meant for women's issues but then spread it open to include more gender issues and the queer issues. </p>
<p>[00:03:31] So, I believe that even though it is kind of interesting to work with a lot of women, they are also...respect and value what I bring to the table. The feminist ideals, the queer ideals that are non U.S. based and different ways of looking at gender and talking about gender. And more and more I'm trying to attract also male faculty who can step in and open up spaces to talk about gender from masculinity point of view or the queer point of view. So, that's my responsibility to reach out and invite more people. </p>
<p>[00:04:08] MHR: Yeah, so... I mean as a student I believe you and one other professor have been only two male professors I ever took [WGSS] classes [with]. So is there like... is it hard to find male professors to come teach at Wooster? </p>
<p>[00:04:26] AA: I think it is hard to find male professors who are really invested in the feminist issues historically. Now we have a new cohort of people who are more interested in it but not necessarily able to teach courses because of their departmental responsibilities. So most of the... most of the courses, except maybe the masculinity course that have been taught, is taught by the woman at the College of Wooster. And it's hard to find people who are taking feminist perspective, or queer perspective, or both, or intersectional perspectives but also freeing them up time or to teach courses. It's also very much of a challenge.</p>
<p>[00:05:13] MHR: Yeah, I mean I was asking these questions because as a student, as a male student, I'm also very much, like, the only male students in these WGSS classes I'm taking and I've always been curious about integrating more men into the Discipline. Yeah.</p>
<p>[00:05:32] AA: I mean I hope that you will have more courses in at least Masculinity or Queer Masculinity combinations that will attract more students. More students start seeing that this is valuable of who they are, what they do. So and male students is a particular. So, we need to work on that a bit more. Next year you're on the... on the board so you can help me with that.</p>
<p>[00:05:56] MHR: Yes! Cool. So how have you seen as... since you've been a professor at Wooster, how have you seen the WGSS Program change? Or if you have seen any change?</p>
<p>[00:06:09] AA: I have. At the time that I came in there was a larger cohort of people who contributed to the WGSS. And for a variety of reasons those people retired, left the college or transferred somewhere else. So there was an erosion of those bodies. So now we are trying to actively recruit a lot of young people who can actually fill some of the void, or the gap, that is created by the departures. So that has been an issue for us that we will hopefully address down the road. But the exciting news that we also got awarded a tenure track line and this is one of a kind. In forty years of the history, that's the first full line that the WGSS is getting outside of Christa. So it is the most exciting development. But also there are other issues of people who are leaving. So that is affecting us. But also people who are committed to WGSS being put into other responsibilities so they cannot really offer courses in the WGSS. So we have to manage that dynamic. It is something new for us as well. So it's a good development but also some negative developments that we have to overcome. </p>
<p>[00:07:27MHR: ] Your point about the tenure track, and it being like the first of its kind. A lot of people I've been talking to have been talking about how an issue they have at the WGSS Department at Wooster currently is the fact that we have these awesome visiting professors come in for a year or two and then you get really attached to them and what they teach. And then when you become a senior they aren't there anymore... </p>
<p>[00:07:53] AA: Yep, yep.</p>
<p>[00:07:53] MHR: ...To be your I.S. advisor. So, how do you see, like, the tenure track really, like, helping the Program in the future?</p>
<p>[00:08:02] AA: I think it's going to help to grow, first of all. But, second of all it's going to stabilize the Program. The students are going to feel that there is, in addition to Christa, another person fully in the Program and the rest of us are committed to it will contribute or chair the Program. So, it will stabilize the Program. It will make the advising, I.S. advising, easier. So that person can overlook for four people or, depending on the years, seven people or whatever the numbers will be. So there will be more relationship building between that person and the community building within that person and the student body. But also that person can grow the Program, the numbers go up and we will have the same issue yet again. So... and that's a good problem to have. Right? It's a very good problem to have. So I am hopeful that this person will help us to stabilize and the growth the Program, more than anything else.</p>
<p>[00:09:04] MHR: Yeah that's something that I hope for future students at Wooster, too. </p>
<p>[00:09:10] AA: Yes.</p>
<p>[00:09:12] MHR: You sort of talked about this a little bit, but what are some big strengths you see of the Department currently and what are some weaknesses you see of the Department?</p>
<p>[00:09:22] AA: I think the biggest strength is being very interdisciplinary. It borrows from all kinds of places and within the college. And that is something that I always celebrated. And that comes with also some of the burden because if we cannot free up people to contribute or take on an I.S. advising then it becomes an issue. So, there is a good and the bad thing that interdisciplinary way of looking at it. The good is the college is committed to it. They're giving us a whole line. We're committed to it, so we see that commitment in the number of students interested in the classes as well as the majors or the minor. So there is a growth in there. So those are all the good stuff. The bad stuff is definitely the staffing. And something as a chair that I am facing, the staffing comes with either the lack of courses that the students can take. Also some of the courses that we need and we cannot staff them because there is nobody who can teach those. So I would like to see somebody who can teach classes on trans issues, somebody who is continuously offering a class on masculinity and more queer courses in the books to come up more frequently. But in order to do it... to do that we need more bodies who are willing to offer those courses but also Departments that free up time for those people who can teach those courses. </p>
<p>[00:10:46] MHR: The question that just popped into my head is... the WGSS Department is such a small Department and it is relatively new and we're talking about how this tenure track is, like, a big deal for the department because it shows that the school is really supporting the growth of it. Has it felt, since you've been a professor, that the school's always, like, supported the WGSS Department? Because a lot of times, I know, there can be controversy with WGSS Departments, as it's like, "oh it's not, like, a legitimate area of study. Like, why is it Women's Studies? Why shouldn't we have male studies, too?" So has it felt like the college has always supported the Program? And, like, wanted to see it grow? Or, is it, like, as the Programs grown and there's been more interest then they start taking more initiative in it?</p>
<p>[00:11:40] AA: I mean my understanding... that before even I got here when Joanne Frye originally built the Program there was support and there was commitment from certain Departments, such as English, History, Art History, Religious Studies, that they were committed to it. And that commitment came in with extra work or ability to take a course release in a Department and contributed to the Program. So those Departments see that as support and the college supported that. And there were times that when the students are down, they say, "Oh you don't need the extra people. You can survive." But they really show the commitment to the Program because it means that no matter how small or large we can get, there is one and a half permanent position in the Program. It is a huge deal comparatively. And I think more now there are faculty member who are advocating for queer issues or trans issues in addition to women's issues. So they see those as attached additional layers at they feel like diversity is a commitment. So in addition to women's issues we're also committing to other diversity issues that are housed in the WGSS Programs. So now the WGSS is seen as a hub for diversity as the colleges engage into the conversations with diversity and engagement. We are using WGSS as one of those stand points or hot bed. It houses diversity that is extremely valuable for the college. So therefore that becomes another way of they are showing commitment and value because it adds diversity.</p>
<p>[00:13:24] MHR: With the Program being so interdisciplinary and growing, a lot of times, for me at least, there's just so many cross-listed classes that we can take. And they've all been awesome. Do you find, sometimes, that somebody wants to cross-list and they think that the Program is really relevant to WGSS majors but it's not actually relevant. Like, I guess talk about the process of how do you decide if a class really is appropriate to be cross-listed.</p>
<p>[00:14:00] AA: <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/_media/files/academics/areas/wgss/wgss-requirements-courses.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">We ask for a syllabus. We look at the readings and the goals of the course. And one of the things that we are committed to... we want the courses to be offered from a feminist standpoint rather than having as, like, an added unit to it. Or a queer perspective.</a></p>
<p>[00:14:17] So we are interested in courses that builds on the idea of we're going to look at the feminist foundation, the queer foundation and also if it's possible take an intersectional perspective to look at the other elements attached to it. So if there is a course that is going to cover a gender in one day, out of how many, we are not interested in cross- listing that. But if, let's say, there is a course in feminism and film that builds on the idea of feminism, that is what we're interested in. That approach from the day one to the end of it with their assignment, with the readings, with the idea of building feminist sensibilities in the class. We are interested in that.</p>
<p>[00:15:03] MHR: Yeah I ask that question has I've talked to some alumnus of the Program who were students, and they were talking about how when they were there it sort of seemed there was starting to be a transition from classes that were appropriate for WGSS cross-listed versus classes that just because they had the word "women" in it...</p>
<p>[00:15:26] AA: Yeah.</p>
<p>[00:15:27] MHR: ...then it would've been cross-listed. So, has there been, like, a change in how you or how the Discipline, like, decides what's appropriate?</p>
<p>[00:15:36] AA: I think there is a shift from, I guess, late 90s onward looking at the intersectionality, right? So we are not only looking at the women's issues but we are looking at different gender issues and also women's issues with them. So most of the people who have trained before that, they might have taken courses that did not do that work. Therefore they don't have enough training. And the new people are coming out of the PhD Programs in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies or with certificates that they do that work in different levels. So there is a value on looking solely on women's issues.</p>
<p>[00:16:15] Of course there is. But we also want some of the courses to take more of an intersectional prospective. To look at the issues that are women's issues, but they have different elements to it. So...and once you have a course it is crossed listed, we cannot take it back, right? Because that person might develop that and that was needed at the time. Now we cannot ask for a new syllabus because it's already approved and it's already in the books and it's already been cross-listed. But what we can do; monitor when there's a shift between that person and another person is teaching the class that they are actually integrating some of the new voices in the courses that they are teaching. So they are not going to be outdated. </p>
<p>[00:17:04] MHR: So another question I have is, what do you think the most valuable thing students learn in WGSS classes or... and then to follow up with that, why is WGSS such an important area of study, especially at a school like the College of Wooster?</p>
<p>[00:17:22] AA: I think the WGSS is, again, where we are in terms of the politics and the cultural shifts. WGSS became one of those important Departments that does the diversity work, right? So it is important for the College of Wooster students to come into WGSS courses where they can learn about women's issues, but also they can learn about transnational feminism, they can learn about queer lives, they can learn about issues pertaining gender, sexuality, and other identity elements. So this Program does work on identity as an umbrella that focuses on gender, but intersects with the other things.</p>
<p>[00:18:04] So I think students come into the Program, as well as taking the courses that might not be the majors, they learn about critical lenses to look at the society where we are. Looking at women's issues, looking at gender issues that can add sexuality issues, but also become more of aware of the diversity and the layers of the diversity and the complexities of it. So we try to give them critical perspectives to interrogate what does it mean to be gendered, or gender queer, or black lesbian, or black feminist, or transnational person, or a trans person. In this time of the where we are going in terms of the society, but also historically what has been done and why is it important to look at the history to understand all the fights that people fought so we can enjoy some of the liberties that we have. So it largely introduces to them a critical lens to look at issues pertaining woman and gender and sexuality, but also gives them other tools to interrogate the society at large and to question the power structures around us. Political, economic, or otherwise.</p>
<p>[00:19:15] MHR: So, especially at a school like College of Wooster which is, like, a small town in Ohio which...there's definitely, I guess, a struggle with the students on campus and the town that surrounds us. So, how do you see WGSS being important as like, sort of, that kind of relationship? </p>
<p>[00:19:36] AA: I think WGSS gives students a community as an intellectual community, but also a community that they can thrive and they feel like they belong to even down here earth surrounded by, maybe, a lot of people who are more conservative or they don't practice some of the things that we value. So therefore we give them a house. Also we give them a position to speak from. </p>
<p>[00:20:03] We support what they do on campus and outside of the campus their involvement in the community. So I see WGSS as a Program that is a hub of critical thinking, but also a community that supports no matter how different or similar you are and value that within and outside of the college. And we want to address that from the first day somebody declares a major that, you know, you're part of a learning community but you also learn to become an activist and that's okay and we support you in that endeavor as well. </p>
<p>[00:20:43] MHR: Yeah! Speaking of what we learn, what's a favorite class you have taught within the WGSS Discipline, and what are the goals you, sort of, hoped your students would get out of that class? </p>
<p>[00:20:56] AA: One of the secondary core-courses that we have is the one that I teach; <em>Media, Gender, Race, Sexuality</em>. It's looking at gender, race, sexuality in the media. I like teaching that course. I think you're surrounded by the media nonstop and I want the students to get a critical lens looking at the representations of diverse bodies, but also looking at the self-representation in the new media that you all engage in. What do you do? How do you represent yourself in particular ways? And question the ways in which you represent yourself. I think students enjoy the class because we look at historically where we were and looking at the television, the film, and the growth of the representations. But also looking at the new media and understanding, you know, how much what... the ways in which represent ourselves is replicating the stereotypical representations and how we go and challenge those.</p>
<p>[00:21:56] I think students really enjoy the media part as well as looking at the gender elements. So I wish I can offer that course more frequently to accommodate more students, but I hope it happens. Now it's not happening that much but that's one of my favorite courses at the college!</p>
<p>[00:22:15] MHR: That sounds really interesting!</p>
<p>[00:22:17] AA: Take it!</p>
<p>[00:22:27] MHR: I know! Hopefully it'll be offered while I'm still there. I'll have to come back for it! </p>
<p>[00:22:25] AA: You must! </p>
<p>[00:22:26] MHR: Yes! So we already talked a little bit about what you want to see the Program look like and being in the future. But, as the new chair of the Department, do you have any other goals you want to achieve within the Program? Or how do you see the Program moving forward especially, as you said, being the first male, the first international chair as well and bringing all of those things into the Program as a whole?</p>
<p>[00:22:58] AA: I would like to see, first of all, that we have a successful hire.</p>
<p>[00:23:04] MHR: Yes! </p>
<p>[00:23:12] AA: And that hire brings what we don't have and what we desperately need; other diversity elements to the WGSS Program. So that's one of my top priorities for next year. But starting next year, and also my third year as the chair, I hope to develop a Queer minor, Queer Studies minor that is housed in WGSS but also is a interdisciplinary Program that borrows from other Programs, so that minor can give us a different kind of energy, commitment, and excitement. And we can also have more courses in the Queer Studies because currently there is only one course that has a Queer title in it and definitely I think the students are interested in it.</p>
<p>[00:23:49] There is a growing interest of that, so I hope that I can achieve that as well.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[00:23:55] MHR: Awesome! I think it'd be awesome to have a Queer Studies minor!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[00:23:58] AA: I think so, too!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[00:23:58] MHR: Yeah! How would it be, sort of, a, like, companion Program to WGSS? Or, like, what you want it to be like? But... talk about that a little more.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[00:24:09] AA: I think we really need other core-courses... such as we need a core-course on queer theory meaning that we need a course on transnational queer. We need a course in queer politics and some queer history. So those would be the elements that will make the core of the study and the others will be electives that come from the WGSS dimension. So there is a queer core and the rest will be the secondary core that really supplements through the WGSS. At the moment we have core faculty who is trained to teach queer courses but we don't have the time or the space to do so. So one of the things that we need to negotiate to release us from some of the duties and start teaching these courses if it's possible.</p>
<p>[00:25:02] MHR: That's awesome! That sounds so cool. It's also cool, too, because I know a lot of people in different areas of study love WGSS courses but don't have the time to, like, take all the WGSS classes and I think having a Queer Studies minor might be a really interesting way for them to be involved but not feel like they can't take the courses.</p>
<p>[00:25:26] AA: Yeah, and also I think it's good for us because I look at other Programs in Ohio, looking at liberal arts school. <a href="https://denison.edu/academics/queer-studies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Denison has a Queer Studies Program</a> and some of the other colleges also have a Queer minor. </p>
<p>[00:25:41] We are one of the rare ones that don't have it, so if you want to be competing with them in that capacity we have to get there. And I hope that the college will commit to it. And I know the diversity conversations that we have engaged last year and this year, I hope that there will be more acceptance and push towards acceptance of that minor sooner than later. </p>
<p>[00:26:06] MHR: Yeah. No, that's very exciting.</p>
<p>[00:26:08] AA: Yeah. </p>
<p>[00:26:09] MHR: I feel like the WGSS Department right now is in, sort of, an exciting moment of really beginning to push forward and expand. </p>
<p>[00:26:17] AA: I think so too. I think we caught a good energy and if we can bank on it we can do great stuff.</p>
<p>[00:26:23] MHR: Yeah! I think those are actually all the questions I have, but I want to know if you have anything else you want to ask me or bring up or say about WGSS at Wooster? </p>
<p>AA: I want to say thank you for tackling these projects. You are doing something very valuable and I can speak for all of the past chairs that we really appreciate what you are working with Catie and Christa on this. So thank you. And I am also looking forward to have you on board next year so we will carry on these conversations and also materialize some of this stuff next year. </p>
[00:27:02] MHR: Yeah! I'm looking forward to it.
Original Format
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00:27:02
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Ahmet Atay
Subject
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Women's studies; Queer theory; Human sexuality; Gender; Interdisciplinary approach in education; Queer community; Feminism; Men
Description
An account of the resource
This is an interview with current chair of the WGSS department, Ahmet Atay. Dr. Atay talks about his experience being the newest chair of the WGSS program at Wooster and comments on the responsibility he feels being the first international and male chair of the program. Dr. Atay discusses how he got interested in WGSS topics and how he mixes WGSS with his other discipline; Communications. Dr. Atay talks about WGSS cross-listed classes at Wooster his vision for the future of the program. Dr. Atay also describes his idea to create a Queer Studies minor at Wooster.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Atay, Ahmet
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Unpublished
Date
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2018- 06-13
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OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries
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Presented with permission from Ahmet Atay<br /><br /><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
Type
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Sound
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Atay Interview.mp3
Coverage
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Cyprus; United States; Louisville; Wooster
-
https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/fed792552aebb547746439f40b2bb061.mp3
83ce98c9da5c5dbce302a8d23601c28f
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Title
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Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews
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LGBT population; Alumni and alumnae; Oral history; Women's studies; Feminism and higher education; Homophobia in higher education; Gays in higher education
Description
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This collection contains oral histories of alumni and faculty who are/were involved with the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the College of Wooster. Interviewees include alumni of the program, faculty, former faculty, invited speakers.
Creator
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Publisher
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Unpublished
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Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Interviewee
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Goodwin, Meonyez
Location
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Virtual Interview
Transcription
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Meonyez Goodwin Interview Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and Meonyez Goodwin for clarity [00:00:00] MHR: I am here with Meonyez Goodwin and it is June 20 [2018]. Hello. And thank you for being a part of this. [00:00:07] MG: Oh you're welcome! How are you? [00:00:08] MHR: I'm good! So to start off my first question is, where are you from originally and how did you end up at the College of Wooster? [00:00:18] MG: I am from Shaker Heights Ohio. And how did I end up at the College of Wooster? It's actually funny because I wanted to go to a big school like Kent, O.U., O State and I got accepted to all of those, but my high school guidance counselor told me to try out one more school as far as visiting and seeing how their academic programs were. And it ended up being the College of Wooster. And after visiting so many big schools I was kind of overwhelmed. So I ended up going to the College of Wooster and I loved it! And I guess it went from there! [00:00:55] MHR: Yeah! [00:00:55] MG: Went from there! And it was so funny cause she was like, "Oh you're not going to like the big schools! You're going to love the College of Wooster and everything. And I, like, told her... I said, "if you're wrong, you're buying me all my school supplies!" And so she ended up being so right. And I was so embarrassed but I'm glad I went there. So, yeah! That's how I ended up at the College of Wooster. [00:01:16] MHR: Yeah. Awesome, yeah! So my next question is, what made you interested in the WGSS Discipline, and did you know you wanted to be in the WGSS program when you came to Wooster? [00:01:25] MG: So originally I wanted to be a Psychology major, believe it or not! And something fell through with, like, all the Psych courses. They were filled during orientation. [00:01:37] And so my... what is it... my... what are the people... orientation... the people who help you register for classes? [00:04:05] MHR: Archers? [00:04:06] MG: Archers! Yes! My archer ended up putting me in an Intro to WGSS course with them. It was a visiting professor named Dr. Dhar at the time. And she was really really great! Like, she helped me develop all of, like, my feminist perspectives and she really got me into Women's Studies and all the things that help us as women in things that actually don't sometimes, too. And yeah that's how I, like, really fell in love with... just from that intro class. And then ever since then I had taken like two or three WGSS courses every semester. And I decided to major my sophomore year into WGSS. So yeah. [00:04:39] MHR: Very nice! Yeah, it seems that a lot of people I'm talking to... they sort of just, like, fell into WGSS and... [00:04:43] MG: Yeah! It was not planned at all! I didn't even know what WGSS was! So when I had took the intro course I was like, "OK, so are we just going to be studying about women all day long?" I was just so, like, unaware what was going on in the class. Then I fell in love with it! [00:05:04] MHR: Yeah! Alright, so my next questions are, what are some of your favorite classes that you've taken in the WGSS discipline and what were the most valuable things you learned from those classes? [00:05:10] MG: Oh I loved the Media, Gender and Race course I took! That was cross listed with Dr. Atay's Communications class. I love that class. Blackness and Sexuality. I love Women in Music. That was definitely a favorite because I love music, so integrating those two subjects together was, like, so dope! What else do I love... I love Christa Craven's class, Feminist Pedagogy class! You take that Junior year. I really liked that! What else... I guess I liked <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10255&context=independentstudy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I.S.</a> You know I got free range so... not really... it feels, like, not really a course but it was one of those things we got to be the director of your work. And we don't have a lot of free range when we do things sometimes in our academic classes, so I guess that had to be one of my favorite classes too if you count it! [00:05:49] MHR: Yeah! So talking about your I.S., what did your... what was your I.S. on and how did you take what you learned from your WGSS classes into your I.S.? [00:05:58] MG: Yes! Ok so I interviewed six black identifying women at our college and I went to get their perception of beauty standards and body ideals and how that affects them and how that affects how they perceive others. And by doing so I had a historical context as well. So I had looked up, like, things about the sapphire, the mammy, the Jezebel and how those stereotypical images are still in our media today just in different forms. And more, like, modern day forms and seeing how those images affect us as well. Because when you look at certain shows like Scandal you see Kerry Washington as the jezebel, but a lot of people, like, bypass that image of her because of her relationship with, you know, the president. You know, like they're so focused on her relationship with the president that they forget whatever else she is capable of doing. And, like, I did a media analysis of The Real Housewives of Atlanta which is where the Media, Race and Gender class came into... with Dr. Atay because he introduced me to all those stereotypical images and representations of black women. And so I really just let the voices of, you know, my participants speak for themselves. [00:06:59] And I did, like, the theoretical context with Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, bell hooks and just really giving, like, black women's voices a chance to be heard and, like, everything just about them. So that was my I.S. [00:07:12] MHR: Yeah, that's a very important topic, I think! Especially in the WGSS Discipline at Wooster, too, because I think we have a little ways to go with diversifying what we're learning. [00:07:27] MG: Yes we do! It was a good way of, like, integrating my WGSS perspective and my Africana’s perspective, because I'm Africana minor as well, so I was really trying to find how do I combine these two, you know, majors together and make it cohesive, and flow and that I could take both of my studies from each, you know, major into an I.S. [00:07:43] MHR: So my next question is, how would you describe the state of the Program of WGSS while you were a student at Wooster? And I ask this so we can sort of see if there's been change with students from the beginning to now and, like, what problems are still there or what good things are still there. [00:08:02] MG: Yeah, so I definitely feel like the lack of staff members of color, and just staff in general. Like, WGSS is a very small Department. Like, and we don't even say Department we say Program, you know? So it just shows that we need more people who are willing to, like, join on board with the WGSS Program and, like, help our students because... by being so small we only have maybe one or two people that our students can go to that actually are knowledgeable of the material and of the courses that we need to take. And just making sure that we have direction in that Program. Because a lot of things can get very lost or, you know, confuse, you know, with everything that goes on. And I think just... of course more diverse faculty. That's with any Program at Wooster, honestly. So that's nothing new. But I would also say just keeping it innovative, like, our courses. I really feel like Women in Music was such a dope course. I had never taken a course like that, like, since then. So I thought it was, like, really cool to, like, see that course happen. And just, like, making sure, like, we keep the courses interesting for our students. So, I think that could be a thing to work on... is, like, just having those different topics addressed in a classroom. [00:09:00] MHR: Yeah I think what's really... I've found hard and what I've heard being voiced by others, too, is the fact that because there is such little amount of staff and we have so many visiting professors who bring in, like, these really cool topics and what they're experts in. And then if want to do something with that for your I.S., and then they're gone, then have to work with, like, Christa and then all the other WGSS faculty are there in other Disciplines as well. [00:09:20] MG: Yeah there's no, like, stability, like, you know there's no consistency with the numbers of staff members or the people that stay, that leave you know? Yeah, I would definitely try to get somebody, tenure track. [00:09:27] MHR: Yeah. [00:09:27] MG: Have we resolved that issue? Do we have somebody? [00:09:28] MHR: Yeah, so next year, I believe, we are having... so next year is 2019, 2018-2019 school year, and we have another visiting faculty member coming in and then we're hoping that the coming year we'll have... we'll be able to have a tenure track professor hired and yeah. I hope that will bring some more stability to the Program, too. [00:09:42] MG: Yeah, I agree. [00:09:42] MHR: So I'm curious to see what will happen with that. I think... unfortunately it's not something I'll ever be able to see happen because I'm gone next year. All right. So my next question is, did you face any challenges being a student in the WGSS Discipline, or did you ever feel any stigma towards you for being in this, like, Program or studying these things? [00:10:02] MG: Yeah. So I was the only WGSS major Africana minor this year in which... it didn't shock me, but just the lack of, you know, people of color in the Program always, like, makes me wonder, "ok, like, cool," but then it's like, "damn, I see all these other majors..." and so I always sometimes, like, in the beginning because I came in, I guess you could say dumb about WGSS stuff you know, because that wasn't like a liberal thing to have in classes or in schools. And so I think as I developed what I... I found myself, like, shying back because I'll be like one of maybe two or three black people in a class and I didn't know how to voice sometimes what I was feeling or how I wanted to react to certain images or certain theories because, again, we didn't have a lot of, like, black theorist or, you know, black artists that we would focus on. It was mainly dominated by white voices. And so just finding how to speak up in those spaces and... let alone in my own, like, writing... Like my I.S. has to be the most proudest moment of my life because it was, like, strictly what I wanted, you know? As a black queer woman, this is me. And so I think that was hard for me to find myself in WGSS courses or in the WGSS Discipline because I never saw anybody like me. And I knew there were people, like, who were people of color or black in the WGSS Discipline, but I mean hadn't had them or seen them as often, or they were a WGSS minor and not a WGSS major so we will be in different courses or phases. And so I think just finding myself in the process as well as the curriculum itself was, like, one of my challenging things. But I did OK, you know I graduated. [00:11:29] MHR: You graduated, you were a great T.A. and you did an amazing I.S.! My next question is, what were some of your favorite things about the WGSS Program at Wooster in terms of what you learned or, like, academically but also in life as well? [00:11:47] MG: Yeah! I loved my one-on-one talks with Christa Craven. Like even though she wasn't my I.S. advisor this year I, like, still talked to her and, like, throughout the year she has really guided me as far as, like, stepping outside of my comfort zone and speaking up. Like I said, I was very shy and nervous to always voice my opinion. And just having those one-on-one conversations with her really helped me develop as a scholar and as a person, as a woman, you know? But I also liked our little, like, meet-up sessions. Because I know my freshman year, [00:12:21] Ashley Chavez, she had us do, like, a WGSS formal and I really enjoyed that. That's really how I got connected to a lot of WGSS majors and minors during my freshman year which propelled me my sophomore year to major in it. So that was one thing I loved. I loved when we had all the WGSS seniors or juniors meet-up. Like, moments with other WGSS people really made my day, so I would really definitely push to have more events like that with each other because the camaraderie y'all will build will definitely help y'all, like, during y'all tough moments and tough times. I would definitely say just being with the WGSS family helped me a lot. [00:13:04] MHR: Yeah hopefully we will do more of that in the future too. I think... [00:13:07] MG: Yeah. [00:13:08] MHR: ...because we are such a small Program too and, like, everyone is in all the same classes together. [00:13:14] MG: Exactly! Like you'll always run into them. You can always talk and just say like, "oh my god can you believe our advisor?!" "Yeah I can't believe it!" You know, like, just having those moments to, like, debrief and talk about whatever. It helps so much. Yeah. [00:13:29] MHR: Yeah. So another question I had is, what do you hope to see... I mean you talked about this a little bit, but how do you see the WGSS Program becoming even stronger for... in future generations and future years what do you hope to see? [00:13:46] MG: Yeah just, again, like creating more stability within our staff members. Like making sure we have a consistent group of people who love what they are doing. A familiar face helps develop trustworthy relationships, you know what I mean? And so I think just having that and keep up with, like, innovative courses, keep them interesting because so much is going on in our society. Everything is changing left and right. So we need to keep up with the times and make sure that all voices are represented in our courses, and our staff, you know? In our I.S... like whatever it is because that can really... they make a difference in our Program, you know? Because we're already small and different. So, like, why not keep it the same? Like let's make sure that we keep it growing, you know? I would say that. [00:14:40] MHR: Yeah! Yeah I hope so too because I think WGSS is also growing. So... [00:14:45] MG: Yeah like... [00:14:48] MHR: As we're growing... [00:14:48] MG: We started... [00:14:49] MHR: The Program at Wooster has to keep growing too. So... [00:14:51] MG: Yeah! [00:14:52] MHR: ...We'll see! This next question is... I know you just graduated and like… but this next question I guess is a more, like, hypothetical instance, is, how have you used what you learned from the WGSS Discipline in life after Wooster? [00:15:10] MG: Oh that's actually a good question. Well I'll be a special education teacher for Teach For America. And what's funny is that right now I'm teaching ELA, English Language Arts. And so we're doing Audre Lorde tomorrow! So... and Audre Lorde was, of course, one of my theorists that I used in my I.S., so I've already incorporated some things of, like, black feminist writers in our, you know, courses, in our lessons, because, again, diversifying what we're teaching our students is important because representation matters, you know? So maybe a lot of my students don't know who Audre Lorde is yet, but after tomorrow they will. They'll have at least a glimpse of her and, you know, like a piece of her tomorrow. So, like, that's one way I plan on, you know, incorporating my WGSS Discipline into, like, after. And just like keep writing. I definitely want to write more, I guess you could say mini I.S.s if you will. And just, like, exploring those Women of color, you know, that have changed our world, that are involved now. So that's how. [00:16:20] MHR: Yeah that's great! A last question I had that just popped into my head is, many people I've been talking to have been saying how WGSS is sort of connected with their activism. Do you have any experience with that or has Wooster's WGSS Program, sort of, inspired your activism at all? Like because you were saying as a woman of color, a queer woman of color, has that inspired anything for you with WGSS at all? [00:16:50] MG: Yes. So I'm always active. I'm always protesting something. So it's just funny because recently they had, like, a Pride festival down here. It’s very small and intimate in Atlanta. And it's just something they just threw randomly that I saw on Facebook and I went to. And it was just so nice to, like, advocate and be in that space of people who are like me, or who believe in the same values as me. And just, like, the other day we had a protest at TFA because we wanted to celebrate Juneteenth, you know, which is, you know, the celebration of freeing of all slaves, you know, black people. And just having those moments, you know, because, like, I'm aware of Juneteenth because of the things I studied in Africana and, you know, the things I learned in WGSS, you know, I'm proud to be a queer woman of color and know all these other different identities as well. So I think me just being an ally or being a part of the movement is, like, what I'm always going to be. So, like, an activist, you know, like a womanist as I may call myself, is something I take full pride in. So whatever the cause is you will see me there! [00:18:04] MHR: No that's awesome! Yeah I think WGSS has definitely made me feel, like, I can go out and, like, protest things or advocate for things because... while we may not be learning exactly what each of those things are it's... I feel like it educates me to listen to other people and to understand stories but also understand the basis for a bunch of the things we go and advocate for. [00:18:35] MG: And it's nice to be a part of a community that shares those similar values that you have. You know because it's very rare that you find people who you connect with... [00:18:46] MHR: Yeah. [00:18:46] MG: You know, on a deeper intellectual level as well as, like, activism and, you know, like feminist values and things like that. So I definitely agree! And WGSS allows you to do that. Because you learn so many ways of, you know, working with people and collaborating with people and, like, joining movements with other people outside of your bubble, you know? So yeah. [00:19:10] MHR: Yeah! [00:19:10] MG: Yeah. [00:19:11] MHR: I agree! So those are all the questions I have but I wanted to ask you do you have any thing else you want to say about WGSS at Wooster or any questions you want to ask me about the project? [00:19:21] MG: Oh yeah! Ok so what when will it be up? I want to keep an eye out! [00:19:25] MHR: I think what Christa Craven is hoping we are going to do is also have Feminist Pedagogy work on this as well and sort of, like, to make it even bigger. And I think that the celebration for the fortieth anniversary, this will, sort of, be like officially unveiled. But right now it's, like, a working archive but I think that's the plan. And then after this fortieth anniversary we're hoping what the work we do is, sort of, going to inspire people to start looking at WGSS Programs not just at Wooster, but, sort of, throughout the country and create more documentation for this area of study since it is so new. [00:20:03] MG: Yeah! Oh that's so dope! I love that!
Original Format
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00:20:03
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Meonyez Goodwin
Subject
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Queer community; Women's studies; Black women; Sexuality; Race; Feminism; Mass media; Women; Independent study
Description
An account of the resource
This is an interview with Meonyez Goodwin who is a 2018 graduate of the College of Wooster. In this interview, Meonyez reflects on her experience of being a WGSS major at the college. Specifically, she talks about what it was like being a queer woman of color in the WGSS discipline. Meonyez describes what her senior independent study was on and what classes and aspects of the WGSS major were most influential to her. Meonyez also talks about what the state of the WGSS discipline was when she was a student and what she hopes to see for the WGSS discipline at Wooster in the future. Meonyez finishes by talking about how she is using what she learned from WGSS in her life after Wooster and how WGSS connects to her activism.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Goodwin, Meonyez
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Unpublished
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2018-06-20
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OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries
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Presented with permission from Meonyez Goodwin<br /><br /><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
Type
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Sound
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Meonyez Goodwin Interview.mp3
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Shaker Heights; Wooster
-
https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/1b217720e4febf80505467870493e37c.mp3
e4174865645a9b8b5c03ac23f1b3dfe7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews
Subject
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LGBT population; Alumni and alumnae; Oral history; Women's studies; Feminism and higher education; Homophobia in higher education; Gays in higher education
Description
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This collection contains oral histories of alumni and faculty who are/were involved with the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the College of Wooster. Interviewees include alumni of the program, faculty, former faculty, invited speakers.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
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Unpublished
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Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Interviewee
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Bowerman, Christina
Location
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College of Wooster Digital Studio
Transcription
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<p><strong>Christina Bowerman Interview</strong></p>
<p><strong>Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and Christina Bowerman for clarity</strong> </p>
<p>[00:00:00] MHR: All right. So I'm here with Christina Bowerman. It is May 30th. Hello Christina.</p>
<p>[00:00:05] CB: Hi!</p>
<p>[00:00:06] MHR: Thanks for coming!</p>
<p>[00:00:08] CB: Of course! Thanks for having me.</p>
<p>[00:00:08] MHR: Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you. So to begin I'm just going to ask you, where are you from and how did you end up as a graduate of the College of Wooster?</p>
<p>[00:00:15] CB: So I'm from Walnut Creek California and I applied to all small liberal arts Presbyterian colleges east of Chicago. And I came to visit and I'd already met the chaplain here previously and Wooster just really stood out. It was of course the last school that I heard back from. But I just sort of fell in love during my visit. </p>
<p>[00:00:35] MHR: Yeah. So what made you interested in the WGSS Discipline while you were a student here?</p>
<p>[00:00:39] CB: So I was interested before I came. So I came to the College of Wooster originally to be a music teacher, so I had a music scholarship and I was really interested in that but I knew I wanted to minor in WGSS. And so I was impressed by the WGSS Program just looking at colleges. And then when I got here my whole first semester I took all music classes and one WGSS class. And that class is what made me change my major because I wanted to go and I wanted to, like, dig into things and learn and I was just impressed by, like, the thoroughness of the Program. </p>
<p>[00:01:09] MHR: That's exactly how I was. I came in... I think I wanted to be anthropology and then switched to communications. And I just took that the intro to WGSS class for fun. And then... because coming in I was like, "I don't think I want to be a WGSS major. I feel like I know that already."</p>
<p>[00:01:24] CB: Yeah, yeah! </p>
<p>[00:01:24] MHR: And then I took it and I was like, "no I do not!".</p>
<p>[00:01:27] CB: Yeah!</p>
<p>[00:01:27] MHR: And now here I am. So what were some of your favorite classes that you took in the WGSS Department and what were some of the more valuable things you learned from those classes? </p>
<p>[00:01:37] CB: So I started with two sections. One semester <em>Queer Lives</em> and <em>Queer Theory and Literature</em> were offered the same semester, so I took both of those at once which was a really wonderful thing to do because I was learning about, like, queer identities from very different perspectives. So, I was, like, reading Foucault with Travis Foster and then I was reading, like, a memoir with Christa Craven. So to be able to, like, dig in, it felt really wonderful. And I was really pushed to my limits to what queer identities were versus like what Wooster was and so that was really important to me. And also like every lesbian I knew were in those classes and that was just a really unique experience, like, at the college to be in, like, a pretty predominant queer space is the first time I had experience. And then I forget what the Junior I.S. class called...</p>
<p>[00:02:26] MHR: <em>Doing feminist research</em>. </p>
<p>[00:02:27] CB: OK it might have been something different, but so I took that, I took in my junior year with Stacia Kock, and then I T.A.ed my senior year with Christa Craven. And so to be able to have that class with two different professors, but then also see juniors when I was a senior sort of grapple with what their research might look like and what research in a feminist lens is, has really taught me a lot about how to be a professional.</p>
<p>[00:02:56] MHR: Nice. How did stuff you learned in class inspire what you did for your I.S.?</p>
<p>[00:03:02] CB: So, I was a double major with Religious Studies, so I was in, sort of, two very different spaces that are actually very similar. But I learned a lot about, like, progressive queer identities and I wanted to research something a little bit different. And so, I don't know if you know what I researched, but I researched the ex-gay movement in the Evangelical Christian Church. And so learning about, like, progressive queer identities has made me want to look into people who wanted to reject that completely and live a different life. And it was fascinating and very polarizing as a student to research that with faculty and other students. </p>
<p>[00:03:40] MHR: That's actually so funny because I just realized I read a part of your I.S. for my Junior I.S. class because we had to find an I.S. that, like, kind of went along with what we were thinking about right at the start so I just realized that Christina Bowerman on that...</p>
<p>[00:03:54] CB: Yeah, that is... </p>
<p>[00:03:54] MHR: Is the Christina Bowerman I'm interviewing right now!</p>
<p>[00:03:55] CB: That is me! </p>
<p>[00:03:56] MHR: That's really funny. I really liked your I.S., it was very thought provoking.</p>
<p>[00:04:11] CB: Thank you! I have not opened it since my orals because I am just terrified to read it. But I loved it so much. </p>
<p>[00:04:05] MHR: Very nice. So what was the campus climate like when you were a student when it came to women's rights and LGBTQ+ rights? </p>
<p>[00:04:15] CB: So I would say it was tolerant but not accepting. So my now wife and I started dating October of our freshman year of college. And so we sort of became like the norm for our graduating class.</p>
<p>[00:04:28] MHR: So by the time we were Seniors it was no longer accepted to, like, stare at us at Lowry or like mock us or do anything like that because we were so beloved by our graduating class because we the only couple that had stayed together for all of college. So that was a really unique experience as, like, queer women to have that in a very rural environment. I would say for women's rights was like a different thing. I would say the college thought it was accepting but then my senior year, I was just realizing this on the drive, was <a href="http://thewoostervoice.spaces.wooster.edu/2013/05/03/student-group-continues-to-combat-rape-culture-on-campus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">when a fraternity reenacted date rape onstage during Lip Sync</a>...was my senior year. And so that sort of spurred this new movement for the college to sort of grapple with what is consent and what does it mean to be a female on the college campus. And what does it mean to drink and date and have sex. And so I was actually part of the investigation committee for that and I was interviewed and it was a really different way to end college. And I ended college feeling a lot less safe than I started.</p>
<p>[00:05:28] MHR: What year did you graduate just to get...</p>
<p>[00:05:31] CB: 2013.</p>
<p>[00:05:32] MHR: 2013. So that's pretty recent actually. </p>
<p>[00:05:34] CB: Yeah.</p>
<p>[00:05:35] MHR: That's very horrifying to hear. But it also strikes me as, kind of, thought provoking to think about that event in relation to what's been happening this year, especially, in the news when it's comes to sexual violence and sexual assault in America. To go back to LGBTQ issues real quickly, would you say that there was sort of... the community was not as comfortable to be as open and out? </p>
<p>[00:06:00] CB: Yes. So I would say, like, there were some very big pockets. So, like, there were a lot of women who played sports who were not out but were, like, dating other women but wouldn't identify in that way.</p>
<p>[00:06:12] I would say Wooster my whole four years was a very horrible place to be if you were a gay male and it was a lot more accepted to be a gay woman or a queer woman. But I think that Wooster was really struggling at that time with what it meant to be a non femme queer woman as well. And so a lot of my friends were struggling with their gender identity and it was like the first time people are talking about pronouns and these, like, gender inclusive bathrooms did not exist. And so bathroom politics was a big topic of conversation. And I do think that it was a very difficult space and that people didn't feel comfortable being themselves. I mean I would say for myself when things happened to me that I felt were, like, targeted because of my queer identity the college didn't really seem to care. Because I did complain a couple of times and it went nowhere, so I think because I was very public about it, and people knew that, then they were less comfortable moving forward.</p>
<p>[00:07:05] MHR: So I'm assuming then for people who identify as like bisexual or trans there was the same sort of non visible... </p>
<p>[00:07:13] CB: Yes. </p>
<p>[00:07:13] MHR: ...Community.</p>
<p>[00:07:14] CB: Correct. I would say there was not a lot of visibility. I would say that a lot of times non WGSS, specifically professors, would be incredibly disrespectful about people's gender pronouns and gender identities and would isolate those students. Especially in cross-listed classes would, like, target them and make them speak so their identity or like mis-gender them all the time. I do not identify as trans so I really tried to be a good ally in that space because I just felt like that was incredibly inappropriate.</p>
<p>[00:07:45] MHR: That's really interesting because it's 2018 and I'm going to be class of 2019, and for me I see now professors putting in more effort to ask people about their pronouns. And then the whole gender neutral bathrooms movement was, like, really starting when I was a freshman and now all the single stall bathrooms are gender neutral so it's interesting in that short span of time there's been such a change.</p>
<p>[00:08:10] CB: It's nice to see...</p>
<p>[00:08:11] MHR: Yeah. </p>
<p>[00:08:12] CB: ...because it feels like the things we were frustrated with made a difference. Even if it's a small difference, like there's gender neutral bathroom signs.</p>
<p>[00:08:22] MHR: Yeah. Good to see then. So going back to talking about being a student in the WGSS Discipline, did you face any challenges being a student in the Discipline or was there any stigma surrounding being a student in the WGSS Department? </p>
<p>[00:08:39] CB: I think there was quite a bit. I think there was a lot of stigma around what I would do after college. That being a WGSS student wasn't, like, your career trajectory and I was wasting my time and just researching my own identity. But I also think there was a lot of institutional bias. Cross-listed classes were very frustrating spaces for me to be in. I don't know what your experience has been like, but I would often find that as long as there was, like, women in the title it could be a cross-listed class. And it was very frustrating. I felt like my opinions in those spaces or my scholarship in that space wasn't as valued. But the big issue I had was when I did<a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1207&context=independentstudy" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> my I.S.</a> and I wasn't initially approved for...I forget what it's called... HS...</p>
<p>[00:09:21] MHR: HSRC?</p>
<p>[00:09:22] CB: Yes something like that. I wasn’t initially approved because the committee thought that my research would be too sexually explicit when my research was actually about specifically men choosing to be celibate or choosing to marry women. But because they saw ex gay they thought I was going to ask people about their sexual experiences. So I had to rewrite my proposal and change the lens of my research because they believed it would be too controversial. But then I also experienced some bias with the WGSS community because my research wasn't inherently bashing the Ex-Gay movement. A lot of people expected that my research would be really damning to that community. And I think people were frustrated that I didn't do that. </p>
<p>[00:10:02] MHR: Yeah that's interesting. Reading your I.S. I definitely saw that. Did you see, like, a change or improvement or non-improvement in, like, the types of courses that were offered for WGSS? Like what were the required courses for you?</p>
<p>[00:10:19] CB: My gosh, what a throwback! <em>Intro</em>, and then you could take two of three, like, 200 level classes. So I took <em>Global Feminisms</em> which is actually why I became a WGSS major. I did horrible in that class and Christa sat me down and was like, "you need to major in this." And I was like, "I did it so bad." And then I took <em>Queer Lives</em> and then I had to take five cross-listed classes I think.</p>
<p>[00:10:43] And I felt like my group of WGSS majors and minors were huge in terms of changing cross-listed courses. So... but some people then weren't allowed to cross-list after they had us because we were like, "this was a horrible experience." Like it wasn't in anyway what the WGSS Department is looking for. And so Christa took over as chair and that was a huge change for the WGSS Department to have a more progressive, like, lens of scholarship.</p>
<p>[00:11:09] MHR: So when you would take the cross-listed classes and then say this wasn't actually for us...Talk about that a little bit. </p>
<p>[00:11:18] CB: Yeah!</p>
<p>[00:11:19] MHR: I don't know if I framed that in a question.</p>
<p>[00:11:20] CB: No that's ok. One of the cross-listed classes the professor flat out said that being gay shouldn't be a thing essentially. And that was a really horrible experience, so she no longer works here. And then some other classes just like talked about being a woman in a very biased, like, traditional lens. And that was very frustrating, like, just because they were talking about women meant it was, like, a WGSS class instead of actually having like WGSS scholarship or authors or things like that.</p>
<p>[00:11:52] MHR: Interesting. Yeah, for me I think there's a ton of cross-listed that I think people usually enjoy. The main issue right now is due to the fact that we keep having so many visiting professors for only a year that it's hard to find courses that will be approved for the upper level classes that aren't cross-listed. So that's been a struggle I've seen. </p>
<p>[00:12:21] CB: Yeah, I think... I was on the curriculum committee when I was in college and I think a huge thing that I saw from that lens was the lack of, like, a dedicated professorship to WGSS and that everyone was pulled in so many directions. So it wasn't actually able to, like, thrive in the way that it could of. </p>
<p>[00:12:39] MHR: Yeah I think the WGSS Department's doing a tenure search right now, I believe, to try and find another professor who can be specific to WGSS.</p>
<p>[00:12:47] CB: That's amazing. </p>
<p>[00:12:50] MHR: Not just Christa, yeah. So I think you sort of talk about this, but was there any stigma that you sort of felt being a WGSS major? You were saying how people assumed like, "Oh I'm just studying my identity..."</p>
<p>[00:13:01] CB: Yeah. </p>
<p>[00:13:02] MHR: ...and it's not, like, a career path.</p>
<p>[00:13:04] CB: I felt like people thought it was easy. But my actual WGSS classes were some of the most difficult classes I ever took. So I think that was frustrating to me. I also took... majored in two things that were both interdisciplinary so I sometimes felt like I didn't have a Discipline to lean on, so that was really good for me but frustrating at times.</p>
<p>[00:13:27] MHR: So I want to talk a little bit about <a href="https://www.wooster.edu/students/diversity/sgi/plummer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Plummer Scholarship</a>, which I see that you were a recipient of. So can you just tell people who could be listening to this who are not familiar with the scholarship what it was and what did it mean to you to be a recipient of the scholarship.</p>
<p>[00:13:45] CB: So it's a scholarship that's given annually to a student who has helped create a more inclusive college campus for queer students. And I was a recipient my senior year and it was a huge honor for me. It's probably one of the most important awards I've ever received from college or since. I think part of the reason it was important to me is because so many adults when I was here modeled that for me. So Mary Schantz doesn't work here anymore but she worked in I.T. and she's an alumn and she and Christa together would host events for queer students, staff, and faculty and they would often also do it at the Wooster Inn. Because I was shown that from early on in college I wanted to make sure to do that for other people. And so it was really an honor for me to get that. One of the reasons it was explained to me that I won is because I also worked for the office of interfaith campus ministries. So I worked really hard to sort of bridge the intersection of what it means to be someone who has religious or spiritual but also queer. But part of what was frustrating about receiving the Plummer Scholarship was that I felt like there was a lot of backlash from the queer community on campus which is sort of the opposite of an inclusive environment. I don't know what it's like now, but when I was here there was a lot of friction between people who were in, like, structured queer groups and then people who weren't. And I wasn't a regular attender of that group. And so I think people were frustrated that it was given to me versus someone who is in that structured space. So that was a really interesting dynamic to experience of like who showed up when I got it and what did that say that it was given to me over one of them. And how do you move forward and to not be fighting against each other but working together. </p>
<p>[00:15:32] MHR: Yeah. It's sort of unfortunate when there's othering within the queer space.</p>
<p>[00:15:37] CB: Yeah it was incredibly frustrating. I would go sometimes to that group to try to, like, be part of everyone that I thought I was really friendly. But I felt like if I wasn't queer enough to be in that space and that was sometimes a frustrating experience to me because I didn't know what they were looking for from me to feel like I could occupy that space with them.</p>
<p>[00:16:01] MHR: Yeah, it's the whole idea of culture in America about what being queer means and what it looks like. I think campus is still, in the queer community, struggling to find that. But I think it's definitely gotten better.</p>
<p>[00:16:16] CB: Good.</p>
<p>[00:16:18] MHR: So, what do you think it means that Wooster has a scholarship like this?</p>
<p>[00:16:23] CB: So, I think it's incredibly important because it shows Wooster's commitment to creating a space where people can be themselves but also a space to realize that there's still room to grow. And I think that Wooster... one of the reasons I love Wooster still to this day, and I come to do things like this, is because Wooster never pretended to be perfect. The town is not perfect, the college is not perfect. The professors I surrounded myself with were very aware of that and were fighting for it to become better. And so I think it's really important that college continues this scholarship and that donor dollars are given to this scholarship because one, it's giving a student some money to get through the rest of college. And sometimes queer students or people fighting for this are isolated from their families. And I know that it's been really helpful to people financially, but I also think just the idea of it. There's a whole, like, ceremony for it, which doesn't happen for other awards, and I think it's just a really special thing.</p>
<p>[00:17:24] And they asked my other adviser, Dr. Kammer, to present to me which was also a really unique experience that they didn't choose a typical, like, WGSS or queer faculty member to present this award which was also a unique way to approach it.</p>
<p>[00:17:41] MHR: Yeah, being very inclusive which is good to hear. I told another person I was interviewing, Hans Johnson, about ways in which I see Wooster now to, sort of, expanding... being more accepted to queer identities and we do something called the Lavender Ceremony.</p>
<p>[00:17:58] CB: Yes! It started the year after I left and I was so pumped and I was so disappointed I didn't get to be part of it. But it was so wonderful to see that that's happening and that there is becoming, like, affirming spaces for people.</p>
<p>[00:18:11] MHR: Yeah. And this year too, I went to go support some friends, and there was, like, a huge turnout. I think that bring you in even more chairs. </p>
<p>[00:18:18] CB: That's amazing. </p>
<p>[00:18:19] MHR: I think it's a very cool way to show that Wooster, as you were saying, is not perfect but it's trying to progress more. </p>
<p>[00:18:25] CB: So one year before I graduated they bought rainbow tassels for all the queer students...</p>
<p>[00:18:30] MHR: Oh nice! </p>
<p>[00:18:30] CB: ...and so I didn't graduate that year. But Mary Schantz actually saved me and Evelyn rainbow tassels so that when we were seniors we got to wear them and it was really wonderful. And it was just that small symbol of like thank you for what you did, but also, like, you survived being queer in Wooster. It was really a nice gesture.</p>
<p>[00:18:51] MHR: Very nice! I think my final question is how have you used what you've learned from the WGSS Discipline in your life after Wooster? Is there anything that really sticks with you and you try to really use.</p>
<p>[00:19:04] CB: So I think everything. I think one of the things I've been reflecting on is the ability to take feedback at work. So I work in a middle school in Cleveland now. I used to work for an education nonprofit in Cleveland, so ever since I've left I've worked in urban education. And I think something that has helped me, sort of, progress pretty quickly in my career is that I'll often give myself feedback before my supervisor does, but with them and in partnership with them because WGSS taught me that I'm not always right, that it's important to listen to other people, and that it's super important to be self reflective. And so I'll often get things in my performance, it's performance review season, and so I often get feedback that's like, "you're very self aware and you're good at giving yourself your own critical feedback and you hold yourself accountable." And those are things specifically Christa taught me, was to have high expectations of everyone but higher ones of myself and to push myself to a limit I didn't think existed. And that has gone a really long way for me professionally.</p>
<p>[00:20:07] MHR: I think that's really interesting because I think it's cool to hear where WGSS majors have gone post Wooster and show people who are, sort of, iffy on the whole WGSS thing to say, "you know, we are learning, like, important things about how to interact with people in the world and do that. And, like, you're in teaching and you were a WGSS and Religious Studies major. Just we can bring things we learn into the real world to help us, sort of, be better people. </p>
<p>[00:20:37] CB: So I'm the Director of Operations for this middle school and I think what's really interesting to me is that in my, sort of, operations cohort I'm told very often that I am, like, very empathetic and I'm good with kids and I'm good have parents things and I don't think those should be abnormal in my job because I'm in charge of like our food Program and our dismissal process and our enrollment. So I'm interacting with regularly those groups of people. I think that's a skill that WGSS taught me is to, sort of, view everyone as a whole person and, sort of, work within that instead of isolating or stereotyping people based on what I'm told. And I can't thank the people who are my peers but also my professors enough for sort of pushing me to that place because Wooster can be a big bubble and WGSS can be a bubble, and sadly my life is not just a nice WGSS family after college. So it also helped me learn how to be patient with people who are still learning but be willing to, like, walk alongside them in that process. </p>
<p>[00:21:41] MHR: Yeah, that's awesome. Those are all the questions I have for you, but do you have anything you want to say or ask me?</p>
<p>[00:21:48] CB: This is exciting, like, thank you for having me. I think WGSS is incredibly important and if it was up to me it would be a requirement just like a religious studies classes is because it just teaches you how to be a better person.</p>
<p>[00:22:02] MHR: Yeah, I agree! That's what I was telling other people I've interviewed because they've asked, "like what do you want to see?" And I said, "I think it'd be cool to have like a feminist requirement class." So, we'll see where that goes...if that'll take fruition.</p>
<p>[00:22:19] CB: And it's amazing to see how far Christa has taken this.. this major and this Department and she was a huge mentor to me and still is. And I'm just so grateful to see her work continue and touch people. So...</p>
<p>[00:22:34] MHR: Yeah, I agree!</p>
<p>[00:22:35] CB: Yep.</p>
<p>[00:22:36] MHR: Well thank you so much for coming!</p>
<p>[00:22:38] CB: Yeah, of course!</p>
<p>[00:22:38] MHR: This was very nice to talk to you. </p>
<p>[00:22:40] CB: Yeah you too.</p>
<p> </p>
Original Format
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Sound
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00:22:40
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Christina Bowerman
Subject
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LGBT people; Women's studies; Gender; Religion; Queer community; Homophobia in higher education; Gays in higher education; Scholarships; Independent study
Description
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This is an interview with Christina Bowerman who is a 2013 graduate of the College of Wooster. Christina reflects on her time in the WGSS Discipline at Wooster and discusses the challenges she faced being a student in the discipline as well as the life changing things she learned in her classes. Christina discusses what the campus community was like for LGBTQ students as well as the campus climate for women's rights. Christina also discusses her Senior Independent Study project and what she uses from the WGSS Discipline in her life after Wooster.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Bowerman, Christina
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Unpublished
Date
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2018-05-30
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OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries
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Presented with permission from Christina Bowerman<br /><br /><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Sound
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Walnut Creek; Chicago; Wooster
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Christina_Bowerman_Interview2.mp3
-
https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/c520497ffba352a6ee3afc30e1ec68af.mp3
bf22e420284efbbe544738159aae0dd6
Dublin Core
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Title
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Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews
Subject
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LGBT population; Alumni and alumnae; Oral history; Women's studies; Feminism and higher education; Homophobia in higher education; Gays in higher education
Description
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This collection contains oral histories of alumni and faculty who are/were involved with the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the College of Wooster. Interviewees include alumni of the program, faculty, former faculty, invited speakers.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
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Unpublished
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Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Harris-Ridker, MAtthew
Interviewee
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Myatt, George
Location
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Virtual Interview
Transcription
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George Myatt Interview Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and George Myatt for clarity [00:00:00] MHR: So I with George Myatt, it is May 29 [2018]. Hello, thank you for being part of this study. [00:00:08] GM: Thank you. [00:00:09] MHR: So to begin the interview, just some background questions, where are you from and how did you end up at the College of Wooster? [00:00:16] GM: Sure, I'm originally from Cincinnati Ohio and I ended up at the College of Wooster, you know, my college counselor recommended the College to me. So I just applied like any other student would for a spot at a college. [00:00:33] MHR: Nice. What year did you graduate? [00:00:37] GM: I graduated in 2011. [00:00:39] MHR: Cool, so my next questions are sort of based on your participation in different WGSS classes and different things on campus. So, what made you interested in WGSS Discipline? [00:00:52] GM: I was interested in expanding my understanding of feminism as well as what was happening in Queer Studies at that time. So, I saw myself as an activist or someone who was going to lead to promote fights, to get equal rights, and to push things forward and I was always interested in understanding what feminism was instead of what the media was telling me what it was about. [00:01:20] MHR: Very nice. So what were your favorite classes that you took in the WGSS Department and what were the most valuable things you learned from those classes? [00:01:31] GM: Sure. So, I think, one of the most valuable ones, first, was the introduction to WGSS. It was the first of its kind since that's when the Program went just from Women's Studies to, finally, WGSS. [00:01:46] I found it valuable because it challenged my perspective as to what feminism was and we were introduced to different concepts of it. We didn't get to look at, like, the history of it all the way, but it was an intersecting point to show the differences of where we got out of what was America's perspective on women's issues, and all those other things, and we took a world view of all these different things. We did look at feminist thought and in the media now of America. So that was very valuable to see that as of now. Another one that was very helpful was a course by Dr. Craven which was Queer Lives and that was looking at specifically the queer lives of men, women, and other identities along the LGBTQ+ spectrum and it was nice to see a world perspective in that. You know, I got to learn about how in Brazil, I forget the names unfortunately of these identities, but they're very different in how they act there and it's something like oh it's part of the culture, it's right there. Versus in America, it's like, I don't know what to do this. I can't touch this. So, I saw those as valuable in those regards. [00:03:04] MHR: Talk a little bit about your I.S. I know that it was very WGSS central. [00:03:10] GM: Yes, yes. The backing theme was, was definitely WGSS central but it was pushed into a theatrical space because I majored in theater/dance. So, it was, it was all about putting the issues of gender and sexuality on the stage in an interactive forum particularly looking at the gay male identity. So it was all about a visual conception of that. When you take a male and female energy and you put it together you're going to get all these identities that come out of it. [00:03:45] But at that time there was no visual reference as to what that looks like, it was just you put it together. But people don't know what that means. So with my I.S. adviser Shirley Houston-Findley, it became like a positive and a negative charge I was thinking about electricity. But, I didn't want to put like a plus symbol on someone and a negative symbol because those have negative and positive connotations. So, it then became a male dummy and a female dummy and then there there's a white screen there, so kind of like what people might change behind if they have one in their home, and I come out of the stage where it's looks like there's shards of electricity going everywhere. I come in and take the two cords and bring them together. There's a light that comes out of it and I just straight up tell, in a monologue, to people what this is all about not just go off into the next thing. And then I go behind the screen and then I start changing and showing how I can shift identities or change it. And it was a format of different scenes from a couple different plays to show that. So, one was from a play called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Me_Out_(play)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Take Me Out</a>. It's about how a baseball player has never come out in the prime of his career and what would happen. So, dealing with issues of coming out those issues of what it means to be a man in a sport like that and if you're gay. The next one was taking two scenes from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_in_America" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Angels in America</a> that dealt with, you know, the complications of attraction as well as what is considered mostly masculine and feminine [00:05:18] and can those types of people come together or can they coexist, or the problems that society creates when we try to bottle those things up and not let them interact. And then the last one, to turn on its head, was a play by Caryl Churchill called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_9_(play)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cloud 9</a>. In that I played a woman named Betty. And as the playwright described it, it was a man playing a woman. So, it was definitely full on drag. In that you basically see a woman in the eighteen hundreds of Victoria Africa, or Victorian age Africa, and how she's ostracized by her, by her husband and all her other family how their identities are switched. And they kind of confuse the brain as to, well wait that's a boy but that's a girl and now there's a strange relationship with this uncle. This is kind of creepy. And then there's some, there's some homosexual activity going on stage. What's going on, you know, with that? [00:06:15] To backtrack a little bit, I played one of the title characters in Take Me Out. What's kind of important with that is it's, kind of, a poking fun at a major league baseball player named Derek Jeter who's biracial. So, I could pass for biracial in that instance for that play. So that was a bit of a rumoreque kind of poking fun, if you will, for that kind of play. And then with Angels in America I play Joe. He's a conservative federal Mormon judge. And he's, he's definitely coming to grips with who he is and he has yet to come out and he finds this man who is who's, who he attracted to who's younger, who's more feminine, and starts to fall in love with. So there's the complications of Reaganism in the 80s and religion and other complications just head on with each other. But that was the production component I took. [00:07:12] To describe more about my independent study or what I did within it. So I had that theory as to when you put the male female energies together you get all kinds of identities. I first looked at how the gay male identity was pushed down or kind of left alone in 20th century American theater. How it was just pushed to the side. And then to prepare for my roles into, into the production, which was called "The Electric Current," I took a, read a book by a woman named Diane Torres who basically teaches women to be Drag Kings. And they start to learn male energies, and male lingo, and other body languages as to what it's like to be a male and to assert your commanding presence and energy when males try to come, come up and confront you and try to get past you. So I had to learn that because, yeah, I'm definitely gay and queer my own right and, you know, this being whole tough thing was like, OK well I could stumble through to do it, but I have to learn what this is so I understand what's being taught. And so that was interesting. So it was basically taking movements like I have where I'm very, like, soft in my movement to more sharp and such and lowering my voice and speaking more concerted in a way. And even my body language, I couldn't be as fluid [00:08:44] I had to be more like, you know, physically stuck or something to show that there was struggle in my body in a way. And then after that, you know, after the production was than a full on analysis of what I did during the show and what those moments were kind of creating. So that's what it was about. [00:09:08] MHR: Thats really interesting! [00:09:08] GM: I can give you the full text of it if you like. [00:09:10] MHR: Oh sure, actually! [00:09:11] GM: Yeah. [00:09:14] MHR: What in the WGSS classes sort of, like, helped shaped your idea for your I.S. [00:09:20] That was actually hard because it almost seemed like Queer Lives was kind of battling for some of "The Electric Current's" attention because Queer Lives said, take a world view. But my I.S. said, I love the world but I got to focus on America first before we can go to the world. But actually there was another thing. There was another class I took about feminism and this was always offered in conjunction with the Department of Theatre and Dance and WGSS and that was Feminism and Theater. That had the most influence because that looked at feminism from a theatrical perspective by a woman named Jill Dolan and she looked at the different types of feminism presented on stage at that time. So the first one was cultural feminism which, as described by her, is it's not just like girl power and such like that, but it's like, men suck! Women only! Women only island! kind of mentalities. You know, forget men we don't need them. Her argument, okay you can do that but all you're doing is isolating yourself from a population of people who make up the equal parts of this world too, as well. [00:10:41] Then you had liberal feminism, in what Jill Dolan describes, and this was a book made in like the 90s, so some of it is still accurate today. The liberal feminism was bringing in everything, feminizing everything and not like gender feminizing but a tool of feminism to go after what the mainstream or norm thinks is good when actually it's bad and you're actually taking these identities and just putting them in and strict constructions with that. So, to back track and circle around a little bit, some of the languages between all the courses I took had these similar terminologies but they were set differently. So I had to think back to what I was learning and then put my own label stance so that the audiences that I was reaching from a theatrical and world perspective, and WGSS perspective, could all be on the same page with that. And kind of like hints and nods to that as well. [00:11:55] But the final part of that course where it was just like, oh of course here's the bias of the author but it's her book and she's arguing very well, was materialist feminism. Materialist feminism, from the theatrical perspective, is where we take something that is considered normal and turn it on its head to show how messed up it really is. How bad it is or the problems with it. So in the examples of that show what happened theatrically was how I got, you know, challenging a conventional way a play as run, I'm dressing myself as from man to woman, I'm bringing in different challenging viewpoints of moments and interaction that we don't usually see because it's so taboo or hidden at that time. Another inspiration, because her name is coming up all over the place, Butler... [00:12:40] MHR: Judith Butler? [00:12:41] GM: Thank you. Judith. And like, Adrian... [00:12:46] MHR: Rich? [00:12:47] GM: Rich! But Judith Butler was always coming up in these books, always referenced throughout all of this and was the toughest writer because she packed so much into one sentence where you're like, here's a book on this one sentence you wrote. So that's how it shaped it. And then another woman named, that I found eventually for the research that Jill Dolan was referencing, was a woman named Sue-Ellen Case, and she was another theatrical person too. So yeah, really the inspiration for it, it just came in different avenues at different times. [00:13:26] MHR: So moving a little more away from the academic aspect of WGSS, what was that campus climate like when you were a student when it came to, like, women's rights and LGBTQ rights? [00:13:42] That four year period from 2007 to 2011, it was dramatic shifts. So, by that time, the old guard had left. So, there was a president that was very nice to the students, no discrimination. He had left and then Grant Cornwell came in. And I'm in that period of time where there's tons of transformation that was just literally right after freshman year, just started like crazy. The climate... there were people, and throughout the years it got more liberal more open and accepting. I saw, I saw this change right under my feet. I was a part of it. The theme that was common though was that, we're the gays, and I don't mean to be rude but I saw a ton of lesbians and bisexual ladies, but there were hardly any people who were out and gay and male like me. [00:14:31] I've heard rumors that it was very underground, whatever that meant at that time. I and didn't participate in any salacious stuff like that. And then transgender rights at that time, by the time I got to my junior year people were putting their feet down and saying something about it and doing something about it. I had no recollection of what transgender was until my sophomore year when I had friends who were coming to me and coming out. The overall climate really, it just got more liberal. It got more open. Dr. Craven had arrived a year or two before. The college was clearly moving in the direction of more openness and it needed those pushes along the way to help that. I never felt unsafe on campus. I always felt safe. People who identified as straight acting, or straight, were always very pleasant to me, were always very nice. I had very few, almost no, confrontations that people wanted to beat me up, ostracized me and call me names. If they did I was with my friends. So, there was a difference with that. But there was, unfortunately, inner turmoil to get to those points. In terms of making a stake a claim for your name or, or seeing what that was, so unfortunately there was cases of loneliness because there were no other gay guys around. There were no other like- people, but there were a lot of supportive straight people. So thankfully there was that. [00:16:08] MHR: Yeah, so in the beginning you were talking about how you were interested in the WGSS classes because you felt like you were an activist. Did taking any more classes inspire more activism while you were a student on campus? [00:16:22] GM: It did, it did. I came in that way from the get go. But, it inspired me to be a thoughtful activist in many respects. A critical thinker who can basically go further and take action on things like that. I guess it inspired me to, to stay in the course and keep going with who I was, as a gay man, to be open and as well to, you know, set a foundation for others eventually so that they could feel comfortable. And doing that was true, I know the group is changing in that many different times was w the group <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=voice2001-2011" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Allies and Queers</a> our <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1268&context=voice2001-2011" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LGBT student</a> <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1535&context=voice2001-2011" target="_blank" rel="noopener">group on campus</a>. It really inspire me to do that, to be a part of that, and then graciously honored to then be voted as you know the president of that organization for my senior year. So it was very important to me. [00:17:23] MHR: Awesome. So actually going back to a few more points about taking WGSS classes, was there any, sort of, when you were taking classes was there any stigma you, sort of, saw as somebody taking a Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies class, or being a guy taking those classes? [00:17:47] GM: We had some guys in the Introduction to Women's course. That wasn't an issue. No one was mean to others in that class. There might have been some, like, there were no any, like, whoops didn't know kind of moments necessarily. They were mostly silent but not, but not judgmental. But around me and such, I never faced that because I think people saw me, because I was such a public figure in people's eyes not like, I'm unpopular people must respect me thing, [00:18:23] I think because I was so highly visible that people knew to respect me and not ever go into something like that. But any time I heard, any time I heard rumblings about, and it always happened, of feminism in particular. How apparent straight white men would attack feminism and call it a problem when really it was just a disagreement with their beliefs or thoughts as to what is normal or not because they just didn't understand. They didn't have the tools or understanding of that. Dude, you call yourself normal. You call other people who are not like you, other, it, different, foreign, object, you know? So there was that. It's hard to say if that got better over time or not with, with the status of things and being that way. But, I never felt uncomfortable in the class. I never felt that from my peers that I wasn't comfortable taking it. They just had interesting charred views about feminism because they weren't informed, they had bad examples of people who they thought were over-hyperly feministic in the wrong way, to which I say, people are different and shift and change at different times and they're just being themselves. Don't, don't think that they are taking on something that they shouldn't or an ideal like that. Don't attack the person for feminism. Have a healthy discussion or dialogue about it, you know? So, yeah. That's how I would respond to that. [00:20:06] MHR: What about being a guy in any of the classes? Was that controversial at all? [00:20:14] GM: That wasn't an issue in the WGSS intro course and it wasn't an issue in Feminism in Theater. It wasn't an issue in Queer Lives but it was unfortunately, and I wasn't harmed by it, but I was the only guy in the course. But I knew the women in that course, and the other identities in there. I don't know if someone was transgender or not in that course, just being, you know, safe and honest about that. But it was very, female queer lives driven focused, unfortunately, and not enough male. And it's like, I don't want to be the only one here to be like, "Male problem, male problem, male problem." But I did at times and that's ok. I didn't fight with anyone about it. But I didn't feel uncomfortable. The discussion, and it's not that it has to be this, but very female, traditional female focused. Not enough male focused. But there were some moments of people of different identities on different parts of the spectrum, especially transgendered, not as much for bisexuality. So it had its unevenness, but it happened naturally. It wasn't anyone's particular fault. [00:21:31] MHR: I was curious about that because as a guy in the Program, too, I'm oftentimes the only guy in especially at the more upper level courses. So, I was just curious if that was similar issue and experience. [00:21:45] GM: Sure, yeah. [00:21:46] MHR: So one of my last questions is, how have you used what you learned from the WGSS Discipline in your life after Wooster? [00:21:59] GM: I guess what I've used now, in a sense, is I'm much.. I mean obviously I'm much more educated on besides just the information but the... the interdisciplinarys that go within it. But also the core theme that go with it. That, you know, identity transforms. Identity doesn't just stay there. It armed me with the right information and power to call people out when, you know, they're not be nice to others or being dicks. It also afforded me the ability to educate others on things that they think is right or wrong. But it also really allowed me to... reminded me to keep thinking openly and extensively with what it means to be a human, to the queer, to be gay, to have your identity. So it's really influenced me to have an educationally positive influence on others in almost any conversation that I might have If we go talk about feminism, if we talk about women's issues, gay rights, gender issues. Particularly gender issues, that is the one thing that when you start to push people like this in the outside world about, they start to freeze up because they're like, "system could not compute, what are you talking about?" So you're kind of helping extend the Program or education to peoples' lives because they may not have known about it as well. [00:23:28] MHR: Yeah, that's awesome. Is there any, well you sort of talked about classes that really stuck with you, but, like, what's, like, one thing that you have, like, kept with you, like the most? [00:23:42] GM: Well, physically I've kept the books. What I kept with me? And besides the knowledge of what I've learned. I've learned that, basically, I mean two things. Open to the possibility of exploring for more information. Just because you found it here doesn't mean you can't go further with it. And basically, always to keep an even more open mind than you thought because while there's times there are people in certain subjects of their disciplinarys that there like, "no, this is the rule, you can't bend it! Blah." [00:24:21] But literally it helps with that. Saying, "just because it was this way before doesn't mean it can't be this now. And if you dig deeper, the perspective you might have been taught could actually be wrong. There's more to the story." So, it really fueled a thirst for more knowledge, for more understanding, being more inquisitive with whatever I might research or understand even with my line of work, to go further into it. And, as well, to kind of be aware of what is considered male and female with it. So, or, well gender coded I would say because I don't want to be like it's only this or that. What is traditionally gender coded are not gender coded as well. So, so yeah! [00:25:09] MHR: That's awesome. I'm actually… that's interesting because I'm, sort of, feeling those similar themes from the classes that I've been taking. So that's cool to hear that it's similar for you as well. Those are the questions I have. Is there anything you wanted to bring up or say? [00:25:28] GM: What is a defining moment that's prompting you to... to look at this important juncture for the WGSS Program? Is it because of a new subject that's being introduced or just the... one of the anniversaries that's coming up? [00:25:44] MHR: Well, the main thing is it's the anniversary coming up so me and Dr. Craven were able to do this project through a grant. For me personally I was just interested in hearing people from all different generations, so people who have taught here, people have been students, sort of why WGSS was important to them. Because for me personally coming into Wooster I did not think I was going to be a WGSS major in the slightest. I thought like, "oh what is there to, like, learn? I feel like I understand feminism." [00:26:20] That was a very, like, teenager type of thing, like, not as cultured as I could've been. So then I took the intro class for fun and then I was just exposed to all these new ideas and all these new thoughts and different theorists and topics. It was just... I was fascinated by it and I started to be more classes and then I thought to myself, "this is awesome and I really enjoy these things and it feels very important and very relevant, especially with the climate we are in right now." And I thought, "this is actually my favorite classes I've taken." So, with that experience in mind for myself I was just curious to hear what others were taking from the Program and how it sort of shaped how they think and how they, like, where they have gone after Wooster. [00:27:15] GM: Are you finding any common themes or theories pop up or...? [00:27:21] MHR: I mean, right now it's... it's a lot about activism I think. I think a lot of people who I've been talking to have been very active on campus as either a faculty member or a student. I'm just...this whole idea of, like, being open to different people, being open to different ideas and how this sort of change of acceptance of people from different identities has, like, grown throughout interviews with people I have been talking to. So those are the main things I'm seeing right now. [00:27:58] GM: Cool, very good! [00:28:00] MHR: Well, thank you so much for doing this! [00:28:03] GM: You're welcome.
Original Format
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Sound
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00:28:03
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with George Myatt
Subject
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Women's studies; Feminism; Theatrical works; Plays; Stage plays; Gay drama; Theater; Acting; Angels in America; Gender; Masculinity; Sexuality; Interdisciplinary approach in education; LGBTQ people; Independent study
Description
An account of the resource
This is an interview with George Myatt, a graduate of The College of Wooster in 2011. George was a Theater and Dance major, but was very involved in the WGSS department at Wooster. George talks about his experiences in the WGSS classes and how he related what he learned in those classes to his Theater and Dance classes. George also talks about his experience being a guy in a largely female discipline and the importance of interdisciplinary education within the WGSS program. George also talks about how he used WGSS related topics in his senior independent study.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Myatt, George
Publisher
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Unpublished
Date
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2018-05-29
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OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries
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Presented with permission from George Myatt<br /><br /><a href="%20http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Cincinnati; Wooster
Identifier
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George_Myatt_Interview.mp3
-
https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/623dcab8da0e1ac0cc7484fcb1a80548.mp3
00b7d8033dd006deef12cee01611706e
Dublin Core
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Title
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Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews
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LGBT population; Alumni and alumnae; Oral history; Women's studies; Feminism and higher education; Homophobia in higher education; Gays in higher education
Description
An account of the resource
This collection contains oral histories of alumni and faculty who are/were involved with the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the College of Wooster. Interviewees include alumni of the program, faculty, former faculty, invited speakers.
Creator
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Publisher
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Unpublished
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Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Interviewee
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Fitz Gibbon, Heather
Transcription
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Heather Fitz Gibbon Interview <br /><br />Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and Heather Fitz Gibbon for clarity <br /><br />[00:00:00] MHR: All right. I'm here with Heather Fitz Gibbon. It is June 14th [2018]. Hello Professor Fitz Gibbon! Thank you so much for being a part of this. So to start off I'm just going to ask you where are you from originally, and how did you end up as a professor at the College of Wooster? <br /><br />[00:00:18] HFG: Before college, from Chicago. New Jersey before that, other places before that. We moved around a lot. And I went to Kenyon College as an undergrad and Northwestern for graduate school. And I wanted to be at a small liberal arts college and Wooster had a position. So, there we go! <br /><br />[00:00:40] MHR: Very nice! <br /><br />[00:00:42] HFG: That was almost 30 years ago. <br /><br />[00:00:42] MHR: Oh, very nice! So what got you interested in the WGSS Discipline either at Wooster or as a student before coming to Wooster? Just talk about your experience with that. <br /><br />[00:00:55] HFG: Yeah. In college there were no such courses. There was no Women's Studies. Sociology courses didn't talk about gender. It didn't exist as a topic really. And so I got to graduate school and was assigned as a T.A. to what was then called a Sex Roles course, which is a horrible name. We would never teach something called that these days. There we go. And I wasn't that interested in issues of gender at that time, but then I started really coming to see how gender and sexuality were not present in any of the curriculum and not present in the work. I mean, originally to be honest thirty five/forty, yikes, years ago I wasn't sure WGSS, or at that time Women's Studies, made sense because my thought was we shouldn't ghettoize it. We shouldn't just have a place where, "over here we'll talk about gender and we don't have to do that anywhere else." But, as I got further in my career I realized that it wasn't being done anywhere else and that we needed a place to start talking about gender. And then when it came to Wooster they were looking for someone to teach, again a badly named course, Women in Society. Which was kind of like, "look! There are women in our society!" So I quickly changed that name of that course and then taught that. I didn't teach in Women's Studies. My position is a third Urban Studies, and part Sociology and part, originally, Women's Studies and I didn't have any room to really teach directly in the Program. I was teaching the Sociology of Gender course, but I had a fabulous opportunity. In her effort to drag me into the Program more fully, Joanne Fry had me team-teach Intro to Women's Studies with her, which was an amazing experience. To team-teach that with someone from literature perspective, a humanist, ... she looks at the world very differently than I do as a social scientist. And so we team-taught Intro Women's Studies in the 90s, late 90s maybe? Early 2000? And then I started teaching more of the core courses and ended up being one of the chair of Women's Studies. I was one of the last chairs of Women's Studies before it became WGSS. So that's a long history of me and WGSS. I've taught Intro to WGSS a number of times. I was Dean of Faculty for seven years, so the last eight years I was not teaching a lot. So I haven't been doing that much recently. <br /><br />[00:04:04] MHR: So you were talking about teaching Intro to WGSS with Joanne Frye, or talk Intro to Women's Studies a little bit more about that experience. You were saying you guys were coming from different academic perspectives. <br /><br />[00:04:19] HFG: Joanne had been central to the field. And really the difference is that, for example in looking at a novel, I as a sociologist would look at it as data. What does this tell us about society? I’m not very good at symbolism and meaning--I learned a lot from Joanne from that. And I think she learned a lot from me about the social science of understanding the experiences of gender and sexuality. We teach differently. It was a great experience from that perspective. At that time as a Program we were in the process of thinking about shifting to WGSS. So what was different? We were doing a lot more on issues of sexuality, which hadn't been central to the Women's Studies course. We added some core sections on masculinities that in Women’s Studies weren't as core to the Discipline. So we were exploring together how to embed those in the Intro course and start to build the curriculum. It was 2001 or 2002 because it was right after 9/11 and we were wrestling with how to make it a far more global course and deal with issues of global feminisms in the 9/11 era, which was a challenge. <br /><br />[00:05:53] MHR: Of course. You were... sort of started talking about my next question for you which is, when you were chair what was, sort of, the state of the Department? Because you said you were the last chair of Women's Studies before it became Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. <br /><br />[00:06:10] HFG: You probably have some of this history. You've talked to Joanne, I think, so you know some of the history but I'll give you my perspective. By design when the Program was created it had a half time coordinator of the Program who came from another Discipline, took a three year reassignment of their duties for half time duties to administer the Program, and then you would solicit other people to teach in it. And so there was really only a half time position and it rotated among various faculty at the college. That was by design and the really great thing about that, and I miss that in many respects, is that meant that there was a committed group of faculty who were this core group who were contributing to the Program. And it was very valuable. The Program wasn't defined by one person. It didn't solely reside with one person who was the face of Women's Studies. There were many of us. But, it given some enrollment pressures it became harder and harder to find folks to teach the courses and chair the Program. Partly, the college lowered the teaching load meaning faculty were teaching a little bit less. It wasn't much but it was enough that Departments weren't letting people reassign their time to teach Women's Studies, so it was getting really difficult to staff the Program. We also recognized at that time that we didn't have an expertise in global feminisms and we didn't have enough focus on sexuality. And that's where the Discipline was going. I think what I'm proudest of as chair is writing and getting the position that brought Professor Craven to us. For that position we recognized we need another half time, so that we retained the half time rotating position and then we added a permanent half time with Professor Craven. So she's half time WGSS/half time Anthropology. And then we have tried to retain the same kind of rotating chair but it's still really really hard to do. So we're in a better place, but still a challenge. Although, better with the new position. We're moving away from the rotating chair a bit, and I miss that in a sense because it puts too much on the people in the positions in WGSS and doesn't share the load and provide different perspectives on the Discipline. But, it's probably the only way you can do it. <br /><br />[00:08:59] MHR: Yeah I'm looking forward to seeing how the tenure track professor is going to help maybe, like, stabilize the Program in a way. So we'll see where that goes. So you were talking about how WGSS was sort of going into global feminism and part of that was because of 9/11. Can you talk a little bit more about that? <br /><br />[00:09:24] HFG: The first time I taught Intro to WGSS the question of how to address global feminism in an era of 9/11 was key. But that's not the central reason that we were looking at global feminisms. This is just where the field was going and, as we saw the Discipline evolving, where we were weakest. Part of this is the transition from second to third maybe fourth wave feminism. I'm being careful on this, I think second wave feminism gets a really bad rap as being non-diverse and only about white women. It wasn't entirely that, though it was too much about white women and white middle class women and was not very global. [00:10:07] And certainly third wave feminism really pushed the Discipline to say, "hey wait a second. How do we think about other expressions of gender and sexuality in different contexts?" And we weren't doing a good job of negotiating that. And personally I kind of fall in between the waves, right? I'm a little on the end of second wave feminism but older than third wave feminism. So trying to bridge some of that has been fun. <br /><br />[00:10:36] MHR: Very nice! So my next question has to do with... as a professor of Sociology as well, how do you incorporate WGSS into your Sociology classes, as well? And also, how do you see Wooster's WGSS Program being so interdisciplinary as being an important aspect of the Program?<br /><br /> [00:10:58] HFG: Those are two big questions! <br /><br />[00:10:58] MHR: Yeah, those are huge questions, I'm sorry. You can't take it apart as you please! [00:11:02] HFG: Let me take the first one. I don't know if you know Peggy McIntosh's Stages of Curricular Design. You should read, it's very good. And she talks in terms of women, but you could extend that to gender and sexualities. It's not present at all in Disciplines. That was my college experience. And then as the Discipline progresses, it's what she calls add women and stir, which is, "okay we'll have a chapter on women in the sociology textbooks. And we'll talk about it there and that's the only place we'll talk about." And so certainly early in my career, early in the fields, that's what we were doing. And I think most of us in Sociology have worked really hard over the past few years not to just have, "this is the week we will talk about women!" So for example, my other main area is Urban Studies, and I teach an Urban Sociology class. [00:12:03] It was actually kind of funny because I was... that used to be usually male, and I would teach the Urban Soc class and it would be twenty five men and five women. And then I would teach the Sociology of Gender course and it would be twenty nine women and one man. It's gotten a lot better on both sides. And so I would do a week on women in the city because, "look! There are women in the city!" And that's just not productive. So now in my courses as I'm talking about any kind of social forces, such as poverty, globalization, or inequality, gender and sexuality are key to understanding those forces. Certainly looking from an intersectional perspective, looking at the intersections of gender, race, class, sexualities in any of the social forces we look at. [00:13:02] Interdisciplinarity, yes! It's very important but I don't know... I don't know that we always do it well. I don't know that we always define what interdisciplinarity means. Does it just mean we have a sociologist and an English professor teaching a course together? That's not necessarily interdisciplinarity if we just alternate classes and present it differently. It's really hard work to do truly interdisciplinary work. But it's important because I think bringing together the skill sets of humanities, social sciences, we need more of the natural sciences and really bringing that to, you know, a perspective that is more than just the sum of the parts I think is really important. Again we don't always do such a great job because it's hard. Early on the Program is really dominated by humanities. Now I think it's far more social science dominated. So we've gone through different trends. <br /><br />[00:14:00] MHR: Do you have a favorite class you have taught at Wooster that's been a part of the WGSS Program? <br /><br />[00:14:06] HFG: One of my favorite courses was an upper level seminar called Gendered Spaces as it brought together urban and issues of gender. We looked at how it was kind of a spatial feminism. We looked at how spaces are gendered. How sexuality overlays spaces. I was thinking about it recently because the class went out and they identified Timpkin Science Library as one of the most males spaces on campus. And we just, this spring, had the unveiling of really trying to change some of that by adding some forgotten names, hidden figures so to speak. Yeah, I think that was my favorite class to teach. It was a lot of fun looking at how the experiences of... how urban design has been very masculinized. Looking at the, kind of, heteronormativity in urban planning and urban design particularly if you look at the suburbs and the structures of those. I also... I liked, I think, teaching WGSS Seminar. But it's the hardest course I've ever taught. It's a tough course to teach. But if it goes well it's really rewarding. It can go badly but if it goes well it's very rewarding. <br /><br />[00:15:25] MHR: Yeah that Gendered Spaces class sounds really interesting. <br /><br />[00:15:27] HFG: I want to be able to teach that again, yeah! <br /><br />[00:15:30] MHR: Yeah! I will take it if you are teaching it! <br /><br />[00:15:34] HFG: Lovely! <br /><br />[00:15:35] MHR: So another question I have is what are the most valuable things students in the WGSS classes learn, or why is the WGSS discipline such an important area of study in your opinion? <br /><br />[00:15:48] HFG: Yeah. I think the central issues, and this is, you know, from my perspective as a Sociologist obviously, is looking at power and privilege across various domains in our lives and how that affects experiences. Power, privilege seeing intersectionality through various aspects of our lives and how that plays out in understanding how we define ourselves in terms of categories such as gender, sex, sexuality are imbued with that power and privilege. I think that perspective is essential. You know, and I think it's essential for various groups. It's important for social justice issues, for making change in the world. Not to sound too cheesy and naive, but to try and make some change in the world. I think it's important for that. I think it's important for students who are trying to find their place in terms of categories that they've been placed in or that they're trying to identify themselves. And it's a really important place for students who haven't thought about that before, to understand the roles of power and privilege. Who maybe... who have not understood their white privilege or their privilege based on heterosexuality and haven't understood where that comes from and how that develops. I think that's really important. <br /><br />[00:17:26] MHR: Yeah, no it was really interesting to me when I took the intro class, and the started to take the upper level classes before I became a major, just how... because coming into Wooster I was sort of thinking, "oh this discipline, like, it's, like, I already know about these issues." But then when I started taking it I was like, "these are still applicable to, like, everything." It's really like one of the basic things of how our world is run and we really need to understand these better. So I definitely like your answer because I really have seen that. Are there specific things you want your students to get out of the classes you teach in WGSS? <br /><br />[00:18:07] HFG: Yeah... <br /><br />[00:18:07] MHR: Like are there certain goals you have for them? <br /><br />[00:18:12] HFG: I don't know that I have goals that are that different with my WGSS courses than in any of my other courses. I want them to think critically and in all my courses I want them to look at structures of power and inequalities and to question their assumptions and to look at their experiences from a new perspective. Now if I can get there at the end of course I'm very happy. You know, students who think they know everything about gender and sexuality already so... trying to, "OK let's look at this from a new perspective and challenge your assumptions that you have whether you've never thought about gender before or whether you've thought a lot about it." <br /><br />[00:18:59] MHR: So one of my final questions that's coming to my head right now is, how do you see Wooster's Program in comparison to maybe other small liberal arts Programs in Ohio or even to, like, a big university? Is there anything Wooster's WGSS Program is unique compared to others? <br /><br />[00:19:21] HFG: Yeah, I mean, we're small. A little smaller than some other liberal arts colleges. And so that limits us. I think we're one of the older Programs in at least The Ohio Five and the GLCA in our cohort. That's a longer standing Program and there's some history that I think is really exciting for Wooster's program. And now, not surprisingly, the I.S. makes a difference. The fact that we've got students out there doing research, doing social justice based projects... and there are some, still some, Programs that are far more rooted in a more traditional Women's Studies kind of perspective. [00:20:13] So I think we've grown and evolved in that way better than some. I mean the difference is we don't have twenty faculty all working together on issues of gender and sexuality solely, you know. And we're always having to beg, borrow, and steal faculty members from other Departments to get courses taught. And that's hard. <br /><br />[00:20:38] MHR: Yeah we'll see how maybe this tenure track will change things in that aspect. <br /><br />[00:20:45] HFG: The danger is that other faculty simply then, "oh, we have these two positions now we don't have to worry about it, right? You don't have to.. you don't need me as much because we've got these other positions.". <br /><br />[00:20:57] MHR: Yeah. <br /><br />[00:20:57] HFG: And I hope that doesn't happen. <br /><br />[00:21:00] MHR: Yeah. <br /><br />[00:21:01] HFG: It kind of happened a little bit when we got the position of Professor Craven. But the college is really focused on issues of interdisciplinarity and putting some resources behind it. So, that'll be good! <br /><br />[00:21:14] MHR: Yeah! How do you envision the WGSS Program at Wooster for the next... well it's the fortieth anniversary this year, so what do you envision the Program looking like in another 40 years? <br /><br />[00:21:28] HFG: We're already on the way of it being a far more diverse Program, being far more, again, intersectional, being far more global. And I think just... we'll continue that way as we go forward. <br /><br />[00:21:45] MHR: So those are all the questions I have. But did you want to say anything else or ask me anything before we end this interview? <br /><br />[00:21:55] HFG: So what becomes of this project? <br /><br />[00:21:59] MHR: Originally it was because it's the fortieth anniversary. So me and Dr. Craven and also Catie Newton who works in the library got this grant to do an oral history project to, sort of, create an archive of the history of WGSS at Wooster. [00:22:16] So we could just have a history of the WGSS Program because it is such a new Program. To sort of have historical documentation of it for future generations. And then the hope is to have students look at the work that we started here with WGSS at Wooster and then, sort of, take it into a more broad context. As of now my goal is to, sort of, archive stories of people who have been a part of the WGSS Program since the beginning to now and just have their oral histories and their stories here for people to look at and listen to in future generations. <br /><br />[00:22:53] HFG: Which is exciting and it reminds me of a direction that we are already going a little bit in and I hope to do more of. Last week I was with Catie Newton at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in D.C. This is my third year I'v gone looking at digital humanities, which oral histories are a part of that. Professor Craven, Hayward and Holtz have been...Helis Sikk went this year, so there's a bunch of faculty getting into that. And I think it's really interesting using various media to get students looking at interpretive work and interpretive data. And that's really exciting. There's some fun areas we can go with that. And again I.S. is a great place to do that. I keep trying to push my students to say, "you should do a film along with this, or you should have an interactive website mapping some of these issues." Which would be great. <br /><br />[00:24:03] MHR: Yeah! It's the cool experience for me because being a millennial and the digital world is becoming so much more a part of education. [00:24:12] I think this is a really cool way to sort of archive this history but also have this be a platform for other students to take inspiration to do more digital or online stuff with WGSS. So I'm excited to see where it goes.
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00:24:27
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Virtual Interview
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Interview with Heather Fitz Gibbon
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Sociology; Women's studies; Feminism; Second-wave feminism; Third-wave feminism; Human sexuality; Gender; Urban studies; Interdisciplinary approach in education
Description
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This is an interview with The College of Wooster professor Heather Fitz Gibbon. Heather talks about her expereince teaching in Sociology, Urban Studies and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies. Heather also talks about her involvement in the beginning of the Women's Studies discipline at Wooster. Heather also talks about the importance of the WGSS department being interdisciplinary and what she wants the department to look like in the future.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Fitz Gibbon, Heather
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Unpublished
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2018-06-14
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OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries
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Presented with permission from Heather Fitz Gibbon <br /><br /><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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eng
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Fitz-Gibbon Interview.mp3
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Chicago; New Jersey; Wooster
-
https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/cab39615912102851536d3f168a456e3.mp3
7fa97bc4685acae276ff6ddc659846b9
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Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews
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LGBT population; Alumni and alumnae; Oral history; Women's studies; Feminism and higher education; Homophobia in higher education; Gays in higher education
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This collection contains oral histories of alumni and faculty who are/were involved with the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the College of Wooster. Interviewees include alumni of the program, faculty, former faculty, invited speakers.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
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Unpublished
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Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Oral History
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Interviewee
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Frye, Joanne
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College of Wooster Digital Studio
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<p><strong>Joanne Frye Interview</strong></p>
<p><strong>Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and Joanne Frye for clarity</strong></p>
<p>[00:00:00] MHR<strong>: </strong>All right. I am here with Joanne Frye and it is May 30<sup>th</sup> [2018]. Hello Joanne.</p>
<p>[00:00:06] JF<strong>: </strong>Hello. </p>
<p>[00:00:07 ]MHR<strong>:</strong> Thank you for being a part of this project. I'm very excited to talk to you. </p>
<p>[00:00:11] JF<strong>: </strong>Good to talk to you too Matt.</p>
<p>[00:00:13] MHR<strong>:</strong> I'm going to start off by asking you, where are you from originally and how did you end up at the College of Wooster? </p>
<p>[00:00:18] JF<strong>: </strong>I was born in South Bend, Indiana. After college I went to graduate school at Indiana University, finished my Ph.D. in 1974, divorced my then husband, had two small daughters and went on the job market in 1976. I got the job at the College of Wooster on a short-term basis in the English Department. It was a two-year appointment, and I was fortunate to end up making it my life career. </p>
<p>[00:00:51] MHR<strong>: </strong>So what was your experience with Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies in your education? </p>
<p>[00:00:57] JF<strong>: </strong>Well, there wasn't any.</p>
<p>[00:00:58]MHR<strong>:</strong> OK.</p>
<p>[00:01:00] JF<strong>: </strong>That's a place to start. I mean it wasn't really possible to have a background in Women's Studies when I was an undergraduate. I was an English major. There were very few women writers even taught in many of the courses that I took. I did my dissertation on Virginia Woolf and that became a path for me into Women's Studies in a somewhat indirect way. As you probably know, the first Women's Studies Program formalized in the US was at San Diego State in 1970. I was pretty much done with coursework of any kind by then.</p>
<p>[00:01:38] With a Ph.D. in English I found my way to feminism partly through literature and partly through life experience. I went from there in terms of my arrival at the College of Wooster. When I went through my divorce, I found myself very hungry to read other women writers. So I proposed—early on when I came here—a course then called “Major Fiction by Women.” That became a kind of focus point and a platform for me to develop in lots of different other interdisciplinary directions.</p>
<p>[00:02:15] MHR<strong>:</strong> So you're saying that the Women's Studies courses were just... or, like, the degree wasn't there when you were in school?</p>
<p>[00:02:22] JF<strong>: </strong>The courses weren't even there.</p>
<p>[00:02:24] MHR<strong>:</strong> Oh, the courses weren't even there. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask, if there were even, like, Women's Studies designed courses.</p>
<p>[00:02:30] JF<strong>: </strong>There was... nobody really had anything. Women's Studies was... was newly born, I guess, in the late 60s. But you had to have some courses before you could develop programs, which is how the program here worked. We might have a course occasionally in a Discipline that would focus on women in one way or another, or gender. Pretty much not sexuality—but lots of evolutions had to come before we got to where we are now in the Discipline.</p>
<p>[00:03:08] MHR<strong>: </strong>So can you tell me a little bit about how and why the Women's Studies program was created at The College of Wooster and how did the efforts to establish that program, sort of intersect, with other efforts? </p>
<p>[00:03:24] JF<strong>: </strong>Where to start? </p>
<p>[00:03:28] MHR<strong>: </strong>It’s a broad question.</p>
<p>[00:03:29] JF<strong>:</strong> It is! Maybe I'll break it into a couple of parts.</p>
<p>[00:03:33] Well, let me begin by paying tribute to two people you won't be able to interview who were really important in the early years of the program—people on the ground here at the college before I arrived in 1976. And those are Jim Turner, who was in the history Department and one of the founding members of the program, and Deb Hilty who had been in the English Department and became secretary to the president of the college. She did a lot of her groundbreaking work behind the scenes, in a way, as a part of the administration. She was often instrumental in shaping the kinds of speakers that might come to campus. She certainly was influential in guiding me to some writers and thinkers that I might have taken a little longer to come to, particularly and most centrally Adrienne Rich, who was, I think, one of the founding intellectual presences in our thinking about the Program—along with such classics as Simone de Beauvoir, and in my case Virginia Woolf, and in many people's cases Virginia Woolf also.</p>
<p>Deb Hilty taught a course within the English department called “Poetry by Women” that then became one of the very first courses that we had in the Program. Jim Turner had taught a course in the history Department and had developed a course on Women in Contemporary Society, which was the first interdisciplinary course. That was on the books when I came in 1976. Because I was also offering, within the English Department, a course on fiction by women, I was tapped as someone interested in these issues and appointed to the Committee on the Status of Women. It was then suggested that perhaps the next step would be to propose a <a href="http://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/items/show/19">Women's Studies minor.</a></p>
<p>I didn't know much. I had to learn a lot. [00:05:33] We had <em>Women in Sport</em>, <em>Poetry by Women</em>, <em>Psychology of Women</em>, <em>Fiction by Women</em>, <em>Women's History</em>, <em>Women in Contemporary Society</em>, and there was a course, then interdisciplinary, <em>Sex Antagonism in Western Literature</em>. So those seven courses—on the basis of that—we proposed to add a new course, a capstone course for a minor, then called Seminar in Women's Studies. With eight courses, we proposed a minor, which calls for six courses—for a student to take six courses—so you can tell it was pretty thin offerings. I was then chair of the Committee on the Status of Women, which brought the proposal. Therefore it was my task to argue it to the faculty. So we took that to the faculty and it was actually approved in January 1978. That was our first big step in formalizing what was not then yet really a Discipline anywhere—certainly not in the courses that we were proposing as part of the minor.</p>
<p>[00:06:36] MHR<strong>:</strong> It sounds like everyone who was a founding member of the Program was, sort of, learning along the way because there was nothing to base it on.</p>
<p>[00:06:42] JF: The first time we taught Seminar in Women's Studies, Jim Turner and I did it together, as an overload. We had no teaching credit for doing it. We had a handful of students. We met in Kittridge over lunch and mostly we had to use mimeographed materials. We did have <em>The</em> Se<em>cond Sex</em>, which became a very important text in my thinking about the Program and, you know, foundational in a lot of feminist thought despite all its flaws, which are many. So we just sort of looked around and said, "what is there?" And that's what we put together. And it was... it was exciting.</p>
<p>[00:07:19] We felt like we were doing something new even though, as your question implies, there were Programs developing similarly across the country—though each Program, in my view, was really marked by what the institutional character was. Wooster had some advantages. It had its interdisciplinary history, it had its independent study, it had an openness to curricular innovation. And those really enabled us to do what could only be done, at a small college like this, as a collaborative effort among Departments and individual faculty.</p>
<p>[00:07:56] MHR<strong>: </strong>So you're saying it started off as a minor originally. Were you a part of the process of it becoming a major?</p>
<p>[00:08:05] JF<strong>: </strong>You know, I can't emphasize enough how much it was all collaborative. At the same time I was there for all of the first part of the Program and served as the first chair of the Program once it was approved as a minor. I, for some years, was not in favor of a major because I didn't think we had the depth of resources and scholarship and foundational understandings to make it a major. So when people challenged even the minor to say, "well you know it's not really a Discipline," I shared some of that because we had a lot of work to do as scholars and thinkers and teachers and students and learners all together. But by 1988, ten years into the Program, people were more and more saying, "now there is the material! Now we should have a major!" So in 1988 [as part of the move toward a major], we celebrated 10 years of the Women's Studies Program and our keynote speaker was Adrienne Rich. </p>
<p>[00:09:06] MHR<strong>: </strong> Oh wow! </p>
<p>[00:09:06] JF<strong>: </strong>One of my hidden secret most exciting moments was when I was working late one evening and the phone rang and it was Adrienne Rich calling to say yes she would come. It was... very thrilling. And, again, I credit Deb Hilty in many ways for her influence on my thinking. And then with Adrienne Rich, it [the celebration] just exploded. She added many important concepts and so much to my thinking and to the thinking of a lot of people in the field as it was developing. Then we had a lot of other important contributors [to the celebration]. Some of them were students at the college, but also the current editor of [00:09:43] "Signs," Jean O’Barr at that point. bell hooks came, [00:09:48] Zillah Eisenstein, Elizabeth Higginbotham in sociology, [00:09:54] Marilyn Boxer, Gail Griffin. This was a very exciting celebration—a day-long symposium of local contributors and then these national figures that we were able to get to come. We were thrilled, of course, to have the college give us some funding for that and we put a lot of work into making it happen. And that was a very exciting thing. [Let me back up and give more background.] Before that—in 1985—we had finally actually gotten approval for the first half time position in what was then still Women's Studies. So that's the first time then I had an official title. I became that first chair and taught half-time the interdisciplinary segments as well as in my original field in English--and then did the curricular chairing and organizing. It took a lot of work—it still does—to organize all the cross-listed courses, to engage all the different people from all the different Departments and pull them away from what they see as their primary work. We were doing that at the beginning. It still goes on, as you've probably heard.</p>
<p>[00:11:02] So I was chair then officially as of 1985, having been sort of chair without appointment prior to that. [Following the 1988 celebration], with the committee—again a collaborative effort—we then finally proposed the major and had it approved in January of 1989—eleven years after the minor. And majors were increasingly developing [around the country]. Universities, of course, had a great advantage in terms of the number of faculty they had, the number of access to different ways of thinking in appointments across the Disciplines, and so forth. But we had the advantage of the sort of "think on our feet" flexibility that we had at a small liberal arts college that was open to innovation. </p>
<p>[00:11:46] MHR<strong>:</strong> It sounds exciting! </p>
<p>[00:11:47] JF<strong>:</strong> It was exciting! Oh and one other thing that was interesting along the way before we actually got to the major. We had a number of students who did self-proposed majors under the college's guidelines for independent majors. We developed guidelines for those [self-designed majors] and those [guidelines] became the foundation for the major. So we went forward from that. The first two Women's Studies majors under this independent rubric graduated in 1986. One did an I.S. on female sexuality. One did an I.S. that was a feminist sourcebook for campus—already, sort of, seeing some of the directions the Program would need to keep evolving in terms of activism and in terms of sexuality studies. It was kind of interesting that those were the first two I.S.’s. And then we had another independent one on midwifery, another one that developed a high school curriculum. So, there was a range of interesting innovative work done even before we had the formal major.</p>
<p>[00:12:57] Those, of course, fed the energy to develop the actual major. By then we had more courses and continued to have a collaborative investment of many faculty. </p>
<p>[00:13:07] MHR<strong>: </strong>Yeah, that's cool to hear that the self-designed majors by students were actually part of the organization of what the Program would become. So going off of the idea of students in the program, what was the popularity of the Program like in its early years?</p>
<p>[00:13:27] JF<strong>: </strong>There was good energy... pent up energy from students, such as the ones I mentioned already, who were craving—craving these understandings and craving academic affirmation of the things they wanted to know that had such an impact on their own lives and thinking. There was also some backlash, I guess, but not hostile backlash exactly. Trivialization, you know, "well then why don't we have men's studies?" And, you know, all the sort of usual diminishment of the kinds of things that we were doing. But I didn't feel that students were particularly resistant. Students, as you know, choose courses according to their interests, so the ones that were hostile stayed away. And probably students in the courses heard more from their peers outside the classroom over lunch in Lowry or wherever. And so they heard some resistance that way. And there were some grumblings among the faculty, but mostly it was pretty well received. We did make a decision early on to make the Program premised more on conceptual understandings. And that meant that our commitment to the activist components lagged a bit.</p>
<p>[00:14:50] I would stand by that decision as a way to enable the intellectual maneuverability that was required to develop a new Discipline. And then to not make simple-minded applications from the way the world was, but rather to think about simultaneously the way the world is and the way we would like it to become in terms of social justice concerns. So, I would stand by the emphasis on epistemology and cognitive concerns and conceptual understandings even as I recognize the need for the applications—which Christa's been fabulous about emphasizing and bringing more to the fore, as others have been as well, but Christa in particular.</p>
<p>[00:15:36] MHR<strong>: </strong>So, I'm just curious because a few of the courses at Wooster, when I was talking to Christa we were talking about <em>Queer Lives</em> for instance. And the waitlist, she was saying, is, like, is sometimes as long as the class itself. So classes that were offered in the early years of the program, was there a problem of too many people being interested or was it hard to fill the classes?</p>
<p>[00:16:01] JF<strong>: </strong>Not so much like the long wait lists, though once something is relatively new then there's a sort of backlog of energy and interest of people waiting for it to happen (though Queer Lives has been around for a while now and still has that kind of pressure). It depends a lot, of course, on the cultural context. Feminism had a... still a lot of negative connotations at that point. And, you know, we go in and out of how we think about feminism. Some of us have seen feminism get co-opted to corporate talk, which we’re not that happy about. You know, we want to pull it back to its roots in social justice, including for all people with a focus on gender. Anyway, back to the popularity question, I wouldn't say with the same kind of resounding enthusiasm that you're talking about in numbers. [00:16:55] But the students that did come were markedly enthusiastic [and we did need to gradually add additional sections of the Introduction course].</p>
<p>[00:16:59] MHR<strong>:</strong> Ok. So to talk more about historical context at the time when the program was being created, what was the campus community like in regards to women's rights and LGBT rights when the program was created?</p>
<p>[00:17:12] JF<strong>: </strong>Well, the Women's Resource Center had been going on for a while and that was a place where women students, in particular, would go for books, conversation, programming. The academic branch sort of spun off of that and went in its own direction. The attention to LGBTQ... well obviously I mean a lot of people were not out. You know, closeting was more common than not, so one didn't even know. And for reasons of privacy, it's not like you go around asking.</p>
<p>[00:17:50] MHR<strong>: </strong>Of course.</p>
<p>[00:17:50] JF<strong>: </strong>And, so, you'd feel your way for what people's issues would be. And people were understandably apprehensive about coming out. Deb Hilty herself didn't come out till considerably later. I knew she was lesbian and I knew that she was a magnet for students who needed to have a comfort zone. She somehow knew how to make herself available to students without coming out. It was brilliant. I mean, she was amazing. And students are very alert. They somehow... I mean, as you know, you have your own networks and find a way. I hope that all of us in Women's Studies, regardless of our own sexual identities, were, you know, we were too I think safe zones and we had I.S.’s that would explore topics of sexuality. I had an I.S. [student] in English—he worked on homosocial relationships in D.H. Lawrence's novels. [00:18:52] He was gay. And I can't remember exactly when and <a href="https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1245&context=voice1971-1980" target="_blank" rel="noopener">how he came out</a>, but he was editor of "The Voice" and he did a big, sort of, coming out kind of issue in which—I don't think it was his own coming out—but it's like "this is for our community" and that was fairly early on. It wasn't associated with Women's Studies per se, but clearly the environment of the campus had some connection to that. So we had a lot of, sort of underground, finding our way—all of us finding our way in a culture that was pretty marked by homophobia.</p>
<p>[00:19:28] MHR<strong>: </strong>Yeah. Very raw history.</p>
<p>[00:19:31] JF<strong>: </strong>It is. It totally is.</p>
<p>[00:19:35] MHR<strong>:</strong> So, you already talked about a lot of the struggles that you faced when trying to get the Program off the ground, like how there was really no example for how to do it. Not very many classes or faculty involved. But were there any other struggles that you, as well as the other founders, faced when trying to get the Program off the ground?</p>
<p>[00:19:58] JF<strong>:</strong> Ongoing dialogues with Departments. And I think this persists throughout the whole history of the program. Loyalties that faculty members need to have to their Discipline of origin and then also feel to the interdisciplinary work in Women's Studies/WGSS. And that's a tension. And that's always a tension. I mean, Women's Studies—WGSS—by definition, almost has to remain interdisciplinary both because of its intellectual needs and because, at a small college like this, you're just not going to be able to appoint enough faculty to approach all the different questions that need to be addressed in the curriculum. [00:20:40] So you really have to be able to draw people from other Departments. That struggle was early, middle, late. All the time.</p>
<p>[00:20:48] MHR<strong>: </strong>Yeah.</p>
<p>[00:20:49] JF<strong>: </strong>Though, of course, one of the great things was when Christa was hired as permanent Women's Studies faculty, even if half time. And that was a big accomplishment. Now the new position. That will be interesting to see how that develops, so...</p>
<p>[00:21:04 ] MHR<strong>:</strong> Yeah, I know right now the WGSS Department is on a search for a tenured professor. So, I'm very, very curious to see where that goes in the coming years. I think it's going to happen when I'm not at Wooster anymore, but I hope to, like, keep tabs on what’s happening. </p>
<p>[00:21:21] JF<strong>:</strong> Sure, sure.</p>
<p>[00:21:22] MHR<strong>: </strong>I've seen personally how it can be difficult to have different professors coming in who are just temporary positions who bring in all their own interests. And then, I was talking with Christa about this, like how a student can get really attached to one professor, really interested in their research because that's what they're specialized in and then they leave before they can have them as their senior I.S. adviser.</p>
<p>[00:21:46] JF<strong>:</strong> That's right.</p>
<p>[00:21:47] MHR<strong>:</strong> So I am... I'm excited for this search going on.</p>
<p>[00:21:50] JF<strong>: </strong>You know, and even the leave program has problems there. I mean—there are students I still regret I couldn't work with because I was going on leave. But I couldn't make my own whole research pursuits be dependent on which students I wanted to work with. But... but it was sad not to be able—to approach a senior year when I knew I was going to be on leave and not be able to work with certain students who were... we had worked well together in earlier courses. Yeah, the temporary faculty—that's a big one.</p>
<p>[00:22:21] MHR<strong>: </strong>Yeah. So how have you seen the program change. I mean obviously there's been tons of change but what are some of the biggest changes you think you have seen from the early years and what the program is now? </p>
<p>[00:22:38] JF<strong>: </strong>Well, not surprisingly, I don't feel very well versed in ability to talk about the current program. I'm aware of a lot of changes that took place during my years and then since my retirement. But the big things I think that developed over time and continue to develop are greater awareness of the diversity among women. We certainly hoped we weren't just talking about white women, but it was a lot of the way things came out in the ‘70s when we were starting the program. And we had to work hard on that. And students helped us with that too. We've always had trouble attracting—I think this is still the case—we don't have as many students of color take Women's Studies or WGSS as would be healthy for the program. That's something to continue to pay attention to. So that's one development: a greater awareness and an investment in antiracist thinking and in diverse resources as part of the program. Same with sexuality questions. A greater development of the resources, which of course has happened. Greater faculty presence, which has happened, but there's more to be done. And, of course, the curriculum there. At the beginning, so much of it felt like we were just opening up what we can discover about any of us in our lives and how gender has had an impact on how we think about things.</p>
<p>[00:24:10] And then it became clear we needed to remind ourselves to think about social justice for all people in their gendered lives and to make that a more central concern. So, that was a really important ongoing concern and emphasis. You know, when intersectionality became an important concept in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, that sort of facilitated some of the ways of thinking about that. And then what to do with activism, how to think about engagement in the process of actually making change in the communities we live in, as well as learning about how to think about that change. Now I'm of the view both are very important and need to be linked to each other but you don't have to be always doing both simultaneously because then you wear yourself out. So you, sort of, find your way, pause and think and figure out theoretically how things might work better, and then invest in making the changes you can. Some people learn a lot about theory by doing, also. So it can go the other direction. </p>
<p>[00:25:25] MHR<strong>: </strong>Were you involved at all when the program changed from just Women's Studies to what's now Gender and Sexuality Studies? </p>
<p>[00:25:32] JF<strong>:</strong> It's funny because people were making rumblings about change of a name for a long time when I was still chair. And then of course we had the rotating chair and then I came back as chair briefly because nobody was willing to do it so I did it briefly again in the early 2000s. And I didn't want to lose “women.” Some people wanted Gender Studies. I was very opposed to Gender Studies. I was fearful we would lose women as a focus. And I just thought that was still too important.</p>
<p>[00:26:04] I would have been in favor of Feminist Studies, Feminist Gender Studies, something like that. That would have been probably my preference. But Feminist was seen to be a loaded term. In any case, they did it when I was on leave. So, I mean, I think it was going to happen. And, you know, the concepts are the important thing. And WGSS seems to be working now. And so I affirm that. It's probably not what I would have chosen. It's clearly not what I would have chosen at the time. I wanted feminist in there. But anyway—that's how that happened. It was contentious but not hostile.</p>
<p>[00:26:46] MHR<strong>: </strong>Did it seem like it was always gonna become more than just Women's Studies? Was that a thought that you and other people who sort of created the program... was that ever a thought in your head when it was first created?</p>
<p>[00:27:00] JF<strong>: </strong> No, not at the beginning. At the beginning it was like—we haven't been thinking about women in the academic programs that we're aware of and we <em>need</em> to think about women. And it was sort of just there as a baseline thing. Very quickly we became aware of all the things that opens up in terms of human diversity across sexualities and cultures and religions and races and all the different classes. All the different ways humans are diverse. So, we became rather quickly aware that that opened on to a lot of things. But it took quite a while till it became an issue of title or how to label it all. And of course labels keep eluding what we really mean. So it's an ongoing question I think. But, WGSS is working I think. Is it working for students do you feel?</p>
<p>[00:27:53] MHR<strong>: </strong>I think the name definitely encapsulates what we're learning and what the goals are from the degree. I'm curious to see if a name change will ever come again to something like Feminist Studies. Because I think today, in my opinion, Feminist is not such a controversial term.</p>
<p>[00:28:11] JF<strong>: </strong>Right, right.</p>
<p>[00:28:12] MHR: So I'm very curious to see if that is ever going to become part of the name.</p>
<p>[00:28:17] JF<strong>:</strong> I would still love to see it be part of the name but I would also love that to be accompanied by the reminder that feminist isn't just about me getting my own: "If you're a woman and you want equal rights then you're a feminist." I don't really buy that. I think if you're a feminist you care about social justice for all people. And so I would like that to be evident somehow in the definition of feminist. I would love to see that in the program title. </p>
<p>[00:28:49] MHR<strong>:</strong> Me and Dr. Craven, because she was... or she asked me what I would like to see in the program and I was talking about I'd be interested if there could be, sort of like a general education requirement, like a Feminist or Social Justice, like, requirement.</p>
<p>[00:29:06] JF<strong>: </strong>And we've had that conversation over the years: having a required course [drawn from courses emphasizing social justice]. And of course, you know, Black Studies grew up right alongside, now Africana Studies, grew up right alongside Women's Studies and in the best of times nourished each other but at times seemed to be at risk for competing for limited resources, which is horrible. You know, I hate that thought. It never should be that way. But a lot of the conversation was: can we make FYS into such a [social justice] course?</p>
<p>[00:29:39] There were experiments with that: can we require from a list of courses among these programs that are available. Many people who teach in such programs are not thrilled about students there because they have to be there. It's much harder to teach a course where you have a mix of students who are passionate about wanting to learn it and students who are hostile to it and resistant to the thought that they are being made to do something. So there are those questions. And they've been part of that discussion a long time. Another part of the discussion was, early on, how much do we want a separate program and how much do we want to mainstream the topics. And, of course, both/and has to be, in my view, the only way to go. I think it has happened but it's bumpy.</p>
<p>[00:30:32] MHR: Yeah I think it's also interesting to think about how WGSS has sort of gone into other programs with all the cross-listed classes we have now. So we have, like, a bunch of, like, Women in the Political Sphere, Women in Music, Women Psychology. So, I think that's interesting to see how it sort of becomes a part of all these different areas of study. So... </p>
<p>[00:31:02] JF<strong>: </strong>But it's useful to remember that in many ways the programs started from just those kinds of courses.</p>
<p>[00:31:07] MHR<strong>: </strong>Exactly.</p>
<p>[00:31:07] JF<strong>:</strong> Before we had the organizational structure. So they feed each other in the best of times. And, you know, one of the things you as a student probably know more about than I do: the need to do your best to have foundational concepts in each of these courses but not to have it be redundant for those who have gone from one course to another. You know, "oh again I'm going to learn these basic concepts," but there are people who haven't learned them yet.</p>
<p>[00:31:37] MHR<strong>: </strong>Yeah.</p>
<p>[00:31:37] JF<strong>: </strong>So those are parts of an interdisciplinary structure that are to be negotiated.</p>
<p>[00:31:43] MHR<strong>: </strong>Yeah that's what I like a lot about WGSS is I feel like it's relevant to, like, everything. It's very interdisciplinary. So, a question that just popped into my head was did you have a favorite class you taught within the WGSS Discipline and what were some of the main objectives you wanted students to come out of that class with?</p>
<p>[00:32:07] JF<strong>: </strong>I actually loved doing seminar because—and I would tell students this in the beginning... first of all I was instrumental in making it ungraded because I don't like grades.</p>
<p> [00:32:17] MHR<strong>: </strong>Yeah.</p>
<p>[00:32:18] JF<strong>: </strong>But I would say, "this is a course where you all do have a foundation we can take for granted. You're all serious about the work. We expect responsibility from all of you. And we're going to go with the questions that don't have answers and really wrestle with them." And I really enjoyed that. And it was often difficult because people come from such different places and they aren't always ready to do that and some people hated having no grades and all of that as well. So I won't say it was utopian but I really enjoyed both working with the structure of the course and then working with the students in the course.</p>
<p>Then a course I haven't mentioned—and I'm sad I don't think it persisted; it must have been just my course—“<em>Feminist Perspectives on Motherhood</em>.” It was not a motherhood course. [00:33:10] I would insist that it was feminist perspectives on motherhood, which involved thinking about how we gender parenting, how we think about gender through the reproductive knot, what we do to disentangle this knot if we want social justice for all people regardless of all those constraints. I really loved developing that course. That was very important to me—and hard work, really hard work. And the reading load was... well just ask the students who were in there. I loved doing that course.</p>
<p>In the English Department I loved doing the Virginia Woolf course, which was sort of my origin in my ongoing passion because she just ends up making you ask a lot of questions and I'm fully committed to the idea that questions are where we have to be. Not answers so much. I mean obviously you want answers but not ready-made answers. You want to keep pushing hard, but always ask the next hard question. That's my mantra.</p>
<p>[00:34:12] MHR<strong>: </strong>Do you have a favorite Virginia Woolf book? </p>
<p>[00:34:14] JF<strong>: </strong>For WGSS, <em>Three Guineas</em>. For literature, and also gender thinking, <em>To The</em> <em>Lighthouse</em>.</p>
<p> [00:34:26] MHR<strong>: </strong>I'll have to add those to my list!</p>
<p>[00:34:27] JF<strong>: </strong>Yes, do! I recommend!</p>
<p>[00:34:27] MHR<strong>: </strong>Awesome! So speaking of literature, I read a little bit of your memoir, <a href="http://joannefrye.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>Biting the</em> <em>Moon</em></a>. I wanted to just ask you to talk a little about your experience with writing the memoir as well as some of the things that are most influential to your experience.</p>
<p>[00:34:46] JF<strong>: </strong>As I just said about teaching, I think it holds true in writing as well. You need questions. You start with questions, you pursue questions, you ask hard questions. You don't go for easy answers. So I had a backlog of questions.</p>
<p>[00:35:04] My first book had been a book of literary criticism about contemporary women novelists using first person voice for women to tell their own stories. So I was thinking about the way in which claiming agency in a narrative form was important. That was my first book. And my second book was on Tillie Olsen, who was also a very major presence in my intellectual life, and I got to know her quite well and did interviews with her and so forth. And she pushed me that much harder to think about probing the role of class and all kinds of things—the way history plays out in people's lives—poverty, racism. And motherhood. And I was doing the Feminist Perspectives on Motherhood course and I was doing independent studies with English majors about writing narratives. So all of those things converged in my saying: "wait a minute. I have all these questions. They come from my life. They come from my life as a single mother, from my life as an academic, as a person committed to literary understandings. How do I think about feminism and motherhood together through my life?" So that was the trajectory that got me to that book. It took me a long time even to get to think I was going to write it and then it took me a long time to write it. But it was question driven and I went in trying to figure some things out.</p>
<p>[00:36:43] MHR<strong>: </strong>Very nice, yeah. I really enjoyed the little bit I read!</p>
<p>[00:36:47] JF<strong>: </strong>The section on the development of the program?</p>
<p>[00:36:51] MHR<strong>: </strong>Yeah!</p>
<p>[00:36:51] JF<strong>: </strong>It was fun to be able to reflect on the importance that had, personally, for me in the work and in the program.</p>
<p> [00:37:00] MHR<strong>: </strong>So I guess the final question I have is there anything you learned through the experience of being a professor in the Women's Studies Department or being a part of getting the program off the ground?</p>
<p>[00:37:13] JF<strong>:</strong> Be ready for change. Keep asking questions. Keep learning from whoever's around you and read with great hunger to understand.</p>
<p>[00:37:28] MHR<strong>: </strong>Good answer! All right, those are all the questions I have but I wanted to just ask you if you have anything else you want to add or say.</p>
<p>[00:37:36] JF<strong>: </strong>This doesn't fit at this point exactly, but you had asked early on, and then I ended up not really addressing it so much, the national context. And I did want to mention the development of the <a href="https://www.nwsa.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Women's Studies Association</a>, about the time we developed the minor in the 1970s. And the <a href="https://glca.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GLCA [Great Lakes Colleges Association]</a> had the Women's Studies group, and many of us served as representatives on that. We learned from colleagues in other like institutions, which was very helpful. Many of the voices would be university voices, whereas the GLCA ones would be more from a liberal arts context. And so you'd learn from everybody. And I came, among other things, to really value the institutional context at Wooster with the way in which I.S. and interdisciplinary work and... and openness to change had enabled us to develop Women's Studies here. And WGSS.</p>
<p>[00:38:32] MHR<strong>: </strong>The historical context of the time you're talking about is kind of fascinating to me who has this rich resources of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and at the time it was really getting off the ground. So it's very interesting to hear your perspective. I feel like we covered so much in 45 minutes! And then there's probably so much more to say but thank you so much for being a part of this.</p>
<p>[00:38:59] JF<strong>: </strong>My pleasure. Thank you, Matt, for doing this project.</p>
<p> </p>
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00:38:59
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Title
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Interview with Joanne Frye
Subject
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Literature; Academic majors; Interdisciplinarity in education; Women's studies; Feminist studies; Feminism; Gender
Description
An account of the resource
This is an interview with retired Professor Joanne Frye. Joanne Frye was a founding force in the creation of the Women's Studies minor and later Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies discipline at the College of Wooster. Joanne talks about her experience with literature and her interest in feminism and Women's Studies. She talks about what the process of creating the Women's Studies discipline at Wooster and the challenges that were faced in creating this area of study at Wooster when there were few programs like it in America. Joanne also talks about the classes she taught, Virginia Woolf and her novel <em>Biting The Moon</em>.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Frye, Joanne
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Unpublished
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2018-05-30
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OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries
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Presented with permission from Joanne Frye<br /><br /><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Joanne_Frye_Interview.mp3
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South Bend; Wooster; San Diego
-
https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/470e36ebd9c36db1dd4fe90fceaa65fe.mp3
155af9e7c94a75ce4cbfa7ca4625332e
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Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews
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LGBT population; Alumni and alumnae; Oral history; Women's studies; Feminism and higher education; Homophobia in higher education; Gays in higher education
Description
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This collection contains oral histories of alumni and faculty who are/were involved with the Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the College of Wooster. Interviewees include alumni of the program, faculty, former faculty, invited speakers.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
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Unpublished
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Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Sound
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Interviewee
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Monbarren, Denise
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College of Wooster Digital Studio
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<p><strong>Denise Monbarren Intervew</strong></p>
<p><strong>Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and Denise Monbarren for clarity</strong> </p>
<p>[00:00:00] MHR: All right. So I'm here with Denise Monbarren, our Special Collections Librarian here at Wooster. It is May 24<sup>th </sup>[2018]. Hello Denise.</p>
<p>[00:00:09] DM: Hi Matthew.</p>
<p>[00:00:11] MHR: Thank you for coming. So to begin the interview I'm just going to start off with some introductory questions. So where are you from and how did you end up at Wooster?</p>
<p>[00:00:21] DM: I grew up outside of Youngstown, Ohio -- Strothers, a very small town steel town. I went to Kent State for both my undergraduate and my graduate. After getting my library science degree, the person that I had been spending a lot of time with and I decided that we were going to get married. And he just happened to be in this area. And there was a very temporary position here at the college, which was supposed to be a five month position, and that was in January 1985. And needless to say I stayed a little longer. It's now been 33 plus years!</p>
<p>[00:01:04] MHR: Very nice! So what is your background and women's studies, gender studies, WGSS Department?</p>
<p>[00:01:08] DM: I guess I've always been interested in various topics related to gender studies. And partially that's because of my interest in dance for many years. Dance and theater, as well as literature and art. And while I was at Kent I was very involved as a student in various things including the editing of the creative arts magazine. And so it was very very much an activist campus</p>
<p>[00:01:40] from 1978 to 1983 when I finished my first graduate degree. And during that time period when I was at Kent I was very much involved with people from all of those Disciplines, and doing things like Take Back the Night. And of course we worked with women's reproductive issues during that time period, extremely a part of the time period. So that by the time I got to campus here in 1985, right out of graduate school, of course I had more, probably, in common with a lot of the students on campus than I did with the faculty. But because of the areas that I was interested in, the faculty in those areas… I was very lucky. I worked with the English Departments. I had Joanne Frye, who was also very big in Women's Studies, and I worked with her and her classes and also worked with the French Department, Carolyn Durham, and theater Department. And so in the end of the 80s then we also had a lot of students and faculty on campus. The circles that were ever tightening that got together. A lot of the students that I had supervised here in the library were some of the very first students who came through the Women's Studies major. Also, there was a small group of faculty that were younger faculty. We used to meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays downtown for feminist discussion groups. So we did that in the late 80s. And then by the early 90s more and more involvement, and some of that was at the national level starting to hit our campus, or I was working with people like Deb Hilty who was interested in changing our policy, especially since AIDS was such a big crisis at the time period, and worked with students and faculty here on our campus to help bring the NAMES AIDS quilt to campus.</p>
<p>[00:03:44] I also worked with students in the what was then the Women's Studies program and was co-I.S. adviser on I.S. related to one of our collections, and Special Collections, <a href="http://openworks.wooster.edu/motherhomeheaven/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mother, Home and Heaven collection.</a> But as I said it was a little bit of everything. A little bit from the activist views. The campus has certainly grown, you know, to a much more inclusive campus. But back in the late 80s, I think there was a small circle of support network. Younger faculty who wanted to raise issues who wanted to change policy as well as students wanting to change policy. And we had a very activist campus in the late 80s and early 90s. So that's the way I sort of got into it and I've sort of been working in various aspects, more from the research, and helping the students in terms of research in the most recent years. </p>
<p>[00:04:47] MHR: Talk a little bit more about the…what the campus climate was like when you first came and, like, how you've seen it change. </p>
<p>[00:04:54] It has changed a lot. I think of course, you know, we're always a microcosm of what's happening in the larger world. And certainly, you know, coming from a place like Kent State where it was very activist, to Wooster, which perhaps in the early 80s… we weren't seeing that quite as much. And I got here in 85, where I think it was just starting to shift a little bit at that time period, the campus. The biggest issues tended to be more towards looking at diversity issues. But we were also starting to see more with gender, more concern.</p>
<p>[00:05:32] If you were just to look at the student newspaper, The Wooster Voice, and you see… you take a look at the issues from 1985 when I first got here to the 88-89, and certainly up through 91, because the editors were also people that were taking WGSS classes. And you will see that there were active columns that showed up every week. So you had something called Miss Conception that was an advice column every week. And you had a lot more people being brought to campus during that time period and we were starting to have more conversation I think at the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s. Certainly the beginning of the 90s, too, we saw more organization happening. When I was here in 85, it's not that there weren't these conversations happening, but as was the the kind of conversation that was happening at many smaller places. While even at Kent, to tell you the truth, support systems and Women's Studies programs tended to be very confidential. And so you had things happening in a very closed knit society. So you'd go into classes, you'd go into these types of events or discussions where they were a safe protective spaces but they were safe and protected for people they needed to protect. Which was wonderful. But they did not let outsiders in. And so you didn't have that cross pollination for people who were the allies that wanted to support what was going on.</p>
<p>[00:07:12] And I think that people began to push out of that bubble a little bit more in the late 80s, in the early 90s, and almost because they had to. Because of course, you know, we started to see more activism around things, like I said, because it was the beginning of the AIDS crisis when it really started to hit in a big way nationally, so discrimination. So we had to look at our policy statements. We had to look at that. So the kinds of things that happened in the early 90s was a response as we… as… you know, you've been here for a while on this campus and you see the way change is slow and sometimes it requires something happening to get pushback. And you see these constant pushbacks when you go a few steps forward and then things calm down. But during the early 90s was a huge, I think, a huge activist period. And perhaps that slowed a little bit after 9/11. I think everybody took a step back and it was very peaceful in terms of perhaps not quite the activism that we'd seen the in student groups. And you get those waves on campus with faculty that are here for a while, and faculty that leave, with students that are here for their four years and so their organization that they bring to light, you know, is being, you know, up and running as they are seniors. But if they're not the first years and the sophomores who are coming in afterwards to take, you know, to take up the slack. Now I'm seeing more and more voices being heard. Like the past couple of years I think we're seeing another surge which is kind of nice. It is very nice to see after a couple of periods of dormancy.</p>
<p>[00:09:01] MHR: Yeah. So were you involved at all when the program changed from just Women's Studies to Women's, Gender Sexuality Studies?</p>
<p>[00:09:10] DM: Yes, in the sense that I've been working with the students the entire time period. And, you know, certainly these are changes that I think was always a part of what was understood among people in the program. I think to actually name and claim it was a nice change. You know, I don't know that it necessarily, for the people in the program, that it changed it in a huge way from what I could see other than the fact we were finally owning it. And I think it did help, I think, bring more people into the program who felt that they perhaps had a more of a place. And so in that way I think that was more welcoming. </p>
<p>[00:09:52] MHR: Sounds like it was kind of, like, it was an unspoken Women's, Gender Sexuality Studies...</p>
<p>[00:09:56] DM: Right!</p>
<p>[00:09:58] MHR: ...Department but putting a name to it sort of helped it become more official.</p>
<p>[00:10:04] DM: And I think that in many ways that happens in so many different ways. You know I hate to think how many years I've been watching this because it feels like I just got here, but I think that certainly we evolve, the language changes. I keep watching what has gone on with the various student groups and the name changes and because I'm in archives I have to log these changes too. And that's quite interesting to watch how the trends will push in people so that they feel… and I think it is a sense of ownership and to have the students in the faculty who are up and coming take ownership. And, you know, to rename as a way to claim.</p>
<p>[00:10:44] And so I watch as the language changes and the way things are constantly evolving and I think it's a way to see what is happening on campus and where the push is and the shoves. Because, you know, you had these umbrella groups and then you'd have a lot of fractures and then you'd get an umbrella group again. And then you will see now when I watch the posters and see all the groups that are assigned to an event, you know, and who all helping to sponsor it, and you see the partnerships that are happening. You didn't see that as much a long time ago. It was always you understood that, “oh this was this kind of event,” you know, “this is an LGBT event. This is a Women's Studies event.” Now when you see events that are shared by so many people whether or in Departments and the Dean of Students Office and the President's office. It's nice to see that people are taking ownership and saying this is our community and our community has many players. It's not just this person or this person. It's a thought of many groups coming together to sponsor. And that's a change. That's a real change on this campus. </p>
<p>[00:11:59] MHR: That's awesome! So my next question goes more towards the special collectors, where you work. Can you tell me about any of the items or collections that are most used by the WGSS students or faculty?</p>
<p>[00:12:13] DM: Well one of the things that I am most proud of, and this is actually the reason why I did my first advising for an I.S., was that one of my student employees Cara Gilgenbach, who is now the curator at</p>
<p>[00:12:28] Kent State special collections, was coming through in the Women's Studies program. And I'd been working to help with this collection, Mother, Home and Heaven collection. And it was an honor of Josephine Long Wishart, who was President Charles F. Wishart's wife. It's a popular advice literature for women specifically, although there also includes popular advice to men as well and to young boys and young girls. Definitely comes out of a very Christian kind of tradition, of course. Starts with early 19th century and the idea of the angel in the house kind of thing. But a lot of my colleagues working at the library in the early 90s could not understand why we would pull it together as a collection and say, “well these are the kinds of books you can find on anybody's grandmother's shelf or, you know, down at the used bookstore! How can we use this special collection?” And it's a wonderful collection because the original collection's over 700 titles. And we have added more as we've seen things that were in our general stacks, or things that people once they saw the collection actually added more to… is that you can take a look at what was expected. What were the social norms of particular time periods for gender and sex role? To look at everything from the, of course, Christian nuclear family, to looking at roles within the house, outside the house, how these changed during periods of war, World War I, World War II. We have cookbooks. We have, you know, recipes during different time periods but we also have things like reproduction. We work not just with WGSS but, for example, working with the <em>History of Sexuality</em> class this past couple of semesters.</p>
<p>[00:14:28] And so we could look at, you know, primary source materials. There's the self sex books, the series that are very interesting because, of course, you know when these things were not discussed when you are a certain age you would just get this little book beside your nightstand and say, “OK you are now a young boy. This is what's going to happen to your body.” And, of course, very binary kind of set up. And this is your expectation for this time period for the girls, you know, a certain age and then for the wedding night and just to take you right through the steps. But there are also early contraception manuals. There are a lot of information, certainly the old Comstock books, you know, kind of things a lot of primary source materials that are there that did help us to get an idea of what was an expectation during a different time period and how does that evolve and how does it change? For a while, we actually, and this was another way I got involved on campus, is that the early Women's Studies program, even before it became a program, had a little safe space over in Lowry Center in the basement that was called the Women's Resource Center. And it was just a gathering of materials that would be helpful. And that was definitely, we say women's resource, it was definitely a sexuality studies and definitely not specific to gender. I mean it was a very fluid kind of collection that was being, being put there. And that collection kept getting shaped by books that people would leave their, journals that people would leave there, things that would come and go.</p>
<p>[00:16:14] I don't know how many times we would have a go through and help cull, help go through and organize to make it more responsive to a particular student population at a particular time period. Eventually this went over to Kauke. And so Christa and I worked with that a while ago when we brought those into special collections and added those as a complement to the Mother, Home and Heaven collection so that we now… also has an LGBT materials in there, some more current materials on reproduction and other kinds of things. But those collections are being used constantly with the WGSS Department. We've had students do every thing from I.S.'s that studies on the advertisements for feminine hygiene products throughout the years. We've had students who have taken WGSS courses and also taken history courses who've looked at physical culture in the late 19th century and the early 20th century and done I.S.'s like the bra and the bicycle and what this meant for history of women. That is a collection that I had to fight tooth and nail for to say, “let's keep it here, let's not split it up! Let's make it a real special collection, a popular culture collection, that can be a resource of primary source materials.” And it is still the most used collection that we have. And it's not just WGSS but, you know, history, art students have looked at it. We've had Soc. students who've made use of the collection. But I would say definitely we always do our <em>Feminist Methodology</em> course [visit] when we do a nice exercise. I think you were in that. </p>
<p>[00:18:07] MHR: Yeah yeah, I was, I was! I think I saw that collection in my <em>Junior I.S.</em> class.</p>
<p>[00:18:13] DM: Right. And we also did… we do an exercise. We look at Mother, Home and Heaven kinds of issues in advice literature, looking at <em>Ladies Home Journal</em>, some <em>Better Housekeeping</em>, that aren't a part of that collection, but we also have added that. It's just so that that way we can, you know, take a look and see this popular advice change in the same publication which has a specific demographic from the 1940s up through even today. And what is being pitched at and how does this change. So that's definitely one of the biggest collections that are used by WGSS students. But we've also had students who have taken a look at some of our early female faculty because College of Wooster, in our archives, Annie B. Irish was our first female faculty. And she came to Wooster because Wooster would give her the Ph.D. at a time the Johns Hopkins would not.</p>
<p>[00:19:13] MHR: Wow!</p>
<p>[00:19:13] DM: There are other things in our collection that people make use but certainly in terms of the WGSS program we've used the Mother, Home and Heaven collection on so many different levels. From an introductory level, to the I.S. level, with many students and they've just gotten so much out of it.</p>
<p>[00:19:32] MHR: That's awesome! I think it's really cool that Wooster has a collection like that that's become such a popular and, like, solid collection. So my next question, what challenges do you think small programs like WGSS face in creating digital archives of their past or, like, just creating archives in general?</p>
<p>[00:19:55] DM: Well one of the problems I think we have here at Wooster is there wasn't an official college archives until I created it. So I worked behind the scenes from 1990 to 1995 when we opened special collections to start a college archives.</p>
<p>[00:20:13] So we don't have some of the general information about the college history that we're having to go back. And, you know, when alumns give us things and certainly we try. We have a lot of the student publications and the yearbooks. Those kind of everyday sources that most college archives have. But in terms of student organizations and in terms of, you, the kind of events that might have happened that, that weren't collected. I send students out onto campus every week and after events happened the Flyers come into special collections so that we can gather those and try to keep track of them. And since I'm on the WGSS listserv, and I get the WGSS emails, I can, you know, I can go through an archive, what is happening within the Department, curricular changes that type of thing. But it's the students stories that that are all important. Especially for the people who might have the scrapbooks, might have the pictures, might have the memories of things before we were starting to collect. And so that the kind of digital timeline that Marina was putting together, the kind of work that you're doing now to help collect those stories is a really good thing because what we're doing is collecting the voices. And the other thing is that certainly all liberal arts colleges, and any kind of community, like I said so much of it was not discussed openly.</p>
<p>[00:21:56] Prior to the late 80s, you know, that there were these little segments of things that were going on campus that the people that were here during those time periods if you can get their stories, get their collections, their memories, their pictures because so much of it was done behind closed doors. That going to be the really hard thing.</p>
<p>[00:22:19] MHR: Yeah.</p>
<p>[00:22:31] DM: You know, because there might have been something very important going on. I know that there was a very active Lambda Wooster in early 90s. But really there was a small group of students that were doing that and a lot of people outside that group didn't necessarily know what was going on. Because there was still, even by that time period, there was a certain amount of, “this is happening within our group,” and yes they were public events, but how much you're going to be able to collect about their, you know, what life every day was like for students on the campus at that particular time period. Or for some of the very first students coming through in the program, would be great if you got the early alumns. You know, that the people that became the first majors and to say okay what was life on the campus, what does this mean to you to be one of the very first Women's Studies majors and to get those voices. And you do still have some students who are still around. Sharon Rice was one of the people on campus now that she's still on campus. And, you know, when you get to the alumni weekends and get some of those people coming back, would be great if you could do some of those oral histories with them. And if they have some of their scrapbooks, or memories, or photos and, you know, to encourage them to build buildings that way. I know that other digital projects have been cultivated in that way.</p>
<p>[00:23:50] Brenda Meese has been dealing with the Women's History and, and sports. And so every alumni weekend she would try to get the people back, you know, and say, “can you identify people in the photos? Can you do that just to even to get the meta-data for those digital objects?” And it's to get the more collective memory that you can. </p>
<p>[00:24:13] MHR: Yeah. Yeah, part of this project, I'm trying hard to talk to students who graduated more recently and more before the program, but for everyone listening, if there's not something there, get those stories! Yeah, so you talked a lot about, just now about, what kinds of material you think is going to be particularly useful for the WGSS Discipline to collect and preserve. But I guess another question I have is, if there's a dream's special collections you could help create or you want to see Wooster have, what would that be? </p>
<p>[00:24:52] DM: Wooster keeps changing. So I think the most important thing is that we continue to listen to what the student's needs are. Since I get to work with all of the students for the research projects and I do get to know the students either because of the students that I supervise in my Department. You know many of them are members of organizations that are very WGSS oriented, like k(no)w or Vox or that type of thing. I get to hear what their concerns are and it's just as I get to see the research projects then it's like, “oh! Well we've got this! Maybe we could build in this area!” But I think it's, it's very important for students to constantly say, “hey! There's something here that needs to be addressed. So we need to look for something more.” Certainly, in terms of archives I would say, you know,</p>
<p>[00:25:50] I would love to be able to have more of the Student Organization materials. We try to get as much as possible to try to organize them. But when the student groups are trying, you know, when I have student leaders that are associated with special collections and they know that we're collecting things then I can get minutes, I can get flyers, I can get all that kind of thing just to document the life of the campus. That's one kind of collection. But then when you have students who are interested in particular areas, for example, reproductive rights then I know, for example, that that there is an interest in that. Then I get people who will contact me and say, “would you be interested in these books?” And, for example, this summer one of the people that was associated with the college, Jimmy Meyer, who had done her work on research on reproductive rights in Cleveland, Ohio said, “you know, I'm trying to weed my collection, would you like some of my backlog of books?” And it's like, “yes!” Because this is something that was just… you know, anything that you give us is going to help complement what we already have. So this kind of finds and so much of what we have in special collections that students are using are because they saw the original collection and the great use. You know we had the original collection and then we saw, then Jimmy Myers said that, “well because you've got this, let me add this!”</p>
<p>[00:27:30] And we also, you knows, have the Nancy Herbst Sechrest because Nancy, who's an alum, was a librarian, said, “you know I've been collecting women's biographies for years. Can we add that to Special Collections?” And it's like, “Sure!” So it's the Wooster network which… you know, never underestimate it.</p>
<p>[00:27:56] MHR: Yeah. Yeah, so you really did a good job of telling us about what Wooster has and also what needs to be brought up and brought into special collections. So those are all the questions I have for you. Is there anything else you want to say in regards to WGSS at Wooster or special collections? </p>
<p>[00:28:24] DM: I don't think so. I think the wonderful thing, like I said, is the fact that if we can keep, you know, evolving and because it can't be the kind of thing that is like, “well we've collected everything that we're going to collect,” because it is an ongoing task. And I know that when you have these kind of projects that you put in place for an anniversary, it's wonderful. And usually for the first year after an anniversary it's like there's still momentum. And it would be nice, you know, if students in the program could keep that momentum going and say, “okay, this is not just something for the anniversary, but let's remember that this is a program that is going to continue to change because its population continues to change.” The faculty will continue to change. Every time you get a new faculty in, their interest are brought to this campus just as every time we bring new students you bring your desires, you know, your research needs to campus with you. And because of that we have to keep going forward. So this is a great project.</p>
<p>[00:29:33] I would like to see that, you know, that, that it doesn't end with a digital project or with an oral history project. But that students become more and more excited about collecting their history and to having these interviews with people that went before them or to take note of what's going on around them because sometimes, you know, that happens at the alumni weekend twenty years down the road as opposed to as it's happening. But certainly anything that can be collected that you want to give to the archives, that would be something that we want to make sure that we look at and see what place does it have. You know, to tell our story.</p>
<p>[00:30:15] MHR: Yeah, yeah important to know. Again for listeners, keep adding to this archive and give your own stories! Thank you so much for coming.</p>
<p>[00:30:27] DM: Ok, thank you!</p>
Original Format
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Sound
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00:30:27
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview With Denise Monbarren
Subject
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Special collections; Women's studies; Sexuality; Student activism; Archives; Religious thought--20th century; AIDS (Disease); NAMES Project Quilt;
Description
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This is an interview with Denise Monbarren. She is the Special Collections librarian at The College of Wooster. Denise talks about first coming to Wooster and changes that she has seen in both the campus climate and the WGSS program. Denise talks about the challenges with archiving peoples' stories and how that relates to the WGSS discipline. Denise also talks about the resources available in Special Collections that WGSS students use and have access to.
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Harris-Ridker, Matthew
Monbarren, Denise
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Unpublished
Date
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2018-05-24
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OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries
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Presented with permission from Denise Monbarren <br /><br /><a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a>
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Mp3
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eng
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Monbarren_Denise_Intervew.mp3
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Youngstown; Wooster