Interview with Myeshia Babers
Dublin Core
Title
Interview with Myeshia Babers
Subject
Feminism; Race; Pedagogy; Masculinity; Minorities in higher education; Cowboys--West (U.S.)--History; Texas
Description
This is an interview with Professor Myeshia Babers. Babers is a Professor of Sociology at the College of Wooster. In this interview, Babers discusses her work on black masculinity, specifically as it has been constructed in Texas. Babers also talks about classes, teachers, and experiences she's had in the academic sphere. Babers comments on race in academia and the ways that language impacts our understanding of masculinities in everyday life.
Creator
Stewart, Emery
Babers, Myeshia
Publisher
Unpublished
Date
2018-09-14
Contributor
Feminist and Queer Pedagogies Workshop, College of Wooster, funded by the Hewlett-Melon Foundation
Rights
Format
Mp3
Language
eng
Type
Sound
Identifier
Myeshia_Babers_Interview.mp3
Coverage
Texas; Wooster
Oral History Item Type Metadata
Interviewer
Stewart, Emery
Interviewee
Babers, Myeshia
Location
College of Wooster Digital Studio
Transcription
Transcription of Myeshia Babers Interview
Edited by Emery Stewart for clarity
[00:00:00] Myeshia Babers: Okay.
[00:00:01] Emery Stewart: Okay, so this is Emery Stewart, I am a Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies major here at the College of Wooster. It is September 14, 2018 and I am here with Myeshia Babers. Okay, so Myeshia, what is your primary area of study and how do you incorporate a feminist or queer approach into your teaching?
[00:00:24] MB: Whoa, okay.
[00:00:26] ES: It’s a big question, so if you need to break it down…
[00:00:28] MB: Yes.
[00:00:29] ES: Take your time.
[00:00:30] MB: Uh, so, let’s ask that again.
[00:00:32] ES: Sure. Okay, what is your primary area of study and how do you incorporate a feminist or queer approach into your teaching?
[00:00:40] MB: My primary area of study is, it's actually- I’m a cultural anthropologist, and so what I do within that is look at black masculinity in contemporary American culture and society and I’m interested in asking questions about how black men negotiate this intersectional identity in, in a Western space. Right? So, black rodeos, theres trail rides, and also black ranchers. Specifically, in South East Texas. How I incorporate... so, the second part was how I...
[00:01:22] ES: The second part is how do you incorporate a feminist or queer approach into your teaching? So, I guess more, like, in the classroom.
[00:01:29] MB: In the classroom okay, so in terms of the courses that I’m teaching, so this semester I’m teaching Racial and Ethnic Groups in American Society, in U.S. Society. And then next term I’m teaching Masculinities and Inequality. What I have realized is over, over my time teaching, that the language that we use to talk about these subjects especially with identities, it’s a very masculine language, English is, and so incorporating that into the teaching is to actually, to centralize that conversation, before we go in depth into the way that we’re talking about these identities. Whether it’s- we are talking about race, and how people in different cultures talk about race in another language. So, for example in Spanish, where you have, um, the masculine feminine forms of words, and it’s my hope that it makes students more comfortable to talk and share their own stories and perspectives.
[00:02:36] ES: uh huh
[00:02:38] MB: Because, I mean, learning is, it’s a group thing, right?
[00:02:41] ES: Yeah.
[00:02:42] MB: And it requires everyone to participate and externalize the different experiences and tools that we have, to move forward.
[00:02:50] ES: Yeah, for sure. Okay, perfect. And then so the next question is who or what were some of your biggest influences in feminist and queer pedagogy? So, these could be texts that you read, things you went through in your actual life, teachers or mentors you had in undergrad or graduate school or maybe other peers in your field.
[00:03:13] MB: Okay, two things. So, when I first started teaching... it’s intro to social anthropology and it was a summer course. So, in terms of, um, requirements that had to be met for degrees. I got- Because it was taught in the summer, I got a lot of students who were engineer majors and like in the natural sciences, and so, sometimes it takes a little more work to connect how, anthropology or sociology or WGSS sorts of topics are relevant to engineering and so.. I found it really interesting at first the challenges actually and, and then working to overcome that, which actually has shaped me long term. Like just this first initial class has shaped me long term in my approach to helping students bring their own interests, whether you are an engineer, or you are interested in WGSS into... what was it? There was a point. Go back, what’s the thing?
[00:04:23] ES: Um, your influences.
[00:04:25] MB: Oh, what influenced me. Okay, so my influences.
[00:04:26] ES: Yes.
[00:04:27] MB: So, I guess helping those particular students in that first class to realize how, just the, the demographics, like within these fields, these engineering fields, is male dominated, shaped the way that as Americans, like the way that we take our influences to other countries and try to shape their cultures…
[00:04:50] ES: Right.
[00:04:51] MB: …and ways of life. So that was one, and then the next was my advisor in grad school and just talking about. Hm... Tread lightly here, but just talking about failure. Right? And how sometimes we think that, or we feel like if we’re not doing well that somehow there’s a problem. And so, what she said to me was, you know, the process is the prize. And so, learning is something that is ongoing, and we don’t always like check all the boxes. Or like- We don’t experience success... or what we define as success linearly. And sometimes, you have to- failure is a part of that learning process.
[00:05:35] ES: Right.
[00:05:39] MB:And so as a woman of color in grad school that was actually very significant for me, because all of the other people around me actually I, let me just back up a minute. So, I’m the youngest and I graduated in 2017, I was the first African American person to graduate with a PhD in my department.
[00:06:05] ES: Really?
[00:06:06] MB: Yes.
[00:06:07] ES: Texas A&M, right?
[00:06:08] MB: Yes, In 2017, right?
[00:06:10] ES: Wow, wow.
[00:06:12] MB: Yeah, so there’s still a lot of firsts. And that’s uh…
[00:06:14] ES: Especially in – So, I’m from Dallas actually so I know a lot of people that go to A&M. And, yeah. Can you—Do you maybe want to talk a little bit about that and how like maybe being in the South, being a woman of color in the South has, like impacted your view on feminism and teaching and stuff?
[00:06:30] MB: [inaudible noise] … Oh, yeah, so we’ll just go back to that first class, alright so.
[00:06:33] ES: Yeah.
[00:06:34] MB: Again I’m, how old was I? Barely cracked 20, and like I said, it was a summer class, and these are engineer students, they just want to check the box of their cultural and diversity requirement for graduating, so it’s, they’re already coming in with this, you know, this is going to be easy because it’s social science, or humanities and just the different ways that from the enlightenment, the way that we value science versus the humanities. And so, I walk in, and mostly white male students, who grew up, sort of in central Texas and in the area, so there’s that whole set of, I guess challenges, that I had to sort of work through, over that... what was that? Five weeks, Monday through Friday for five weeks.
[00:07:30] ES: Ooh.
[00:07:31] MB: So, there’s defending my right to be there as an instructor, because of my race, because of my gender. I got accused of being racist because one student earned a C and he felt like, well, one, there’s a challenge to just the [sigh] importance of anthropology to his future as an engineer.
[00:08:00] ES: Right.
[00:08:01] MB: And so that was something that was brought to a group discussion with the department. So, just dealing with that, in teaching. Making sure that people are still understanding the material, making connections, drawing the success, but then also the emotional labor.
[00:08:21] ES: Yeah.
[00:08:23] MB: And feeling personally, I guess, attacked. Because I’m walking into the classroom, and it’s like, oh, you know, who are you? You don’t belong here and that just comes with ideas of who we attach this expert status to. And who can be an expert in what topics? Cause I know that—I mean I’ve heard other, other, other professors, white women, who are teaching about, teaching topics, or books written by women of color and students feeling like well you can’t teach this. You’re not supposed to—you know, who are you to teach this topic about people of color? And so, I think that, that’s very eye opening and that’s something that is sort of always present for me.
[00:09:07] ES: Yeah.
[00:09:08] MB: And I imagine just women in higher ed. in general and that’s just sort of across the board. Whether you’re a woman teaching an engineering class or teaching a humanities… yeah, I think I was going all over the board there, but sorry.
[00:09:21] ES: No, that was great. Okay, let’s see so, we can kind of move to, when was a time where you say maybe a feminist pedagogy or way of teaching have a positive influence on your work or in the classroom as well?
[00:09:37] MB: Storytelling is always my go to. Audre Lorde, right?
[00:09:40] ES: Yes, yeah.
[00:09:41] MB: So, just storytelling is always the go to. Just because I feel like learning is a shared experience and it’s also important for students to hear each other’s stories and backgrounds. And often, I feel like students can say things, one, that I cannot, or at least shouldn’t. And so, it’s just me coming into the classroom. Or coming into the classroom with the mind frame and the expectation that we’re all going to be contributing and for me, it will never be the case of I talk, you listen. Because we all have our tool kits. And even if you’re coming with, you know, just, a background in biology, right? The way we talk about... the body, right? From a biological standpoint, versus the humanities. Like, you just hearing someone else speak about it in those terms helps, um, but yeah storytelling mostly, mostly, is my go-to.
[00:10:51] ES: Perfect. We kind of already touched on some of the challenges that you face, maybe having this feminist lens in your classroom. Was there anything else that you wanted to mention about the way you teach or like your feminist methodology of things?
[00:11:08] MB: I’m not quite sure if this one is a feminist methodology, although. I mean, I feel like ethnography is one of those. But, I really—I have this assignment that I do, I really like. It’s an ethnography assignment. It’s a four-part assignment that asks students to go out into the field, which the field being somewhere that you’re comfortable with and just sort of, taking the fish out of water. Looking at your culture from a different lens. Or just applying these key concepts, categories or theories, to understanding your own world. And then bringing all that back into discussion. Cause sometimes we think, shifting what we see is natural, or decentralizing what we think is just an automatic way, or this is how it is for everyone. Well I guess, yeah that’s decolonizing. So, I mean.
[00:12:15] ES: For sure, yeah. That definitely counts.
[00:12:17] MB: Score one for the decolonizing practices.
[00:12:20] ES: Yes, yeah, for sure. What motivated you to participate in this workshop and what do you hope to get out of it?
[00:12:28] MB: Oh goodness. Okay, great. Glad you asked me that. Motivated to participate in this workshop because my research is on black masculinity in the Western world, on cowboys, right? So, everything about my research is male, masculine, cis, hetero. As far as the data I’ve collected. So as not to assume that this is cis, hetero. This is self- identified.
[00:12:57] ES: Right
[00:12:58] MB: Um, but it, you know, in the data analysis and then writing, you know. It’s just in the language and so coming – and this is maybe three years ago. So now in this current moment where we are talking about gender inclusivity—inclusion, I feel like it is important to, if not say, make any critiques about the, well actually yeah – just a response to the way power is embedded in language. Maybe even just like something as small as updating the language in the way that I write about this very male dominated, cis gendered sub culture and cultural practice. And then the way that they understand masculinity. In my findings, it’s actually no, it looks a lot like, um, nurturing and the way that we kind of, we um, we, we push that conversation onto talking about women and gendered notions of work and labor. But yeah so I just in the pre-reading we just talked about alternative language and so, I’m like well maybe, so it’s giving me ideas for my own work, but then it’s also kind of like, reaffirming some of the things that I do in the classroom, in terms of decentering and storytelling and letting people share from their own experiences, so yeah.
[00:14:37] ES: For sure, okay. So, last question is, is there anything that we haven’t talked about yet here that you would like to talk about or like to kind of clarify or like to take note of?
[00:14:48] MB: I don’t know about clarifying, honestly, I feel like I’ve been rambling. I just hope that there’s something there that’s useful and that there’s a through line. No, not at the moment, but if you feel like you need some clarifying I’m always happy to come back and do you know, follow up or clarify.
[00:15:05] ES: No, no, for sure. Okay well perfect, thank you so much!
[00:15:08] MB: Thank you
Edited by Emery Stewart for clarity
[00:00:00] Myeshia Babers: Okay.
[00:00:01] Emery Stewart: Okay, so this is Emery Stewart, I am a Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies major here at the College of Wooster. It is September 14, 2018 and I am here with Myeshia Babers. Okay, so Myeshia, what is your primary area of study and how do you incorporate a feminist or queer approach into your teaching?
[00:00:24] MB: Whoa, okay.
[00:00:26] ES: It’s a big question, so if you need to break it down…
[00:00:28] MB: Yes.
[00:00:29] ES: Take your time.
[00:00:30] MB: Uh, so, let’s ask that again.
[00:00:32] ES: Sure. Okay, what is your primary area of study and how do you incorporate a feminist or queer approach into your teaching?
[00:00:40] MB: My primary area of study is, it's actually- I’m a cultural anthropologist, and so what I do within that is look at black masculinity in contemporary American culture and society and I’m interested in asking questions about how black men negotiate this intersectional identity in, in a Western space. Right? So, black rodeos, theres trail rides, and also black ranchers. Specifically, in South East Texas. How I incorporate... so, the second part was how I...
[00:01:22] ES: The second part is how do you incorporate a feminist or queer approach into your teaching? So, I guess more, like, in the classroom.
[00:01:29] MB: In the classroom okay, so in terms of the courses that I’m teaching, so this semester I’m teaching Racial and Ethnic Groups in American Society, in U.S. Society. And then next term I’m teaching Masculinities and Inequality. What I have realized is over, over my time teaching, that the language that we use to talk about these subjects especially with identities, it’s a very masculine language, English is, and so incorporating that into the teaching is to actually, to centralize that conversation, before we go in depth into the way that we’re talking about these identities. Whether it’s- we are talking about race, and how people in different cultures talk about race in another language. So, for example in Spanish, where you have, um, the masculine feminine forms of words, and it’s my hope that it makes students more comfortable to talk and share their own stories and perspectives.
[00:02:36] ES: uh huh
[00:02:38] MB: Because, I mean, learning is, it’s a group thing, right?
[00:02:41] ES: Yeah.
[00:02:42] MB: And it requires everyone to participate and externalize the different experiences and tools that we have, to move forward.
[00:02:50] ES: Yeah, for sure. Okay, perfect. And then so the next question is who or what were some of your biggest influences in feminist and queer pedagogy? So, these could be texts that you read, things you went through in your actual life, teachers or mentors you had in undergrad or graduate school or maybe other peers in your field.
[00:03:13] MB: Okay, two things. So, when I first started teaching... it’s intro to social anthropology and it was a summer course. So, in terms of, um, requirements that had to be met for degrees. I got- Because it was taught in the summer, I got a lot of students who were engineer majors and like in the natural sciences, and so, sometimes it takes a little more work to connect how, anthropology or sociology or WGSS sorts of topics are relevant to engineering and so.. I found it really interesting at first the challenges actually and, and then working to overcome that, which actually has shaped me long term. Like just this first initial class has shaped me long term in my approach to helping students bring their own interests, whether you are an engineer, or you are interested in WGSS into... what was it? There was a point. Go back, what’s the thing?
[00:04:23] ES: Um, your influences.
[00:04:25] MB: Oh, what influenced me. Okay, so my influences.
[00:04:26] ES: Yes.
[00:04:27] MB: So, I guess helping those particular students in that first class to realize how, just the, the demographics, like within these fields, these engineering fields, is male dominated, shaped the way that as Americans, like the way that we take our influences to other countries and try to shape their cultures…
[00:04:50] ES: Right.
[00:04:51] MB: …and ways of life. So that was one, and then the next was my advisor in grad school and just talking about. Hm... Tread lightly here, but just talking about failure. Right? And how sometimes we think that, or we feel like if we’re not doing well that somehow there’s a problem. And so, what she said to me was, you know, the process is the prize. And so, learning is something that is ongoing, and we don’t always like check all the boxes. Or like- We don’t experience success... or what we define as success linearly. And sometimes, you have to- failure is a part of that learning process.
[00:05:35] ES: Right.
[00:05:39] MB:And so as a woman of color in grad school that was actually very significant for me, because all of the other people around me actually I, let me just back up a minute. So, I’m the youngest and I graduated in 2017, I was the first African American person to graduate with a PhD in my department.
[00:06:05] ES: Really?
[00:06:06] MB: Yes.
[00:06:07] ES: Texas A&M, right?
[00:06:08] MB: Yes, In 2017, right?
[00:06:10] ES: Wow, wow.
[00:06:12] MB: Yeah, so there’s still a lot of firsts. And that’s uh…
[00:06:14] ES: Especially in – So, I’m from Dallas actually so I know a lot of people that go to A&M. And, yeah. Can you—Do you maybe want to talk a little bit about that and how like maybe being in the South, being a woman of color in the South has, like impacted your view on feminism and teaching and stuff?
[00:06:30] MB: [inaudible noise] … Oh, yeah, so we’ll just go back to that first class, alright so.
[00:06:33] ES: Yeah.
[00:06:34] MB: Again I’m, how old was I? Barely cracked 20, and like I said, it was a summer class, and these are engineer students, they just want to check the box of their cultural and diversity requirement for graduating, so it’s, they’re already coming in with this, you know, this is going to be easy because it’s social science, or humanities and just the different ways that from the enlightenment, the way that we value science versus the humanities. And so, I walk in, and mostly white male students, who grew up, sort of in central Texas and in the area, so there’s that whole set of, I guess challenges, that I had to sort of work through, over that... what was that? Five weeks, Monday through Friday for five weeks.
[00:07:30] ES: Ooh.
[00:07:31] MB: So, there’s defending my right to be there as an instructor, because of my race, because of my gender. I got accused of being racist because one student earned a C and he felt like, well, one, there’s a challenge to just the [sigh] importance of anthropology to his future as an engineer.
[00:08:00] ES: Right.
[00:08:01] MB: And so that was something that was brought to a group discussion with the department. So, just dealing with that, in teaching. Making sure that people are still understanding the material, making connections, drawing the success, but then also the emotional labor.
[00:08:21] ES: Yeah.
[00:08:23] MB: And feeling personally, I guess, attacked. Because I’m walking into the classroom, and it’s like, oh, you know, who are you? You don’t belong here and that just comes with ideas of who we attach this expert status to. And who can be an expert in what topics? Cause I know that—I mean I’ve heard other, other, other professors, white women, who are teaching about, teaching topics, or books written by women of color and students feeling like well you can’t teach this. You’re not supposed to—you know, who are you to teach this topic about people of color? And so, I think that, that’s very eye opening and that’s something that is sort of always present for me.
[00:09:07] ES: Yeah.
[00:09:08] MB: And I imagine just women in higher ed. in general and that’s just sort of across the board. Whether you’re a woman teaching an engineering class or teaching a humanities… yeah, I think I was going all over the board there, but sorry.
[00:09:21] ES: No, that was great. Okay, let’s see so, we can kind of move to, when was a time where you say maybe a feminist pedagogy or way of teaching have a positive influence on your work or in the classroom as well?
[00:09:37] MB: Storytelling is always my go to. Audre Lorde, right?
[00:09:40] ES: Yes, yeah.
[00:09:41] MB: So, just storytelling is always the go to. Just because I feel like learning is a shared experience and it’s also important for students to hear each other’s stories and backgrounds. And often, I feel like students can say things, one, that I cannot, or at least shouldn’t. And so, it’s just me coming into the classroom. Or coming into the classroom with the mind frame and the expectation that we’re all going to be contributing and for me, it will never be the case of I talk, you listen. Because we all have our tool kits. And even if you’re coming with, you know, just, a background in biology, right? The way we talk about... the body, right? From a biological standpoint, versus the humanities. Like, you just hearing someone else speak about it in those terms helps, um, but yeah storytelling mostly, mostly, is my go-to.
[00:10:51] ES: Perfect. We kind of already touched on some of the challenges that you face, maybe having this feminist lens in your classroom. Was there anything else that you wanted to mention about the way you teach or like your feminist methodology of things?
[00:11:08] MB: I’m not quite sure if this one is a feminist methodology, although. I mean, I feel like ethnography is one of those. But, I really—I have this assignment that I do, I really like. It’s an ethnography assignment. It’s a four-part assignment that asks students to go out into the field, which the field being somewhere that you’re comfortable with and just sort of, taking the fish out of water. Looking at your culture from a different lens. Or just applying these key concepts, categories or theories, to understanding your own world. And then bringing all that back into discussion. Cause sometimes we think, shifting what we see is natural, or decentralizing what we think is just an automatic way, or this is how it is for everyone. Well I guess, yeah that’s decolonizing. So, I mean.
[00:12:15] ES: For sure, yeah. That definitely counts.
[00:12:17] MB: Score one for the decolonizing practices.
[00:12:20] ES: Yes, yeah, for sure. What motivated you to participate in this workshop and what do you hope to get out of it?
[00:12:28] MB: Oh goodness. Okay, great. Glad you asked me that. Motivated to participate in this workshop because my research is on black masculinity in the Western world, on cowboys, right? So, everything about my research is male, masculine, cis, hetero. As far as the data I’ve collected. So as not to assume that this is cis, hetero. This is self- identified.
[00:12:57] ES: Right
[00:12:58] MB: Um, but it, you know, in the data analysis and then writing, you know. It’s just in the language and so coming – and this is maybe three years ago. So now in this current moment where we are talking about gender inclusivity—inclusion, I feel like it is important to, if not say, make any critiques about the, well actually yeah – just a response to the way power is embedded in language. Maybe even just like something as small as updating the language in the way that I write about this very male dominated, cis gendered sub culture and cultural practice. And then the way that they understand masculinity. In my findings, it’s actually no, it looks a lot like, um, nurturing and the way that we kind of, we um, we, we push that conversation onto talking about women and gendered notions of work and labor. But yeah so I just in the pre-reading we just talked about alternative language and so, I’m like well maybe, so it’s giving me ideas for my own work, but then it’s also kind of like, reaffirming some of the things that I do in the classroom, in terms of decentering and storytelling and letting people share from their own experiences, so yeah.
[00:14:37] ES: For sure, okay. So, last question is, is there anything that we haven’t talked about yet here that you would like to talk about or like to kind of clarify or like to take note of?
[00:14:48] MB: I don’t know about clarifying, honestly, I feel like I’ve been rambling. I just hope that there’s something there that’s useful and that there’s a through line. No, not at the moment, but if you feel like you need some clarifying I’m always happy to come back and do you know, follow up or clarify.
[00:15:05] ES: No, no, for sure. Okay well perfect, thank you so much!
[00:15:08] MB: Thank you
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Stewart, Emery and Babers, Myeshia , “Interview with Myeshia Babers,” WGSS at Wooster: Past, Present, and Future , accessed May 16, 2024, https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/items/show/116.