4 10 142 https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/626b72f064386dd64e9a0f761f4f0cbe.jpg 8273fe73752b557f17abf9e9bc0ec63b 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 A name given to the resource Photograph of Dr. Christa Craven with three years of her Independent Study advisees Subject The topic of the resource Women's studies; Women's studies--Congresses; National Women's Studies Association. Conference and Convention; National Women's Studies Association; Alumni and alumnae; Faculty; Faculty advisors Description An account of the resource This is a photograph of The College of Wooster's professor, Dr. Christa Craven along with four of her senior thesis advisees at the National Women's Association Conference in 2013. Left to Right: Annie Jaeb (WGSS ’14), Abbi Heimach (WGSS-RELS ’11), Christa Craven, Laura (Stricklin) Tornes (Sociology-RELS ’11), Christina Bowerman (WGSS-RELS ’13). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The personal collection of Dr. Christa Craven Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 11-2013 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Craven, Christa Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPEG Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NWSA2013_001 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant November 2013; Academic Year 2013-2014; Fall 2013; 2013 National Women's Studies Association Conference Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unpublished https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/37d00aa5f47d9315b393878d886711f8.JPG 4f2b68e0a3882be34d8debe59a6d6eda Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata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 A name given to the resource Candid Photograph of Alumni Lunch at the 2013 National Women's Studies Association Conference Subject The topic of the resource Women's studies; Women's studies--Congresses; National Women's Studies Association. Conference and Convention; National Women's Studies Association; Alumni and alumnae; Faculty Description An account of the resource This is a photograph of The College of Wooster's alumni and faculty during a lunch meeting at the National Women's Studies Association conference in 2013. From left to right: Abbi Heimach (WGSS-RELS ’11), Ashley Chavez-White (WGSS-ANTH ’15), Joanne Frye (faculty in English & Women’s Studies), Christina Bowerman (WGSS-RELS ’13), Laura (Stricklin) Tornes (Sociology-RELS ’11), Stacia Kock (WOMN ’04 & faculty in WGSS). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The personal collection of Dr. Christa Craven Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 11-2013 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Craven, Christa Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPEG Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NWSA2013_002 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant November 2013; Academic Year 2013-2014; Fall 2013; 2013 National Women's Studies Association Conference Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unpublished https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/c216c23da308a7ec9060689e7e04931e.JPG 84334eaef9243467a1af0b6c0e72c6b3 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 A name given to the resource Photograph after the Alumni Lunch at the 2013 National Women's Studies Association Conference Subject The topic of the resource Women's studies; Women's studies--Congresses; National Women's Studies Association. Conference and Convention; National Women's Studies Association; Alumni and alumnae; Faculty; Description An account of the resource This is a photograph of The College of Wooster's Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies alumni, students, and faculty after a lunch meeting at the National Women's Studies Association conference in 2013. From left to right in the back row: Heidi McCormick (Alumni Relations), Angela Neely (WGSS-HIST ’13), Stacia Kock (WOMN ’04 & faculty in WGSS), Joanne Frye (faculty in English & Women’s Studies), Christa Craven (faculty in WGSS & Anthropology), Abbi Heimach (WGSS-RELS ’11), Laura (Stricklin) Tornes (Sociology-RELS ’11). From left to right in the front row: Annie Jaeb (WGSS ’14), Ashley Chavez-White (WGSS-ANTH ’15), Christina Bowerman (WGSS-RELS ’13). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The personal collection of Dr. Christa Craven Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 11-2013 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Craven, Christa Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPEG Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NWSA2013_003 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant November 2013; Academic Year 2013-2014; Fall 2013; 2013 National Women's Studies Association Conference Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unpublished https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/e3d1394a1d68a01f742e2cb67e2d0705.jpg e24831f318ca592a80bf3f1159e49ebb 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 A name given to the resource Photograph of Dr. Christa Craven at Feminist Activist Ethnography Book Signing at the 2013 National Women's Studies Association Conference Subject The topic of the resource Women's studies; Women's studies--Congresses; National Women's Studies Association. Conference and Convention; National Women's Studies Association; Faculty; Books--Exhibitions Description An account of the resource This is a photograph of Dr. Christa Craven at the signing session of her book, Feminist Activist Ethnography, during the 2013 National Women's Association conference in Cincinnati. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The personal collection of Dr. Christa Craven Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 11-2013 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Craven, Christa Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPEG Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NWSA2013_004 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant November 2013; Academic Year 2013-2014; Fall 2013; 2013 National Women's Studies Association Conference Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unpublished https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/354a40d8f9cfc8dd89f8755b02613da7.JPG 70e95f5ac7670122e1260b18371f9d58 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 A name given to the resource Photograph of WGSS Students, Alumni with their Parents, and Faculty after a Lunch at the 2013 National Women's Studies Association Conference. Subject The topic of the resource Women's studies; Women's studies--Congresses; National Women's Studies Association. Conference and Convention; National Women's Studies Association; Alumni and alumnae; Faculty; Description An account of the resource This a photograph of The College of Wooster's Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies students, faculty, alumni and parents after a lunch meeting during the National Women's Studies Association c onference in 2013. From left to right: Jennifer Eyl (faculty), Alumni Parent, Laura (Stricklin) Tornes ’11, Annie Jaeb ’14 (front), Alumni Parent, Abbi Heimach ’11, Christa Craven (faculty; front), Christina Bowerman ’13, Angela Neely ’13, Ashley Chavez-White ’15 (front) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The personal collection of Dr. Christa Craven Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 11-2013 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Craven, Christa Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPEG Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NWSA2013_005 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant November 2013; Academic Year 2013-2014; Fall 2013; 2013 National Women's Studies Association Conference Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unpublished https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/45f1fbcfaba751115184bc8f2b63ad9c.png 2202628563c5e0a54c58d11aa88bb83d 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 A name given to the resource Voyant WGSS I.S Titles Word Cluster Visualization Description An account of the resource This is a digital visualization of words frequencies on Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies' Independent Studies' titles generated by the web program Voyant. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adams, Marina Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://voyant-tools.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Voyant</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unpublished Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 04-05-2018 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PNG Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context WGSSTITLES_VOYANT_001 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1988 to 2016 Subject The topic of the resource Women's studies; Theses; Frequency (Linguistics) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Heil, Jacob https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/27a950e7e66f26fd973b90d6890383a2.png daaae4b6376822eac7b57a2d8fd6a12d 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 A name given to the resource Voyant WGSS Titles Over Time Visualization Description An account of the resource This is a digital visualization of the frequency of the words "masculinity," "gender," and "women" between 1988 and 2016 on the titles of WGSS senior thesis generated by the web program Voyant. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Adams, Marina Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://voyant-tools.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Voyant</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unpublished Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 04-05-2018 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PNG Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text; Still Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context WGGSTITLES_VOYANT_002 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1988 - 2016 Subject The topic of the resource Women's studies; Theses; Chronologies Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Heil, Jacob https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/af2656b76ecac7958a56d8945070b67d.mp4 e73f79329756fb97cba25f8c10ead550 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 A name given to the resource I.S Monday 2018 Promotional Video Description An account of the resource This is a video showcasing Wooster's students, their families, faculty, alumni, and community members during the proceedings of the college's annual tradition of I.S Monday — a day in which all celebrate the year's seniors after they turn in their senior thesis (I.S). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The College of Wooster Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Youtube Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The College of Wooster Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 27-03-2018 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP4 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISMONDAY_001 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Class of 2018; I.S Monday; Academic Year 2017-2018; March 2018 Subject The topic of the resource Theses; Tradition; Parades https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/cb36813372ac526e476f6d9ea21cc29d.mp3 24e4a3365a2e3b20d4536e77dacdacf9 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 A name given to the resource Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews Subject The topic of the resource 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 An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harris-Ridker, Matthew Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unpublished Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Mp3 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Harris-Ridker, Matthew Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Craven, Christa Location The location of the interview College of Wooster Digital Studio Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Sound Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:44:53 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Craven Christa Interview Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and Christa Craven for clarity [00:00:00] MHR: OK. So I am here with Christa Craven. It is May 17th [2018]. Hello Christa. [00:00:08] CC: Hello Matthew. [00:00:13] MHR: Thank you for being a part of this! So to start off the interview I'm just going to ask you where are you from and how did you end up as a professor at College of Wooster? [00:00:20] CC: So I am one of those true global nomads. I was born in Virginia but lived till I was ten in Hawai‘i. My dad was in a foreign service so I lived in Taiwan, Germany, Singapore, Austria, went to college in Florida went to grad school in Washington D.C., and then never ever thought I was going to end up in the Midwest, but came for an interview at the College of Wooster and was really pleasantly surprised and really excited about some of the work that was being done here. And you know my position is half Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and half Anthropology, and that was… that was really compelling and I was really excited to be able to be a part of the development of this Program that's been going on at that point for 30 years, and now 40 years, but being part of that process was really an exciting aspect. [00:01:11] MHR: Awesome. So what got you interested in the Discipline of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies? [00:01:19] CC: I'm one of those people I've always had an unspoken minor in feminist ideas. So all of my degrees are in anthropology. But even as an undergraduate I went to a small liberal arts college called New College in Sarasota Florida and one of the things we were really encouraged to do was design tutorials. So it was very much self-designed kind of courses and so we did it either for ourselves or in collaboration with other students. [00:01:44] And so I had a lot of individual tutorials that I did. But also, like, a feminist theory course and a queer studies course that were co-designed with like five to ten other students. And so that was a really exciting collaborative learning moment for me and that's something that I'm always trying to bring in to my experience here at Wooster as well, even though it's kind of a different, a different culture. But I was really excited by the kinds of questions that were being asked in Feminist Studies and in Queer Studies. And so I was interested in the anthropological focus both that the cross-cultural aspect of it but also the focus on ethnography and, you know, working closely with groups, and getting to know them over a long period of time, and doing in-depth interviewing. You know, all those things were really exciting to me and I could really see them meshing with feminist and, you know, queer approaches to research as well. [00:02:37] MHR: Was there a particular, like, course you took, or anything that really you like was that moment where you're like I really like the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies classes or Discipline? [00:02:48] CC: That is a great question, and actually the first course that popped into my mind was a reproductive health course that I did with a feminist biologist. And even though that, you know, the natural sciences didn't end up being my trajectory, I have still incorporated that interest in reproductive health. You know, looking both at the medical, you know, health care aspects of it but also looking at the, you know, the social aspects, the political aspects, of health. [00:03:15] And so I think that really… that really inspired me to, you know, to think about… you know, take a topic that I cared a lot about. I worked at a Planned Parenthood when I was an undergraduate as well. And to take a topic that I really cared a lot [00:03:29] about, reproductive health, pro-choice activism, and you know I did counseling for HIV testing, and to take all of those things and then look at them from, you know, through a feminist lens was just a really exciting opportunity that that really got me interested in research. As well as bringing that together with activism because that's… you know I wanted my research to be meaningful to move beyond the academy in terms of, you know, in terms of moving out into the world. [00:04:00] MHR: A similar question is how do you, you touched on this briefly, how do you combine both your anthropological background and your Women's, Gender and Sexuality studies background to really shape how you teach courses at Wooster? [00:04:16] CC: I have always really drawn on a lot of cross cultural examples. I feel like it's really important, you know, both for myself but also for students to, kind of, move between analyzing a context in which we are well versed. You know, something that is familiar to things that are far less familiar, to be able to understand the experiences of people who grow up with very different cultural values and norms. And when we think about gender and sexuality, we have to be thinking about that throughout the world and the ways in which those, you know, norms around gender and sexuality also intersect, with you, know norms around, around race, class, you know, nationality, age. [00:04:57] I mean all the all the axes of difference that are going to impact the ways that people experience gender and sexuality. So for me that, you know, taking that cross cultural focus and then also, I mean just going back to ethnography, taking a really in-depth look at people's lives. And so sometimes that's through ethnographic accounts, but then other times that through literature, or through a memoir where you really get a deep appreciation for a person's experience and being able to understand the larger concepts, you know, feminist concepts but through the lens of an individual experience. [00:05:33] MHR: Yeah, I agree. I think for the courses I've taken with you I can definitely see that. So what year did you become a professor at the College of Wooster? [00:05:45] CC: In 2006. [00:05:46] MHR: 2006. [00:05:46] CC: So I'm going into my 12th year. [00:05:48] MHR: Wow! So my next question is a little bit about the change you've seen in the program since you first started at Wooster. [00:05:54] CC: Absolutely. [00:05:55] MHR: So how did you see, or how was the program set up? Was it even called Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies when you were here? And also how have you seen it change to now, just specifically with the Department as a whole? [00:06:10] CC: Absolutely. So when I came in 2006 I was the first person to be hired in what was then Women's Studies. So even though it was only a half position, because I was also half in Anthropology, I was the first kind of dedicated faculty and that was something that, you know, professors had worked toward here for quite some time. And so it was a real honor to, you know, to come into that position. That was also a time where there was a lot of talk in the program about, you know, what kinds of things were going on in the Discipline. Was Women's Studies, you know, an accurate description of the kind of work we were doing in the classroom? Because many of us were teaching on, on gender, on masculinity and many of us were teaching about sexuality, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer studies. You know, all of these things were already in some ways being incorporated into the courses, and so just thinking about, you know, the, the naming of the program, but even more than that we did a real curricular revision at that time. We looked at what courses were being offered. How can we reframe, or not really reframe but, but how can we take what the program does well—some of the things like Senior Seminar that's been done since 1978 when the program began, and that's the only non-graded course at the college and really offers the students an opportunity to really engage deeply with feminist theory. You know, take things that were kind of hallmarks of the program and, and then to kind of tweak that with some of the interests, you know my interest in looking at transnational feminisms. Again as an anthropologist, and thinking cross culturally, I really wanted to think about, you know, incorporating more on what kinds of feminist work was going on throughout the world. And that was also the point at which we added a Queer Lives course that there were no courses on the books that were offered in LGBTQ studies at the college. Actually, that's still the only course that's, that's on the books, there were lots of courses that are offered [00:08:13] you know one time, or by a visitor, or, you know, just that are, you know, that are part of the student experience but that aren't, that aren't something that are offered regularly but Queer Lives is offered once every three years. And I wish we could offer more because every time we offer it I think the waitlist is about as long as, you know, as the class itself. So, it's a really exciting course to teach. And so at that point, I mean to go back to your original question, so I think I arrived in 2006 and I think in two thousand, you know, six and seven we were really talking through the curriculum. And then in 2008 we changed the name to Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies but also made some really significant revisions in terms of the, the courses that were offered and making it, you know, looking nationally and internationally at what kind of trends were going on in the field and making sure those were a big part of our program. [00:09:05] MHR: I think you definitely touched on this but was there any struggle with trying to figure out how you could… how you changed it from being Women's Studies to Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies? Was there, like, any I guess arguments between the people in charge about, like, what needed to be part of the curriculum? Like, going from Women's Studies to Women's, Gender and Studies, do you know what I mean? [00:09:32] CC: Yeah, I mean I think there's always been some fluidity in the curriculum in terms of, you know, just giving each instructor that teaches Intro to WGSS, does it in a different way, you know uses different, different textbooks, covers different topics, but generally are covering some of the same ground in terms of, you know, giving a history of the Discipline, you know, talking about, you know, social justice and intersectionality and, and those kinds of things. [00:09:59] But when we revamped the curriculum, we were a little bit more intentional about kind of saying, you know, saying that these, these are the things that we want to see in these particular courses and, like you know, moving through the curriculum we want to make sure that students are exposed to all of these different perspectives. And there's also this wealth of cross-listed courses that we have. I mean even though I'm, you know, I'm the, half of me is, you know, is teaching the WGSS courses, we have so many opportunities at the college to connect with you know feminist faculty in other Disciplines that are teaching, sometimes interdisciplinary but sometimes, you know, feminist political science, or feminist psychology, or feminist sociology, and so being able to figure out, like, what are our core objectives in the WGSS courses but then what can we also know that our students are going to be getting, you know, in some of these cross-listed courses. So there's really a lot of conversation about that. The other thing that your question made me think of though is that, you know, teaching, teaching an Introduction to Women's Studies course I think many people already felt like oh my gosh there's no way I can possibly fit in everything I want to fit in. Right? And so I think the big question was well if we're also going to talk about gender and sexuality in substantive ways, well how on earth are we going to do this? And I think this is true, really, of, of any introductory course. There's no way to cover it all. [00:11:23] And so we, we designed that course to really leave it flexible for the instructor to, kind of, play to some of their own strengths. But we really wanted to make sure that that course was, you know, substantively addressing, you know, intersections of experience. We, you know, we wanted to make sure that that course was thinking critically, you know, bringing in critical race theory, you know, bringing in transnational feminist perspectives, bringing in queer studies perspectives. And so being intentional about saying, OK well we want this course to do, you know, these are the broad things we want this course to do with the particular topics that, that get taken up are really at the discretion of the of the professor. [00:12:09] MHR: Yeah, when you were talking about the cross-listed courses… I remember when I talked to you about becoming a WGSS Major you were like, you are going to be taking so many different cross-listed courses, you are going to have some extra ones, and I was like will I really? And I really do now. So that, that just made me laugh. [00:12:26] CC: That's great because I talk, I talk to a lot of students about that because, honestly, I mean because we have such a rich array of cross-listed courses at the College the vast majority of our majors and minors take way more than they need for the major and minor. I mean in terms of, like, having to take a certain amount because they tend to be the kind of courses that you want to take anyway. [00:12:44] You know, they're the kind of courses that often excite, you know, a student that is interested in feminist or queer studies, is going to be drawn to courses on, you know, on topics about reproduction, about sexuality and, and the kinds of things that, you know, that are being taught across the college. [00:13:01] MHR: Cool, So we talked about the, sort of, changes in the program itself, but my next question is, have you seen a change in the students at Wooster who are in the WGSS Department or just changes in students in general with their perception of people in the WGSS Department or faculty in the WGSS Department? [00:13:19] CC: So when I first came to college, you may remember this from your very first year the college. So, during orientation they have the, oh, gosh now I'm going to forget what they're called, but, like, the kind of mini classes, like, where you go around the different departmental meetings? [00:13:34] MHR: Yeah. [00:13:35] CC: And you learn about different majors? I know there's an official name for that but I'm forgetting. But when I first came here we used to get, you know, maybe three or four students that were interested in, in Women's Studies and then Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. And that was always exciting and we talked to them about our courses and we, you know, very often those were of the students that would get into Intro and be a part of that. Now when we do it, we have three sessions of, of that, I mean easily we get 50 or 60 students over the, over the course of it. There is a tremendous difference even over the last decade of students that come into college saying, I want to learn about these perspectives. You know, I want to learn about Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. There's also a difference in terms of students coming in who are out and confident and comfortable in themselves. [00:14:25] You know I would say in the last five years so many more students in those early orientation meetings would say, “Oh yeah I am a part of my Gay Straight Alliance at my high school and I want to continue that work now that I'm at college.” And so having students that are already thinking about these issues, not coming into a class for, you know, the very first time going, you know, what does all this mean, you know, but coming in with some of their own ideas. And, and I think we in this particular political moment, too, I think we see, whereas ten years ago I felt like I was often, especially in the intro classes, trying to explain to students why we're not in a post-feminist, post-racial moment. Why we're, you know, why this stuff is still necessary. [00:15:11] MHR: Yeah. [00:15:11] CC: Right? And now, I feel like students are coming to us saying, OK we realize shit is bad out there in the world and we see, you know, in the news, you know, on the television and you know we know that feminists have been working with this for many years and we want to learn more about how to make change in the world and how to think about equity in, you know, in important ways and start to do this work. And so I feel like students are kind [00:15:39] of, instead of us trying to convince students that this is important, you know, we want to work and figure this out together. [00:15:55] MHR: Yeah, that's really interesting because one of the reasons what drove me to WGSS a lot was, at first I was, when I came to Wooster, I was like I'll take the intro class for fun. I don't think it will really be like all that, like interesting, it feels like everyone, like, knows this already. [00:16:10] But like through, what, I, I realize that it's not just the study of sexuality it's very interesting that you're saying that because I definitely that was a reason why I chose to be in the WGSS Department, yeah. [00:16:27] CC: Well, one of the things we talked about even with the name change. You know one of the proposals on the table was to call the program Feminist Studies because really, I think, most of us that teach in, in WGSS, you know, what became called Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies feel like feminism is a perspective with which we view subjects in the world. So, it's not just about, you know, studying women, or studying masculinity, or studying queer experience. It's about looking really at anything in the world and taking a perspective that really values equity and values, you know values social justice. And, you know, it's not so much about the topic it's more about the perspective and the questions that you ask. And so that's, I mean, I think the way that, you know, we like to approach most of the classes. [00:17:16] MHR: My next question is about the strengths and weaknesses you see in the Department. So sort of, like, what frustrations have you experienced being in the Department whether that be with the faculty as a whole on campus, with students, like, logistical issues and then after that one, what do you really see as a big strength of the Department? [00:17:42] CC: I think the biggest difficulty that we experience is just being such a small Department and having, you know, we've had visitors for at least five or six years which means that on some level, you know, we're getting new and exciting ideas every year with all of the different people that are coming through the program, [00:18:01] but there's a lack of stability. And there's, there's a sense, you know, I think students particularly, you know, you take this amazing course with somebody in your, you know, second year and then you want to do your I.S. on that topic but that person’s not here anymore. I would also love to see more of the, the Queer Lives, you know, work like Queer Lives, and like I said this is such a popular [course on] campus. There's tremendous amount of student demand, and we don't have the faculty to offer, you know, more courses. I mean we could easily offer like an Intro to LGBTQ Studies and a Queer Theory course, and you know courses, a variety of courses that, you know, there's been great student demand for a Queer Studies minor for many years. And, I mean, I think that would be so amazing. I mean if we had the faculty to do it but one course every three years that's on the books does not a minor make. And so we really have to… we need the institutional support to have regular faculty who are, you know, here in the long term offering these courses over and over again so that we can, that we can make them available to students. [00:19:06] MHR: Do you think it's the institutional support because it's a, a lack of support, like, in general for the curriculum of Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies, or where do you think that comes from? [00:19:20] CC: I think it comes from being a small institution, and having a lot of different needs across campus. And, and wanting to, you know, think about where student desires lie. You know, we've also seen, you know, our majors have quadrupled over the last decade and so we've really seen a great deal of interest in, in WGSS and, and that's one reason that we're hiring a tenure track position. [00:19:44] And that's, you know, it is really exciting to have that support from the institution to do that. [00:19:49] MHR: You talk about the weaknesses, a little bit, of the Department. What do you think a big strength of the Department is? [00:19:55] CC: Oh, yes! Getting back to the other half of the question. As we have gotten more majors, we've gotten much more diverse interests in the Department. And so we end up with I.S. projects that are all over the map, quite literally, and figuratively in the sense that students are drawing from a lot of different Disciplines. They are interested in a lot of different topics and I think that the weakness there is that we don't have faculty that necessarily specialize in all of those things. You know, we, we had a great project a couple of years ago on disability rights, we've had a project, a V.R. project, so a virtual reality project, that a student, a student designed a virtual reality videogame to, you know, to teach people about the experience of sexual assault survivors. And we've just, we've had such an array, and I give those two examples because neither of those are in my specialty areas. I actually experienced V.R for the very first time looking at her I.S., which was awesome, [00:20:56] but again, you know, it's, I think the, the weakness is that we don't necessarily have the specialty areas, you know, in terms of faculty being able to support students but we have faculty that are excited about trying out new and different things. And so, we end up with students that say, “OK, I'm willing to look into VR on my own, I'm willing to get, you know get that training, and then I'm going to run with this.” And to then have faculty to be able to say, “OK I'm going to run with you.” You know, and, and that's, to me that's the strength of the program is that we get, even though we're very small and, you know, I mean when we look at like a large university settings where they've got, you know 10-15 faculty in the Department, and you have a really different kind of, you know, situation here we have far fewer faculty, but I think we have very, you know, dedicated and interested and curious faculty who want to try out new things and a lot of that comes from our cross-listing faculty. You know, people who are, you know, their home Discipline is, is not necessarily WGSS but they are willing to work with us around these very innovative, creative, interdisciplinary projects. And, and that, you know, some really cool stuff I think comes out of, out of the program and that way. [00:22:12] MHR: I think this leads perfectly to my next question about what, how do you envision the future of the WGSS program at Wooster? As it's getting bigger, do you envision, like, the program changing in any way? [00:22:26] CC: I think there's always change and there really should be. I think it's you know any program that doesn't change is just going to remain stagnant. And, and remain, you know, in, in a particular historical moment where, you know, it's not going to be as relevant as you, as you move forward. I think WGSS has grown so much since, you know, so many programs were established across the country in the 1970s and 80s. We were one of the earliest. And, we have organizations like the National Women's Studies Association and, you know, various, you know, various conferences devoted to sexuality studies and queer studies [00:23:04] that are really pushing the boundaries of the field and, and I think that's what, that's part of why, you know, hiring new faculty both in WGSS and in other disciplines that do feminist and queer research really helps us remain vital because we get to continue to be a part of those conversations and you know go to those national and international conferences and bring that back to the program and say, OK so, you know, in 2006 when I came these were some of the important things that we wanted to make sure were covered in our courses, well, well what now? You know, how do we want to see those courses evolve and so I feel like that is an ongoing conversation. Even though, you know, right after I got here in 2008 we did this curricular revamp, you know, it's time to revamp again. And I think part of the excitement for me of hiring a tenure track colleague is bringing someone in with new ideas of how to think about, you know, how to think about improving the program. You know, what are, what are ways that we can see the program, you know, moving and contributing to campus and beyond in the future. [00:24:09] MHR: So my next question is, what are some of the favorite classes you've taught in the WGSS Department and also what is, if you could teach a course, any course, like what's your dream course to teach in a WGSS Department? [00:24:25] CC: I get, one of the reasons that I was really drawn to Wooster was that I got a chance to teach so many of the courses that I wanted to teach. [00:24:34] Two of the courses that I really wanted to design and teach were ones that we added in 2008, so Transnational Feminisms and Queer Lives. Both of those were, you know, areas of interest and specialty for me. And I absolutely, you know, love introducing students to those topics because they're topics that, that I care a great deal about. But I've also been able to offer courses that have cross-listed with WGSS through my anthropology side, like the Global Politics of Reproduction. Which is also, you know, just in, in my specialty area, you know along, along the lines of, of my own research and being able to offer those kinds of courses has, has been really, you know, really exciting to me. There's nothing more exciting than introducing students to things that you love and that you care about. I've also, in the last couple of years, become very interested in public scholarship and thinking about ways to move the kinds of work that we do in the classroom, and the kind of theoretical work that we do, into practice and thinking about ways of making not only research public, but also, the class that you were in with me, Global Politics of Reproduction. Our semester long project was a <a href="https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/courses/College_of_Wooster/Global_Politics_of_Reproduction_(Spring_2017)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wikipedia project</a> and that all of the students contributed either a substantial revision and or a new article to Wikipedia. And, I think I mentioned this to you in the car the other day, what's really exciting about that is those have been viewed thousands, I mean the articles that students in that class produced, have been viewed like hundreds, you know, tens of thousands of times. And many times, like the one that you wrote on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobada" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sobada</a>, on massage during pregnancy in Mexico, is if you type in sobada on Google Scholar, or not Google Scholar, I'm sorry, just regular Google search, is like the first thing that comes up. I mean that's… that is true public scholarship. And, so, that's something that, you know, it's not a research paper that you turned in to me at the end of the class and never really looked at again and never really picked up, but that's something that you have left a mark on a public space that has put more information out there on a practice that wasn't included before. And that’s… that's pretty exciting. [00:26:46] MHR: Yeah, that was, that was one of my personally favorite classes I've taken at Wooster, and that project was really cool. [00:26:55] CC: And the other thing that I loved about that project was so many of the students in the class really wanted to raise the volume of women of color in the field, and so either chose to, since it was an Anthropology class, look at the work of women of color anthropologists, or chose to look at, you know, theorists or activists who were making a difference in terms of reproductive justice and reproductive health care particularly in communities of people of color. And so that was a really, again, in terms of making, you know, putting information out there that wasn't previously there. Being able to do that with a real political intention, you know, being able to say, OK not only am I going to put, you know, I mean we can all put whatever we want out on the Internet, but being able to make those choices with a political understanding of, you know, this is important because other people are not highlighting this work. Other people are not raising the volume of these voices. So let's do it! You know, let's, let's contribute to this as… as a political, you know, contribution. [00:28:02] MHR: Yeah, and I think that project itself really, like, highlighted what I see the WGSS Department wanting to get out of the students which is, like, educating people on issues that are intersectional. [00:28:16] CC: Absolutely, and acknowledging with that project that a lot of the time it was, it was students in our class that started those articles but they've now been edited by other people. So, they've, they've opened the door for other people to contribute. And so that really gives a sense, too, of collaborative scholarship. I mean all research is collaborative in the sense that you're always drawing on what came before. You're always drawing on the ideas that, you know, maybe it was, you know, over lunch or after class that you talked to someone, but there, but, you know, you're always generating that kind of collaborative, collaborative work. But to be able to engage in a project, like the Wikipedia project, where you may write something down but someone else may come in and change or they may add to it, or they may say well actually this isn't right and they make an argument for why that is, that kind of collaborative scholarship I think it's really important to feminist thought. You know when we go back to looking at, you know, feminist pedagogy and thinking about how, you know, how feminist research and scholarship is conducted, collaboration is a huge part of that. [00:29:15] MHR: Yeah, speaking about Wikipedia, can you talk a little bit about the WGSS edit-a-thon that happens at Wooster? [00:29:24] CC: Absolutely! [00:29:24] MHR: Yeah. [00:29:25] CC: So for the last, I think four years now, might be three, you can look it up, we have done a WGSS Wikipedia Edit-a-thon every spring and, and we've linked it to WGSS week. So that's our, kind of, week in the spring where we usually bring in you know one headliner speaker. [00:29:43] You know we've had Jack Halberstam, we had Bree Newsome, we've had some really amazing people come. There's always other things scheduled that week too. So, like, conversations on campus around reproductive rights, you know, around all kinds of topics that students have found important, and so there's often roundtables and things like that. So one of the things that we've had for the last few years is the Edit-a-thon. And I think each year we've had about five classes, and most of those are classes that are cross-listed with WGSS or that have a significant component of feminist or queer studies, you know, kind of work in the class, and those courses have all contributed to Wikipedia articles. And, so, the courses are all run independently and the students are doing that work in each of those courses, but ultimately during WGSS week we come together to, kind of, a lot of us upload the material at that time or, you know, and or, and engage in conversation just about the process of doing it. Some of the students, when we got together last year, many of them had already uploaded their material to Wikipedia and so they were actually able to talk with the group about their experience then with moderators who either, you know, continue to contribute to their work or who blocked their work for particular reasons and so we were able to get into some really interesting conversations about what it looks like to put feminist material out there. And, you know, have it accepted or not and, you know, what, what kinds of strategies, you know, we could, we could have together to make sure that material gets out there. [00:31:15] I think there's been some really great conversations kind of between and among the students in the classes because they're all working on different topics but they're also working towards this larger goal of, you know, kind of upping the voices of women on Wikipedia. And we know, I mean the <a href="https://www.nwsa.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Women's Studies Association</a> has partnered with Wikiedu for at least five or six years because we know about the contributions on Wikipedia are primarily, you know, are primarily done by white male writers. And so what does it mean to think about drawing in, you know, students of color, non-binary students, female students to say you know we can be Wikipedians too! We can, you know, contribute to these articles as well and we can contribute on topics that might not otherwise be represented on Wikipedia. I think if, I remember correctly, it's like less than 20 percent of the biographies on Wikipedia are about women. And that tells you something really substantial about who's contributing and who's work is seen as important. Right? And then if women, again I don't know the statistics, but if we think about well how does that intersect with, you know, LGBTQ organizers or theorists? How does that intersect with you know with women of color, or people of color? Again, these are, you know, these are important things to be thinking about as we think about our scholarship is raising the volume of historically marginalized voices. [00:32:43] MHR: Yeah, I think one of the most surprising things when we were doing our Wikipedia project was that, like, none of the feminists or authors we were reading were put on Wikipedia yet, or… or like if they had it was like, this is so-and-so born here. And that was... [00:32:58] CC: Right, and then it's done. [00:32:58] MHR: All that was on there. Yeah. [00:32:59] CC: Yeah. [00:33:00] MHR: So [00:33:01] CC: Absolutely! I mean I think that was really eye opening for students. And then the one, oh my gosh I've forgotten her name, but the, the one woman in our class who looked at postpartum depression and it was, there was a huge section on men's experience with postpartum depression but nothing on the symptoms that a woman might experience with postpartum depression. [00:33:23] MHR: Yeah that was... [00:33:25] CC: I mean that's profound. That tells you something about who's writing and who's contributing to these articles. Right? [00:33:30] MHR: Yes. Yeah, no, I remember, I think I edited that one and I was just shocked about it. And I think she was saying, too, how she kept uploading new things and the original author kept taking them down. [00:33:45] CC: Yeah. [00:33:46] MHR: Yeah. Yeah. So… so interesting. [00:33:48] CC: Lots of, I mean there's lots of politics to thinking about, you know, contributing to public feminist scholarship. [00:33:53] MHR: Yeah. So we talked a little bit about how you envision the Department moving forward, but I want to ask a little bit about, we talked about the Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, but what are some other important things you see the Department doing throughout the year? Not, not in the classroom but outside of the classroom. Like it's impact on the campus. [00:34:21] CC: One of the things that I love about Department is the Senior Seminar: Feminist Pedagogy in Practice, which I talked a little bit about before. It's the only non-graded course at the college, so all the students, you know, it's pass/fail. It's the, the idea is to, you know, kind of mirror and think through feminist pedagogy even in the sense that people aren't being graded on their performance that it is a much more collaborative, you know, kind of endeavor that students are working together but also designing their own assignments and their own ideas about the way that they want to see the course proceed. In a class like that, students are asked to think about feminist pedagogy, to think about feminist teaching and learning. You know, thinking about themselves as learners, but then also how they might draw in others and teach them, not necessarily in the classroom environment, but how they might be involved in, you know, helping people better understand feminist issues. And, so, in that class, you know, when I teach and I always ask students to think for their final project about what kind of mark that they want to leave on campus. And, so, the <a href="http://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/items/show/1">all-gender bathrooms</a> project emerged from that class, and it wasn't completed during that class, but what I love about it was that it began there. The students there had an idea, they wanted to see something happen on campus, and they got together the tools to work with that and then move forward with it. And it's something that now all the single stall bathrooms on campus are all-gender bathrooms. You know, students have also, students worked towards a meatless Monday on campus and really linking the, you know, vegetarianism and feminist, you know, feminist ethics and really kind of coming up with a sophisticated feminist theoretical argument for why they wanted to do what they did. [00:36:08] What I really love is that in that class something different always comes out of it. And that's, those are the kinds of contributions that I want to see WGSS making on campus, is through you know student-driven projects things that the students find important and, you know, that I can support and get behind and work with them on how to best organize it but that it's something that's really driven by their ideas and their passions. [00:36:36] MHR: So, as a professor for that kind of student driven class, how does that differ from teaching, like, a different course, like...? [00:36:46] CC: Well it's so different in the sense that I come into that class kind of with the bones of a syllabus. Like I have some of the first readings that we're going to do, you know, just to kind of get started. I want to introduce the students to you know feminist pedagogy, so we begin by reading bell hooks' Teaching the Transgress, which has been a real classic in thinking about feminist teaching and learning. And we read other, you know, more, more recent work, like Sara Ahmed, and, and we read a variety of different things that get us thinking about what, what can feminist pedagogy bring to, not only our personal sense of learning but how we want to move through the world. How we want to live our, our lives, especially since the students in that class are seniors, you know how do we get on that lives beyond the, beyond academia. Beyond college. And so on the first day of that class I also bring a list of questions for students about what kinds of assignments they want to see in the class, how do they learn about the material, you know, how do we want to in an ungraded class, or not, or a pass fail class, [00:37:48] how do we want to hold ourselves accountable for doing the research or doing the, doing the reading and coming to class, you know, to engage? I mean obviously we know if everybody just blows off the class then we don't actually have that kind of collaborative engagement, so how do we you know as a group decide, you know, what, what that's going to look like. And the students ultimately do that. They really design the syllabus, and that's a really exciting part of it. And that's different. You know most classes I teach I'm the one that designs the syllabus. You know, I come up with the assignments. Now there's some, I actually try a version of that in, when I teach Intro to WGSS, I also have the students design an assignment. I don't have them design the whole… the whole course, but I do you have them design one assignment. And so it's kind of the mini version of, like, you know, if you take Intro and then when you get to be a senior you kind of get the, you know, broader more experienced version because I assume that seniors are going to be a little bit more experienced with, you know, how they learn and what kind of… you know, what kind of possibilities exist for, for thinking about, you know, learning in different kinds of ways. [00:38:51] MHR: Yeah! Yeah, I'm excited to take that class next semester. [00:38:55] CC: I'm glad you’re in it. [00:38:55] MHR: Yes! So, I guess another question I have is, as a teacher you see yourself teaching your students to go out into the world and have specific things you want them to learn through the classes that we talked about earlier. But is there ever anything you hope to learn from the students? [00:39:18] CC: That's a great question. And I think it's some of what I love about, you know, about teaching Senior Seminar because the students are always… they’re always coming up with topics that are not in my specialty area. Like, you know, studying feminist ethical arguments for vegetarianism, totally outside my wheelhouse! But really important and fascinating, and something that I learned a lot from that experience. Another, another course, this was years ago, but the Seminar got really interested in embodied learning, about thinking about how we learn not only through reading and talking about things, but how we learn through moving our bodies. And so that class, we went and took a yoga class together and engaged in some really amazing conversation about, you know, physical and mental health and how that relates to thinking about feminist learning. Again, not at all in my area of expertise but something that I feel like still impacts the ways that I think about, kind of, bringing more kinesthetic or, or embodied practice into, into classrooms. And so hopefully the students are always in some ways planting seeds for me to then think about, OK so how can I incorporate something like this into, you know, maybe back into the Intro class? Maybe really coming full circle in a sense. Or, or how are these things that I can incorporate into other aspects of my teaching, or the ways that I advise I.S. and, you know, encouraging students. I think I learn from the creativity of students to then, kind of, coming full circle again, to then encourage creativity on the part of future students. To be able to say, these are some of the things that have been done in the past but that's not that's not all we can do. So what ideas do you have? You know what virtual reality, [00:41:10] you know, again something that I'm well versed in. What kind of creative ways can you come to this material and, you know, make something new that impacts the world in really different ways? [00:41:24] MHR: Has there ever been like a moment where you've been teaching a class where like a student says something, or like asked a certain question, or like write something on a paper where you go like, yes! Like, they got it! Like they got what I want to teach them! [00:41:41] CC: Absolutely. I mean there are definitely those moments where particularly when I see students engaging outside of their comfort zone and trying to understand situations and experiences that are different than their own. I think those are the most powerful moments for me. You know, as someone who grew up all over the world, you know, experiencing, you know, different people and different cultures. Also, as an anthropologist, you know, thinking about that training of trying to understand how other people make sense of their world in different ways. And so I always feel that sense when I see a student able to kind of come out of their own personal experience. I mean there's a lot that we can learn, you know, I mean a lot of feminist learning and teaching is very personal. I mean you know you've got the second wave [slogan], you know, “the personal is political.” And absolutely! I mean I, I really agree that the personal really is political and the political is personal, but I also think that what, what that, you know, that reduction takes us out of the idea of understanding how other people's personal is political, if that makes sense. [00:42:51] Like the idea that it's not only our own personal that's political, but it's also thinking about the experiences of people who, you know, who may have very different backgrounds from our own may understand things in very different ways than we do and trying to understand the ways that they make sense of their experience in the world. And so that's a, that's particularly powerful for me when I see students grappling with that in doing that work. [00:43:18] MHR: So those are all the questions I have. But I'm gunna, I guess ask you is there anything else you want to talk about in regards to WGSS at Wooster? [00:43:29] CC: I would love to know what you want to see in the future of the program, particularly since you're engaging in, you know, this project of interviewing a lot of alums and me as a professor, I'd be interested in your ideas of... [00:43:43] MHR: Yeah, I mean one thing that I've always thought would be interesting is, thinking about the core course requirements for Wooster in general, like we need a quantitative requirement we need math in natural science we need some humanities courses, like... feminist course requirements or something like that. [00:44:08] CC: An FQ, a feminist and Queer Studies requirement. [00:44:10] MHR: Yeah! Yeah, yeah! So I've always thought that that could be really interesting, maybe something to bring up in feminist pedagogy for instance. [00:44:20] CC: You know it's interesting to think about, when you have a Discipline that, you know, is very interdisciplinary and, and impacts thinking in a variety of, of, you know, across a range of Disciplines. How do you, how do you make that more effective? How do you, you know, how do you infuse that into more students' experience? [00:44:41] MHR: Yeah! Anything else you want to bring up? [00:44:47] CC: No, but thank you so much! This was a really nice opportunity to talk about this! [00:44:50] MHR: Thank You for being a part of the project! [00:44:53] CC: Excellent, thank you so much Matt. [00:44:53] MHR: Thank you! 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 A name given to the resource Interview with Christa Craven Description An account of the resource This is an interview with professor Christa Craven and her experience being the first hired faculty member dedicated to the WGSS program at Wooster. Christa talks about her experience working half-time in WGSS and half-time in Anthropology and how this has inspired her teaching style. Christa talks about what it was like during the program shift of WGSS at Wooster from Women's Studies to Women's, Gender & Sexuality studies. Christa talks about her favorite classes and favorite projects students have done, including a Wikipedia editing project and the importance of public scholarship. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harris-Ridker, Matthew Craven, Christa Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unpublished Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-05-17 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Presented with Permission from Christa Craven <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Mp3 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Hawai'i; Taiwan; Germany; Austria; Singapore; Virginia; Florida; Wooster; Washington, D.C. Subject The topic of the resource Anthropology; Women's studies; Feminist studies; Gender; Interdisciplinarity in education; Reproductive health; Curriculum change Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Craven_Christa InterviewEdited.mp3 https://woosterdigital.org/wgssatwoo/files/original/470e36ebd9c36db1dd4fe90fceaa65fe.mp3 155af9e7c94a75ce4cbfa7ca4625332e 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 A name given to the resource Queer Voices & Feminist Histories Interviews Subject The topic of the resource 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 An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harris-Ridker, Matthew Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unpublished Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Craven, Christa; Denise, Monbarren; Joanne. Frye; Fitz Gibbon, Heather; Myatt, George; Bowerman, Christina; Goodwin, Meonyez; Atay, Ahmet; Bonhomme, Isabel; Sherry, Will; Johnson, Hans Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Mp3 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Harris-Ridker, Matthew Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Monbarren, Denise Location The location of the interview College of Wooster Digital Studio Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Denise Monbarren Intervew Edited by Matthew Harris-Ridker and Denise Monbarren for clarity  [00:00:00] MHR: All right. So I'm here with Denise Monbarren, our Special Collections Librarian here at Wooster. It is May 24th [2018]. Hello Denise. [00:00:09] DM: Hi Matthew. [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? [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! [00:01:04] MHR: Very nice! So what is your background and women's studies, gender studies, WGSS Department? [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 [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. [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.   [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.  [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. [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. [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. [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? [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.   [00:09:52] MHR: Sounds like it was kind of, like, it was an unspoken Women's, Gender Sexuality Studies... [00:09:56] DM: Right! [00:09:58] MHR: ...Department but putting a name to it sort of helped it become more official. [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. [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.   [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? [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 [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 History of Sexuality class this past couple of semesters. [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. [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 Feminist Methodology course [visit] when we do a nice exercise. I think you were in that.  [00:18:07] MHR: Yeah yeah, I was, I was!  I think I saw that collection in my Junior I.S. class. [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 Ladies Home Journal, some Better Housekeeping, 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. [00:19:13] MHR: Wow! [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. [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? [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. [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. [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. [00:22:19] MHR: Yeah. [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. [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.   [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?   [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, [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!” [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. [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?   [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. [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. [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. [00:30:27] DM:  Ok, thank you! Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Sound Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:30:27 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 A name given to the resource Interview With Denise Monbarren Subject The topic of the resource Special collections; Women's studies; Sexuality; Student activism; Archives; Religious thought--20th century; AIDS (Disease); NAMES Project Quilt; Description An account of the resource 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. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harris-Ridker, Matthew Monbarren, Denise Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Unpublished Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-05-24 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource OHLA Undergraduate Fieldwork Fellow/Faculty Mentor Microgrant, College of Wooster Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Presented with permission from Denise Monbarren <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Mp3 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sounds Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Monbarren_Denise_Intervew.mp3 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Youngstown; Wooster