00:00:47.640 - 00:01:02.210

But I was just wondering, I was wondering if like, do you know if it's recording the transcript? Because I need a transcript. I'm pretty if it's recording it, it should generate

00:01:02.210 - 00:01:11.520

A transcript once it posts. Perfect. If my memories of of doing lectures during COVID... Yeah.

00:01:11.880 - 00:01:23.480

are correct. Although you probably want to go through and correct the transcript because every now and then things come out funny. OK, I'll reread it before I turn it in.

00:01:25.800 - 00:01:32.680

OK. So are you ready? Sure. OK. What is your educational background?

00:01:33.280 - 00:01:43.590

What is my educational background? Let's see. I'm going to start with high school. I did my last two years of high school, a performing arts

00:01:43.590 - 00:01:59.130

boarding school called Interlochen, which was in northern Michigan, and I went to College in Westchester County, New York. Sarah Lawrence College, a very small school, under a thousand I think,

00:01:59.130 - 00:02:15.000

and it used to be an all women's school. It went coed in, I think, 1970, but at least when I was there, it was like an 80-20 split. So it was still mostly women.

00:02:16.920 - 00:02:39.000

I did a year of my undergraduate abroad in Paris. I did a master's in theology at Harvard, and I did my PhD in history of religion at Emory University, which is in Atlanta. So I went to lots of schools.

00:02:39.360 - 00:02:51.960

Yeah, that's a very impressive background, actually. Lots of places. So you never actually studied women's studies, like you never majored or did...

00:02:52.120 - 00:03:09.560

No, I was, I was never a woman's studies major. So I had a class in high school that was women in literature. And then the next time I had anything that was specifically

00:03:09.560 - 00:03:24.760

in women's studies, I was in my doctoral program at that point. And I decided that they had a doctoral certificate in women's studies. And I decided that since the focus of my research was women

00:03:24.760 - 00:03:38.120

in early Christianity and gender and sexuality and theology, that it made sense, that the classes made sense and sort of why not? Yeah, OK.

00:03:38.600 - 00:03:46.800

I mean it, it wasn't even a really deeply thought out decision. It was more like, this would be easy to do. Why not?

00:03:46.800 - 00:03:58.890

It will kind of add something to my resume. Yeah, I gotcha. How did you end up at Towson? I ended up at Towson a little bit by accident when I was on

00:03:58.890 - 00:04:12.000

the job market. It was the fall of 2008, which you may or may not know was a disastrous time to be looking for a job. The markets were crashing.

00:04:12.000 - 00:04:25.690

It was a really, really big economic crash in the fall of 2008. So everybody who was on the job market then they'd apply for all these jobs, and then they'd get emails back saying, sorry, we've

00:04:25.690 - 00:04:40.560

had to cancel the search because the universities didn't have money to hire anyone. So I applied for a job, a lot of jobs that were in, like, early Christian history or early Christian theology.

00:04:41.560 - 00:05:01.520

And then I saw this advertisement at Towson, and the advertisement read, like, women and religion with a global focus. And at first I didn't even think of applying, but my dissertation had a pretty significant comparative focus.

00:05:01.880 - 00:05:17.560

So I was looking at modesty and Christianity in the 4th century. A long time ago. But I had a lot of comparative evidence from contemporary India and West Asia, from Hinduism and Islam.

00:05:17.920 - 00:05:30.120

So contemporary religions that that have fairly intense modesty practices and veiling practices. And I did my outside... When you do a PhD, you do an outside exam.

00:05:30.160 - 00:05:49.640

So an exam that's outside your main area of focus, and my outside exam was in feminist ethnography. So I decided that I could sell myself for the position and and I applied and it ended up being the job that that I got.

00:05:50.360 - 00:05:56.680

Gotcha. And I'd never felt more grateful that I had done the women's study certificate. Yeah.

00:05:57.600 - 00:06:11.140

At least I had a little bit of official cred. Yeah, who would have thought? So what is your title now? Your full... My full title now is Associate Professor of Women's

00:06:11.140 - 00:06:19.160

and Gender Studies. OK, gotcha. And what exactly do... Like, where is your role with Associate Professor?

00:06:19.720 - 00:06:29.600

Right. So Associate means tenured. So if someone has assistant professor, it means untenured.

00:06:30.320 - 00:06:40.280

But they're moving towards tenure. Tenure. What does tenure mean? Tenure means that you have a job for life.

00:06:41.240 - 00:06:54.040

Unless the university closes down or you commit a major crime or something like that. Yeah, so I was. When was I tenured?

00:06:55.640 - 00:07:07.400

I guess 2014. OK, gotcha. And what motivates you to teach? I really, really, I really enjoy it.

00:07:09.200 - 00:07:22.440

The first teaching I did was actually teaching high school, and so sort of between my master's degree and my PhD, like, I'm very tired of school. I'm going to try something else, and wasn't really qualified to

00:07:22.440 - 00:07:33.740

do anything. So I just sent my resume to a bunch of private schools in New York City. I knew I wanted to live in New York City and I got a response

00:07:33.740 - 00:07:49.380

back from all girls Catholic High School and they had a job that was teaching sophomore religion class and I was like, I I can completely handle that, no problem. But most of the job was actually teaching first and second year

00:07:49.380 - 00:07:59.280

French. And I was kind of like, we'll see if I can teach that, but it actually turned out to be really lovely. I really enjoyed it and I didn't know if I would.

00:08:01.040 - 00:08:14.410

But yeah, so I kind of thought maybe that was going to be my career, teaching high school. But after a year, I was like, I really enjoyed this. I can see myself really enjoying it for maybe another five years,

00:08:14.410 - 00:08:32.350

but probably not ten years or 30 years or 40 years. Yeah, so I decided that that I would go forward and do the PhD and do do college level teaching. What do you want your students to take away from your

00:08:32.350 - 00:08:51.760

teachings? Main. Yeah, I mean it, it's changed a bit over the years. The main things that I want when I started, I think I really, I

00:08:51.760 - 00:09:04.160

wanted students to know a lot of content and I wanted them to have skills, especially writing skills, reading and writing skills. The skills part hasn't changed.

00:09:04.160 - 00:09:16.120

That's still really, really important to me because I think you don't know where you're going when you're in your early 20s. You just, you don't.

00:09:16.120 - 00:09:26.440

I didn't know where I was going. And even when you think you know where you're going, you don't. And the things you learn in college, they have to be things

00:09:26.440 - 00:09:40.740

that that either are going to enrich your life or your work or ideally both. And I feel like those those skills and reading and writing, they do both of those things that you they enrich your life

00:09:40.740 - 00:09:55.180

and they they give you something. They give you a real sort of step up in any work environment because I think in the world as it is today, the most important thing to know is how to learn because things change so

00:09:55.180 - 00:10:08.000

quickly. So for me that's, that's a real focus, is sort of those skills that you can move around with, that you can use anywhere and that just like make your life more enjoyable and richer.

00:10:08.760 - 00:10:29.630

But I still, and, like, I hope students find the content interesting, but I think now I'm more focused on teaching the idea of, I guess you call it intellectual humility. I think it's easy in college to catch hold of an idea and

00:10:29.630 - 00:10:44.480

then feel very self-righteous about it, especially in fields like women's studies and, you know, to catch onto, like, a critique or something, or catch onto an idea about something. And I think, I got it.

00:10:44.480 - 00:10:54.960

It's right. And people have felt that way for a long time about a lot of things. And almost without fail the next generation did not think they

00:10:54.960 - 00:11:14.100

were right. And yeah, so just giving students, encouraging students to give people in the past a fair hearing and to have a sense that, you know, their own ideas and their own commitments, as

00:11:14.100 - 00:11:30.680

right as they seem right now, are probably not better thought out and probably not more, sort of, I don't know, righteous than other people's in the past. So yeah, sort of an idea of intellectual humility.

00:11:31.680 - 00:11:43.800

So what classes do you teach at Towson? Like, are you... So I have taught all sorts of things, I've taught a number of times, I've taught feminist theory.

00:11:44.200 - 00:11:57.580

It's not one I've taught in the past couple of years, but I'm sure I'll teach it again sometime. I've taught a fair number of Intro to Women's Studies, but usually when I teach an intro class I teach Women in

00:11:57.580 - 00:12:14.440

International Perspective because of the background that I have and sort of comparative material and feminist ethnography. I teach a class called Christian Sexual Ethics that counts for

00:12:14.440 - 00:12:35.470

the ethics core, as it's basically a history of Christian sexual ethics taught through a feminist lens. And then I have some some sort of more specialized classes that I teach, women's spiritual practices, which focuses on

00:12:35.470 - 00:12:48.420

contemporary women and contemporary communities and women's, maybe not so much beliefs, but things they do. Right. So I'm teaching that class right now and right now we're studying

00:12:48.420 - 00:13:05.900

Mexican American women's devotion to the Lady of Guadalupe and sort of the different ways they practice devotion and what it means in their lives. And then I teach a class, gender and religion in African

00:13:05.900 - 00:13:20.800

diaspora, which is mostly Western Hemisphere. So the US, Canada, Central and South America and the Caribbean. Gotcha. So that's mostly what I teach.

00:13:21.480 - 00:13:29.160

Oh, every now and then I'll teach a graduate class on queer religion or I'll teach independent studies on queer religion. OK, gotcha.

00:13:30.360 - 00:13:54.280

And what are some pros and cons of teaching feminist thought? I mean, I think a pro is seeing people excited to see something from a different angle. You sort of always looked at some issue from one angle and say,

00:13:54.280 - 00:14:08.070

huh, I never thought of seeing it from that angle. You know, whether they decide they're convinced by it or not, I think that's always really exciting to sort of see someone's mind like make that little shift and see something

00:14:08.070 - 00:14:21.240

like, huh, There's a different way of looking at that, but that's really exciting. The con is, it's hard, and convincing people that it's worth it to do something

00:14:21.440 - 00:14:36.830

hard is hard. Yeah, definitely. So do you have or did you have to face any discrimination getting to where you are today, just like as a woman or...

00:14:36.830 - 00:14:52.310

Interestingly, not really until I was in Graduate School, and really not until I was in my doctoral program, was quite interesting. I mean, so I went to this, you know, predominantly women's

00:14:52.310 - 00:15:07.130

college that had started out as a women's college. And you know, I didn't feel any barriers at all to my education there. You know, it, the place had been designed as an educational

00:15:07.130 - 00:15:22.490

institution for women. It was a really radical place in a lot of ways. I was there in the mid 90s, and I think I was pretty common in that I thought of feminism as something that my mom had taken

00:15:22.490 - 00:15:35.360

care of in the 70s, and that was cool. That was fine. Like, I wasn't opposed to it, but it was very 20 years ago, You know, that was just kind of kind of my attitude to it.

00:15:35.360 - 00:15:53.120

And I knew a lot of people who took women's studies classes, but it never even crossed my mind to want to take one. And when I got to my master's degree at Harvard, I certainly didn't feel discriminated against.

00:15:53.320 - 00:16:09.300

But it was the first time I really noticed men and women acting very differently in classes. So, you know, I'd be in these graduate seminars at Harvard, and it was noticeable how most of the women would let the men

00:16:09.300 - 00:16:22.800

talk over them or just kind of hang back when it was clear that they had better ideas. And I found it really disconcerting. Yeah, I didn't sense any discrimination actually from

00:16:22.800 - 00:16:37.700

professors in any way. But I was really surprised at how self-censoring a lot of my female colleagues were. And it was really the first time that I ran across some really

00:16:37.700 - 00:16:55.720

explicitly feminist classmates, one in particular who had studied with Katie Cannon, who's a really important womanist theologian at in Philadelphia Temple. And Katie Cannon was her advisor, and she went to

00:16:55.720 - 00:17:05.520

Harvard. And her advisor at Harvard was Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, who's a really, really important feminist theologian. And she was part of the Women's Action Caucus.

00:17:05.520 - 00:17:12.280

And I was, like, I was kind of fascinated, like, I went to one or two meetings with her. I was just, like, kind of interested. I was like, who knew?

00:17:14.000 - 00:17:36.240

She actually, I wish I'd gone with her. But she went with a few friends to see, what was it? It was a an exorcism of the patriarchy that was was done by the author of Gynecology, whose name I'm going to blank on now.

00:17:42.960 - 00:17:55.320

It will come back to me. But this really famous sort of radical feminist from the 70s, and she was like, yeah, she was up there exorcising the patriarchy, and I was surrounded by all of these women in their

00:17:55.320 - 00:18:05.520

60s. But yeah, I didn't really see real sexism in academia until I was in my doctoral program.

00:18:06.560 - 00:18:23.760

Gotcha. And I definitely did then. It was really stark and it was really, it was really damaging. In my program, we started out with equal numbers of male and

00:18:23.760 - 00:18:31.920

female students, and I think I'm one of two women who actually graduated. Really. Yeah.

00:18:32.080 - 00:18:42.200

Oh, that's crazy. How many did it start as? I think when I was there, there were maybe five or six overall at different stages.

00:18:44.400 - 00:18:57.410

And I had, I had a really good relationship with my own advisor. And when I talked with him about it, his attitude was like well, so and so had problems, and so and so was crazy. And so I was

00:18:57.410 - 00:19:07.720

like, no, that doesn't happen. It's not that all of the women in the program have, like, profound emotional issues. It's that the program made them crazy.

00:19:08.720 - 00:19:23.160

So that the senior woman in the program who retired when I was there, who was who I actually wanted to work with me and and one other student talked with her about the situation and in our department.

00:19:24.760 - 00:19:39.770

And she said, I know, I'm completely aware, because we're like, people are disrespecting you. They're being, like, obnoxious to the female students. There's a sexual predator on faculty that everybody knows

00:19:39.770 - 00:19:52.060

about and no one does anything about. Fortunately, I was warned in my first week never to be alone with him in a room. But the fact that someone came and pulled me aside in my first

00:19:52.060 - 00:20:05.230

week of my doctoral program and said, never go to his office, never take an invitation to his house, like, that's insane. Everybody knew. I went in to complain to the, like, the director and he's

00:20:05.230 - 00:20:14.160

like, so we're talking about so and so it's like, yes, obviously we're talking about so and so he's like, well, it's a problem. I recommend that you don't spend time alone in his office.

00:20:14.520 - 00:20:31.860

I'm like, this is... Imagine that happening here. It was just toxic. It was, yeah. And I had, you know, I guess four women, all of whom were were a

00:20:31.860 - 00:20:47.000

bit ahead of me in the program, who just never graduated or who switched programs. You know, I like really, really bright, you know, women who should have had careers.

00:20:47.520 - 00:21:05.600

And yeah, yeah, I think one of the most deadly things to me was how, how I could see certain patterns being passed down to my male colleagues who I mostly had really positive relationships with.

00:21:05.600 - 00:21:23.000

I was kind of like, you become what you see, you know, and you don't even realize necessarily what you're seeing and what you're talking when you do. But yeah, that was really disheartening.

00:21:23.480 - 00:21:36.560

Yeah, definitely. So I think in my experience, things were kind of the lower down, if you will, I didn't really feel any barriers at all.

00:21:37.160 - 00:21:50.000

But when I got to that kind of hire echelon of academia, which honestly is much less regulated. Yeah, I really saw it there. Yeah.

00:21:50.600 - 00:22:05.200

Well, I can't even imagine that happening here. No, I mean, I, like, female colleagues who's like, I go into so and so's office and he has pornography up on his computer and it's obvious that he wants me to see it.

00:22:05.560 - 00:22:19.120

Oh, that's... It's like basically being like low grade assaulted when you walk in looking for academic advice on the Greek translation of a second century document.

00:22:19.880 - 00:22:30.880

You know, like, I'm here to do work. Yeah. OK. How do people react when you tell them you teach women's studies?

00:22:32.000 - 00:22:46.560

It really depends. I think either people are pretty excited and interesting and a lot of people will say, oh, I took a class when I was in college, and the other reaction is just kind of vague confusion.

00:22:46.560 - 00:23:04.600

I've never gotten hostility or anything, but I have gotten confusion more along lines of, what is that? But yeah, I have, like, more and weirder experiences with telling people that I study religion.

00:23:05.360 - 00:23:14.480

Like, there's absolutely nothing like telling people you study religion to bring out so much weirdness. No, because I went to Catholic school, so I can understand that.

00:23:15.040 - 00:23:22.400

Yeah. So I finally, like, on airplane trips, now I just tell people I study history. OK.

00:23:23.960 - 00:23:34.040

It's easier. Let's see. How has your experience been in the Towson Women's studies department?

00:23:41.600 - 00:23:53.440

It's hard being in a small department. Really. Yeah, it's hard being in a small department. You kind of feel like you're always trying to hold onto the

00:23:53.440 - 00:24:07.920

department and always slightly worried that the administration is going to decide that maybe they don't need you anymore. Really. Yeah, I guess that's a part.

00:24:08.160 - 00:24:21.880

I mean, there are things that that students don't see and probably shouldn't see, but I think being in a small department has a lot of stresses in terms of sort of career wise.

00:24:23.840 - 00:24:39.200

But I'd say I've always been delighted by the students. I didn't really know much about Towson when I came. I didn't kind of know what to expect. But yeah, I mean, everybody complaints about students, but

00:24:39.200 - 00:24:49.960

we also, because that's what you do as a teacher. And you're like, students can't read. But then you read things that were written like forty years ago and, like, "students can't read!"

00:24:49.960 - 00:25:01.590

And you're like, OK, fine. Are you from Maryland? No. But interestingly my father grew up in Baltimore, and I have

00:25:01.590 - 00:25:08.040

a fair amount of family here. OK. Grew up in Montana. OK, that's...

00:25:08.280 - 00:25:17.000

I'm watching Yellowstone right now, actually. Oh, wonderful. I grew up maybe three hours drive from Yellowstone, so we went pretty regularly.

00:25:17.080 - 00:25:28.720

Yeah. I'm actually watching the... So they have 1923, which is the before for Yellowstone and that has a lot of interesting female characters in it.

00:25:29.240 - 00:25:34.840

So is it, is it. Is it filmed in Montana, in Wyoming? Yep. Yeah.

00:25:35.200 - 00:25:49.600

It's very beautiful. Like if you like that kind of scenery, like have you seen there's an old, what is it... Robert Redford movie. A River Runs Through It.

00:25:50.320 - 00:25:58.960

It's got like the most extraordinary cinematography. It's a really lovely story too. I'll definitely look it up. It looks like a really nice...

00:25:58.960 - 00:26:12.720

I think it's actually a young Brad Pitt isn't it too? Well, I'll definitely look it up. It's definitely, it's all eye candy for all generations, but the scenery is really great too.

00:26:16.280 - 00:26:32.720

If you could go back in time, would you change anything about your education, experience, or your career or anything? Yeah, I'd start studying ancient languages earlier, and I'd start German my freshman year of college.

00:26:34.320 - 00:26:49.760

Do you speak multiple languages? I speak French fluently. I've studied German at one time. My ancient Latin and my ancient Greek, they were pretty

00:26:49.760 - 00:27:01.340

solid. I'm not sure they are anymore, but it wouldn't be too hard to get them back. I can kind of read Italian and Portuguese and Spanish, mostly

00:27:01.340 - 00:27:16.520

just because I have the background in Latin. And if you have the background in Latin... I certainly couldn't understand them spoken and I couldn't speak or write them. But reading them, like, if there's an academic article, I

00:27:16.520 - 00:27:27.080

can usually figure out what's going on. Gotcha. I wish I'd done more languages earlier. Whenever I have a student who's like, I'm thinking of Graduate

00:27:27.080 - 00:27:33.160

School, the first thing I say is, how's your French and German? Really. Yeah.

00:27:33.600 - 00:27:54.230

Because it's you have qualifying exams before you start your classes in at least one other modern language is important. Yeah, but people don't don't think of it. And it's one way that the scholars from from Europe and

00:27:54.230 - 00:28:06.040

South America could really have an advantage over American scholars is that they tend to have a couple languages before they get to college, never mind before they get to grad school.

00:28:07.040 - 00:28:14.480

Yeah. Every time I had colleagues who were like, in my doctoral program, you know, from Austria. And I was like, I hate you.

00:28:15.200 - 00:28:25.400

I'm like, Nicola, I hate you. She's like, Oh yeah, I grew up speaking French, German, English and Italian. They were the national languages of my country.

00:28:26.840 - 00:28:41.120

It's like, we started Latin in fifth grade. That's insane. But otherwise, no, I'm really happy with the institutions that I went to.

00:28:41.240 - 00:28:55.680

I have very mixed feelings about Harvard, but... Obviously. I don't blame you. What prominent social movement was happening when you joined the department or while you have been at the department?

00:28:59.640 - 00:29:18.760

Let's see. I joined in 2009. What's happened while I've been in the department has definitely been the Black Lives Matter movement.

00:29:19.600 - 00:29:30.980

Yeah, I was thinking of everything that that would be, that would be the biggest and the most important that's happened while I've been in the department. When I first joined the department, in my intro classes,

00:29:30.980 - 00:29:46.500

a lot of the students had never heard the word feminism before. It was pretty common for students to use in their papers to write either feminine or femininity rather than feminism, and they genuinely just didn't know that there was any

00:29:46.500 - 00:30:06.810

difference between the words. That wasn't true by about five years later. And that was really a result of what I would call Beyoncé feminism, that there were a certain number of pop stars who,

00:30:06.810 - 00:30:28.390

who picked up on certain things, but they really popularized a certain number of feminist ideas. And it became a less of, it became more socially acceptable, I think, for college students, particularly college women, to

00:30:28.390 - 00:30:41.160

self identify as feminists or at least to have kind of an open- minded interest in it, which hadn't been true earlier. Gotcha. Yeah.

00:30:41.760 - 00:30:53.680

But I think Black Lives Matter has been the movement, social movement during my time at Towson that I think has been most prominent and has caused sort of the most change. Yeah.

00:30:53.920 - 00:31:16.400

Yeah. What do you hope to see for the department and the feminist movement? What I'd like to see for for the department is I'd like to see

00:31:16.400 - 00:31:37.780

more connections between students who graduated and students who are still in the program, which, I'm trying to make that happen, but I'd like for it... I'd like for that feedback loop to exist, because I think the

00:31:37.780 - 00:31:50.000

most exciting thing that happens is when one of our undergraduates does an internship at an organization where one of our alums is working or that one of our alums founded.

00:31:50.000 - 00:32:06.280

So, you know, one of the alums of the graduate program founded a woman's health clinic that does doula work and that does some sort of self help health meetings on reproductive health for black women.

00:32:06.280 - 00:32:21.280

And it does all of this really interesting work. It's a business, but it's also doing activist, feminist, activist work around health, and you know, having her say, hey, do you have students who might want to intern with me?

00:32:21.520 - 00:32:32.400

Like that was it for me. Like, that's what it should be all about. And because I think it's very easy for college students to think, what am I going to do with this?

00:32:34.480 - 00:32:41.950

And I'd like for them to see, well, this is what people are doing. Yeah. It's the best way to learn and to have those connections and

00:32:41.950 - 00:32:53.360

also to realize that there are there's so many different paths that people take that aren't kind of what's laid out in like, a career booklet. Yeah.

00:32:54.520 - 00:33:04.480

And that those generally are more fulfilling and more interesting. Gotcha. And then what do you hope to see for the feminist movement?

00:33:05.240 - 00:33:26.680

What do I hope to see for the feminist movement? For me, and this is actually been true since I was eighteen, and this is really all social movements almost. I don't think there's enough focus on poverty that I think,

00:33:28.800 - 00:33:47.600

I think people get really caught up in culture war issues and those are issues about which it's very easy to get riled up and very easy to make memes about and sometimes very easy to make, like, a change.

00:33:47.600 - 00:34:01.800

It's it's kind of like, if you decide that a show is offensive, you can cancel it. Awesome. I think your activism worked, but but for me what what I find,

00:34:01.800 - 00:34:23.720

you know, when I think overall, you know, what helps women, what helps women is not being in poverty. And, you know, I think what helps men break cycles of domestic violence, what helps men break cycles of sexual

00:34:23.720 - 00:34:39.760

violence, number one, not being in poverty. It's not the only thing, You know, very rich, well educated men have these problems too. But there's almost no problem that you can cope with if you

00:34:39.760 - 00:34:57.690

don't deal with poverty first. Yeah, yeah, that, it really, that, it's the root. And I think that because it's so hard to tackle, and it involves like, the most incredibly boring policy discussions and the most

00:34:57.690 - 00:35:15.270

incredibly tedious, and there's not a lot of instant gratification in order for poverty. The same is true of, say, education. The kind of, looking at root problems there involves a lot of

00:35:15.270 - 00:35:30.280

incredibly dull policy work, involves statistics. It's not, it's not the kind of flashy thing that ends up kind of on the front lines of protest movements or in social media activism or that kind of thing.

00:35:31.000 - 00:35:53.020

But for me, yeah, it's like, so a big a big issue right now and rightfully so, is reproductive justice. But for me, there can be no reproductive justice if people making reproductive decisions are entirely hobbled

00:35:53.020 - 00:36:10.670

by poverty, poverty that makes it difficult for them to seek abortions and very difficult for them to raise children and difficult for them to find contraception. And that none of those things are really, genuinely choices

00:36:10.670 - 00:36:22.960

when you're limited financially from doing any of them. I agree. That would be my great hope. Yes.

00:36:23.200 - 00:36:37.380

It's not a big one. It's not very flashy and it's such a long standing issue. But I feel like, I feel like it's been decades and decades since sort of the American progressive movement has been

00:36:37.380 - 00:36:44.160

solidly focused on poverty. really not since, like, the 1930s. Really. Yeah.

00:36:44.480 - 00:36:51.600

A lot of the focus now is very surface. Lot of surface level. I mean, important issues. Yeah.

00:36:52.160 - 00:37:05.520

But there's other like deeper, yeah, things that go into it. OK. What theory or ideology do you think is most impactful, impactful right now?

00:37:08.000 - 00:37:28.210

I guess in this era of feminism, or even a person. Yeah. I mean, kind of two, like, one very old and one pretty new that that I would highlight as I think being really important right

00:37:28.210 - 00:37:44.830

now. And one is Marx and Engels sort of classic economic thought because... Because, again, I think it's really, really easy to get up caught up in in sort of cultural issues and and not look

00:37:44.830 - 00:37:58.560

at what's driving things from an economic point of view or what kind of limitations there are. So, so that it's very easy to be like, we should do this, without saying, can we do that?

00:38:00.480 - 00:38:16.640

Because, you know, one thing that I sort of try to balance with my students, especially in general theory, is that you have to be a utopian thinker, meaning you have to be, what is the best possible solution, but you also have to be profoundly realistic.

00:38:16.920 - 00:38:33.180

What can I get done during the next 50 years of active life that I have and the circumstances that surround me? So you have to have both, like, that imagination, but also be willing to see things very clearly and make, you know, make

00:38:33.180 - 00:38:46.320

well informed decisions about where you're going to put your energy and where you're going to put your focus. And I think that kind of classic economic thinking can be really helpful with that.

00:38:48.160 - 00:39:02.190

So, so that's one. And I mean there's been generations of feminist Marxist thinkers and feminist economists. I mean I think the issue of unpaid labor and care labor are

00:39:02.190 - 00:39:15.190

still huge issues. We saw this during the pandemic, and I think, I think that's really, really valuable to make those economic analyses. The other one that I find students are excited by and I'm

00:39:15.190 - 00:39:33.380

really interested in is a woman called Adrian Marie Brown who wrote a book called Pleasure Activism. And one of the things I find interesting about her is that, you know, she she acknowledges that there is lots of suffering

00:39:33.380 - 00:39:59.110

in life and there are lots, there are lots of problems. But she thinks that too often social activism becomes so focused on trauma and dealing with trauma that the goal of pleasure gets lost and the sort of the savouring of

00:39:59.110 - 00:40:09.480

pleasure gets lost. You're saying, you know, if you have an activist mindset in the world, you know that you have to kind of grab hold of that.

00:40:11.480 - 00:40:25.330

Even if you know that, you know, utopia might not come, that you can't lose a sense of yeah, sort of entitlement to that. But also sort of looking at analysis, you know that, like I

00:40:25.330 - 00:40:40.720

was saying about economic analysis, that, you know, you can say, OK, people need to eat. Like, people also need pleasure in food. It's not just, and so often you find this attitude that the

00:40:40.720 - 00:40:56.920

pleasure is only for the wealthy or pleasure is only for, you know, and that any pleasure taken by people who are marginal is somehow wrong. I always use cigarettes as the example, and my students are

00:40:56.920 - 00:41:08.300

always horrified. But cigarettes are a real class marker. But they're also a pleasure of life. They're something that gives you time off from what's

00:41:08.300 - 00:41:31.780

often excruciatingly boring hard work. They're expensive, but they're actually a pleasure that's within the grasp of the population and, I don't know, the sort of the social put-downs of smokers I think often lose sight

00:41:31.780 - 00:41:45.190

of that. And have a little appreciation that, you know, or, you know, drinking a 40 on your stoop. It's like, nobody begrudges the pleasure of martini in a nice

00:41:45.190 - 00:41:58.540

bar. Yeah, no one says you're a bad person for for getting dressed up and enjoying a nice bar, but you're criminalized for taking pleasures if you're poor, if you're marginal in

00:41:58.540 - 00:42:08.310

other ways. And I find that analysis of hers really, like I said, it makes me look at things from a different angle. And I think it's really interesting and I think it's

00:42:08.310 - 00:42:13.480

helpful. Definitely. Yeah. I would have never thought about it like that either.

00:42:15.080 - 00:42:23.440

She's one of the thinkers that I can find most exciting and helpful. Gotcha. I was actually,

00:42:23.440 - 00:42:38.960

my next question was, do you have any role models that you look up to or follow their teachings in the field? I would say the person who's made the most impact on my own scholarship has been Saba Mahmood.

00:42:40.760 - 00:42:53.720

So Saba Mahmood died very young. She died in her early 50s, several years ago. She was a student of Judith Butler's. So Judith Butler is this really, really important sort of

00:42:53.720 - 00:43:05.960

postmodern feminist philosopher? If you've heard about the idea of performativity, gender performativity, it's her idea, the person who coined coined the term.

00:43:07.920 - 00:43:33.240

And one of the things that Saba Mahmood looked at was sort of what goes into becoming normative. So Judith Butler was very interested in, like, gender transgressions and the people on the fringes and and things like

00:43:33.240 - 00:43:46.280

this. But what Saba Mahmood really looked at was how difficult it is and how much work actually goes into living into or living up to certain norms.

00:43:47.880 - 00:44:07.330

And she was really focused on sort of the way that a lot of feminist theory only sees women's agency when the agency is directed to liberal ends. So it's sort of the idea of freedom, the idea of liberty,

00:44:07.330 - 00:44:20.070

and a lot of ideas that, when you look at them, are very, very Western and and really part of kind of the Enlightenment tradition. Because I was, you know, in my scholarship looking at women,

00:44:20.070 - 00:44:30.160

first of all, lived a long time ago, before the Enlightenment happened. Yeah, and then women who were very, very interested in living into religious ideals.

00:44:30.520 - 00:44:49.520

I found her work really helpful, but it also kind of gave me an angle on a lot of other feminist thinkers I was reading to kind of see how embedded certain certain very European Enlightenment ideas work.

00:44:49.640 - 00:45:02.200

Which is not always a bad thing, but I think it's really important to know where your ideas are coming from. Like, it's not necessarily a bad thing that they're Enlightenment ideals, but it's important that you know that they're

00:45:02.200 - 00:45:14.680

enlightenment ideals when you're looking at them, rather than sort of naturalizing them as if they're just, like, the truth, and recognizing they have a history, they come from a certain place, and they might not work everywhere.

00:45:15.360 - 00:45:25.480

Yeah, yeah. So Saba Mahmood definitely. It's just completely tragic how young she died. She died of a very aggressive cancer.

00:45:26.600 - 00:45:35.200

It's like one day she was publishing and six months later she had passed. Yeah, it was... It's an incredible loss.

00:45:36.000 - 00:45:52.000

Yeah. And then the last question, what motivates you to continue performing in the women's studies field? Well, I think it's that all those things that I thought my

00:45:52.000 - 00:46:04.310

mom had solved in the 70s, at least half of them haven't even been addressed yet. Yeah. I mean, there's so many things that are better, and we

00:46:04.310 - 00:46:13.680

don't even realize they're better because we never realized how bad they were. I mean, when I think of, you know, I don't know. I'm buying something on Amazon.

00:46:13.680 - 00:46:26.880

I think, you know, my mom couldn't have gotten a credit card on her own. Yeah, when she was in college, like, the laws had not been passed to allow her to get a credit card without a husband's

00:46:26.880 - 00:46:36.790

name on it. She just couldn't have gotten one. Yeah. You know, and, you know, I'm not sure anyone even thinks of that

00:46:36.790 - 00:46:43.840

today. Like, it doesn't even cross their mind. Yeah. You know, it wasn't super long ago that a woman just couldn't

00:46:43.840 - 00:46:59.800

get a credit card, that she wasn't considered a financial adult. Yeah, so, but there are all of these other things that, you know, I mean there were, there was a strike in New York City in

00:46:59.800 - 00:47:08.730

the 70s. Wages for housework. And you can find photos of it. Women marching down the streets demanding wages for housework,

00:47:08.730 - 00:47:21.760

saying we're doing unpaid labor. It's an important part of the economy. And, you know, lo and behold, 50 years later, you have a major pandemic.

00:47:21.760 - 00:47:32.640

And one of the main results is women quitting their jobs because they have so much unpaid labor to do at home. Yeah. And it it's, it's never addressed.

00:47:32.640 - 00:47:42.770

I mean, there were all sorts of, you know, like pandemic benefits. There was no "my housework has quadrupled" benefit and therefore I had to

00:47:42.770 - 00:47:49.200

quit my job. Yeah, there was no "the kids are all home and I have to supervise them," I had to quit my job.

00:47:49.200 - 00:47:58.920

Like, there was no benefit that really addressed that massive caretaking. Unpaid caretaking. Yeah.

00:48:00.960 - 00:48:15.840

So there's barely any maternal leave. It's only for some women and it's unpaid. You know, any business that's, I don't know, like smaller than 50 employees doesn't have to give it at all.

00:48:16.120 - 00:48:28.400

And lots of people work for small businesses. That's that's a lot of workers. They're just not covered at all. Yeah.

00:48:28.440 - 00:48:51.610

I mean, I think, and I mean this is something that's happened in the past few years, but you know, the the Me Too movement, it's that there there are certain things that are no better than they were in 1971 that, you know, like couch

00:48:51.610 - 00:49:05.280

casting. You know, that you look at a show like, I don't know if you ever saw Mad Men and there's like really, really blatant sexism in the workplace and stuff like that.

00:49:05.280 - 00:49:19.960

And you're like, OK, and a lot of jobs that's more or less gone. But every time I teach, entered women's studies, half of the women in class have been harassed on the job by managers. Yep.

00:49:21.520 - 00:49:38.160

You know, and it doesn't matter if you're a minimum wage restaurant worker or if you're working for NBC or if you're working for, like, a major studio, that it's still, it's pervasive. Yeah.

00:49:38.640 - 00:49:48.560

So there's still things that need to be... There's still things that, it's not ready to move into the history department quite yet. Yeah.

00:49:49.360 - 00:50:06.040

Because it's not history. It's not history exactly, even though I'm a historian, but I'm like, no, it's actually, this is not history. These are these unsolved issues.

00:50:07.560 - 00:50:18.360

Gotcha. OK, well that is all. I can tell the sun is setting because... That is all that I have for you.

00:50:21.120 - 00:50:24.480

I guess I just hit stop recording. OK.