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Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies on What Seems Like the Last Warm Day in Country Is (Except Maybe Canada)

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Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies on What Seems Like the Last Warm Day in Country Is (Except Maybe Canada) GSFS Newsletter Spring 2017 Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies On what seems like the last warm day in country is (except maybe Canada). If the global Vermont, November 8th, 2016, three feminists rise of highly nationalist and patriarchal politics sat on the back porch of Chellis House. As the in places as far flung as Russia and France, the sun warmed our faces, we acknowledged that the Philippines and the UK, has taught us anything future might not be female. We allowed ourselves it should be that no place is protected from the to enjoy these last fleeting hours of not knowing. reassertion of political machismo and racial and We promised to try and spend more time making religious supremacy that is sweeping through so community and less time frantically working. many other countries. It is not guaranteed that I can still feel the sun’s rays, the prom- everything will be okay. We must all do the hard ise of warmth even as winter was coming. That work of making the future possible. afternoon held the promise of feminist connec- Third, we feminists now have more work tion even as we were staring into the abyss of one added to our already double and triple-burdened of the most virulently misogynist, homophobic, lives. As caretakers of children and elders, re- transphobic and xenophobic political moments in sponsible community members, teachers, lead- U.S. history. ers, and just plain good citizens, we now have As director of the program in Gender, Sex- the added burden of doing what we can to resist. uality, and Feminist Studies, I want to summon Whether that work finds us calling Congress up the possibility of warmth even when storms members or showing up every weekend to protest are raging, metaphorically and, in Vermont, liter- the latest anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immi- ally, all around us. grant, anti-planet-earth policy, we, as feminists, First and foremost, we as feminists owe must take on this burden as well. it, to ourselves and our communities, to not get Fourth, we can be afraid, very afraid. lost in the storm. We cannot give up the warmth Feminism and feminist studies are under attack. of feminist connection, even when such warmth, At a global level, universities like the European like the winter sun, seems further and further University at St. Petersburg and Hungary’s Cen- away and less and less visible. As Arundhati Roy tral European University are being threatened told us, “Another world is not only possible, she is specifically because they offer feminist, gender, on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breath- and queer studies. At a local level, when Charles ing.” To sink into the cynicism and nihilism that Murray, a man who has consistently argued for also swirls around us is to give up on the very racial differences in intelligence, was the object premise of feminist thought and action: that we of protest at Middlebury College, his colleagues are more than our individual selves, that we are at the American Enterprise Institute and many part of larger communities and that our actions, right-wing pundits blamed the Program in Gen- although personal, are also always political. der, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (despite no Second, we cannot lose ourselves in the direct link between the two). This is not coinci- sort of optimism that assumes “everything will dental. Certain forms of knowledge, including be okay.” This optimism often rests on a lie about the critical knowledge of feminist studies, are un- the U.S. —that somehow it is exceptional and is der attack under this new global Right. Feminism not subject to the forces of populism and authori- as theory and as praxis represents a threat to tarianism in the same way apparently every other these political movements. We should not assume continued on page 7 been like? CT: I have taught 16 classes at different types of institutions with varying demographics of students—University of Arizona, UCSB, Rice. While at the Southwest Institute for Research on Women, I also taught a class on race, gender, and resistance to high school boys who were man- dated by the courts to attend the class as part of their drug treatment program. I loved teaching the class–although it was heartbreaking and challenging too. The vast majority of the students who ended up in the class were Latino—and not because Latino teenagers do any more drugs than White teenagers, but because of the racism of the An Interview with criminal justice system. So, we talked about this as part of the class. I learned how to teach in this Carly Thomsen space. Teaching high school students forced to be By Rebecca Coates-Finke ’17.5 and Meiriely Amaral ’19 in a class they didn’t want to be in taught me in- Professor Carly Thomsen is the newest faculty valuable lessons—about pedagogy and about life. member of the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Q: What sorts of classes are you hoping to bring Feminist Studies. We sat down with her to get to Middlebury? to know her a little bit better. This interview has CT: Last semester I taught “Politics of Reproduc- been edited and condensed. tion: Sex, Abortion, and Motherhood” and “Intro to Queer Critique.” This semester I am teaching Q: How has your time at Middlebury been so far? “Feminist and Queer Politics of Food.” In the CT: I’m really excited about the culture at Mid- latter, we use feminist and queer theory to think dlebury. I have already made some friends and about food justice movements, and politics. I’m I really appreciate my new colleagues, both in looking forward to teaching it because I think it GSFS and across campus. I admire how engaged builds on things already happening at Middle- and excited the students are, which is something bury, such as the prospective food studies minor, that makes this a wonderful place to be a teacher the Food Studies House (Weybridge), and the and a scholar. community garden. In the future, I’ll also teach Q: Where were you before you were here? engaged research and I hope to teach courses on CT: I’m from rural South Dakota and I lived in activism as well. the upper Midwest for the first 25 years of my life. Q: Do you consider yourself an activist? I completed my Master’s degree at the Univer- CT: Yes. I’ve been involved in reproductive, in- sity of Arizona and my PhD at the University of digenous, queer, and food justice activism. I have California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Most recently, participated in lots of campus based activism and I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Rice University’s engaged in community organizing in conjunction Center of Women, Gender and Sexuality in Hous- with and outside of nonprofit organizations. At ton. UC Santa Barbara I was the faculty advisor for Q: Sounds like a lot of warm places—how do you a queer reproductive justice group. This group like the cold? utilized feminist and queer thought to exam- CT: I don’t prefer the cold, but I can deal with ine reproductive justice as a site through which it. The year I left Minnesota the temperatures gender and sexual norms get reproduced, but also reached minus 40 degrees. At the time, I was liv- through which they can be challenged. Beyond ing in a trailer without central heat and working being engaged in activism, my scholarship also for a non-profit on the White Earth Reservation. critically examines different social movements. So, in short, I feel like I can handle the winter! The book I’m writing and the film I’m produc- Q: What has your previous teaching experience ing, for example, consider gay visibility politics 2 through the lens of LGBTQ women in rural South cultural norms are produced and how they move Dakota and Minnesota. My new project focuses and shift across time and space, and, further, to on food justice movements. So, my scholarship develop the various tools and skills to engage in examines social justice movements as sites where conversations that, despite being on, say, a topic norms and ideas are both reproduced and chal- similar to what we discuss in class, differ sharply lenged, and I hope that the kinds of analyses I from the ways in which we’ve discussed that same offer will be useful to fellow activists. topic in class. It might come as no surprise, then, Activism doesn’t mean just one thing, of course, that I see social engagement as one site through and it shows up in my courses in significant which we can sharpen our critical thinking skills, pedagogical ways: In most of my courses, for just as I see critique as central to social engage- example, my students complete engaged research ment. What if we saw activism as not only a site or translation projects through which they find for potential social transformation but also for ways to discuss feminist and queer theoretical epistemological transformation, a site where we ideas with people who haven’t read the texts can make more nuanced how we examine, under- we’ve read in class or necessarily had the kinds of stand, and approach the world? conversations we’ve had all semester. This assign- Q: Thank you for your time! ment is not about proselytizing; it is meant to get CT: Thank you! students to think about how ideas and terms and his older brother fashions himself as as a “Mex- Sony Bolton on ican gangster” to avoid being mistaken for a Filipino “houseboy.” He starts to breed attack “‘Flip,’ Peasant Spanish” dogs to sell to Hollywood celebrities.
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