Meet the woman behind the feminism class teaching our current Point Park students the important history of where our ladies in power came from.
HC: How long have you been a professor at Point Park?
I started in January of 2007; this is the beginning of my ninth year at Point Park.
HC: What made you want to teach history?
I started out in college in French literature, but realized I did not want to study literature forever and I loved my history classes. I went to Paris for a year and had these two amazing history classes. That’s when I really fell in love with history. As far as the teaching, I knew I wanted to go to grad school and I grew up in a family of teachers. It felt like a place I could do what I enjoy doing and stay in academics, but make a difference in a greater number of people’s lives..
HC: We heard you teach a Feminism class; can you elaborate more?
I have had a lot of students over the years who have asked me to do a women’s history class. I realized that there are some upper-level classes on campus that are looking at present day issues, but I felt like the students really needed a good foundation in what the debates were to get to the present. The class looks at mostly western world issues, a lot of American and European debates around what feminism is and how you define feminism over time. We analyze how it changed from the middle of the 19th century until the 1970s or 80s. During that century there are three major time periods of change in women’s history.
HC: As a woman, how do you feel about teaching your feminism class? Do you think it empowers you?
When I was in grad school there were enough people who said to me, “oh you’re a woman, you must be doing women’s history,” that I actively didn’t do women’s history. I thought there was a lot I could do that didn’t have to be defined by gender. I wrote my Master’s thesis on gender, and did a lot of reading and work on it when I was in grad school. Now I incorporate it into my classes no matter what; you can’t do good social and cultural history without gender.
There was a need to focus an entire class on feminism. It was something students really wanted. In class, we do talk about the present. There are conversations that we have around the issues that remain for women today. Yeah, I do think that it is a place where I can discuss the reality of being a female academic too.
HC: What do you think people need to know about gender equality?
As a historian, I think it is important to know that it does have a long and changeable history and the way we understand it today isn’t the way it was always understood. Feminism isn’t a bad word. It doesn’t apply a whole bunch of expectations on a person. It really is just about equality.
HC: How do think Her Campus is helping empower women’s writing?
I definitely think it is useful to have a venue to discuss issues that are relevant to you. As you move forward, it is a place for you to have positions of power and authority to see the reality of your fields and to give you concrete experience.