The black-and-white photograph hangs underneath the window, resting against the wood-paneled wall of Margaret Himley’s third-floor office in the Tolley Building.
The photograph is simple, a close-up of a street sign. Gay St, the sign reads.
In a sense, the world Margaret Himley has created at Syracuse University is SU’s own Gay Street. It is a safe space for members of the queer-identified community to be open and honest, to talk about who they are and where they want to go. But it is also a two-way street, open to allies and non-queer-identified people who want to learn about queer-identified people, and vice versa. It has stop signs all along the route to allow time for discussion, inquiry and exploration. It has yield signs to ensure fairness and respect and encourage proceeding with care. But most importantly, the road is always well lit and navigable. Himley makes sure of that.
Himley, who has taught writing and rhetoric at SU for the past 28 years, co-founded the LGBT Studies minor five years ago. She said the path to the inception of the minor evolved naturally, starting with her position as co-chair of University Senate’s LGBT concerns committee. From there, she discovered a huge interest from students and staff in an official LGBT studies program.
“There were all these queer kids who wanted to minor and take courses where they could learn about themselves and people like them, and staff from all different disciplines who wanted to teach queer-focused courses but had no program to offer them in,” she said.
Himley, who identifies as LGBT herself, teamed up with Andrew London, a sociology professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, to create the minor, which offers courses in five colleges and 11 departments. In doing so, she substantially widened the LGBT community already established on campus by the LGBT Resource Center, Pride Union and other LGBT-friendly organizations, by giving a place for students of all sexual orientations to explore gender and sexuality in an academic setting.
“We wanted to have LGBT topics infused throughout the curriculum,” Himley said. “We didn’t want it to be a specialized program for the tragically sad gay people – our constant goal is to make the program an interesting and exciting exploration of sexuality.”
Each semester, Himley teaches one or two courses in the minor. This semester, she teaches QSX 111: Queer Histories, Communities and Politics. On a Tuesday afternoon last week, 48 students from all sexual orientations, class standings and majors filtered into a basement classroom in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management for class. As they came in, sipping Starbucks iced lattes and bottles of Mountain Dew, Himley personally walked up to each student, greeted him or her by name and handed the student an attendance card to sign.
One student approached Himley to tell her she had to leave class early for a job interview. Not a problem, Himley told her. The student turned to go back to her seat, but Himley touched her arm to stop her. “How’s the job hunt going?” she asked, and the student’s face lit up as she chatted with her professor for a couple of minutes.
After the student returned to her seat, Himley turned around and almost bumped into another student who was angrily waving her BlackBerry around.
“Oh my God, Margaret, listen to this,” the student cried, and then read a passage she typed into her phone from a textbook that discussed sexuality offensively.
“That’s appalling, it sounds like something from the 1950’s,” Himley said of the textbook passage. “Are you complaining to the teacher?”
“I think I’m gonna wait until after the course ends,” the student replied with a grin.
“Yeah, wait ‘til you get your A,” Himley said, laughing.
This approachability is part of what makes Himley so easy to work with, said Benjamin Zender, an administrative staffer who is pursuing a writing degree at SU and has taken classes with her. He said most teachers who are as excited and passionate about their work as Himley is would be wishy-washy on requirements, but she does not make her class an academically smooth ride. She has high standards for her students and makes them work, but she keeps them engaged and interested every step of the way.
“For a grad seminar I took with her, we had to produce a 20-page research paper, which is the biggest paper I’ve encountered in a while,” Zender said. “She expected a lot, but she also helped me expand what I thought I could achieve. I think of myself as a scholar and an author now in ways I didn’t before.”
But Himley’s concerns for her students do not dead-end with their academic lives.
“She’s one of the strongest support systems I have in the world right now,” Zender said. “She just, like, got me on track with what I want in life. That sounds over the top, but it’s true.” He paused for a second, then added: “She changed my life.”
Whether Himley is changing her students’ lives or supporting students whose lives are changing, she plays a significant role in her students’ growth. When Allie Forbes, a junior psychology and sociology major and LGBT studies minor first came to college, she had not yet come out as a lesbian. She came out as bisexual in October of her sophomore year and then came out as a lesbian in January, two months after breaking up with her then-boyfriend.
“I talked with Margaret numerous times throughout the coming-out process – about breaking up with my boyfriend at the time, about my family, everything,” she said.
Forbes also leaned on Himley when a topic they were discussing in class hit too close to home for her. While the class discussed allies of the LGBT community, Forbes recalled a conversation she had in high school. She and two friends were discussing another girl’s boyfriend, who is post-operational male transgender.
“They were talking about trans people in a really derogatory way, but I didn’t know enough about trans people at the time to say anything, “ Forbes said. “After I took Margaret’s class and learned more about it, I was mortified that I didn’t say anything.”
Forbes said she sent Himley a panicked email, and Himley responded immediately with open appointment times. Forbes met with her the next week, and “she totally calmed me down. She made me realize there are times you can step in and times you can’t. I’ll use that lesson for the rest of my life,” she said.
But Himley doesn’t drive her students down their paths of self-discovery – she just steers them in the direction they don’t know they’re already headed. Samantha Staub, a graduate student who finished her undergraduate degree in 2009 with a psychology major and LGBT studies minor, attended SU Abroad’s Madrid program the summer after her junior year specifically so she could take a queer studies class Himley was teaching there.
While in Madrid, she met with Himley to talk about the final paper she was writing on queer visibility.
“I was kind of just writing this paper and didn’t really know where I was going with it,” Staub said. “But Margaret read my work and was like, this is a theory. You’ve been working and living in this realm and you’ve created a theory. She saw my work in a totally different way and reflected it back to me so that I could understand what I’d accomplished.”
Andrew London, the co-chair of the LGBT studies program, said that almost every student who takes a class with Himley feels that level of respect for her.
“They learn so much from Margaret,” he said. “Even though they’re working hard, there’s a lot of pleasure in that.”
He said that level of respect exists among the faculty in the program as well, and that Himley has formed deep friendships with her colleagues.
“She’s really fun to work with,” London said. “We work so hard, but we laugh a lot and always make sure we celebrate when we get things done.”
He added that he doubted the LGBT studies program would exist without her. He said he never could have done it alone, and the brilliance and energy it takes to create and sustain a program that reaches across so many disciplines is a rare find.
“Everyone she works with looks up to her in so many ways,” London said. “She’s just a great teacher.”
And part of what makes Himley a great teacher becomes evident during Tuesday’s class. After a student group makes a presentation about gay rights in Serbia, Himley, seated among her students, raises her hand at the same time as another student in the audience. The presenters call on Himley, but she defers to the student.
“He can go first,” she says, leaning closer so she can hear the question. After he’s done, Himley says excitedly, “Sorry, I have two questions. I can’t help myself, it’s just so interesting.”
Her students smile. One kid typing on his iPhone drops it back into his bag, and a girl clicking through Facebook photos closes her laptop. The class looks at Himley expectantly. Because they know – she’s taking the same journey that they are. Her hands are on the steering wheel, but they are hitting the gas and the brakes, slowing down for the curves and the scenery that piques their interest. Their ultimate destinations may be different, but their roads have permanently intersected with Himley’s.