If you have ever gone to a Political Science or a Women’s and Gender Studies event you may have ran into Dr. Laurie Naranch. This amazing professor here at Siena has her door open to anyone, so come sit down on her cozy couch and learn a bit about her.
Hometown: Round Lake, New York
Years at Siena: 10 years
HCS: What is your favorite book or your favorite author?
LN: That is a hard thing to decide. When I was younger, of course I loved Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. And who doesn’t like Little Women by Louisa May Alcott? Now I find myself returning to writers like Hannah Arendt and W.E.B Dubois. I like to read great American political thinkers on the question about gender and race and belonging. I still love fiction – I just don’t get a chance to read fiction as much as I’d would like, though I do occasionally teach fiction in my Political Theory class. I taught The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, it’s a nice break from some of the other bits of writing and you still get out some of the political ideas and the questions of gender equality and worries about authoritarianism.
HCS: What is your favorite activity off campus?
LN: That’s so hard too. I like to do a lot of things so I don’t have one thing. I like to go to the movies, I like to go sailing. I like to garden and hiking. I like to travel – I like to be on the move, I guess you could say!
HCS: Where did you go for undergraduate and graduate school?
LN: I did my undergrad degree at the College of Wooster in Ohio which is a school that emphasized undergraduate research. When you are a junior, everyone has to do a thesis and when you are a senior, you have to a thesis for the whole year. I think that’s what put me on the track to get a PhD. I got my PhD. at Rutgers.
HCS: What made you want to become a professor?
LN: Passion. I was between going to law school because I was a political science major and Women’s Studies minor, and fiddled around with biology. But I was between law school and grad school and just felt more passionate about learning more about politics on possession and dispossession around the questions of gender, race, and democracy. And I was a good student.
HCS: What is your favorite class to teach?
LN: Every class has its own pleasures, but I do love upper-level classes because the students are more independent and doing their own work. So I do love the Human Rights class, Women and Politics, and I love being able to teach Film and Politics. I would like to offer Film and Politics again soon. If people lobby me for it, I will teach it sooner rather than later.
HCS: Are there any new events or classes coming up in the Political Science Department?
LN: There are a couple of things. For me, I haven’t gotten the chance to teach Film and Politics; I am developing a course on the Politics of Clothing as a way of looking at free speech, gender questions, political belonging, class issues and the politics of the hoodie. Also, I do want to go back to my Disaster and Dystopia class to theorize the relationship between human technology and nature. So I’m hoping to have that as a CAN course. I mentioned my interest in biology before, I was a bio tutor in undergrad and I thought I would take more of a biological track. But I’ve always been interested in questions about the human-technological world, which is a huge issue in terms of environmental sustainability and just how we think about human beings and the world we live in. It’s a deeply ethical topic. I taught that course once before as a special topics course and I would like to have the chance to do it again.
HCS: Any activities you are involved in on campus and off campus?
LN: I’m the faculty advisor for the HeforShe club, which is so exciting. I do a lot of planning for speakers here on campus, and I’m the chair of the political science department and director of the Women’s Studies minor, soon to be the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality minor. And I’m involved with some local activities, whether it’s clean up day or something in the village like the community garden.
HCS: Have you published anything recently?
LN: I have an article on Sojourner Truth, the 19th century abolitionist and women’s rights activist, coming out in a book through Rutledge Press on 51 key feminist thinkers. Then I’m writing something on our Topic Living Philosopher, Adriana Cavarero. So that’s most traditional of my political theory, political philosophy writing.
HCS: What made you get into political science?
LN: Anger. I first became interested in politics because I became quite angry with the corruption I saw in my hometown and my frustration with class inequalities. Anger is a powerful emotion. It can be destructive in politics but also productive in terms of a motivation to understand and improve things that are unequal and unfair. Ways in which we really deny the democratic possibility in our collective lives together.
HC: What is your favorite area of politics to study?
LN: All politics fascinate me for different reasons, but my own research centers on gender and politics, democratic theory, and popular culture and representation. I tend to be in those areas.
HCS: I ask a lot of professors this, but have your students inspired you?
LN: Oh yeah, all the time. Because it could be something that one of the students said in class that makes you think of one of the articles or ideas differently. It could be something that students do in terms of the activism on campus, the leadership qualities. Students are inspiring all the time for their courage of thinking and action; the amazing things students do, like our Symposium Students presenting in front of this world-famous philosopher and they’re so calm. I’m really inspired by the activism and public service students display and how students so often can be so thoughtful. Siena students, at your best, are pretty engaged and care about the world.