After a fantastic lecture about the “Woman Question” of the 19th century, Her Campus at UC Davis writers Mariana Huben and Kirsten Burrell met up with PhD student Bethany Qualls to talk about being a TA on campus and how her field of study applies to modern day.
Photo Credits: Mariana Huben
HC: Why are you studying at Davis?
B: I’ve been living in SF since 2008, went back to do a Master’s at San Francisco State, and liked it. I thought, “maybe I’ll do a PhD.” Davis was a really great fit; they called me to let me know which was awesome. It’s been really great. The English department is fabulous, really community-oriented, people work on stuff that I like to work on, and there’s a lot of support.
HC: What can you tell us about your general experiences as a grad student and a TA?
B: This is my second year as a grad student. I really dislike the quarter system. I think it’s really hard for grad students in particular. I can see why, for undergraduates and professors, it’s delightful, but it’s a little crazy. I really like being a TA; I’ve taught a long time. People get to come to me and talk to me about ideas I love working and helping people with their writing, so that’s a big thing that I’m really into. I’m a very silly, interactive teacher, so I do a lot of pairs and small-group stuff, getting everyone talking to each other. My fellow grad students are delightful, my cohort is really cool, and everybody is really different. Plus, the department as a whole is pretty mixed, as far as what people do. Time periods, theoretical focuses, and topical focuses are also really mixed, which is, I think, on purpose because it would be boring if everyone did the same thing.
Photo Credits: Mariana Huben
HC: Your specialty is the Prostitution Narrative. How did that happen?
B: Yeah, that’s what I do! I got into this whole gig, interested in how 18th century novels of marriage and prostitution work. Reading prostitute narratives is really fun because a lot of them are sexy. Something that I noticed in the work I was doing on my master’s thesis was the discourse and the reasons women are saying in these narratives (regardless of who authored them), that they are prostitutes. They are still very similar, eerily so, to what sex workers in the past thirty years have said about why they choose to do sex work and what sex work gives them that other job opportunities don’t. It’s like, “Well, shoot. There have been a few centuries between the early 1700s and 2016, and not much difference in how we talk about women’s virtue and female value.” I move forward in time, not backwards. I think it’s important to think about the SlutWalk [according to Wikipedia, “a transnational movement of protest marches calling for an end to rape culture”] or these other movements as ways to empower women to be sexual beings and to have agency. They’re fighting a lot of discourse that isn’t just twenty years old; it’s hundreds of years old. The weight of Anglo-American-European culture, which is really influential today, isn’t easily put aside. Knowing that there is a past, but also knowing what that past looks like, is really important to think about. “Okay, what’s with this savior complex? What’s the context then? What’s the context now?” There are some changes, but also some weird similarities, and then that gets into deeper, bigger issues.
HC: Do you have any tips for writer’s block?
B: If you write on the regular, and you write at a set time, that helps a lot. Play around with trying to write at different times of the day. For me, when I’m having writer’s block, I take out paper. Think about how it is easier to revise than produce, so if you get something – anything – on paper, you will be able to fix it, or change it later. Another thing I’ve done for writer’s block, more for school project stuff, is find a giant whiteboard, and map out ideas. Put all the things on the board and see how they relate.