Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

WGS MAJOR, Kalina Chazin-Knox, in regards to Dr. Purvis’s ENG/WGS 371 that she is enrolled in.

 

The following is a short interview with a Women’s Gender Studies major, Kalina Chazin-Knox, in regards to Dr. Purvis’s ENG/WGS 371 that she is enrolled in.

Ryan: Thank you again for agreeing to do this interview. I wanted to start by giving you a bit of background. Dr. Purvis’s course is a brand new course designed to bring together upper-level students from two different majors or minors, English and WGS. My interview questions today will focus on this design and your own particular experience in the course as having enrolled either for English or WGS. You are a WGS major, correct?

Kalina: Yes, I am.

Ryan: Did you know prior to today that ENG 371 is cross-listed as WGS 371, and that the course itself is designed to meet two different groups of students: English and WGS majors and minors?

Kalina: Yes, I did know that.

Ryan: Did you happen to speak to a professor when signing up, or did you just see it listed on the website?

Kalina: Yeah, it’s one of the requirements for a WGS major, or is an optional requirement, so that’s why I took it. I didn’t even think about it being cross-listed until I got to the first day of class, and there were some people there for English and some people there for WGS. But I think it’s a really cool concept.

Ryan: Yeah, I had a similar experience with that too, where it didn’t really occur to me until I got there. I have a couple of other questions here that draw on what I just asked. When a professor plans a new upper-level literature course like WGS 371, they’ll be thinking about the course content and the materials they want students to read. Thinking about both course readings in ENG 371, but also Dr. Purvis’s approach to these materials, in what way would you say this course feels familiar to you, that it’s similar to other WGS courses you’ve taken here at UMaine?

Kalina: We’ve talked about some figures that are familiar. We’ve talked about Judith Butler – though we haven’t read their work yet. We’ve talked about some people that I know of because of other WGS classes. We also analyze the stuff that we read with gender in mind a lot of the time. Or it comes up a lot – because gender comes up in everything – a lot. And I think because we have both English majors and WGS majors in the class, we think about things differently. We have a lot of different majors, actually, we have Philosophy and Psychology, so having all of those perspectives together – This is really a discussion-based class, because Dr. Purvis gives us the readings, but then we just talk about it and our interpretations of it, so I think having all of those perspectives makes it what it is, and makes it a good class.

Ryan: We also touch on Gloria Anzaldua, who is someone she mentions a lot, and they’re actually a massive WGS writer as well, despite their focus on Border Studies. How would you say it’s been, being in a class with so many disparate majors covering such a topic? Has it been different from WGS classes you’ve taken, has it been about the same?

Kalina: I think WGS as a department has a wide spread of what people are combining it with, so it’s been sort of similar in that way. But this class seems especially diverse in the majors that we have, and like I said earlier, I think it really has a good impact on the diversity of the perspectives that we get. People bring in stuff they learn in their different classes, like I’ve brought some stuff from Psych in, some of the Philosophy majors have brought that in, and the English majors. So I think it’s really interesting too.

Ryan: Would you say there’s a really rich discussion?

Kalina: Yeah, definitely.

Ryan: Is there anything in this class that has been different from other WGS courses you may have taken before? Anything that stands out as being the exception?

Kalina: We don’t have much writing to produce, we mostly have reading to analyze and talk about, so we don’t have as many individual projects. It’s mostly just in-class discussion, and that’s a difference.

Ryan: So it’s less writing-focused, more analyzing the reading and the theory and discussing it in class. Would you say that’s caused any difficulties in the class, or that it’s made the class easier to approach?

Kalina: I’d say both. I enjoy the discussions and I think they help me learn, but also I like having stuff to do when I’m not in class, when I’m not reading, I like to process it. Homework helps me do that. So having just the discussion and no other projects I’m working on on my own is a motivational damper. I feel like I spend less time with the material.

Ryan: It being all in class does hamper putting it all together with written theory?

Kalina: Yeah.

Ryan: Okay. So, English and WGS students bring a lot of different skills and background knowledge to the conversation. Thinking about the course makeup now, what skills and approaches have you seen our colleagues bring in from disparate majors that have improved the conversation?

Kalina: Especially yesterday, we had our guest speaker, and he was talking about his poetry book and the nonfiction that he writes. I think a lot of the English majors had good input and questions about the form he was writing with. They’re definitely a lot more insightful about the meaning behind words than I feel like I am, not from an English background. So I think they’ve really contributed to how I think about the works from an English perspective rather than through gender or through my psychology background.

Ryan: Speaking on philosophy, I’ve realized that I’ve been taking a lot of non-direct approaches to it. The thing I’ve found most interesting is our discussion of borders not as physical things but metaphorical divisions. So that makes a lot of sense. What, in turn, do you think your colleagues from English are adding to the conversation? Are they bringing in any skills or approaches that might usefully enhance how you approach future WGS courses? And if so, what?

Kalina: Analyzing poetry and prose the way an English major thinks of it rather than how I would think of it as someone outside that major. I haven’t been formally educated in college about English, but I think listening to my classmates and their perspective on that is really going to help me with analysis.

Ryan: So it’s given you a newfound acknowledgement that language can play a big part?

Kalina: Yeah.

Ryan: That’s definitely been the thing that I’ve noticed the most. The discourse on language and storytelling has been very important in analyzing these themes and theorems and so on and so forth.

Kalina: Also we talk about language a lot, and not just English. We’ve read a lot of things that are English and Spanish – a combination of both of them – or translations. And translations have been a big part of this class, and I think that having English majors there helps me with understanding how important it is that it is a translation, and how translations are different from a raw text. And also translators do different things with texts than the original authors do. I think that’s a really interesting thing that I’ve learned from all these perspectives.

Ryan: Is there anything else you’d like to share? We’d love an example of a specific text or conversational point you’ve encountered in WGS 371 that has really enhanced your experience in the course. Anything you’d like to share that’s improved your experience.

Kalina: That’s a good question. A lot of the things that I’ve taken away from this class are the stories we tell when we’re together in class. Everyone has different perspectives to bring, and we all have personal stories or things that relate to the text that we’ve brought. I think a lot of the things that my classmates have told me and related to the text have enhanced my own knowledge a lot.

 

We thank Kalina for her time and input in regards to this effort to blend disciplines within the English and Women’s Gender Studies fields.