What I do for a living

In the late 1990s, people would ask me what I did for a living.

“I’m getting my Ph.D. in English,” I’d tell them.

They’d immediately say, “Oh, I’d better watch what I say around you!  My grammar is terrible.”

I have to roll my eyes even typing that in.  I found that so annoying!  I wanted to say, “Yes, policing other people’s grammar is what I love most in the world.  I’m just standing here waiting for you to mix a modifier.”  You don’t get your Ph.D. in English to study grammar!  I was studying literature and culture--in particular the writings of 19th century American women.

These days when I tell people that I’m director of Women’s and Gender Studies, I get a very different set of reactions, which usually consist of one of the following:

• “Women’s what?”
• “Oh, good, now you can tell me what makes women tick.”
• “I read Jane Austen/ Emily Dickinson/ Virginia Woolf in college.”
• Blank stare.

People may have a distorted understanding of what it means to study English, but many of them have no clue at all about Women’s and Gender Studies.  So here’s some information, in case you’d like to know, from the College of Charleston’s WGS website,

Women's and Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary field of scholarship devoted to the study of women and gender in different cultures and time periods.

Women's and Gender Studies emerged in response to the recognition that the academic disciplines have studied human life by investigating men's lives. A primary aim of Women's and Gender Studies is to include women in our body of knowledge by examining women's writings, by researching women's roles and status in various societies, and by emphasizing women's cultural and historic contributions.

 WGS students get to take courses from departments across the campus, courses like Women and Politics, Gender and Communication, Psychology of Gender, and Human Sexuality.  They learn to think on their feet and to defend their opinions (and to be open to changing their minds).  They learn to think critically about controversial issues and about the world they live in.

And I get to work with outstanding students and faculty every day and talk about women and gender.  I have a great job.