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“We can’t impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.” - Donella H. Meadows

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Charter Gonzag’s Journal of Schoalrship and Opinion 2025-2026 Vol. 63. Editor-in-Chief Assistant Editor Assitant Editor Assistant Editor Copy Editor Copy Editor Scientific Writing Editor Graphic Designer

Kevin Pinkelman Morgan Perron Jolene Henrikson Jack Champlin Liz Padrnos Eloise Medberry Ashlyn Brown Audrey O’Donnell

Charter is a publication of the Gonzaga University Student Media Board. All questions and comments regarding Charter can be directed to: charter@zagmail.gonzaga.edu All contributions to Charter are created and designed by Students, Faculty, Staff, and alumni of Gonzaga University. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the Charter staff, the Media Board, or Gonzaga University. All Content © 2026 Gonzaga University 502 E. Boone Ave. Spokane, Washongton 99258 Epigraph Credit: Donella H. Meadows is an American environmental scientist, educator, and writer.

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Charter Gonzaga’s Journal of Scholarship and Opinion

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Letter From the Editor Dear Reader, Thank you for taking the time to open this book, read this letter, and explore this collection of phenomenal scholarship and opinion authored by students. My vision for Charter is one which authentically reflects the entire Gonzaga community, so I hope that you see part of yourself in this book. The theme for this year’s edition of Charter is “systems.” I was particularly excited for this theme because of its applicability to all academic disciplines. The way the field of biology handles systems is wholly different than how the fields of sociology or literature understand systems. Universally, I believe an understanding of systems recognizes the intrinsic connections between various parts. If we are to think like Aristotle, we can appreciate that any system is greater than the sum of its parts. The production and publication of Charter is a marvelous example of a system. Charter would not exist but for the work of student authors, the publication company, the Student Media department, faculty across all disciplines, and the Charter editorial and design staff. Charter can only thrive when each component of the greater system is in alignment. I encourage you to flip to the “Acknowledgements” section at the end of this book to recognize and appreciate the collective effort required to publish this edition of Charter.

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In reviewing countless Charter submissions, my conception of our theme has only grown. I have come to see the political systems that dictate our nation’s governance, how systems of knowledge influence the research process, the role that gender systems play in literature and life, and how systems of power have been, and still are, used to oppress marginalized people. We exist within systems, regardless of our feelings towards those systems. My understanding of our theme has also been deeply shaped by the sociopolitical events, and zeitgeist, of our time. In the past year, we have witnessed systemic violence against immigrants across the United States. Our international systems have failed as the state of Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza, leaving over 70,000 Palestinians dead. There have been great advancements in the medical field, as researchers continue to understand human systems on a deeper level. The inauguration of Gonzaga’s President Katia Passerini has triggered systemic change across all parts of campus. Systems implicate everything, and everything implicates systems. At times, I find myself adopting an overly systemic perspective and struggling to give due focus to micro-level analysis. This is particularly relevant when it comes to advocating for social change. It can be daunting to see the flaws in governing social systems that feel too vast to fix, or even conceptualize. To create change, we must understand our position within a greater system and recognize the connections we have to other individuals. One may

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struggle to create systemic change, but a collective certainly can. While you are encouraged to explore this book in any order, I hope that the different sections can guide your reading experience. In the “Creating” section, you will see how different systems, and their parts, are constructed, developed, and defined. In the “Intersecting” section, the pieces explore how the intersection of identities, concepts, and components is fundamental to any system. Finally, the “Reckoning” section offers an examination of how to wrestle with the existing systems that define so much of our life. As you read, I hope you are moved and educated by the writing in Charter. I urge you to reflect on the systems within your life and to interrogate your role in those systems. I genuinely hope you enjoy reading these pieces as much as I did and, in doing so, recognize the outstanding writing of Gonzaga students. With all my appreciation, Kevin Pinkelman

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Contents Creating Beauty 14 Beyond By Erin Roney

Not the Painting but the Canvas: Cinema and the Mystery of Selfhood By Caleb McCullough

The Philosphy of Pleasure in Cavendish’s Convent

42 By Jamieson McHenry

The Systems of Theatre: An Interview with Dr. Blake Edwards Interview by Jack Champlin

Flipping the Script: New Perspectives in Justin Audibert’s Production of The Taming Of the Shrew By Kayla May Chongco

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Remedios Varo Surrealism as an Avenue to Relcaim Feminine Power By Sequoia Barger

Intersecting 92

Evolving Epistemologies: An Analysis of Feminist Knowledge Building By Jamieson McHenry

Beyond the Male Model: 106 Rethinking Autism Spectrum Disorder By Carmela Martucci Coseo

An Interview with Dr. Sara

114 Diaz

Interview by Liz Padrnos

as Social Resistance 130 Comedy By Mia Fraley

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Cold War Constructions of Masculinity in Giovanni’s 140 Room and The Left Hand Of Darkness By Grace Applegate

Reckoning The Maga Machine

162 By Sydney Severo

Androcentrism in the Catholic Church:

180 An Interview with Dr. Megan McCabe Interview by Jolene Henrikson

Leave the Light On: Exploring 192 Memory as a Site of Resistance By Kira 森 Bifone

The Myth of Neutrality: 106 Constitutional Evolution By Jack Kashork

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Ecosystems: An Interview 216 with Dr. Annika Rose-Person Interview by Ashlyn Brown

An Eye for an Eye: Sytems of Discrimination Inflicted upon 226 The Tejano Community as “deserved punishment” for Santa Anna’s 1836 Invasion By Nicholas Hylen

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“We must recognize that any revolution must begin with thought, and how we imagine a new world, with how we reconstruct our relationships with one another, with unleashing our desire and building a new future in the basis of creativity rather than rationality.” – Robin D.G. Kelley

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Creating

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Beyond Beauty By Erin Roney Once upon a time, fairy tales spun yarns of damsels in distress and villainous witches, but as society has evolved, so have our stories. Central to many of these classic tales are the archetypes of the “good girl” and the “bad girl.” The “good girl” is typically characterized by traits such as obedience, modesty, and nurturing, reflecting societal expectations of femininity that align with patriarchal ideals. In Critical Theory Today, Lois Tyson provides a definition of the “good girl” archetype; “[S]he’s modest, unassuming, self-sacrificing, and nurturing” (Tyson 86). The “bad girl” defies these norms and is often portrayed as independent, rebellious, and threatening to established order. “Men sleep with ‘bad girls,’” Tyson writes, “but they don’t marry them” (86). Sleeping Beauty (1959) introduced viewers to Princess Aurora, a girl who was blessed with beauty, grace, and obedience, while also presenting a villain of dark powers and a vengeful heart: Maleficent. Aurora embodies the ideal “good girl” through her passive acceptance of fate and unwavering virtue, while Maleficent exemplifies the “bad girl” with her rebellion against social order and desire for power. However, Maleficent (2014) uses a feminist framework to reimagine these roles, attempting to break free from the restrictive “good girl/bad girl” binary. By presenting a more nuanced portrayal of female characters, Maleficent challenges traditional cultural norms. It disrupts the

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“good girl/bad girl” narrative, instead highlighting women’s multifaceted nature. In Sleeping Beauty, Briar Rose’s character embodies the “good girl” archetype by fulfilling passivity and obedience. Rose’s happiness is explicitly tied to a man she just met, as reflected in her exclamation, “[T]his is the happiest day of my life. Everything’s so wonderful. Just wait till you meet him” (Sleeping Beauty 38:14-38:20). When it is later revealed that Rose is Princess Aurora, instead of being elated at discovering her identity, her primary concern is the unavoidable separation from the man in the woods. This reaction shows Aurora’s limited personal ambition and highlights how her sense of self is predominantly tied to the ideal of romantic love. Further, Aurora’s limited speech often revolves around the actions of others rather than expressing her own desires. She is very passive within the narrative, displaying a lack of agency in critical situations. This lack of agency is a vital aspect of her character, as it demonstrates how the “good girl” role restricts female characters to passivity, leaving them dependent on male characters for their happiness and fulfillment. As Lois Tyson notes, “[p]edestals are small and leave women very little room to do anything but fulfill the prescribed role” (Tyson 86). The pedestal functions as a metaphor for the narrow, ornamental space women are allowed to occupy, valued more for staying in place than for acting with autonomy. Thus, by having Aurora consistently act in response to others rather than on her own initiative, the film perpetuates the notion that women should be compliant

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and reliant on the figures around them. In the film’s culmination, where Aurora is awakened by Philip’s kiss, it is not a question of whether she will marry him, but when. She has not been given her “happily ever after” through her own actions but through the intervention of a male hero, and it is him that she must repay. This exemplifies Tyson’s assertion: “[A] beautiful, sweet young girl... is rescued (for she is incapable of rescuing herself) from a dire situation by a dashing young man who carries her off to marry him and live happily ever after” (85). Aurora’s ending had already been laid out for her the moment the audience was made aware of her engagement to Prince Phillip when she was just a baby. This predetermined fate underscores the lack of agency afforded to her character and highlights the broader pattern of fairy tales that confine “good girl” characters to passive roles in their own stories. Ultimately, there was nothing Aurora could do to change her fate; the restrictions of her role left no room for heroics on her part, reinforcing the absurd notion that sticking to the values of obedience and submissiveness towards men will provide a woman with her happy ending. Maleficent’s character serves as a foil to Aurora’s “good girl” qualities, showcasing the traits of the “bad girl.” Before Maleficent even appears on screen, the audience is already prepared to view her as “all bad.” In the fairies’ discussion about why Maleficent isn’t invited to Aurora’s christening ceremony, Fauna’s remark, “Well she can’t be all bad,” is swiftly countered by Flora’s assertion, “Oh, yes she can!” (Sleeping Beauty 11:18-11:23). This dialogue

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firmly prepares audience members to anticipate Maleficent’s character as one that can only embrace evil, leaving no room for interpretation. Maleficent’s lack of empathy and relational warmth further alienates her from the “good girl” virtues that are presented within Aurora. Fauna states that Maleficent is a creature that “[d]oesn’t know anything about love, or kindness, or the joy of helping others” (12:50-12:55). Unlike in Maleficent, where her backstory is explored in depth to provide motivation and complexity, the original Sleeping Beauty offers no such context, rendering her character more one-dimensional and less sympathetic. This denies her any qualities that might humanize her. Neither does she try to humanize herself by attempting to disprove the assumptions people have of her. Maleficent’s self-proclaimed title as “The mistress of all evil” not only solidifies her status as the “bad girl,” but also reflects her internalization of society’s expectations (Sleeping Beauty 51:11-12). She knows that they expect no better from her, so she has expected no better from herself. As Tyson emphasizes, “‘Bad girls’ are used and then discarded because they don’t deserve better, and they probably don’t even expect better” (Tyson 86). Maleficent’s acceptance of her evil persona suggests that she has come to believe in the inevitability of society’s view of her. The narrative implies that she has stopped expecting or striving for any form of redemption or acceptance. Her understanding of herself is shaped by the expectations of those around her, causing a self-fulfilling prophecy in which she embraces the very evil she is accused of. In the end, as a “bad girl”

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who defies societal norms and embodies rebellion, she is not someone Phillip—or society at large—sees as worthy of love, marriage, or salvation. Instead, Maleficent is confined to being the villain, an obstacle to the “good girl’s” happiness. Phillip’s willingness to kill her without hesitation reflects the broader cultural narrative that positions “bad girls” as threats to the social order that must be eliminated to restore balance. Maleficent’s separation from the traditional romantic ideal makes her expendable. She is not a damsel to be saved but a danger to be destroyed. Unlike the one-dimensional villain depicted in Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent (2014) provides a deeply humanizing backstory for its titular character, inviting viewers to reconsider the simplistic and confining “bad girl” archetype. The film opens by introducing the audience to a young Maleficent, full of innocence and committed to protecting the enchanted Moors. Maleficent soon meets Stefan, who is caught trespassing in the Moors. When she lets him go without reprimand from the other fairies, a friendship forms between them. Maleficent’s relationship with Stefan shows her ability to trust and love, illuminates that she is not born evil, that there is not a singular ending for her character. Their friendship deepens over time, and on Maleficent’s sixteenth birthday, Stefan gifts her with a “true love’s kiss” (Maleficent 8:03). The rose-colored glasses of love are quickly shattered as Stefan leaves Maleficent to seek out power. He finds himself the personal servant to the King who is determined to take over the Moors. Maleficent becomes the sole barrier between humans and faeries,

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and the object of all the King’s anger. Gravely wounded in battle, the King commands his closest advisors: “Kill the winged creature. Avenge me, and upon my death you will take the crown” (15:00-15:10). Stefan, overhearing this conversation, is driven by his thirst for power, and exploits Maleficent’s love for him to get close to her. Though he cannot bring himself to kill her, he commits an equally heart-wrenching act: stealing her wings. This pivotal moment is not just about personal betrayal, but reveals a broader, more insidious dynamic. As Simone de Beauvoir points out, the supposed “advantages” women gain in their relations with men are not genuine benefits, but the limited rewards offered to those who accept their position as the Other (Beauvoir 1269). Stefan’s actions, driven by self‑interest rather than love, exploit Maleficent. By treating her affection as a resource to be mined, Stefan reduces her to the very status de Beauvoir critiques: a woman whose value lies in objectification and what she can provide for a man. Stefan’s ambition thus enacts the logic of othering, stripping Maleficent of identity and agency so that she exists only in relation to his rise. While Stefan gains power without sacrifice, Maleficent loses a core part of herself, illustrating how male ambition can reduce women to tools for advancement. Unlike the overly simplified characterization of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty as a “bad girl,” this string of events adds complexity to Maleficent’s character. It reimagines her villainous tendencies as a response to the manipulative and exploitative forces she has faced rather than as inherent parts of her identity. This dynamic

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challenges the traditional “good girl/bad girl” binary by demonstrating how external forces, rather than intrinsic nature, shape individuals. Maleficent’s relationship with Aurora further complicates her position on the spectrum between “good” and “bad,” illustrating the internal and external conflicts that define her character. Initially driven by a desire for revenge against King Stefan, Maleficent curses Aurora, with a sense of revenge fueling her actions. However, as Stefan begs for mercy, she creates a “loophole” in her curse: “The princess can be woken from her death sleep, but only by– true love’s kiss” (Maleficent 32:34-32:45). She presents the King with a paradox borne from her belief that true love does not exist because of Stefan’s treachery. The act of ensuring the curse’s ostensibly unbreakable nature is both a punishment for Stefan and a reflection of Maleficent’s own disillusionment. This cynicism is a defensive mechanism, a way to shield herself from further emotional pain. Maleficent’s bitterness and mistrust color her actions, making the curse a symbolic representation of her internal struggle and emotional turmoil, while also acting as a tool for revenge. But, even by adding a “loophole” to the curse, she hints at a lingering capacity for love and care. As Aurora grows, Maleficent finds herself watching over the young princess, initially in the intent of ensuring her curse’s fulfillment. Soon, Maleficent’s purpose for watching Aurora evolves as she takes on the role of Aurora’s silent protector, saving her from various dangers and ensuring her well-being (36:24-42:30). Aurora, in turn, becomes a symbol

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of hope and redemption for Maleficent. The girl’s unwavering belief in the goodness of the world and her genuine affection for the “Fairy Godmother” she believes Maleficent to serve as a catalyst for Maleficent’s emotional healing. Maleficent’s evolving bond with Aurora disrupts conventional gender norms by positioning a powerful woman not as a threat to be contained but as a caregiver whose strength and tenderness coexist. This dynamic not only underscores Maleficent’s complex nature but also illustrates how Maleficent’s relationship with Aurora cannot fit into the categories of “good” or “bad.” Aurora sees Maleficent as a kind and protective figure, recognizing the inherent goodness that has been buried beneath her cold exterior. Through this bond, viewers see Aurora beginning to break free from the confines of her “good girl” archetype, developing into a more nuanced and empowered character. Unlike Sleeping Beauty, where Briar Rose’s happiness is explicitly tied to a man she has just met, Aurora’s connection with Maleficent leads to a different kind of awakening. First, the audience gets to view Aurora outside of the confines of her sixteenth birthday. She is presented as a fully realized individual who had a complex childhood and strong relationships outside of Prince Phillip. When Aurora’s sixteenth birthday approaches, she has already developed a strong bond with Maleficent, whom she affectionately calls her “Fairy Godmother.” Instead of wanting to stay in the cabin to see the boy from the woods, Aurora expresses a desire to move to the Moors with Maleficent. She tells Maleficent, “I have

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a plan. When I’m older, I am going to live here in the Moors with you. Then we can look after each other” (Maleficent 57:50-57:57). Maleficent reassures her that she does not have to wait, and Aurora becomes ecstatic at the prospect of “sleep[ing] in a tree” and having “all the Fair People [as] her friends” (58:1358:18). Aurora’s development in this section of Maleficent is a departure from the typical “good girl” archetype. She demonstrates a level of independence and assertiveness that is more reflective of her actual age. Instead of conforming to the dominant narrative where a young girl’s main objective is to be with a man or to be obedient and submissive, Aurora seeks out her own path. When Aurora expresses her desire to live in the Moors with Maleficent, her wish is not driven by romantic aspirations but by a genuine connection and a sense of belonging. This underscores her autonomy and ability to make decisions based on her feelings and experiences rather than societal expectations. Aurora is just a child, and there is an innocence that does not need to be centered around the idea of a “hero” or a “prince charming” that will come to save her. By depicting Aurora stepping out of the passive role prescribed to her, Maleficent challenges the notion that female characters should be dependent on male figures for their happiness and fulfillment. In this way, Aurora’s characterization not only subverts and reimagines the traditional “good girl” role fulfilled by Briar Rose in Sleeping Beauty but highlights the power of female mentorship in fostering empowerment and independence. Just as Aurora’s transformation signifies her de-

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parture from the “good girl” archetype through her bond with Maleficent, Maleficent herself begins to transcend her “bad girl” persona, revealing a complex, multifaceted character beneath the villainous façade. Simone de Beauvoir notes that patriarchal narratives often flatten women who initially appear enigmatic, insisting that their mystery be resolved into something legible and contained. She argues that literature repeatedly fails to sustain the complexity of “mysterious” women, observing that “they can appear only at the beginning of a novel as strange, enigmatic figures; but unless the story remains unfinished they give up their secret in the end and they are then simply consistent and transparent persons” (Beauvoir 1270). Initially, Maleficent embodies the archetype of a “bad girl,” shrouded in darkness. However, as the story progresses, her character begins to break away from the confines of the villain. Maleficent’s narrative arc teeters between the want for vengeance or love, but comes to a close when she attempts to reverse the curse she placed on Aurora. Despite her powerful magic, she is unable to undo her own spell, for she declared it would, “[l]ast to the end of time! [And] no power on Earth [could] change it” (Maleficent 32:48-32:53). This failure drives her to seek out the boy from the woods, hoping there was a chance his kiss would awaken Aurora and break the curse. But Phillip had only met Aurora once, and there was only infatuation between them, not love. When he kisses her, she does not wake, so he leaves. In the climactic scene, Maleficent approaches Aurora, preparing to say her final goodbye. She confesses:

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I will not ask your forgiveness because what I have done to you is unforgivable. I was lost, in hatred and revenge. Sweet Aurora, you stole what was left of my heart. And now I have lost you forever. I swear, no harm will come to you, as long as I live. And not a day shall pass that I don’t miss your smile (1:15:50-1:16:40). This farewell is the moment where Maleficent’s transformation is complete. She is no longer lost within her revenge; she realizes that there is an avenue to healing, and hers was getting to know Aurora. Now her heart is open, but she had to lose something once again to find her way back. In a final act of selfless love, Maleficent kisses Aurora on the forehead, which miraculously breaks the curse. This twist subverts the traditional “true love’s kiss” trope, emphasizing that deep, platonic love can be just as powerful, if not more so, than romantic love. This moment also highlights the importance of female mentorship, as Maleficent’s guidance and care for Aurora lead to healing and transformation. It shows that maternal love is more powerful than it is perceived, but it also suggests that if the original Maleficent had been a mother, perhaps she would not have been so evil. This narrative choice reflects a broader commentary on the redemptive power of love and challenges the simplistic dichotomy of good versus evil, suggesting that even those deemed irredeemable can find a path to redemption through genuine human connections. Despite her heroic act of saving Aurora, Maleficent also takes King Stefan’s life, thus embodying the

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duality of a savior and a destroyer. She is both evil and good, vengeful and nurturing. By killing Stefan, Maleficent avenges her past and protects her future, making a bold statement about the multifaceted nature of vengeance and justice. Furthermore, the film’s revelation that Aurora is the narrator of her own story, unlike in Sleeping Beauty where a male voice recounts her tale, presents a significant shift in the story’s representation. Aurora’s narration reclaims the story as hers and attributes its happy ending to Maleficent. Aurora states, “In the end, my kingdom was not united by a hero or a villain, as the legend had predicted, but by one who was both hero and villain” (Maleficent 1:28:00-1:28:10). This shows Maleficent’s multiplicity, illustrating how she defies easy categorization. Maleficent has proven that she herself cannot and will not fit into the “good girl/bad girl” archetypes. There is not a simple binary that can capture the feminine being. As de Beauvoir writes, “a fundamental ambiguity marks the feminine being” (Beauvoir 1269). By presenting characters who exist in shades of gray rather than stark black and white, Maleficent offers a more nuanced portrayal of femininity, challenging viewers to embrace the complexity and ambiguity within feminine nature. In the 2014 Maleficent film, the characterizations of Aurora and Maleficent evolve significantly from their original portrayals in Sleeping Beauty, reflecting a shift over time towards more nuanced and complex roles beyond the traditional “good girl” and “bad girl” dichotomy. This reflects the broader societal shift towards understanding and embracing the

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multifaceted nature of femininity. By challenging the simplistic binaries of good and evil, Maleficent not only redefines the renowned characters of the original Sleeping Beauty film but offers a more empowering narrative for contemporary audiences. This evolution highlights the importance of revisiting and reinterpreting classic tales to reflect the diverse experiences and identities of women today, ultimately enriching the cultural landscape with more authentic and relatable stories.

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Works Cited Beauvoir, Simone de. “Myth and Reality.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch et al., 2nd ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2010, pp. 1265–1273. Maleficent. Directed by Robert Stromberg. Walt Disney Pictures, 2014. Sleeping Beauty. Supervised by Clyde Geronimi. Walt Disney Productions, 1959. Tyson, Lois. “Feminist Criticism.” Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, Routledge, London and New York, 2015, pp. 79–128.

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Not the Painting but the Canvas: Cinema and the Mystery of Selfhood By Caleb McCullough Film has a unique power to draw our attention to questions we might otherwise avoid. It does more than entertain; it reveals. Worlds fracture, characters unravel, and suddenly the solidity of identity begins to loosen. Some of the most powerful films don’t just depict selves in crisis—they act as mirrors, drawing us into a deeper philosophical and psychological question: what if our own identities are fictional constructions? At first glance, the self feels stable: the “I” behind thought and action, a sense of identity that endures from childhood to the present. Yet across philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, mysticism, and film, this assumption is repeatedly unsettled. Rather than a fixed essence, the self emerges as a construction shaped by memory, experience, and social conditioning. When films destabilize this construction, they do more than tell stories about fractured identities; they invite viewers to question the solidity of their own. This essay argues that many films expose the self not as a fundamental core, but as a layered construction—what I will later describe as a painting formed through experience. Beneath this self lies something more basic: the field of awareness in which identity, memory, and emotion appear. By dramatizing memory loss, false worlds, divided consciousness, and infinite versions of identity, films such as Memento, The Truman Show, Fight Club, Everything Every-

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where All at Once, and the television series Severance make the fragility of the self visible. Drawing on philosophy, psychology, phenomenology, and mysticism, I will show how these films illuminate a shared insight: while the contents of identity can fracture, dissolve, or multiply, the awareness in which they appear remains constant. The aim is not only to analyze film, but to follow where these stories point—toward a reconsideration of selfhood that loosens our attachment to the identities we inhabit and onto a more fundamental ground of experience. Constructed Self in Philosophy and Psychology

When I refer to the “self,” the “I,” or the “me,” I mean the familiar sense of being an individual: a person with a name, a personal history, memories, character traits, and social roles. This self typically feels stable—as though there is a fixed identity that persists through time and stands behind our thoughts and actions. Throughout this essay, I refer to this familiar identity as the painted self. The painted self is not an illusion or a mistake; it is a real and functional construction formed through memory, habit, social conditioning, and repeated experience. However, this self is constructed rather than fundamental. Beneath it lies the field of awareness or consciousness in which all experiences, thoughts, emotions, and identities appear. The central distinction of this essay is between the painting—the constructed sense of personal identity—and what I call the canvas—the awareness that remains constant while the contents

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of experience change. Think of this canvas as an infinite openness within which every experience—past, present, and future—unfolds. By “canvas,” I do not mean a separate metaphysical substance, but the minimal fact of awareness itself—the condition for any experience, identity, or interpretation to appear at all. There is only one canvas—awareness itself—but countless possible paintings, each shaped by the particular experiences that accumulate over a lifetime. This metaphor is not offered as an ontological thesis but as a conceptual model that clarifies the distinction between consciousness and the identities that arise within it. An image that helps clarify this distinction is that of an infinitely expansive canvas. By “canvas,” I do not mean a separate metaphysical substance, but the minimal fact of awareness itself—the condition for any experience, identity, or interpretation to appear at all. Imagine a newborn as a particular region on this canvas. From the moment of birth, experiences begin to accumulate like paint strokes: sights, sounds, words, rewards, punishments. Over time, these strokes layer upon one another, shaping how future experiences are interpreted, until the painting feels like the whole of who we are. When these strokes shift—when meanings change or assumptions are revised—it can feel as if one’s own identity is under existential threat. Each “paint stroke” represents a concrete experience: memories, beliefs, emotional associations, and habits that can be reinforced, altered, or reinterpreted as new experiences occur.

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This is why two children can have radically different experiences of the same event. If one child’s first encounter with a dog ends in terror, the stroke of paint correlating to fear will condition future experiences. Thus, through classical conditioning, dogs become associated with pain. Through operant conditioning, avoiding dogs becomes rewarded with safety. For another child, dogs might be painted in warm tones associated with affection and joy. The same neutral stimulus is filtered through different painted selves—that is, different configurations of memory, emotion, and expectations shaped by prior experience. These painted selves are not fixed; they can change as new layers are added. An identity such as “I am afraid of dogs,” once assumed permanent, reveals itself as contingent, constructed, and unstable. Christopher Nolan’s Memento dramatizes this fragility of identity. The film follows Leonard, a man unable to form new memories, who tattoos clues onto his body and collects Polaroids in an attempt to hold together a coherent sense of self. Without memory to bind and give coherence to the strokes of experience, Leonard’s identity fragments. As John Locke, a seventeenth-century philosopher, argued, personal identity depends on memory; without continuity of recollection, there is no stable ‘I’ (Locke 331). Modern neuroscience makes this point in newer terms. In a 2017 TED Talk, cognitive neuroscientist Anil Seth describes the self as a “controlled hallucination”—a predictive model the brain generates to stabilize and give coherence to experience (Seth

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00:02:45–00:03:10). The “controlled hallucination” model reframes the self not as something the brain discovers but something it continually assembles from prediction and correction. Similarly, neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga’s split-brain research shows how the brain invents a narrative “interpreter” to unify otherwise disjointed processes (Gazzaniga 112). What feels like a stable “me” is not a single inner entity, but the brain’s best ongoing construction—a stitched portrait assembled from many parts. Phenomenology sharpens this distinction by examining experience as it is lived prior to conceptual interpretations. The phenomenologist Edmund Husserl distinguishes consciousness from the contents that appear within it (Husserl 91), while the phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty locates selfhood within embodied perception rather than an abstract inner subject. (Merleau-Ponty 100-01). Both accounts echo what the canvas metaphor suggests: the painting— our beliefs, memories, habits—is not identical to the field of awareness in which they appear. The Truman Show offers a cinematic illustration of phenomenological self-disclosure. Truman’s selfhood has been constructed entirely through the staged experiences of his environment. When new brushstrokes appear that contradict the old—a falling stage light, a radio malfunction, the sight of his dead father—it sends ripples through Truman’s constructed world, causing his sense of self to unravel. When taken together, psychology, philosophy, and film converge to show that the self is not a solid core but a layered construction. Its apparent conti-

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nuity arises not from an unchanging agent but from the fragile coherence of memory, habit, and environment. When films destabilize that construction, they don’t merely depict personal crisis—they turn the mirror toward us, forcing us to ask whether the “I” we feel so certain about is any more stable than Truman’s carefully staged reality. Film Case Studies: Selfhood on Screen

Film is uniquely suited to reveal the fragility of selfhood because it does not merely tell us about a character’s crisis—it allows us to see and feel it. Narrative disruptions fracture identity before our eyes, and in witnessing that fracture, we are drawn back toward our own sense of self. Fight Club dramatizes this instability by externalizing identity itself. The film follows an unnamed narrator trapped in a hollow, consumerist existence, which gives rise to Tyler Durden—an alter-ego who embodies everything he represses. The revelation that they are the same person is not just a plot twist but an ontological lesson. Who he thought he was is not a unified core, but a construction stitched together from cultural scripts of masculinity, desire, and rebellion. The film invites us to ask how much of what we take to be our identity is similarly painted rather than fundamental. A different form of constructed identity appears in The Truman Show. Truman’s sense of self is shaped entirely by an environment designed to deceive him. Every friendship, memory, and belief is a carefully arranged painted stroke meant to sustain

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a role he never chose. When contradictions emerge, the coherence of this painted world begins to crack. The power of this film is that it stages the universal human condition: we, too, live inside self-constructs shaped by family, society, and culture. Truman’s eventual leap into the unknown is terrifying because it mirrors a possibility we all face—the risk of stepping beyond inherited roles and questioning the identities we have taken for granted. The television series Severance gives us an even more literal depiction of divided identity. In the show, workers undergo a procedure that splits their consciousness into two selves, the “Innie” who never leaves the office, and the “Outie” who never enters it. The “Innie” self never sleeps and never knows family or freedom. The horror of the series lies in the fact that each “Innie” is fully conscious—aware enough to realize they are a person, yet powerless to change their reality. Severance forces viewers to confront how much of their own lives may be lived as compartmentalized selves, reduced to roles that obscure the deeper ground of their being. In Everything, Everywhere All at Once, identity explodes across infinite universes. Evelyn experiences countless versions of herself—chef, fighter, movie star, even inanimate matter. Each self seems as real as the next, yet no single version can claim ontological priority or permanence. The film’s insight is ontological: if the self is infinitely variable, then no particular self can be ultimate or fundamental. What remains when these identities dissolve is not a final version of the self, but relationship—most clearly ex-

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pressed through Evelyn’s recognition of love not as sentiment, but as a mode of attunement that reconnects fragmented identities within a shared field of meaning. As the audience, we too are asked the same question: when the masks we wear fall away, what truly remains? Taken together, these films present selfhood not as a stable essence but as a lived, fragile construction. Through fractured identities, false worlds, and divided consciousness, they strip away our assumptions of ourselves and in that stripping, they invite us to glimpse the canvas beneath. The Ground Beneath the Self

If the painted image of self is always shifting, then what is constant? What remains from childhood until this moment, through every change in body, belief, and memory? The only candidate is the canvas itself, the open field of awareness in which every stroke appears. Consciousness functions as an a priori condition of experience—not a belief or conclusion, but the necessary precondition that allows anything to appear at all. It is the ground that holds thoughts, memories, and sensations—the condition that allows them to appear at all. To mistake ourselves for the painting is to live in perpetual instability; to recognize ourselves as the canvas is to rediscover the one thing that has never changed. At this point, phenomenology provides a crucial bridge between philosophy, science and mysticism. Husserl spoke of the “transcendental ego,” not the empirical self of personality and history, but the pure

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field of consciousness that makes experience possible (Husserl 91). Heidegger spoke of Being as prior to beings (Heidegger 32), and Merleau-Ponty saw perception as the horizon that frames experience. Where neuroscience describes the self as a controlled hallucination—a model the brain uses to keep experience coherent—phenomenology distinguishes consciousness from its contents—the seeing from what is seen (Seth; Husserl 91). Mysticism goes one step further, not by offering a new explanation, but by relinquishing explanation altogether and directly naming awareness itself as fundamental. Where phenomenology analyzes the structure of experience, mysticism points to what remains when all analysis falls silent. These are not competing theories so much as different modes of inquiry—scientific, phenomenological, contemplative—pointing toward the same insight. Neuroscience models how the sense of self is generated, phenomenology describes how experience is given, and mysticism names what remains when all descriptions fall away: awareness itself. Meister Eckhart calls this ground of awareness “the ground of the soul,” Advaita Vedanta names it Brahman, and Ram Dass calls it “the awareness that witnesses it all” (Eckhart 112; Sankara; Ram Dass 34). As Zen would say, these are different fingers pointing toward the same moon, beyond the painted strokes of self, toward the wholeness of the canvas beneath. Science models the painting, phenomenology inspects the brushstrokes, mysticism points to the canvas. The canvas metaphor also clarifies the nature of suffering in human experience. We suffer when 36

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we cling to particular strokes—roles, identities, beliefs—as if they define what we are. When experience changes, the self feels threatened because it has mistaken the painting for its ground. Yet the canvas itself is never altered by what appears upon it. To speak of what lies “beneath” the self is not to suggest a hidden place, but a more fundamental level of being: the awareness that remains present regardless of what appears within it. Films that destabilize identity can open the door to this recognition. Truman’s leap out of the dome is more than escape; it is the archetypal leap out of illusion. In Fight Club, the collapse of the narrator’s ego clears space for the possibility of something deeper. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, Evelyn discovers that beneath infinite selves is a love that cannot be lost. These films may not use mystical language, but they conclude the same thing: when the painting unravels, we can glimpse the canvas. If the nature of the self is awareness rather than a constructed identity, then recognizing this changes how we see others. What lies beneath the story of self isn’t emptiness but freedom—the freedom to encounter ourselves and others as expressions of the same underlying awareness. This recognition is not only conceptual but experiential: a direct seeing through appearances into the shared wholeness that precedes every role, belief, or division. Conclusion/Invitation

What unites these films is not merely their depiction of selfhood unraveling, but the mirror they hold up to us. They remind us that what we take to be a 37

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solid self is no less fragile, and no less constructed than the identities portrayed on screen. Philosophy and psychology give us the concepts: the self is built from memory, perception, and social conditioning, painted stroke by stroke onto the canvas of awareness. Mysticism gives us the invitation: you are not the painting; the painting is what must be seen through to experience the ground of your being. And film gives us the lived experience of this unraveling, allowing us to feel the cracks in our own identity. Seen together, these stories whisper the same truth: that memory, environment, and roles may all unravel, but what remains is not emptiness. To see this is not to despair, but to awaken. If you are not limited to the strokes of your painting, you are not bound by your past or defined by fleeting thoughts and feelings. Beneath it all lies an awareness that has never wavered; the same awareness is alive in everyone you meet. These stories ask us to question the assumptions that quietly structure our lives: Who am I without the stories I tell myself ? What identities have I inherited without choosing? What remains when those constructions loosen their hold? Look not only at the characters on screen but toward the one who is watching—at the “you” who reads these words right now. Notice the canvas of awareness in which both the film and your sense of “I” appear—it has been here all along, untouched by the changing strokes of life. If, even for a moment, you see that you are not the painting, but the canvas—then selfhood loosens 38

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its grip. And in that loosening, you may find what philosophers, scientists, and mystics alike have sought: a freedom not of escape but of recognition. A felt knowing that beneath the fragile images of “me” and “you” lies one indivisible ground of being.

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Works Cited Everything Everywhere All at Once. Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, A24, 2022. Fight Club. Directed by David Fincher, Fox 2000 Pictures, 1999. Memento. Directed by Christopher Nolan, Newmarket Capital Group, 2000. Severance. Created by Dan Erickson, Apple TV+, 2022–present. The Truman Show. Directed by Peter Weir, Paramount Pictures, 1998. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2008. Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated by F. Kersten, Springer, 1983. Locke, John. “Of Identity and Diversity.” An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Peter H. Nidditch, Clarendon Press, 1975, pp. 331–59. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Translated by Colin Smith, Routledge, 2012.

Perception.

Gazzaniga, Michael S. Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain. HarperCollins, 2011. Seth, Anil. “Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality.” TED Talks, TEDGlobal, 23 Aug. 2017, www.ted.com/talks/ anil_seth_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality.

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Eckhart, Meister. Selected Writings. Translated by Oliver Davies, Penguin Books, 1994. Ram Dass. Be Here Now. Lama Foundation, 1971.

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The Philosophy of Pleasure in Cavendish’s Convent By Jamieson McHenry The desire to seek pleasure is innate, ingrained into the essence of humanity. Invaluable fixtures of the human experience—such as sexuality, self-expression, entertainment, and leisure—are intimately intertwined with what’s considered pleasurable, in both cerebral and bodily respects. While these concepts are often understood as physiological phenomena, driven primarily by innate impulses and desires, the many facets of pleasure are better understood within the context of a broader society. Invariably, the collective has acted as a taste-making apparatus, deeming certain pleasures moral or immoral, appropriate or inappropriate, natural or unnatural. An extensive body of Restoration-era and 18th century literature has interrogated these nuances, allowing for robust insight into the pervasiveness of cultural mores. Analyzing these mores enables a richer understanding of who truly has access to pleasure, and how societal conventions may influence how pleasure is sought. One such work, Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure, complicates this discussion by creating a dichotomy between natural pleasures and those sanctioned through societal structures. The closet-drama explores a proto-feminist Utopian community, the titularly referenced convent, where women can retreat from the public sphere (and the rigid, patriarchal pressures that the public typically entails). In this distinctly pastoral and religious space, female

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actors enjoy agency, fluidity in gender and sexual expression, and access to enjoyments otherwise devalued by dominant society. This gratifying and fulfilling environment contrasts the restrictive outside world. Cavendish centers this dichotomy to illuminate the merits of exploring natural pleasures uninhibited by narrow, societally endorsed conceptions of pleasure. More specifically, she reveals the gendered dimensions of pleasure-seeking, demonstrating how hegemonic ideals such as compulsory cis-heterosexuality and the patriarchy inhibit free access to natural pleasures for women and queer individuals. Lady Happy, the impassioned heart of the play, is an affluent noblewoman who establishes the convent. An avid proponent of interlacing pleasure and human nature, she presents an ideological basis for the convent through her commentary on religious devotion and what the Gods want. In reference to those who abstain from worldly pleasures, Lady Happy says the following: “No madame, it is not for the Gods’ sake, but for opinions’ sake. For, can any rational creature think or believe the Gods take delight in the creature’s uneasy life?” (Cavendish 259). Immediately, Lady Happy frames “opinion” or public pressure as instrumental in promoting abstinence from enjoyable activities, such as eating and wearing what one pleases. In contrast, the Gods—forces classically associated with nature—are portrayed as figures that both accept and derive happiness from the joyous indulgences of human beings. This spiritually oriented argument is presented as an enlightened perspective, considering the emphasis on rationality. Tying plea-

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sure to rationality and divinity serves to emphasize how seeking pleasure isn’t inherently antithetical to spiritual and intellectual fulfillment. Rather than hindering one’s religiosity or mind, indulging in pleasure cultivates a richer existence in those facets of life— even when that existence strays from cultural values of abstinence. Taken as a whole, the scene where Lady Hapy rationalizes the establishment of the convent illustrates her belief system and the prevailing conflict between pleasure and society. Furthering this line of reasoning, Lady Happy submits arguments surrounding the detrimental patriarchal elements of the institution of marriage and traditional heterosexual relationships. Once more, she describes these norms as actively inhibiting natural pleasures by restricting the agencies of women. Specifically, she cites the repressive elements of marriage, explaining how it is “a greater restraint than a monastery” for women, considering that they’re troubled with the “folly, vanity, and falsehood” of men (Cavendish 258-259). In these arrangements, women are subject to immense emotional and domestic burdens. Lady Happy cites how women without the means to escape domestic partnership are “unable to please themselves” and forced to please their male counterparts in a condition akin to enslavement (Cavendish 260). This scene highlights the role of heterosexual marriage as an entrapment, or a mechanism of social and financial domination. Poor women are expected to enter into a marriage for security, even as it is actively harmful to their happiness. Only women with socioeconomic mobility are able to protect

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their “sweet delights, and peaceable life” by retreating outside of the domestic sphere and servitude of the household (Cavendish 260). Since the convent is a space outside of these societal forces—where the social value of marriage is absent, and the pleasures of women are celebrated—the space becomes a liberating escape from expectation. Lady Happy concludes that the absence of men in the convent merely serves to protect the pleasures of her patrons (Cavendish 259-260). As a single woman of nobility, her body is also implicated in this struggle. A woman of her status is expected to couple up with a man, regardless of her desires. Her own, personal choice is under scrutiny by both written and unwritten rules of conduct. Overall, heterosexual partnering is depicted as deeply-entrenched in the time period’s social code, infiltrating the very core of how society defines womanhood. Strictly enforced, the expectation of straight marriage suppresses authentic desires for both non-traditional relationships and remaining unwedded. These options provide avenues for women to exalt in their natural sexual orientations and inclinations or otherwise distance themselves from the downsides of heterosexual partnership. Nevertheless, Cavendish suggests that there can be space to explore these socially condemned pleasures. The convent itself is a physical space that manifests in opposition to aforementioned norms. Authenticity and fluidity are permitted in the convent, including expressions that don’t conform to accepted sexual and gender binaries. For instance, some women of the convent choose to “accoutre themselves in

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masculine habits, and act lovers’ parts” with other women (Cavendish 268). This detail represents a powerful opposition to dominant conceptualizations of pleasurable (and moral) pairings. A respite from society, the convent is a place where women can engage in romantic and platonic dynamics deemed lesser than those celebrated and enforced under heteronormativity. Lady Happy’s own relationship with the Princess, an individual who presents as a woman styled in masculine fashion, further exemplifies the importance of these natural pleasures. Described as “virtuous, innocent, and harmless,” this love-match is shown as a tender, intimate relationship (Cavendish 274). The joy found in this partnership contrasts with the detriments of the socially accepted union: heterosexual marriage. To this point, the vast majority of Act 3 is dedicated to displaying the relatively common limitations of traditional marriages, such as infidelity, difficulties with motherhood, health concerns, domestic abuse, labor imbalances, and a lack of financial autonomy. When juxtaposed by hardships under patriarchy, the convent’s natural pleasures are rendered even more positively. In addition to pleasures of sociability among women, the convent uplifts sensory, intellectual, and creative fulfillment. Reminiscent of the pastoral tradition, Cavendish evokes imagery of abundance and natural beauty, where “Plenty’s Horn” supplies a luxurious array of indulgences. Feasting, wearing the “softest silk,” and pleasing one’s sight with “pictures rare” are all available options within the beautiful expanse of the convent (Cavendish 261). Living in the

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convent is ultimately a sensory delight that encapsulates every facet of bodily pleasure. Cavendish even includes each of the five senses when depicting the sheer bliss of the environment. Examples of this include reference to the “sweet melodious sound” and “perfumed air” of Lady Happy’s utopia (Cavendish 261). These details emphasize the joyousness of retreating into tangible pleasures, even when society may promote abstinence, fasting, and other forms of self-deprivation. Altogether, the convent is a space where these pleasures are worthwhile; female sensuousness isn’t tied to devaluation or other condemnatory consequences. The patrons are able to freely revel in the convent’s bounty, taking pleasure and finding merriment, without being viewed as immoral for their indulgences (Cavendish 260). Considering that the patrons put on closet-dramas within the play itself, one can also witness intellectual and creative pleasures being central to the convent’s ongoings. Despite Cavendish’s favorable depiction of the convent, she demonstrates how these natural pleasures don’t exist within a vacuum. The cultural milieu has authority to punish natural expressions by wielding the power of social convention. Operating as symbols of society, Monsieur Take-Pleasure and his companions continuously talk about disrupting the convent, frustrated with the idea of women living apart from men. At one point, this group considered infiltrating the convent by dressing as women (Cavendish 267). While they eventually decide against the maneuver, this detail further alludes to the prevalence of dominant culture. Even superficial transcendence

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of gender binaries is made difficult under such a rigid system. Despite not physically intervening, the group of masculine figures still serves to voice the concerns of mainstream society. As a privileged group in the hierarchy, they’re unable to understand why women would want to find freedom outside of publicly approved boundaries. Reaping the benefits of the status quo, the men fail to grasp the ways divergence from convention could bring freedom, liberation, and pleasure. To them, this retreat is unnatural, “heretical,” and deserves punishment (Cavendish 263). Once again, societal expectations are at odds with the natural desires of women. Moreover, the convent’s homosexual and queer expressions are also under constant threat. Lines such as “women’s kisses are unnatural” illustrate how queer intimacy was viewed as inherently inferior (Cavendish 284). When the public becomes involved, unconventional relationships are forced to conform to social standards. As an illustrative example, the final act ends neatly with a heterosexual-presenting marriage between Lady Happy and the Princess (Cavendish 285). Ultimately, the Princess is obligated to don a masculine, strictly cis-gender appearance after being exposed as a Prince by Madame Mediator (Cavendish 283). Throughout the text, the Princess’ escape to the convent and expressions of gender fluidity provided a liberating sense of sexual and identity-centered freedom. She found great pleasure in embracing, kissing, and mingling with Lady Happy while presenting as a woman (Cavendish 274). Additionally, she’s shown viewing herself in a mirror,

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reflecting on her desire to stay in the convent with the “beautiful mistress” (Cavendish 279). The Princess’ royal background being what hinders her free indulgence in that pleasure parallels the way other structured, inherently hierarchical, and socially-sanctioned institutions—namely that of heterosexual marriage—can actively limit natural pleasures. Once the play ends, these pleasures of self-expression and authenticity are subdued, and society’s so-called natural order is restored. All conclusively, these examples demonstrate how socially constructed norms can lend themselves to the suppression of truly natural desires, including those that the convent legitimized. Overall, Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure is a masterful exploration of what is deemed natural regarding gender and sexual expression. While stringent regulations, normative judgements, and cultural mores are abundant, these innate pleasures persist, retaining their importance as vital components of the human experience and disposition. To desire, to indulge, to explore one’s fullest self: these acts are ingrained in what it means to be alive. Just as Lady Happy created the convent—her safe haven for pleasurable experiences—humans continue to seek out natural fulfillments, even if that means retreating into their own private pockets of pleasure.

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Works Cited Cavendish, Margaret. “The Convent of Pleasure.” Women’s Writing of the Early Modern Period 1588-1688: An Anthology (Women’s Writing Anthologies), Edinburgh University Press, 2002.

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The Systems of Theatre: An Interview with Blake Edwards Interview by Jack Champlin C: Alright, to begin the interview, would you be able to state your name please? E: Yes, Blake Edwards, and [I work in the] Theatre Department. C: What exactly is your area of study? E: Are you asking, like, research or are you asking what I teach, what I focus on? I don’t know. C: All of the above. E: Oh, yeah. I’m a bit of an uber generalist in that I teach acting and text analysis and playwriting and probably a few other things. My research area is the Hunter Heartbeat Method, which is a series of games designed by a woman who was formerly with the Royal Shakespeare Company. C: Totally. All right, then what does Charter’s prompt this year, “Systems,” seem to mean to you in the world of theatre, whether that’s referring to theatre generally or the Hunter Heartbeat Method? E: I would say that, you know, for a lot of people who get into theatre, and I’m no different, we started as

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actors. And you kind of discover other paths from there. But, you know, acting is always what gets– well not always, but most of the time– what gets students interested in the art form. There is certainly a craft. Most Western acting techniques are inspired by Constantine Stanislavsky, who has several tenets to his craft, where it’s less about this presentational form of acting that dominated prior to realism becoming a thing. Before it was about your posture, and what you could do with your voice. And these things are still important, but realism asked for psychological complexity and bringing, you know, yourself to a role. [It’s] the idea of playing action and not emotion. And that’s not to make it sound like acting is scientific in that way, but it provides a system for the craft; it provides something you can latch onto when inspiration fails you. When you can no longer just wing it or you don’t connect to a character quite the same way as you did the last time you were in a play. So there are always things that you want to do and that you want to avoid, and I think Stanislavsky’s system, you know, over 100 years later, even with all of the offshoots, it still focuses on playing action, playing intention, things coming to life on stage. We don’t pay to see mundane moments on stage. It’s not about generating something from scratch, some emotional thing within you, it’s much more “do what this feels like to you.” If you’re going to accuse somebody? All right. Put that intention behind the lines, and it will probably sound pretty angry because

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those two go hand in hand. C: So, you could say that there are these systems in place to help actors along with the process? E: Mhm. C: How do you employ these systems when you’re directing a play here at Gonzaga? E: That is something a little tougher than it is in, say, an acting class where we’re all going through the same material. A lot of people, [may have] been involved in theatre since they were young children, or] maybe some people are coming to it for the first time in college. You don’t want to assume that any system is in place. One could, if one wanted, go through an entire script and say “okay, for every one of your lines, I want to know what your intention is, what you’re playing.” You just don’t have that type of time in any rehearsal process. But when something isn’t clear, it’s a common director note to ask, “What are you doing there?” And that doesn’t mean literally “well, I’m standing here, I’m saying some lines,” like yeah, I know. It’s “what action are you playing? What’s the intention behind the line?” If something is unclear, or if you notice an actor playing a general attitude but not being specific with what they’re saying, what they’re doing, then I can go back and ask, “Okay,

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what’s the intention behind this particular line that you’re saying? And what do you want to do to the other character? What do you want to get from the other character, or how do you want to make the other character feel?” And it all links back to, yeah, “what are you doing on stage?” And that doesn’t mean stage business, always. It doesn’t mean activity. It means “what is the thing that you were trying to do to the other person?” And it doesn’t always have to be literally, even. So, it’s a way to jump start a lot of different thinking about a character, about the structure of a play. You just make sure that your actors are thinking in active terms. C: Yeah, that makes sense. So, would you say there’s a difference in merit for these systems employing them in an educational context as opposed to a professional production? E: Occasionally, yes. I certainly don’t want to badmouth any great master teacher. But, for example, in Graduate School, I TA’d a class on Sanford Meisner’s technique, and a lot of Meisner is rooted in repetition and repetition exercises. And it is a system I have seen work on a longer timeline, but in an educational environment, if you’re just taking a Meisner class for one semester, a lot of people walk away after four months saying “I don’t know what any of that was worth” because then they never come back to it in the curriculum. So, a school like Rutgers, for example, their graduate

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program is entirely rooted in Meisner’s techniques. And, okay, I can see that working. I can see it work in a professional setting but some of the systems that have been kind of developed by the disciples of Stanislavsky need more time, need more patience. You kind of have to pick a lane, sometimes, in an educational setting. And that’s why a lot of graduate schools are able to focus on, say, Michael Chekhov’s technique, or Lee Strasberg famously. But, in a Liberal Arts setting, typically the system is stripped down to the basic tenets that Stanislavsky put forward. It depends if you want breadth or depth. Sometimes wires can get crossed in educational settings with, you know, faculty turnover, whatnot, and it’s important, I think, to have a clear message that you’re sending to the students like “this is the path we’re on, there are other ways of doing it, and if you’re interested we can give you more of that information.” But it’s not always easy in a liberal arts environment to choose one, so it’s back to the basic tenets. C: You mentioned having a message to convey to the students. What do you think the message is here with Gonzaga Theatre? E: I think that right now, we are sending the message of “make sure that you are looking out for those coming up behind you.” That takes root in our theatre for young audience initiatives, specifically. That takes root in playwriting courses where we want you to consider that you are making something not just for yourself, but also for an audience of your peers; for

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the next generations coming up behind you. What do you want to leave as a kind of legacy of your own time here? What did you create? I’ve come to learn that my own pedagogy relies on ‘you learn by doing.’ It is unfortunately common, I think, to have an approach where, “okay, I, as the instructor, I’m going to tell you everything you need to know. Okay, there it is. Now you do it at the end of the semester and you have one shot and, well, you did it or you didn’t.” And so, in my classes, whether it’s acting with scenes and monologues, whether it’s writing a series of 10 minute plays in playwriting, you do it. Good. What do you learn from it? You do it again. What do you learn from that? Now, do it again. You keep having to reflect on what you’ve created. It’s one of those artforms where you don’t get better at it by just studying it. There’s got to be a doing. Wayne Coyne (lead vocalist of The Flaming Lips) has a famous quote where he was being interviewed about something, I don’t remember, but I read this interview of his, and he said that “So many young artists waste their entire lives dreaming about the things they’re gonna do someday.” And then he ended that little quote with “you gotta do stuff, man.” And I think if I were the type of person to have, like, crocheted quotes about my desk, that would be what mine would be. “You gotta do stuff man.” And I think that applies to most things in life, quite frankly, but certainly artistic endeavors, you’ve got to have your own plan, your own system for how you’re going to

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be able to continue to do the art and not just think about it or study it… not to say those things aren’t valuable because of course they are, but there’s got to be a way to put things into practice. C: I can agree with that. E: Okay, good. C: To synthesize that, it sounds like you promote a system of action within theatre to your students. Doing the things that you care about and actually working on them. Making a difference instead of pure analytical study over and over again. E: If what you are interested in, let’s say, is going into dramaturgy, then yeah, study and study some more and keep doing it. For any performing art, I think it’s pretty essential that we give students as many outlets as possible to put things into practice. And a lot of the systems that are in place, not just here, but in any kind of educational environment where theatre is being taught always tend to stress process more than product. I think a lot of times—hopefully this isn’t too much of a tangent—I’ve come across a lot of people, some in higher education, some not, but a lot of theatre practitioners will toss around the word “empathy.” And, like, “well, in theatre we create empathy.” And we give ourselves a nice pat on the back. But, I feel

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like we don’t always know what that means specifically. Or, it’s maybe not specific enough of a term because, if you’re just engaged with the product of theatre, you can be moved very deeply by seeing a show. Where maybe I’m a bit of a theatre heretic is I’m not sure if that’s the same thing as engendering empathy. It certainly can. But maybe not always. I think what does build empathy is going through the process of working with an ensemble, of collaborating, of finding all these different ways into a text– or even if you don’t have a text, if you’re creating something from scratch, that’s certainly going to build empathy among the participants. And you hope that an audience will also be able to put themselves in the shoes of another and all of that. But it’s more important, I think, to focus on what you were doing as the practitioner and not worry about the response to it. To concern yourself solely with [the response], that’s what creates cynical art. So, focusing on the process and letting the results just happen is the thing that does build empathy in people, that makes people better collaborators. So, that focus on the process, while also, of course, wanting to make good product, is I think what we’re stressing, hopefully, here. C: But the process is about creating the product. So how do you de-incentivize thinking about the audience and the audience’s response while still trying to make a product that is kind of inherently for the audience?

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E: Anytime a process goes sideways, it’s usually because you’ve got your eyes too far ahead in the future. You don’t skip steps just to iron over, you know, “Oh, this isn’t working well, let’s put a Band-Aid on it.” Audiences are usually able to sniff that stuff out pretty easily. If something isn’t making sense or if something seems patched together, then it’s not truthful. I think what we yearn for from our performers, from our writers, is something that is truthful. And, if you don’t follow the process that you’ve set up for yourself and you’re saying, “Well, because we have this product we have to skip steps even, eight, and nine,” then it leads to a less truthful outcome, a less truthful product. Knowing that what an audience wants is something that feels real; it’s really hard to skip steps in a process. I’ve seen over and over that when the rehearsal processes take their exponential leap forward is when actors are finally off book in the process. And that’s not really an accident. It takes time. It’s very tempting to say, well, “I’ve made the best choice possible, [the] show can be opening in two months.” You can’t just say, “well, this is what I want to do in the final version of this product.” You’ve got to continue to explore and deepen things and gain some richness from, you know, not pressuring yourself to have all the answers immediately. You can live in the question for a long time. So, as you previously mentioned, so many theatre

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Vol. 63 practitioners talk about theatre being the business of empathy. Do you think it would be more truthful to say theatre is the business of honesty? E: Possibly, yeah. I mean, obviously, it’s… it’s all fake. Let’s just say it. Let’s just get that out of the way. Yes, I think we all realize that what we’re doing is creating truth within imaginary circumstances. I mean, I mentioned Meisner earlier; that’s his quote. It’s like, hey, we’re in the business of “what if.” We can create these imaginary circumstances, these ridiculous premises, but how would you, the artist, behave within that imaginary circumstance? And if you behave truthfully, then, yeah, you’re going to get that empathetic response from an audience. So, you know, it’s kind of like saying to an actor at the first rehearsal, “All right, what I really want you to focus on is getting the audience to care about you.” That’s dangerous. Be truthful and the rest will fall into place. So yeah, it’s a business of honesty. C: Sure. Now, if you don’t mind, just a little bit of a pivot. E: Absolutely, yeah. C: At the beginning of this interview, you mentioned that your particular area of specification is the Hunter Heartbeat Method. Could you give us a little bit of context on that? E: Yeah, so it is a series of theatrical games, explicitly designed for kids on the Autism spectrum, and I stud61

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ied it in my first graduate program. My second graduate thesis focused on taking these games and bringing them to different audiences, because one of the things Kelly Hunter writes in the introduction of her book is talking about all the things that these games help remediate. Eye contact, spatial awareness, relationships, collaboration, and all these things that kids on the Autism spectrum may need help with. I think those are all things that most actors need to be cognizant of as well. So, I started calling them “these basic human vulnerabilities” that any actor needs to be acutely aware of. Eye contact in my first-year seminar or in productions… looking another person in the eyes is a vulnerable thing. In my FYS, I play these games for the middle five weeks of the course, and at first there is a lot of hesitancy of like “Are we in kindergarten right now? What are we doing?” I’ll ask students to play some of these games… Like “Cramps” is a game where it’s Prospero and Caliban from The Tempest, and you just pretend to give cramps to Caliban, and Caliban has to be in agony until he’s freed from the pain that Prospero puts him through. So, it’s imagination, yes, it is playing, and I think that the most important thing for me when I play these games with a group of actors specifically is making sure that you don’t forget that this is all rooted in play. Yeah, the Hunter Heartbeat Method games they focus on things like lower body coordination, that are more specific to kids on the spectrum, but you can

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always learn something about yourself as a performer, as an artist from going through these games and saying, all right, maybe this wasn’t designed for me, but what am I taking away from it? So, these games are big, silly, you know, not a ton of lines. It’s more about embodiment than it is about learning lines in these games. But that makes for a really interesting group dynamic. This is my third year doing the FYS. This past week students are just jumping up and like, “Oh yeah, let’s play the game.” Whereas the first week of doing these games everyone’s giving each other the side eye, not wanting to jump up, not wanting to participate at all. So, it brings people out of their shells. Yeah, it definitely engenders connection between people who, you know, may not know each other as well when they’re first part of the group, I guess. C: Sure. So, you could say that the Hunter Heartbeat Method is a system specifically designed to help kids on the Autism spectrum, but that it is something that really works for everyone. E: Yeah, I’ve learned from a lot of the various types of groups I’ve done these games with. In grad school, we occasionally had a project that we did with military veterans. So, one day we brought in some of these Hunter Heartbeat Method games, those of us who were familiar with them, and it was great watching the variety of responses to it. You know, the

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system allowed one individual who was very hesitant to share for most of those weeks, when it came time to say Caliban’s line “This island’s mine,” [he] unearthed this kind of primal, guttural howl. [I thought to myself] oh, we just unlocked something. Wow. Even if it wasn’t related to unearthing something very deep within you, I think a lot of the veterans were thrilled to have an excuse to play. To do things that haven’t been dictated to them down to the smallest letter, just like, “Hey, have fun with this. Yeah, you’re playing Miranda. You’re a big burly dude and you want to giggle like a schoolgirl? Now is your opportunity to do it.” Seeing that freedom finally being granted to someone whose professional life is maybe very regimented… You see new things about the efficacy of these games… Whether it’s nurses and engineers in my FYS, whether it’s military veterans, whether it’s actors, you can bring the system to a lot of groups, and it’s not designed to have only one outcome. It shows you things about the participants more so than it does teach them how to play a particular game. Yes, there’s that, but it is enlightening and a bit revealing based on who’s in the room. And that’s kind of, in a roundabout way, what any theatrical production is. It’s about “Who did you put in the room? Here’s what they came up with.” C: Totally. To wrap up this interview, we’ve talked a lot about how these kinds of systems, educational, theatrical, even the Hunter Heartbeat Method, how all of these can im-

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pact productions of theatre. But, to finish this all off, how do you think these systems impact the culture around theatre? E: Yeah, it gives… What would be a good example… That common vocabulary that I alluded to earlier, I think, plays a large role in the culture around theatre. And also, just kind of accepting everybody’s artistry. I mean, theatre people are rather famously accepting. And that is something that I think we need more of when the world outside seems to be darkening rapidly. It’s important to have a group of people that you can create with. For the longest time I feel like we’ve [been] sold this myth, that it’s just one genius that goes off into a room and creates a work of genius. And sure, that can happen, but that’s not the only way that plays or scripts are created. It’s a collaborative artform unlike most others. You even need the audience, too. They’re part of the conversation, and I think the culture around theatre is one of the platonic ideal. [It’s] one where we understand each other, we accept each other, we’ve learned something, even if it’s not a didactic performance, it is something where we can exit the theatre, whether we’re audience members or performers, and say “Yeah, at the end of this process, I learned something about myself that I didn’t already know.” And that’s something that I think is beneficial to everyone, whether you’re in the arts or not. It’s a new experience. Sometimes just for the sake of a new experience. It’s easy to lose sight of how important that is. Not just to feel like “Here’s what I know, and I’m going to stick with

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that.” We want to latch on to what we know. But the more we can live without concrete answers all of the time and avoid latching on to something quickly because it seems concrete and definite… that’s actually a good thing, I think. For anyone’s health, really. C: So you’d say theatre is about discovery, in a way? E: Yeah, definitely. Searching for and not necessarily discovering answers but searching because the search is enriching. C: Awesome. Thank you, Blake. E: Sure, of course, thank you.

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Flipping the Script: New Perspectives in Justin Audibert’s Production of The Taming of the Shrew By Kayla May Chongo Following the 2024 presidential election, women across the nation experienced an onslaught of misogynistic language and behavior following Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss, reminding them that in the eyes of some men, women are nothing but objects to be dominated and controlled. Though it might be hard to imagine, a centuries-old Shakespearean play echoes our modern discussion of gender, power, and dominance. William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew deals with themes of gender roles and the level of control that comes with them. While people in the 21st century are familiar with gendered insults such as “bitch” and “slut,” the play deals with the mother of such insults: shrew. However, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of the controversial comedy turns the play on its head. Director Justin Audibert’s 2019 adaptation of the classic Shakespearean comedy transports the audience to a matriarchal 1590s society, where all the play’s higher-class main characters are gender-swapped. As a result, Petruchio becomes Petruchia, who aims to tame Katherine, reimagined in this production as the stubborn eldest Minola son. Audiences watch as women make the significant decisions that dictate the play’s events, challenging conventional narratives and offering different insights into the role of gender in power. In the same way that people questioned how different reactions to Ka-

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mala Harris’s presidential campaign could have been if she were a man, the Royal Shakespeare Company production poses the question of how differently the play’s events could look if women were those with power and control. Audibert’s decision to gender-swap the characters illuminates the deeply unsettling themes of the original play, particularly the concept of control and submission. The production doesn’t necessarily introduce anything new–the play’s inherent sexism and misogyny were just as unsettling to watch as they were to read. However, this specific production brings to light the discussion of who is the most “shrew-like” of the characters. Before the term became closely associated with women, a shrew was defined as early as 1250 as “a wicked, evil-disposed, or malignant man; a mischievous or vexatious person; a rascal, villain” (Oxford English Dictionary, emphasis added). Throughout Audibert’s production, Petruchia is seemingly highlighted as the shrew because he acts so wild and vicious throughout the events of the play. Additionally, by reversing the gender of the characters who make most of the play’s significant decisions, audience members are invited to reflect on their reactions to events when they go against the societal expectations of gender. For instance, in Shakespeare’s original play, it might be challenging to understand the unsettling feeling that some readers experience from Katherine and Petruchio’s first meeting, in which he throws multiple insults disguised as compliments at her. When Petruchio describes to Katherine how enamored he is by her

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beauty and how he was made to be her husband, the speech could appear playful and flirtatious (Shakespeare 2.1.272-275). However, the gender-swapped RSC production adds specific stage directions to emphasize the unnerving feeling some audience members experience. Petruchia menacingly stalks after Katherine, sometimes going as far as grabbing and tossing him about the stage (Audibert). The scene no longer feels flirtatious–Petruchia acts more as a predatory and sleazy character, emphasizing the inherent coarseness that the character possesses in the original play. Moreover, specific makeup, lighting, and costume choices throughout the play’s latter half illuminate the production’s concept of control and submission. When Petruchia’s violent persona is revealed as the couple moves into her house, the lighting changes to a cool blue that feels as icy as it sounds. To subdue her, Petruchia begins to starve Katherine of food and sleep (4.3.7-10). On the stage, Katherine, whose face has been painted white and whose clothing has been reduced to a sullied undershirt, blends into the background as if he were a ghost. As the scene progresses, the white makeup streaks across his face, symbolizing the breaking down of Katherine’s spirit as Petruchia works to “tame” him. Furthermore, in scenes where the couple is dining together, Katherine sits in a lower chair, making him a physically smaller representation of himself. Conversely, Petruchia, with her ginger hair and bright green clothes, controls the stage and draws eyes straight to her. When the two dine, Petruchia is

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awarded a tall, lavish chair that towers over Katherine’s tiny stool. The contrast in costumes, staging, and makeup further draws out the power dynamics of the play. The woman possesses all the color and power in the scene, while the man fades into the background. Audibert’s decision to gender-swap The Taming of the Shrew poses an opportunity to examine exactly how much “comedy” can be found in a play that focuses on the themes of control and submission to another. It’s quite unfortunate that it takes the gender reversal of the characters for audiences to notice the stark power imbalance and overall discomfort that the original play creates. And, of course, gender-swapping the lead characters won’t necessarily solve the modern problems of power and dominance forged by gender expectations. However, by placing women in roles of power, the production illuminates the innuendos hidden within the original text and brings forth the unsettling power imbalances created by the nature of submission, violence, and societal expectations of gender.

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Works Cited Audibert, Justin, director. The Taming of the Shrew. By William Shakespeare. The Royal Shakespeare Company, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2019, http://dramaonlinelibrary.com. Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by G. Blakemore Evans, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974, pp. 106-142. “Shrew, N. (2), Sense 1.a.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, December 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/ OED/1985362548.

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Remedios Varo: Surrealism as an Avenue to Reclaim Feminine Power By Sequoia Barger Spanish artist Remedios Varo was a skilled drawer, collagist, and painter who began actively creating Surrealist works in the 1930s. Many of her works express both a tension between male and female forces, as well as provide a view into a distinctively feminine lived experience, reflecting her unique position as a female artist in a largely male-centric art culture. As a painter, Varo used concepts of alchemy, psychoanalysis, and mysticism to reclaim the inner power of the divine feminine, or the icon of “female” as an agent of positive creative power (Candenas). While the presence of her own identity is strong within much of her work, the themes Varo addresses are relevant to many women struggling against patriarchal forces and grappling with their own sense of identity (Wu 392). In this way, Varo represents all of womankind by casting herself as the hero of her own stories, which contrasts the role that women were usually prescribed by male Surrealists, the art world, and society in general. The unprecedented and distinctive Surrealist art movement was born in Paris during the early twentieth century and maintained a rich following until its heyday dwindled towards the midcentury. This intriguing movement was characterized by imagery evocative of dreams and the subconscious, and was vastly influenced by popular psychoanalysis, such as the work of Freud and Jung’s theory of the Collec-

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tive Unconscious. As has been the case during much of history, men dominated the art culture during this period, and the Surrealists were no exception. Like many other female artists whose work was not fully acknowledged in the duration of their lifetimes, Remedios Varo only began to gain traction in the public eye shortly before her death in 1963. Varo was born in the year 1908 in Catalonia, Spain, an area which was detrimentally patriarchal at the time (Wu 391). Although this permeating misogynistic force would most certainly have impacted her indirectly through societal pressures, expectations, and treatment, it is uncertain to what extent that mindset was practiced within Varo’s own family. Her mother was a devout Catholic and highly traditional, while her father was an agnostic engineer, and it was he who helped to foster and guide Varo’s artistic inclination when she was young (Kaplan 145). Throughout her childhood, he strictly trained her in the usage of professional drawing tools and techniques, “instilling in her a strong foundation of artistic discipline” (Kaplan 14-5). Both her mother’s religious sensibilities and her father’s scientific knowledge had a profound impact on the way that she viewed the world, as her body of work reflects both religious and scientific influences. As was her mother’s wish, Remedios Varo attended a Catholic school for most of her childhood, in which strict regulations and routines were placed upon her. However, Varo sought out literature that nurtured her imaginative sensibilities, such as Jules Verne and Edgar Allen Poe, and throughout her

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life, she kept a firm belief in magic (Kaplan 17-18). These creative influences provided Varo with a well of inspiration for her future Surrealist work, as magic and the fantastical were central muses in Surrealist subject matter. She continued to practice her artistic skills through drawing, and eventually she would be sent to a much different school. At the age of twelve, Varo’s family came to recognize her talent and sent her to an art school, which was unusual for a Spanish girl at the time. After stints at the Madrid School of Arts and Crafts as well as the School of Fine Arts, she passed the admission test for the prestigious Academia de San Fernando (Kaplan 27). This art academy was just as strict as her years in Catholic school, but here she learned how to utilize oil paints as well as hone her drawing skills. As Varo came of age, interest in Surrealism was on the rise in Spain, and this artistic atmosphere helped revitalize her avid appreciation of surreal subject matter. In an attempt to establish her independence, Remedios Varo married her classmate Gerardo Lizarraga when she was twenty-one. To the modern eye, it may seem counterintuitive for a young woman such as Varo to enter matrimony if she wished for independence, but Spain at the time placed women of her age under the control of their families. In marrying Lizarraga, who himself was quite untraditional in his political practices, Varo would be able to travel and become involved in the bohemian lifestyle that those involved in the art culture were embracing (Kaplan 31-32). Her choice to align herself with Lizarraga was the first act in what would prove to be a practice

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of sexual maneuvering intellectual gain, allowing her to enter into and thus learn from the Surrealist art circle. Varo had no lack of suitors throughout her life, and she chose who she became emotionally involved with in a conscious manner that “would help her survive the difficult war years and… to consolidate her artistic career” (Lozano 29). That is not to say that Varo calculatingly used her beaus, quite the opposite is true, as she maintained close friendships with most of the men in her life “long after any romantic connections had ended” (Kaplan 36). It is important is to recognize that Remedios Varo was making the best of what limited control over her life she had as a Spanish woman in the early twentieth century. Her first independent venture succeeded, and as soon as Varo graduated the Academie, she and Lizarraga moved to Paris. Here, the couple studied painting and learned to appreciate the avant-garde environment of France, which made them partial to Barcelona as their new home upon returning to Spain in 1932 (Everly 31). It was in Barcelona that Varo felt comfortable enough to branch out of the norm in both her artwork and her relationships. In the same period of time that she took a young Catalan artist named Esteban Frances as her lover, the Surrealist influences flourished in her art in the forms of drawings, collages, and paintings (Kaplan 38). However, tensions were brewing that would break out into the Spanish Civil War. An older man named Benjamin Peret came to Barcelona as a volunteer for the Spanish Republic in 1936, and he and Varo soon became involved. When he returned

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to Paris in 1937, she went with him to escape wartorn Spain (Kaplan 53). It was through him that Varo was introduced to the predominantly male Surrealist art community. Although she established intellectual relationships with many strong Surrealist influences such as Salvadore Dali and Rene Magritte, those who should have been considered “Surrealist” women were still considered to be outside the group, and thus female Surrealists had less of a community than men did (Kaplan 57). But regardless of this challenge, Varo struck up an acquaintance with fellow painter Leonora Carrington, which would blossom into a deep, lasting friendship upon their exile to Mexico. Eventually, Varo became a social hub connecting many artists, and through these means she came into contact with the painter Victor Braunner, whose interest in alchemy and the supernatural had lasting influence on (Kaplan 63). But this period of networking did not last for long in the wake of World War II. As the politics of several of her associates were found objectionable by the Gestapo, Varo was arrested in 1940 and was kept imprisoned for several months. Upon her release she and her new husband Peret, fled Paris and sought refuge in Mexico. It was in Mexico City that a group of exiled European artists gathered, many of whom Varo already knew, and created a new artistic community for themselves within this unfamiliar place. Leonora Carrington happened to be one of these artists, and she and Remedios Varo soon became (Kaplan 86). friends and artistic collaborators, discussing their dreams and trading inspirations. Varo lived peacefully in Mexico artworks ma-

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tured into her trademark style and content (Wu 392). The themes Varo addresses resonate heavily with female audiences through the illustration of decidedly womanly inner and outer conflict. Although she frequently subverted gender by making her characters purposefully androgynous, the subject matter addressed is often fundamentally feminine (Haynes 31). The fact that most of her subjects resemble the artist herself is an indication of this femininity, while at the same time flouting gender roles through her interesting use of androgyny. This choice of gender ambiguity is undeniably rooted in Varo’s avid interest in the alchemical arts, in which the union or balance between male and female is a central concept (31). Another source of Varo’s inspiration in this respect lies in Jungian symbolism, which proposes the Anima and Animus as psychological archetypes. The Anima is the female aspect within the male psyche, and the Animus is the male aspect within the female psyche, and it is thought that a person of one sex should implement a healthy dose of the other’s energy into their consciousness be fully-functioning (Wu 391). Varo herself evokes the Animus, which she uses to disrupt the expectational “norm” of womanhood. Although there are numerous instances of such a maneuver, a particularly noticeable example of combining male and female imagery lies within her painting Aurora (Figure 1), also called International Spies. Emerging from a misty, orange forest that almost seems to blaze like cinders, three effervescent figures appear to be approaching the viewer. All three wear an odd and distinctive symmetrical

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figure 1

headpiece with ear-like protrusions. The viewer immediately denotes the figure on the left as decidedly feminine, with a corseted waist and long skirts, while the figure on the right is presented as more masculine in a tailcoat and breeches. As these two make almost begrudging or suspicious eye contact, the calm gaze of the central figure whose gender is indecipherable is just off center. The organic manner in which layers of clothing on all three are rendered is distinctly reminiscent of labial folds; this effect is particularly striking in the central, ambiguous figure whose overall shape bears a strong resemblance to a vulva. The secondary title of this piece, International Spies, seems to give off a theme of these figures being double-agents of some sort, though the work itself does not seem to cast this idea necessarily in a sinister way. Moreso, combined with the amalgamation of masculine and feminine archetypes to create something in between, the concept of this painting seems to revolve around integration of opposites with each other, which results in the trading of knowledge. This idea is reflected in the presence of scrolls in each figure’s hands that suggest some important, secret information which has been obtained through the alchemical combination of masculine and female 80

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presences, while Varo still retains her female identity through the use of feminine imagery in its most obvious form. Another common idea in Varo’s work is the ancient practice of witchcraft. Magic is in many ways akin to alchemy, and therefore the symbolism used in her paintings can tend to overlap the two subjects mutually. But her use of feline imagery is particularly expressive of witchcraft, as cats have long been associated as the traditional familiars of witches. While discussing symbols such as familiars may evoke images of the green-faced nefarious witch stereotype, it is important to acknowledge that “magical” women had an ancient pagan past in the roles of healers, wise women, and midwives. Therefore, Varo’s use of cats in a magical context becomes inherently feminine and a symbol of female power, which may or may not be pitted against male control. In her own life, Varo herself was very fond of cats and frequently utilized them as a symbol of ancient feminine knowledge (Varo and Carson 130-133). One prime example of her endorsement of the close historical relationship between cats and women is Sympathy (Figure 2), which depicts a woman sitting at a table with her rambunctious cat whom has just knocked over a glass of water. The subject here is, again, remarkably androgynous, but her facial features and dress denote figure 2 81

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her as female. Even as the cat is still in motion from its accidental disruption, the serene woman pets it with understanding. Tiny beams of light spring from each figure and weave themselves into a celestial arrangement of machine-like cogs and constellations, which conjures up a sense of cosmic interconnectedness, similarity, and emotional closeness. The woman’s short hair is bright orange with almost ear-like tufts and three cat tails seem to take the place of her feet, just visible from beneath the hem of her skirt. Combined with the visual representation of interconnected energy and understanding, the woman’s cat-like appearance illustrates the close kinship that the woman shares with her familiar. By depicting this historically rooted relationship so beautifully, Varo subtly reclaims the deeply feminine form of magic that is witchcraft, and thus a form of female power. Another way in which Varo’s work endorses female empowerment is by retelling ancient myths in such a way that recasts the heroines as characters of agency and independence. The classic trend of myths with female main characters usually revolves around a combination of several criteria such as receiving a call, being guided by helpers, fighting battles, entering a sacred marriage, reconciliation with a father figure, and reintegration into society (Lauter 90). Varo, while referencing these stories in essence, rejects many of these requirements. Instead, she chooses to emphasize her heroines’ reconnection with nature and the cosmos, self-discovery, and the independent acquirement of knowledge (90). Most of Varo’s leading female subjects are placed within

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the context of this redrawn framework, often employing symbolism and imagery from classical mythology. Remedios Varo utilizes this strategy in order to empower her subjects in The Minotaur (Figure 3). As the title plainly reveals, this work is based off the ancient Greek myth of the Minotaur, half-man and half-bull. In this case, however, the Minotaur is half-woman, half cow. Her femininity makes her a character that both Varo and female audiences can easily identify with. The setting of this piece is not so different from the classical telling of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, but in her own rendition, Varo has added checkerboard floors, which illustrates her interest in Masonic symbolism. This two-colored style of flooring is regularly used in Freemasonry as a symbol of duality, such as “good and evil, the physical and spiritual worlds, male and female” (Broadway 94). Varo’s choice to implement this dualistic imagery compliments both the subject matter of the original tale and her reinterpretation of it, as well as the relationship between the two. The classical Minotaur himself is a fascinating study in the idea of good and evil, as he commits murders while simultaneously being ignorant of morality. Varo figure 3

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includes no evidence of such foul deeds in relation to her heroine, however, which suggests comparative innocence. The difference in sex between the two versions of the character is obvious. And while the male Minotaur’s existence is highly physical and violent, Varo’s female Minotaur is altogether quite different. Her body is depicted as spectral and ethereal, as if to specifically contrast with the beastly, bloodthirsty Minotaur of ancient legend. Varo’s version also appears to be calm, collected, and in tune with intellectual and spiritual pursuits. In her small hand she holds the key to her own prison, the walls of which appear to have already split open in the background, allowing wispy fog to beckon her through the portal and into the mysterious freedom that lies beyond (Lauter 90). By reframing the Minotaur as an independent agent of her own freedom instead of a victim of circumstance who would be slain by the hero Theseus, Varo creates a heroine who seems to defy expectations and supposed fate, thus asserting female power yet again and connecting it back to the idea of self-discovery. Yet another theme that Varo addresses in her work is the concept of “woman” as a creative force. One example of this idea is in a piece called Creation of the Birds (Figure 4). Here, the artist combines fertility imagery with alchemical apparatuses and Masonic symbolism to evoke a sense of both primal power and spiritual knowledge (Everly 70). This painting takes place in one of Varo’s many trademark clay-colored rooms with arched ceilings and few windows, which allow small glimpses of the unfamiliar

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celestial void outside the room. The Masonic checkerboard flooring has made another appearance, although this time in shades of terracotta tiling. The subject is a strange combination of woman and owl, which signifies both femininity and ancient wisdom. She sits at a desk, in the process of drawing birds and animating them off the page by harnessing cosmic light from the window through a triangular focus. Resting over her chest, a small stringed instrument hangs from her neck with one of the strings fueling her pencil. In this way, Varo is placing herself as the subject right in the middle of creating, literally involving her heartstrings in the artistic process. The egg-like imagery of the owl-woman’s paint dispenser in conjunction with the act of bringing birds to life, frames the artist’s works as her children, a part of her, and a reflection of her. By doing so, Varo references both maternity and her own creative expression in the act of painting, thus bringing attention to her own agency in creating art while glorifying the feminine creation of life. While Varo appreciated the female potential for creation, she also depicted the potential burden of the childbearing role, which most women are required to either actively avoid or face up to. Although she got along well with children and enjoyed their company, the artist herself chose never to have children of her own, even making the decision to have an abortion during her and Peret’s marriage (Kaplan 85

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160). The only time she explicitly addressed childrearing in her art was in Celestial Pablum (Figure 5). The subject is a classic Varo-esque svelte female figure, and she sits sleepily at a desk within a thin, tall tower surrounded by endless darkness and starry fog. Her only companion is a frail, waning moon in a cage. The moon itself is a feminine symbol with a long history, in part due to the connection between the moon phases and women’s fertility cycles. The woman spoon-feeds her moon a celestial puree that she procures from a hand-grinder, the shaft of which connects to the exterior space around the isolated tower. This act of feeding establishes the relationship of nurturer and dependent between the woman and the moon, respectively, making it clear that she is the moon’s mother. Both she and her moonchild look tired and confined, with the moon in its cage and its mother enclosed within the small tower, the staircase to which is dangerously steep. This piece portrays a sense of entrapment, each completely ensnared by the moon’s dependency upon its mother (Everly 71). The mother herself “neither rejects nor embraces her nurturing function” (Lauter 90). Instead, she seems resigned to her motherly role, knowing it is necessary and genuinely caring for her moonchild but still longing for escape. As previously stated, this is the only time that Varo clearly addresses motherhood in her work, which implies that the artist considered maternity not as a defining part of a woman’s identity, but instead “a stage to be passed through” (90). In doing so, she defies societal presuppositions about the womanly role of Mother and in-

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stead emphasizes mothers’ individuality apart from their children, all the while making use of mystic and alchemical symbolism to illustrate her point. These five paintings illustrate that while Remedios Varo was heavily influenced by her male contemporaries and the artistic nurturing of her father, she created her own particular genre within Surrealism which deals with distinctly feminine subject matter and perspectives. She does so by subverting gender, celebrating feminine magic, and asserting female independence through her depictions of her characters as androgynous, magically wise, and ultimately agents of their own person. All of these maneuvers employ concepts of alchemy, psychoanalysis, and mysticism in order to reestablish feminine power rooted in the primordial psyche and ancient past. Although Remedios Varo lived in a different world than today, her vast body of work remains intriguing, relevant, and vital to audiences today because of her reference to knowledge of the ancient past and application of timeless magical imagery to subjects of the feminine lived experience.

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Works Cited Broadway, Mary. “Casadora de astros (Star Catcher).” In Remedios Varo: Science Fictions, edited by Caitlyn Haskell and Tere Arcq. Yale University Press, 2023. Everly, Kathryn A. Catalan Women Writers and Artists: Revisionist Views from a Feminist Space. Bucknell University Press, 2003. Ferrero Candenas, Ines. “Reconfiguring the surrealist gaze: Remedios Varo’s images of women.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 88, no. 4 (2011). Gale Academic OneFile. http://dx.doi. org.gonzaga.idm.oclc.org/10.3828/bhs.2011.19. Haynes, Deborah J. “The Art of Remedios Varo: Issues of Gender Ambiguity and Religious Meaning.” Woman’s Art Journal 16, no. 1 (1995): 26–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/1358627. Kaplan, Janet A. Remedios Varo: Unexpected Journeys. Abbeville Press Publishers, 1988. Lauter, Estella. “The Creative Woman and the Female Quest: The Paintings of Remedios Varo.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 63, no. 2 (1980): 113–34. http://www.jstor. org/stable/41178147. Lauter, Estella. Women as Mythmakers: Poetry and Visual Art by Twentieth-Century Women. Indiana University Press, 1984. Print. Lomas, David. “Artist — Sorcerers: Mimicry, Magic and Hysteria.” Oxford Art Journal 35, no. 3 (2012): 363–88. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/23322190. Luis-Martin Lozano. The Magic of Remedios Varo. Translated

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by Elizabeth Goldson Nicholson and Liliana Valenzuela. National Museum of Womne in the Arts, 2000. Nonaka, Masayo. Remedios Varo: The Mexican Years. Editorial RM, 2012. Orenstein, Gloria Feman. “Art History and the Case for the Women of Surrealism.” The Journal of General Education 27, no. 1 (1975): 31–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27796489. Santos-Phillips, Eva. “Questioning and Transgressing in the Representations of Silvina Ocampo and Remedios Varo.” Hispanic Journal 25, no. 1/2 (2004): 155–70. http://www. jstor.org/stable/44284736. Varo, Remedios, and Margaret Carson. “Three Letters.” BOMB, no. 143 (2018): 130–33. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26578929. Wu, Yue. “Analysis of Female Images in Remedios Varo’s Works based on Jung’s Theory.” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, vol. 673 (2022): 390-394. https://www.atlantis-press.com/article/125976122.pdf. Zamora, Lois Parkinson. “The Magical Tables of Isabel Allende and Remedios Varo.” Comparative Literature 44, no. 2 (1992): 113–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/1770341. Image Credits: Figure 1: Remedios Varo, Aurora (International Spies), 1962, oil and Masonite, 65 x 80 cm (25.6 x 31.5 in) Figure 2: Remedios Varo, Sympathy, 1955, oil and Masonite, 95 x 85.1 cm (37.75 x 33.5 in) Figure 3: Remedios Varo, The Minotaur, 1959, oil and Masonite, 7 x 34 cm (6.7 x 13.4 in) Figure 4: Remedios Varo, Creation of the Birds, 1957, oil and Masonite, 68 x 68 cm (26.8 x 26.8 in) Figure 5: Remedios Varo, Celestial Pablum, 1958, oil and Masonite, 92 x 62 cm (36.2 x 24.5 in)

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"Intersectionality refers to particular forms of intersecting oppressions, for example, intersections of race and gender, or of sexuality and nation. Intersectional paradigms remind us that oppression cannot be reduced to one fundamental type, and that oppressions work together in producing injustice."

- Patricia Hill Collins

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Evolving Epistemologies: An Analysis of Feminist Knowledge Building By Jamieson McHenry From the eighteenth century to the present day, feminist theorists have interrogated the production of knowledge. By analyzing how knowledge is produced and legitimized, they have critiqued exclusionary tendencies within theory-building. This includes androcentrism in academia, marginalization within Anglo-American feminism, and the overlooking of empirical insights in modern feminisms. Ultimately, feminist theory has always been concerned—either implicitly or explicitly—with epistemological questions, fostering more inclusive dialectics, and addressing assumptions about whose knowledge matters. This intellectual thread has evolved over time, coinciding with shifts in dominant paradigms. In early feminist analyses—such as those of Mary Wollstonecraft—the critiques were commonly grounded in Liberalism and Enlightenment ideals. By advocating for women’s right to education and a “rational fellowship” between the sexes, Wollstonecraft implicitly asserted the epistemological value of women as human knowers (Wollstonecraft 30). As time progressed, the notion that women could produce particularly valuable insights came to the fore. In the early 1900s, Virginia Woolf ’s book length essay, Three Guineas, prescribed carving out women’s spaces to cultivate change and progressive thought. Radical feminists of the 1960s continued this project. While steeped in essentialist assumptions, the consciousness raising

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of Radical feminists offered potential for theory and praxis based on specific gendered experiences. According to Women and Gender Studies scholars, the feminist slogan that the “personal is political” represents a belief that “shared reflection on experience provides the best grounds for building feminist knowledge” and revealing male domination (McCann et al. 18). However, consciousness raising has often been limited in scope due to the historic centrality of white, middle-class, heterosexual, and cisgendered viewpoints (19). This contributed to the emergence of more intersectional, self-conscious understandings of feminist epistemology. Through frameworks such as Gloria Anzaldúa’s “mestiza consciousness” and Donna Haraway’s understanding of “standpoint theory,” late twentieth century feminists addressed the value of specific, partial, and marginalized perspectives in knowledge production. Finally, modern feminists such as Viviane Namaste have critiqued the abstract theorizing of mainstream Anglo-American feminists, advocating for justice-oriented, actionable theory based on the empirical realities of minoritized subjects. Beginning in the eighteenth century, critiques of knowledge systems were largely linked to the historical, political, and social narratives that devalued women as inferior. Estelle Freedman, a historian specializing in feminist studies, acknowledges how dominant beliefs in “women’s incapacity for virtue and learning” were used to justify “male control over daughters and wives, whether through law or customs” (Freedman xiv). The presumed superiority

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of men produced inequitable access to religious, scientific, and political institutions across cultures. With these disparities in mind, education has been a recurring theme in feminist thought, often with the objective of fostering more virtuous women, mothers, and citizens (xiv-xv). Feminists advocating for women’s education noted how educated women could positively contribute to progress within households and broader society rather than acting as ornamental counterparts to the male sex. While the notion “epistemology” was not mentioned by name, early feminists were nonetheless concerned with epistemological issues. On this note, many hoped to legitimize women’s participation in the circulation and consumption of knowledge. In Mary Wollstonecraft’s seminal piece, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she foregrounds the education of women as a key social issue. Within her Liberal framework, rationality and humanity are presented as contingent. While she concedes the patriarchal belief that women are physically weaker by the “law of Nature,” she also attempts to consider “women in the grand light of human creatures, who, in common with men, are placed on this earth to unfold their faculties” (Wollstonecraft 26). There is a moral imperative to recognize women as full human beings with the capacity to reason. To this end, Wollstonecraft critiques the socialization of women—rather than their innate faculties—as the source of their supposed weaknesses. She characterizes the artificial “frivolity” of women as the result of a “false system of education” that privileges beauty, idle plea-

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sures, and allure over virtue (25). A fuller education, Wollstonecraft aptly contends, could help address this discrepancy, allowing women to act on their potential as rational beings. Additionally, it could benefit broader society, enabling women to “render their private virtue a public benefit” (33). For example, as Wollstonecraft points out, a more comprehensive education may produce “more reasonable mothers,” who are better equipped to teach their children about virtuous citizenship (32). Ultimately, Wollstonecraft’s claim is an early call for epistemic justice. Even though her analytic framework is Eurocentric and focused on the “education of the rich” in a European context, her principles have a wider application (Wollstonecraft 27). Indeed, the education of women is a foundational component in establishing their credibility as thinkers, citizens, and intellectual beings. Wollstonecraft’s arguments thus marked an astounding shift from earlier presuppositions, which placed women squarely in the private sphere. They laid the groundwork for later theorizing, including that of Virginia Woolf. In Three Guineas, Woolf addresses the value of women’s knowledge within an “Outsiders’ society” (Woolf 229). To contextualize her claims, she establishes the notion of an “Arthur’s Education Fund” (221). This “voracious receptacle” signifies how educated families prioritize the enrichment, travel, university enrollment and intellectual development of their sons (221-222). Contrastingly, the potentialities of daughters are neglected. Without equal education or involvement in the public sphere, the “weapons

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with which an educated man can enforce his opinions” are beyond the grasp of women. These include the press, stock exchange, military service, clerical authority, and legal professions (223). Professional societies were also exclusionary, causing Woolf to regard these male-dominated institutions as an “ill-fitting form that distorts the truth” by encouraging the masculine perpetuation of warfare (228-229). When dominant systems of knowledge are barred to women, they often feel compelled to form their own societies for advocacy, knowledge building, and the promotion of their distinct perspectives. This informs Woolf ’s vision of an abstract “Outsiders’ Society” where educated men’s daughters can collaborate “by their own methods for liberty, equality, and peace” (Woolf 229). Since Woolf regards men and women as fundamentally different in “both sex and education,” this method allows women to exercise their faculties without merging their identities to men (228). In this way, Woolf proclaims the epistemological worth of women’s institutions as bastions for anti-war morality and political perspectives. By acting and thinking independently, women can produce social change without sacrificing their unique perspectives. This foreshadows Radical feminist efforts to foster women’s spaces, institutions, and knowledge building procedures. Nevertheless, this mission of forging separate women’s spaces has often been steeped in assumptive reasoning. Woolf and other thinkers championing these efforts have often excluded intersectional frameworks

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and experiences, creating a largely homogenous, essentialist, and narrow understanding of womanhood. For instance, Woolf ’s claims about fundamental, sexbased differences in thought and “instinct” risk homogenizing women based on biological distinctions (Woolf 228-229). In Three Guineas, her thesis is also constructed around the realities of “educated men’s daughters.” Aside from a brief mention of working class women as wielding influence over production, there is little dialogue about the diversity of women (223). This creates a narrow focus that presumes to speak for all women rather than acknowledging their heterogeneity. Radical feminism suffers from a similar flaw, considering that their initial analyses often focused on “white, heterosexual, middle-class women” in the United States (McCann et al. 19). As a result, the experiential insights of marginalized communities were devalued. Lesbians, women of color, Marxist women, Indigenous feminists and other groups were left out of this model. In response to these insufficient frameworks, many feminists sought a more self-conscious and diversified understanding of women as epistemic authorities. Through this approach, thinkers confronted assumptions about whose knowledge mattered and how. Gloria Anzaldúa’s “La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness” responds to many of these concerns. Throughout this piece, Anzaldúa addresses the multiplicity of identity and how that can foster both “psychic restlessness” and unique viewpoints (Anzaldúa 386). To begin, she establishes the “alien consciousness” of the mestiza as con-

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nected to “racial, ideological, cultural, and biological cross pollination” (386). This hybrid identity is one of the borderlands, constituting a mix of Anglo, Mexican, and Indigenous cultures. Thus, the mestiza does not fit neatly into dominant modes of thought. Anzaldúa asserts that the mestiza “copes by developing a tolerance for contradiction, a tolerance for ambiguity” (338). This consciousness enables more pluralistic viewpoints, which are uniquely oriented towards a “massive uproot of our dualistic thinking” (389). As a theoretical lens, the mestiza consciousness is described as particularly helpful for healing conflicts—including rape, violence, and war—that occur between cultural groups (389). Inflected with queerness, linguistic diversity, and a spiritual lens, Anzaldúa’s scholarship invites readers to imagine the profound epistemological importance of borderlands identities. Rather than speaking broadly about women as sources of knowledge, she asserts the specific value of the mestiza experience. As such, Anzaldúa’s approach alludes to the power of particularity. Patricia Hill Collins and Donna Haraway explore this concept through standpoint theory, a theoretical lens that regards knowledge as grounded in positionality. Rooted in sociology, this theory aims to delineate “a method for constructing effective knowledge from the insights of women’s situated experiences” (McCann et al. 253). This approach underscores the notion that there cannot be a singular feminist standpoint, since one’s knowledge is structured by subjective and diverse realities. Social positioning—including intersectional experiences of

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race, gender, class, and sexuality—can influence the knowledge that one produces, including their viewpoints on systems of oppression. Donna Haraway elaborates on these themes in a piece entitled “The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Grappling with notions of feminist objectivity, she seeks a vantage point that is genuinely helpful to theorists, activists, and academics. In developing her theory, she denounces the masculinist “god trick” that claims infinite, transcendent, and scientific objectivity (Haraway 304-305). As an alternative, she posits a “view from somewhere” (307). By privileging embodied, particular, and partial perspectives, Haraway redefines feminist objectivity (304). This viewpoint is meant to better encapsulate our lived, experiential realities as human beings. Partial viewpoints can come together to build richer, more textured understandings of our world. Haraway concludes that “feminist objectivity makes room for surprises and ironies at the heart of all knowledge production” (309). Within this framework, there is ample room for nuance and inclusivity of different perspectives. Deepening her theory, Haraway argues for critical examination of these vantage points. Rather than privileging any one source of knowledge—including that of subjugated parties—she regards no standpoint as innocent or unproblematic (Haraway 305). On a similar note, “Hill Collins concludes that everybody has a partial view; nobody has the place to stand and see everything clearly” (McCann et al. 255). Thus, Collins and Haraway explore how standpoint theo-

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ry can uplift diverse perspectives as valuable, without regarding any one viewpoint as all-knowing. Despite advocating for the heterogeneity of perspectives, Hill Collins is still attentive to the role of identity in knowledge production. In “Defining Black Feminist Thought,” Hill Collins discusses the struggle for a self-defined standpoint and articulated consciousness among Black women. Rejecting purely materialist or ideological conceptions, Hill Collins defines Black feminist thought as encompassing “theoretical interpretations of Black women’s reality by those who live it” (Hill Collins 279). Defining and empowering this consciousness is meant to serve theoretical and political ends. She asserts that “Black feminist thought aims to develop a theory that is emancipatory” and “can aid African-American women’s struggles against oppression” (285). This is especially important considering the erasure, stigmatization, and denigration of Afro-centric and feminist consciousness. She highlights how the knowledge of Black women has been traditionally “denigrated in white, male-controlled institutions” (282). As such, the standpoint of Black women becomes a form of resistance, where systems of domination can be challenged through specialized knowledge. In order to develop this knowledge, Hill Collins advocates for the blending of Black feminist theorizing and the everyday “taken-for-granted knowledge shared by African-American women” (Hill Collins 284). This creates a knowledge base that is situated in lived realities and particular experiences of gendered and racialized oppressions. Beyond this, she believes

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that other groups (such as Black men) can productively contribute to Black feminist thought through dissemination, coalition-building, and other collaborative enterprises (287). Taken together, these strategies of knowledge production can contribute to a vision of “human dignity and empowerment” (288). Through her analysis of Black feminist consciousness, Hill Collins articulates the value inherent to a particular “way of knowing.” Together, Haraway and Hill Collins are prime examples of the self-conscious epistemological analyses that took place during late twentieth century feminisms. Both theorists acknowledge the limits of objectivity and embrace particularity in feminist theorizing as a form of resistance and knowledge building. In terms of modern feminism, Viviane Namaste’s “The ‘Transgender Question’ and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory” is a particularly insightful piece. This 2009 essay interrogates how mainstream feminism has overlooked the realities of the transgender experience, including the centrality of labor and prostitution. When feminist theory neglects these analytical categories, Namaste believes that it “de facto excludes most transgender women of color working as prostitutes” (Namaste 421). For many transgender women, prostitution is regarded as a financial path to physically embodying sex change and interacting with the world as women (420). Further critiquing paradigmatic works, Namaste points out weaknesses in the theorizing of queer feminist Judith Butler. She maintains that Butler has an “underdeveloped empirical approach” to

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analyzing violence and transgender identities (422). In confronting these issues, Namaste highlights an array of realities that impact transsexual women, such as forceful policing of public spaces, criminalization of prostitution, and over-regulation of homeless populations (422). By addressing these injustices, Namaste asserts that the gendered violence against trans people is “part of a continuum of violence against the poor and disenfranchised” (422). Ultimately, the experiential categories of labor, prostitution, and impoverishment are vital to accurately depicting the lived experiences of transgender people. Omitting these categories “neglects the specificity of women’s lives” and the value of transgender people as sites for legitimate knowledge building (424). As a corrective to Anglo-American feminism’s tendency to overlook or invisibilize layered, intersectional experiences and identities, Namaste suggests undoing theory and implementing a more empirical approach that integrates relevance, equity in participation, Indigenous knowledge, and ownership as epistemological values (Namaste 421). This methodology would elevate the material realities, lived experiences, and research priorities of transgender women as grounds for knowledge-building. In doing so, Namaste’s approach hopes to address the “gap between transsexual women’s everyday lives and the theoretical explanations of those lives offered by Anglo-American feminist theory” (424). This is presented as a “truly transformative intellectual practice” that would ensure the priorities of everyday trans women are respected in the theoretical process (424).

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Overall, Namaste provides a justice-oriented and distinctly empirical approach to knowledge production, emphasizing the subject as an actor. This elaborates upon the work of standpoint theorists. Similar to Hill Collins, Namaste is attentive to exclusions, epistemic violence, and how the particularity of perspective can be elevated in practical terms. All conclusively, feminist theory should continue to critically interrogate systems of knowledge. Just as Wollstonecraft denounced educational inequality and Hill Collins challenged the subordination of Black feminist consciousness, future feminists should evaluate whose knowledge is deemed valuable by mainstream society and who is relegated to the intellectual outskirts. Moreover, they should look inwards at the epistemic norms of modern feminism. Discourse can be enriched by addressing inequalities, exclusions, and omissions; as such, feminists can emulate Namaste’s approach by confronting epistemic injustice with tactful, evidence-based approaches. Through this practice, contemporary feminists can build a more collaborative, equitable, and just approach to knowledge production.

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Works Cited Anzaldúa, Gloria. “La Mestiza Consciousness.” The Essential Feminist Reader, edited by Estelle Freedman. The Modern Library, 2007, 385-390. Freedman, Estelle B. The Essential Feminist Reader. The Modern Library, 2007. Haraway, Donna. “The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, edited by Carole McCann, et. al. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021, 303-310. Hill Collins, Patricia. “Defining Black Feminist Thought.” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, edited by Carole McCann, et. al. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021, 278-290. McCann, Carole, et al. Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021. Namaste, Viviane. “The ‘Transgender Question’ and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory.” Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives, edited by Carole McCann, et. al. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021, 416-425. Wollstonecraft, Mary. “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” The Essential Feminist Reader, edited by Estelle Freedman. The Modern Library, 2007, 24-36. Woolf, Virginia. “Three Guineas.” The Essential Feminist Reader, edited by Estelle Freedman. The Modern Library, 2007, 220-230.

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Beyond the Male Model: Rethinking Autism Spectrum Disorder By Carmela Martucci Coseo In 2020, the CDC estimated that about one in every fifty-four children in the United States is diagnosed with autism, with common data showing trends of fewer female cases than male (Knopf 6). This information illustrates the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder in society. However, it neglects to account for the cases of undiagnosed autism, especially common among women and girls. Autism is often thought of as primarily affecting males, creating a disadvantage for females with autism because they do not receive correct and timely diagnosis and treatment. The explanation for the drastic difference in diagnosis stems from the lack of awareness of how autism spectrum disorder is often displayed differently in females than it is in males. Expanding one’s knowledge on the negligence and misinformation surrounding females with autism can increase awareness of the dangers of misdiagnosis and the need for reforming diagnoses requirements. The DSM-5 is the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It is an authoritative guide used in diagnosing mental disorders of all kinds. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is defined by the DSM-5 with five main criteria, or “hallmarks.”The first is a deficit in social communication, including a lack of conversational skills, issues with making or maintaining eye contact, reading body language, and difficulty starting

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and maintaining relationships. Another hallmark of autism is restricted or repetitive patterns. This may be exhibited through recurring motor movements or speech, closely followed routines, strong attachment to a particular interest, or hyperactivity, especially to sensory input. To diagnose any mental disorder, the symptoms must significantly impair someone’s ability to function in daily life. Lastly, symptoms of ASD must begin to present themselves in early development (American Psychiatric Association 50-51). Males tend to exhibit the listed symptoms from the DSM-5. Females, however, deviate from the generalized diagnosis, displaying distinct symptoms from men. Misdiagnosis, a late diagnosis, or no diagnosis is due in part to the effect developmental, psychological, social, and cultural influences have on women, leading to a quieter presentation of autism (Rynkiewicz 739). Women with and without autism alike tend to try to fit in with their surroundings. This action is more extreme for women with autism and often called camouflaging or masking. They observe and mimic what their neurotypical peers may do in social settings. Common hyper-fixations for girls with autism tend to align with the social norms as well, for example, fashion or makeup. Their hyper-fixations may simply be intensified or last a longer duration than their neurotypical peers (Rynkiewicz 740). This, in turn, makes their neurological differences less obvious and facilitates the misalignment of their symptoms with the given hallmarks of autism from the DSM-5. These listed hallmarks align with the male

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portrayal of autism more, not considering the ways in which women with autism differ. Thus, these differences between men and women with autism disadvantage females in the diagnosis process. Because the criteria for a diagnosis is inadequate for the female model, women and girls with autism are often misdiagnosed. Common misdiagnoses of women and girls with autism often include attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Individuals with autism are often misdiagnosed with ADHD due to common hyperactivity. OCD symptoms, including obsessions and compulsions, align with the strict adherence to routines common with autism, as well as the heavy hyper-fixations with certain interests (Fusar-Poliet al. 188). Although these misdiagnoses may not seem directly harmful, they can prevent women and girls from successfully understanding, recognizing, and navigating the unique challenges their diagnosis poses, in addition to finding mechanisms that help themselves. One woman even described her feelings of self-doubt and lack of trustworthy judgment after receiving a non-autism diagnosis. She explained that it did not help answer any of her questions and instead pushed her deeper into a place of confusion and uncertainty (Leedham et al. 139). Although a late diagnosis is more beneficial than none, these also have drawbacks. A late autism diagnosis leaves not-yet-diagnosed women with autism stuck mimicking their surroundings for survival, or trying to fit in for a prolonged period. This overwhelming task leaves many women suffering without

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a diagnosis and feeling completely drained (Leedham et al. 138). Many women recount feelings of extreme depression and anxiety prior to a diagnosis simply because they felt as if they did not fit in with the people around them. Women who receive a late diagnosis also comment on the difficulty of beginning the acceptance process, as many harbor feelings of shock and grief. They experience challenges of reframing their past and self-acceptance at a much older age. Although they share immense amounts of relief, finally having the answers they have been hunting their entire life, these women also note the feeling of missing a portion of their lifetime because of the considerable time of uncertainty before finally being diagnosed. Shocking, late diagnosis are also often harmful to women’s mental health (Leedham et al. 140). The common stigmas surrounding autism introduce them to an already skewed perception of the disorder that they have been newly diagnosed with. Experts have begun to warn of a heightened risk of sexual abuse among the autistic community. Evidently, females with autism, misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, are at an even greater risk. (Arky). Whether it is the social disconnect or difficulty at recognizing the danger, many tests have shown an increased likelihood of sexual assault cases against people with autism (Zeliadt). With widely known statistics about the male-to-female sexual assault ratio, one could correctly assume that similar trends follow over into the autism model. Women and girls with autism are three times more likely to experience sexual abuse

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than neurotypical females. Men, however, show no difference in sexual abuse with or without autism (Zeliadt). As stated earlier, autistic girls tend to camouflage themselves. With a misdiagnosis or a late diagnosis, women often do not have the resources to know how to respond in these kinds of situations. Warning signs of abuse are often misinterpreted as hallmark symptoms of autism, making abuse particularly difficult to identify in individuals with ASD (Carbajal). Common signs of abuse in children include agitation and anxiety, reluctance to initiate social interactions, and repetitive self-injuring or self-soothing behaviors, many of which are also characteristics of autism. Additional indicators may include developmental regression, such as bedwetting, loss of previously enjoyed play behaviors, thumb sucking, or the emergence of problematic sexual behaviors. Among adolescents, signs of abuse often include increased social withdrawal and avoidance of people or places that were once familiar or frequently visited (Raising Children Network). Because these trauma responses closely mirror many recognized autism traits, abuse may go unnoticed. As a result, women with undiagnosed autism may lack both the awareness of their condition and understanding of the increased vulnerability it can create, further elevating their risk of continued harm. Assumptions made about autism spectrum disorder, especially in females, can be extremely damaging. While men tend to follow the hallmarks listed in the DSM-5 for diagnosis, women stray from what is known of this “male disorder,” hiding key traits and

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making it more difficult to diagnose. Without this knowledge of the differing traits, autistic girls can get misdiagnosed, diagnosed late, or not diagnosed at all. The proper diagnosis is crucial for anyone with autism to get the appropriate help they need. There is no “fixing” autism. Instead, treatment is focused on support, accommodation, and wellbeing, improving quality of life and creating environments that fit the person. Since females receive said improper diagnosis more often than males, they are likely to experience harmful effects. Some of these include: the development of other mental health disorders, feeling like a social outcast, and an increased likelihood of becoming a victim of sexual assault. It is important that parents, doctors, and the general public are aware of these significant misconceptions and push to expand their knowledge for the betterment and safety of females with ASD. The fight towards awareness for the neurodivergent female community is growing, but at a slow rate. Acknowledging the lack of research on women with autism and funding future studies to address this gap is essential to creating the change needed to better protect and inform females with autism spectrum disorder. The current DSM definition of the disorder is narrow and curated for the male portrayal of autism. By expanding the diagnosis criteria and increasing education surrounding how autism commonly presents differently in females, the field can move towards earlier, more accurate diagnoses and more equitable support for women on the autism spectrum.

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Works Cited Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th ed., American Psychiatric Association, 2013. Arky, Beth. “Why Many Autistic Girls Are Overlooked.” Child Mind Institute, 27 Aug. 2025, childmind.org/article/autistic-girls-overlooked-undiagnosed-. Carbajal, Jose, and Regina T Praetorius. “How Does Autism Affect the Processing of Child Sexual Abuse Trauma?” SFA ScholarWorks, 2020, scholarworks.sfasu.edu/jhstrp/vol5/ iss1/4/. How to Recognise Signs of Child Sexual Abuse in Autistic Children and Teenagers and What to Do, Raising Children Network, raisingchildren.net.au/autism/health-wellbeing/ autism-child-sexual-abuse/child-sexual-abuse-autistic-children-teens-recognising-signs-responding. Fusar-Poli, Laura, et al. “Missed Diagnoses and Misdiagnoses of Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder - European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience.” Springer Nature, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 6 Sept. 2020, link.springer.com/ article/10.1007/S00406-020-01189-W. Knopf, Alison. “Autism Prevalence Increases from 1 in 60 to 1 in 54: CDC .” Wiley Online Library, Brown University Child & Adolescent Pharmacology, 18 May 2020, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cpu.30499. Leedham, Alexandra, et al. “Understanding Perception of Algorithmic Decisions: Fairness, Trust, ...” ‘I Was Exhausted Trying to Figure It out’: The Experiences of Females Receiving an Autism Diagnosis in Middle to Late

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Adulthood, National Autistic Society, 30 May 2019, doi. org/10.1177/2053951718756684. Rynkiewicz, Agnieszka. “Girls and Women with Autism.” Psychiatria Polska, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 31 Aug. 2019, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31760407/. Zeliadt, Nicholette. “Girls with Autism at High Risk of Sexual Abuse, Large Study Says.” The GW Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute, The Transmitter, 14 May 2018, autism.gwu.edu/girls-autism-high-risk-sexual-abuselarge-study-says.

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An Interview with Dr. Sara Diaz Interview by Liz Padrnos P: Charter’s theme this year is “Systems.” I am curious which systems come to mind that motivate your research. D: My home base is in Feminist science studies, so a system that I am particularly grounded in is science. My field really challenges us to think of science as a human endeavor, not just something that produces objective knowledge about the world, but [something] that also produces and reflects ideologies. My own work within the field has been mainly focused on women of color [in the field of science,] and thinking about how the systems and structures of science have worked to exclude women of color from the project of science specifically, but also from the history of science. When I was a graduate student, I wanted to do a project looking at women of color scientists throughout history. I was initially working in a history program, and the response that I got from my advisor was that there weren’t any [women of color] scientists, so there was no point in doing this project. And I thought to myself, well, that cannot be. Of course, I learned that was not right. There were, in fact, enough women of color scientists to do a project, and to do some research. Part of the problem was that they hadn’t been included in history. It was the

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very systems and structures that worked to exclude them while they were actively working as scientists that kept them out of the history books, so that now we not only do not know about them, but they are truly hidden from history. So, we can think about that [phenomenon] as an even bigger system, which is about knowledge. Science is a knowledge system as much as it is a social system, and knowledge systems go well beyond science; history is a knowledge system, women and gender studies is a knowledge system, etc. So, what I’m concerned with in my work is how we make knowledge about the world, what gets counted as knowledge, and who gets to be seen as a knowing producer of knowledge. That system [of science] interacts with just about every other system in our society—with law, with politics, with the military, with prisons, with healthcare. The health side is really where my research has been going in recent years—I’ve been thinking about health and medicine as a scientific system, as well. And, they have a lot of similar problems to the STEM side of things in terms of their politics of exclusion, of exploitation, of erasure. P: How do you think that systems can be reclaimed in productive ways? D: I am working on a project right now that I’m really excited about. It’s a research collective. The original vision for the project was to create a biology education open-access resource framed by the insights of feminist science studies. An example of what this

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might look like is biology education on sexual development—embryonic sexual development, for example, that doesn’t take the gender binary as its starting place. And, in fact, a lot of really good biology education already throws that out the window because, as it turns out, most creatures don’t develop in these binary ways. There are all kinds of variations in nature. This project was really conceived of as a publicly accessible, educational resource that would help people understand the most critical biological questions that we are facing as a culture from a more critical feminist, anti-racist perspective. In many ways, this is a project of reclamation. It’s a way of reclaiming a knowledge system and thinking about it in a more holistic way that is also more attentive to urgent needs that we have, such as climate change and even things like COVID-19. There is so much misinformation and a lack of understanding about how viruses work and spread. We have a lot of really urgent needs around public biology education at this point in time and that education just isn’t accessible to most people. So, we’re trying to create this resource for people that will be available online as a way of reclaiming biological knowledge for the public. P: The degrees you earned seem rather distinct from one another. You earned a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry and Spanish, then a Master’s in History, and later a Ph.D. in Feminist Studies. Could you give some context

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about your studies, and what inspired you to pivot from studying science to history, and then to go on to earn a Ph.D. in Feminist Studies? D: It was a process. I left undergraduate and worked for about 6 years in biotechnology. In my last position, I worked as an engineer. At that point in time, I knew I wanted to go back to graduate school, but I wasn’t sure what to do. I was kind of weighing options, and I had two paths in mind. One was to get a Master’s in Engineering, and continue in the path I was already on, but I also wasn’t all that happy working in corporate science. By that point, I knew I really didn’t want to do research either. I was kind of thinking if I don’t continue on this path, what do I do? I was thinking of something more academic, rather than applied, as an alternate path. As an undergraduate, for my chemistry thesis, I did a project about the Miwok tribe’s use of a particular chemical compound that they extracted from acorns to use as a dye in their basket weaving. The project was working out what chemical reaction occurred during this particular process. It was a way of exploring non-Western uses of science. It was sort of serendipitous how I came to that particular project, but I was really excited working on it as an undergraduate. And when I was thinking about what I wanted to do for graduate school, I was thinking to myself, whatever that was, that would be really cool. And so, I thought maybe it was the history of science, and it

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turned out I was wrong. If there’s a word for that, it might be ethnochemistry. I applied to a couple of programs in the history of science. I, by some miracle, got into one of them, and have no idea still to this day why they took me on as a student, because when I started in the Fall, both the historians of science were on sabbatical, so I didn’t have any classes to take or anybody to advise me about how to move forward. So I was trying to literally figure out all on my own what classes to take. I was combing through the catalogue, looking at Native American Studies classes. I found a class about Indigenous women, which turned out to be cross-listed with women and gender studies. Right below that course in the catalogue was a Women in Science class. I signed up for that class and met the person who wound up being my dissertation advisor. It was six weeks into that class, and I was just ruined for history at that point because this whole new framework from WGST was so eye-opening. It gave me so many tools for looking at my own experience as a woman in STEM to think about these big questions about the production of knowledge, who’s included, who’s excluded. There were resources there that I had never been exposed to. And so, for the PhD, I [ultimately] decided to apply for the women’s studies program. I talked to my research advisor at that point and she said, “I’ve been waiting.” (laughs) She was just waiting on me. She never put any pressure on me to do it, but once I was ready she was there ready to help me. So, that’s how I wound up shifting my path.

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P: On the WGST page on Gonzaga’s website, there is a photo of Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality. I wonder if you could explain how the concept of intersectionality informs the department’s vision and learning goals for students. D: Intersectionality is really important to our learning goals. If you look at the mission statement for our department, I think you’ll see it’s explicitly there, but also implicit throughout the whole mission statement. So, the program that I went to for my PhD was grounded in transnational feminism, which is not synonymous with intersectionality, but many transnational feminists are also intersectional feminists. I was really fortunate to be able to put together a committee for the project on women of color scientists that was entirely made up of women of color. So, my entire graduate committee were trained women of color feminist scholars which meant they were all scholars of intersectionality, in some way. So, that became really important to me as an analytic lens. It’s impossible to do the work of my scholarly project without intersectionality. It’s absolutely central. For me, as someone that has been participating in the construction of this department—and I’m not the only one—that particular analytic frame is indispensable. We simply must have it because it’s a methodological tool, and I think this is really important: One of the most common misunderstandings about intersectionality is that it’s a theory of identity. It does theorize identity, but it’s not exclusively about identity. It’s in fact about sys-

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tems. Intersectionality is a tool we can use to understand how systems work together, in particular, and so for me to be able to look at the question I had as a graduate student about what women of color are doing in science, I needed a tool that would help me look at how multiple systems were working together. I’ll give an example of this using one of the people I wrote about in my dissertation: Roger Arliner Young. She was a Black woman zoologist. She’d been used as a cautionary tale because her career just tanked at a certain point in her life. The narrative about why that happened had to do with her being too dependent on her mentor, her dissertation advisor, and not being able to survive without him later in her career. Something about that story just didn’t quite resonate with me, so here’s how intersectionality comes back in. I knew I had to look at how the systems and structures of science work. I studied her university. I got papers about her employment. I looked at her graduate student records. So, that’s looking into the system and structure of science. But I recognized she’s also a human being living in a particular place at a particular time. So, I thought, I have to look at what other systems and structures existed in those places at that time. This is how intersectionality comes in. We’re whole people. We live lives of multiple systems, and one of the things I wanted to look at was this time in Arliner Young’s life when things were supposedly crashing down for her. She lived in North Carolina. She had left her mentor, who was in Washington D.C., at Howard University, and went to the North Carolina College for Negroes in the 1940s. So,

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I figured, I should read a book about what was going on in Durham, North Carolina in the 1940s. So, I found one. In chapter 2, her name was at the top of the page listed as a union organizer! What’s interesting is that this person who wrote this book [Christina Green] had no idea that Arliner Young was an important scientist who made a really important discovery. And the historians of science had no idea she was a labor organizer. And actually, what happened to her was that she was blacklisted because of her labor organizing. So, the crash in her career was not because she was too dependent on her mentor; it was because she was a radical! P: So, she was organizing against her university? D: Well, she [irritated] the leaders of her university who were allied with the tobacco farmers in the area. Arliner Young was going around and helping unionize the tobacco workers, and it was the farmers who were contributing large amounts of money to the university to keep the university [running], and they got upset that one of the university’s faculty members was trying to unionize their workers. The university president got irritated with her, and she got fired. This is intersectionality—understanding that our lives are multiple, that the systems we are embedded in are multiple. It’s not just the university. The university is in a context, so if I wanted to understand what happened to Arliner Young, I had to understand what was happening in all these different

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contexts, and how all these different contexts were working together to lead to a particular outcome in her life. So that, to me, is how intersectionality is important to the work we do, whether it’s historical work or other work, that tool of understanding how systems work together and shape our lives in really important ways is indispensable to the kind of work we do in WGST. P: Could you explain the importance of the WGST department being multidisciplinary, and how that benefits students? D: There are two parts to this. One, we are interdisciplinary. Two, we are multi- or even cross-disciplinary. Interdisciplinary refers to bringing the methods of multiple disciplines together into one space, reshaping those methods into something wholly new. As a historian, for example, most of my methods are historical methods. I am looking at archival information, but because I am an interdisciplinary scholar, I am bringing in methods from cultural studies, from textual analysis, since I have a literature background. So, I think about the meaning of texts and words. In that way, the work I do is historical, but it’s also interdisciplinary. It brings things together and makes things entirely new. I promise you this is the case because history journals will not publish my work. (laughs) It’s something too different from what history considers itself to be, since it’s brought other methods together. I do get published by interdisciplinary journals because I am more legible in those spaces.

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The core of our program in the department is interdisciplinary. It’s taught by faculty who have interdisciplinary PhDs. My PhD is in Feminist studies. Dr. Rodriguez-Coss’ is also in Feminist studies, and Dr. Dame-Griff’s is in Women’s Studies. So, the core of our program is training students using these multiple methods pulled together in one space, but we also have cross-disciplinary courses. These are taught by disciplinary experts in one of the traditional disciplines using the frameworks from their discipline but thinking about gender, race, class, etc. together in the context of the discipline. It’s really important that we have both of those things: the interdisciplinary and the cross-disciplinary. The reason I am really committed to that is because even though the field of WGST is now fifty years old, and it clearly is its own animal, it comes from the work done by Feminist scholars in the disciplines. When we go back fifty years to the very origins of the field, there were no PhDs in Feminist studies at that point. The people doing the teaching were Feminist historians, Feminist literary scholars, Feminist sociologists, Feminist political scientists, who were trained in their own field and thinking about questions of women, gender, sexuality, etc. within their disciplinary paradigms and then bringing all those ideas together into a brand new space that created what is now the interdisciplinary space of WGST. So, for me, there has to always be a productive conversation between scholars in the disciplines and scholars in the interdiscipline. Everybody who trained me was a disciplinary scholar. My dissertation advisor was a Feminist social psycholo-

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gist. I also had a Feminist historian, a Feminist cultural studies scholar, and a Feminist Ethnics studies scholar, all on my committee, working to train me and help form me. P: Would you mind sharing what it is like to teach WGST at a Jesuit institution? D: I’ve actually been doing a lot of work on this in recent months, as I’m working with a group of chairs of WGST programs at other Jesuit institutions and trying to pull together a network so we can be more connected with one another, especially in this moment where there are attacks happening on our field from the White House. We are in this really unique space and need to be connected. What’s happening at public institutions is really different than what’s happening at a place like Gonzaga. There are ways we can be a little bit sheltered from federal bans, and yet it’s not a completely cozy situation. There are tensions about doing WGST in a Jesuit space. There are also lots of places of compatibility, but I think that there is something unique about being in this position of tension but also being protected at this moment in time. I think there are a lot of resonances between the Ignatian pedagogical paradigm and Feminist pedagogy. Both frameworks see action, reflection, and experience as critical components of education. So, in some ways, the work we do in WGST is facilitated by being in a Jesuit institution. Students come here knowing they will get an education that is framed by values.

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When I was a graduate student at the University of Washington, a lot of students expected that they were going to get a neutral education that didn’t have values in it, but Feminism is a set of values. It is normative. It says the world should be a particular way, and teaching that to a group of students who are expecting neutrality became difficult. There is a friction there. But here, my students don’t expect neutrality. They know they will get a values-based education. In some ways, Gonzaga students are more open and receptive to a specific set of values because we name them. We say: “These are Feminist values, and we are teaching you through these principles of Feminist values.” Not every student is open to that, but in general, most students come here already expecting that they will get values in their education. While that’s a place of resonance, we can’t ignore that there are places of friction, too. There are frictions around issues of abortion and birth control. There is friction with respect to women’s ordination. So, there are lots of questions we may want to discuss in a WGST class that may not perfectly harmonize with Jesuit values. There is a dance, which I have actually found to be productive. I think it’s useful, and one of the ways it’s been productive for me is challenging the assumption I had in my own education that WGST is a secular project, and that there might be some utility in questioning whether or not it is and should be [a secular project.] [Teaching WGST] at a Jesuit institution creates room for spiritual questions in relation to the field’s questions.

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P: In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler challenges how “representation is the normative function of a language which is said either to reveal or to distort what is assumed to be true about the category of women” (Butler 3-4). I’m curious what you make of this statement. Do you think the category of woman as an identity is still valuable as a rallying point for uniting Feminism, considering there are many more axes of oppression women face in addition to sexism? D: I’m not sure I do think the category of woman is necessary as a rallying point. In particular, because of intersectionality, we get a lot of complication around the category “woman.” Those first kinds of critiques about the category came from women of color, [pushing back on how mainstream Feminism’s] descriptions of femininity were really just descriptions of one particular type of femininity, and so does that mean women of color aren’t women? And, in many ways, culturally, women of color have not been treated as women. So, we get that very first fracturing coming from critiques by women of color, and of course, those expand, and we get lesbian critiques of the category of woman. Butler was one of the people who contributed to those critiques. And then of course, we get transgender critiques of the category [of woman] as well. For me, all of those [critiques] are interconnected through questions about what constitutes a woman, what counts as a woman culturally, and the very kind of narrow

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definition that excludes a lot of people. At this point in time, I feel fairly convinced that we don’t have to organize ourselves around that category in order to be effective in activism. There’s another [angle to this question, though, that should be reflected upon,] and that’s whether the category is useful as a category of analysis. I do think it remains helpful as a category of analysis as long as we’re thinking in complexity about the category and not thinking about it as a reified or natural category, but a social construction. P: This question is specifically in regards to transnational feminism. What are some strategies that are imperative for a transnational feminist network to be effective, and how can transnational feminist networks ensure they’re not foregrounding the most privileged perspectives? D: I think this is one of those places where there’s some overlap between intersectional and transnational perspectives, in that if we start at the margins, we can hopefully avoid the problem of having our movements only represent the most privileged perspectives. In a global transnational context, starting at the margins means starting with people who are the most impacted by global inequality. It starts with linguistic minorities, who do not have access to the common languages that are spoken in transnational feminist circles. So, that means we need to be thinking of those people who can do the work of translation to work with people who are from linguistic

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minorities, [particularly] Indigenous people who may not be able to access the conversations to [state their needs]. So, that work [of translation] needs to be done to make sure that we’re even able to hear from those people who are most likely to be impacted by global inequalities, climate change, etc. That requires translation skills and also [necessitates] that we resource those translational skills. It may even mean that we need educational resources to make sure that people can learn languages that might be difficult to find resources to learn. This was another thing that I learned in graduate school from [peers’] projects who were trying to focus on Indigenous cultures and [were] having a hard time finding the resources to learn the language. Those can be challenges that are structural as well as economic. P: What is a social justice movement you find particularly captivating? D: I’m really fascinated by Feminist abolition movements. My focus in terms of my own teaching has been on prison abolition, but I am also aware there are many other abolitionist frames. The original investigators I’m working with on this biology education project [mentioned earlier] identify themselves as university abolitionists, which was a frame that was really new to me and very provocative to think about. What does it means to abolish the university—especially in this moment where we see universities under attack? I found that very challenging, but I like an idea that challenges me, that unsettles

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me, and I found that one particularly unsettling. But think about how much the university structure itself is about gatekeeping knowledge! What would it mean to have all the systems of knowledge available to everybody, regardless of whether or not you had the educational privilege to be able to score a certain score on a standardized test, to have the grades to enter into the university? University abolition [involves] thinking about radical access to the systems of knowledge. So, this kind of framework of abolishing systems is something I’m really interested in. I’m also fed by those systems. I get my paycheck from those systems. I am saving for retirement through those systems. So, I’m implicated. It makes thinking about these kinds of things challenging, but I really like being challenged in that way—to think about my own position, and my own stakes in these systems.

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Comedy as Social Resistance By Mia Fraley Despite having a marginal place in United States history and being unknown to many, Jackie “Moms” Mabley was “the funniest woman in the world” during the 20th century (“Moms Mabley”). She rose from an extremely difficult childhood to become one of the most well-known Black female comedians by the white and black community alike and had a hugely successful career spanning sixty years from the early 1900s to the 1960s. Unfortunately, scholarship has not adequately appreciated the depth of Mabley’s comedic talent. Mabley simultaneously made her audience laugh while questioning the status quo. At a time when openly speaking about racial discrimination was extremely dangerous, Jackie “Moms” Mabley used comedy and her comedic persona as tools of social resistance, employing humor to challenge racism and sexism while under the guise of appearing harmless to the white population. Born in 1894 in Brevard, North Carolina, Mabley endured an immensely cruel childhood. Originally named Loretta Mary Aiken, Jackie Mabley later changed her name due to her brother’s embarrassment of having a sister in show business (Gillespie). Mabley was one of sixteen children in her family and was the great-granddaughter of a slave. At age eleven, Mabley was raped by an elderly Black man, and again at age thirteen by a white sheriff. She gave birth to a child each time, but both were placed for

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adoption. At age fourteen, Mabley ran away to join a vaudeville-style minstrel show to escape a marriage to an older man her father had arranged (Bennetts 5). Vaudeville was America’s first big-time show business, spanning from the 1880s to the 1930s. It comprised a series of unrelated variety acts, including comedy, singing, dancing, juggling, acrobatics, illusion, and more (Britannica Editors). Mabley became part of the Black vaudeville circuit, performing in theatres in the South that solely catered to Black audiences, as racism and segregation made it difficult for Black performers to be accepted into white venues. The Black vaudeville circuit provided steady work for Mabley, though the pay was meager, and she travelled in minstrel shows for quite some time. At this point in her career, Mabley remained unknown to the larger American public but was successful within the Black American community (Harris 767). The well-known Black Vaudeville duo known as Butterbeans and Susie eventually discovered Mabley and found she was too talented to be working for only fourteen dollars a week. They persuaded her to join them, and, upon doing so, Mabley’s popularity increased significantly. With growing popularity, she eventually branched off from Butterbeans and Susie and began collaborating with other renowned comedians and actors, performing at numerous prestigious theaters in Harlem, often becoming the first Black female to do so (“She Finally Makes the Movies” 87). Additionally, during this time in her career, she began to be known as Jackie “Moms” Mabley, as people she worked with often noted her willingness to help

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struggling actors and comics. She was selfless and provided sympathy for her fellow performers, often emphasizing her concern for young people and the importance of having a mother figure around (Gillespie). Overall, she had a strong mothering nature for other performers she worked with through the Black Vaudeville circuit (Salvo). It wasn’t until the 1960s that Mabley started to acquire a reputation with the white population. She signed a recording contract with Chess Records, and her first album sold well. Her album was declared an overnight success; she recorded nine more albums and was later signed by Mercury Records in 1966. She performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City and appeared on mainstream TV and film, gaining attention from the white population. Ultimately, the 1960s were the peak of her fame; Mabley was one of the country’s most popular comedians, often selling out her shows (Salvo, Gillespie, Bennetts 5, “She Finally Makes the Movies” 88). Mabley was simultaneously experiencing racial and gender oppression, through sexist gender expectations, sexual violence, segregation, and low wages, which allowed her to develop a comedic style that resonated with Black audiences and made light of the cruel realities many Black people lived, and also propelled her understanding of injustice and activism through humor. Before considering the specific humor Mabley employed to deliver social critiques, it is necessary to analyze the persona she engaged to do so. Mabley created and embodied her “moms” persona, which was that of a stereotypical mammy, to make bold

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jokes. The mammy stereotype was developed as an offensive racial caricature constructed during slavery and was popularized through minstrel shows in the latter half of the 19th century. The caricature painted a picture of an older Black female domestic worker who had undying loyalty to her slaveholders, as caregiver and counsel. Essentially, the mammy portrayed that Black women were content with their enslavement, thus legitimizing the institution of slavery (“Popular and Pervasive Stereotypes of African Americans”). Furthermore, the mammy was completely desexualized. In appearance, scholar David Pilgrim writes that the “Mammy was black, fat with huge breasts, and head covered with a kerchief to hide her nappy hair, strong, kind, loyal, sexless, religious and superstitious. She spoke bastardized English; she did not care about her appearance” (The Mammy Caricature - Anti-Black Imagery - Jim Crow Museum). Overall, mammies “served as nostalgia for whites concerned about racial equality” (“Popular and Pervasive Stereotypes of African Americans”). Mabley’s persona was described as “that of an older woman wearing a housedress, floppy shoes, and knit cap,” or a “dirty old lady” (Bennetts 5). The persona was strategic for Mabley, as it allowed her to attack racism and sexism through her comedy. She played into the white population’s familiarity and comfort with the mammy, making herself appear non-threatening and oriented with the racial hierarchy of the time. Thus, white audiences interpreted her act as reinforcing or endorsing the status quo, but in reality, she was using the persona as a

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weapon, using it to fight the oppressive social order. She was able to mask the aggression and critiques in her humor with this persona, allowing her to target social injustices against the Black population that many comics at the time could not publicly address without endangering themselves. Furthermore, this persona “allowed Mabley to perform alone and outside the confines of sexually exploitative expectations placed upon many other Black female performers of her time” (Wood 89). Instead of being hypersexualized like many Black women were at the time, Mabley desexualized herself, placing herself outside the realm of objectification, thus claiming agency over her voice and body. Without this persona, it is not likely Mabley would have been successful, especially among white audiences. Furthermore, by taking on the image of the mammy as a form of resistance against white supremacist patriarchy, Mabley turned the stereotypical concept on its head. Embracing this persona through her humor helped Mabley to safely critique the injustices that Black Americans faced. First, most of her humor challenged sexist and patriarchal notions. Mabley’s jokes were often raunchy in nature, referring to her preference for younger men over older men (“Moms Mabley”). She often mimicked older men, subtly mocking the ways they wielded authority over women, as well as the decline of their sexual powers. Her signature line became: “Ain’t nothin’ an old man can do for me but bring me a message from a young man” (Bennetts 5). This act was likely inspired by the pressure placed on her by her father to marry an older

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man (“She Finally Makes the Movies” 88). Through this kind of humor, Mabley attacked sexism and patriarchy by inverting objectification of the female body onstage to that of the elderly male body, and by resisting compliance with patriarchal systems and heteronormative notions of female passivity (Wood 93). She ultimately reclaims sexual power and makes the older man an object of ridicule. “If they fall into the category of the older male, they are forced into the role of the useless partner. If they are younger, they become the object of Moms’ desire” (Wood 95). Through this kind of humor, Mabley challenges sexism by destabilizing compulsory heterosexuality and “proper” performance of femininity for older Black female bodies (Wood 95). Furthermore, through this act, she enacts sexuality on her own terms, something that wasn’t available to her in her childhood. Mabley likely employed this humor rooted in feminism to empower herself and attempt to mend her past, rooted in sexism and sexual violence (Wood 98). Second, through her jokes, Mabley exposed the violence and isolation experienced by the Black population in the 20th-century United States (Wood 99). During this time, the South remained entrenched in racial discrimination and violence; lynchings, mob violence, Ku Klux Klan activity, segregation, and the absence of police protection were everyday realities for Black communities (Williams 148-156; White 467-479; Muhammad 192-226; Wells-Barnett 1-18). Many Black Americans left the South, as part of the Great Migration, to escape the occurrence of racial violence and discrimination (Holt, “Negro

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New-Comers” 133-135; “A Migrant Family” 135138). Once Mabley rose to fame after being discovered by Butterbeans and Susie, she openly criticized the South, frequently referring to the South as a “foreign country.” She did this to distance herself from Southern culture and highlight the ridiculousness of Jim Crow laws and racism. She would often say, “I just got back from down there” referring to the South, rendering it as unnameable and overall backward. Through this act, Mabley was able to “loosen the knot of nostalgia that holds tight to a happier South” (Wood 99). It becomes evident that Mabley also utilized humor as a way to cope with her experiences of racism. Through humor, she confronted the harsh and unjust realities of the time, using comedy as a way to separate herself from experiences that might otherwise destroy herself of identity (Early 34). Though Mabley passed away in 1975 in New York from heart failure, she left an incredible legacy (“Moms Mabley, Comedy Pioneer”). Her career spanned over six decades. She appeared in several films, recorded over 20 comedy albums, and eventually gained a new audience in variety shows in the 1960s and 1970s. She is considered the first successful Black female stand-up comic (Salvo). Her comedic style contributed to oral traditions responding to racist ideologies ingrained in U.S. culture, politics, and everyday life (Wood 88). Overall, the difficulty of growing up as a Black woman in the South shaped Mabley’s comedy as a form of social protest. By embodying the “moms” persona when executing

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her critiques of racism and sexism, her jokes were easily accepted by a white, racist, patriarchal society and subverted societal racial and sexual expectations. Scholar Katelyn Wood says it best: “Mabley’s humor intertwined entertainment and feminist/anti-racist politics to cut through the pains and silences of pre-Civil Rights United States” (85). Ultimately, Mabley’s persona and humor were tools of social resistance. They were a way for her to release anger, cope with the racism and sexism she faced as a Black woman and affirm her humanity that was often denied.

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Works Cited Bennetts, Leslie. “The Pain Behind the Laughter of Moms Mabley.” The New York Times, 9 Aug. 1987, timesmachine. nytimes.com/timesmachine/1987/08/09/992487.html?pageNumber=226. Britannica Editors. “Vaudeville.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Oct. 2025, www.britannica.com/art/vaudeville. Early, Gerald et al.. “Black Humor: Reflections on an American Tradition.” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 63, no. 4, 2010, pp. 29–41. JSTOR, www.jstor. org/stable/41149267. Gillespie, James. “Mabley, Jackie (Moms).” NCpedia, North Carolina Government & Heritage Library, www.ncpedia. org/biography/mabley-jackie. Accessed 29 Oct. 2025. Harris, Trudier. “Moms Mabley: A Study in Humor, Role Playing and the Violation of Taboo.” The Southern Review, vol. 24, no. 4, 1988, pp. 767–776. Holt, Thomas C. “A Migrant Family Adjusts to Life in Chicago, 1922.” Major Problems in African-American History, Vol. 1: From Slavery to Freedom, 1619–1877, Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Holt, Thomas C. “Negro New-Comers in Detroit, 1918.” Major Problems in African-American History, Vol. 1: From Slavery to Freedom, 1619–1877, Houghton Mifflin, 2000. “Moms Mabley.” National Museum of African American History and Culture, https://nmaahc.si.edu/moms-mabley. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026. “Moms Mabley, Comedy Pioneer.” National Museum of Afri-

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can American History and Culture, https://nmaahc.si.edu/ moms-mabley-comedy-pioneer. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026. Muhammad, Gibran Khalil. The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Harvard UP, 2010. The Mammy Caricature - Anti-Black Imagery - Jim Crow Museum. https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/mammies/homepage.htm. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026. “Popular and Pervasive Stereotypes of African Americans.” National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution, nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/ popular-and-pervasive-stereotypes-african-americans. Accessed 10 Nov. 2025. Salvo, Victor. “Jackie Moms Mabley — Nominee, 1894–1975.” The Legacy Project, legacyprojectchicago.org/person/jackie-moms-mabley. Accessed 29 Oct. 2025. “She Finally Makes the Movies.” Ebony, Apr. 1974, books.google.com/books?id=LN4DAAAAMBAJ. Wells-Barnett, Ida B. The Red Record. 1895. Edited version for History 358, Canvas. White, Deborah Gray. “Visual Sources on Lynching.” Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, with Documents, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012. Williams, Kidada. “Writing Victims’ Personhoods and People into the History of Lynching.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 20, 2021, pp. 148–56, doi:10.1017/ S1537781420000584. Wood, Katelyn Hale. “Laughter in the Archives: Jackie ‘Moms’ Mabley and the Haunted Diva.” QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, vol. 1, no. 3, 2014, pp. 85–108, doi:10.14321/ qed.1.3.0085.

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Charter Cold War Constructions of Masculinity in Giovanni’s Room and The Left Hand of Darkness By Grace Applegate I don’t mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression. It grows in us, that fear. It grows in us year by year. – Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness Homophobic rhetoric accelerated in America after World War II, exacerbated by military insecurity brought on by the Cold War and the fear that totalitarian and communist propaganda would emasculate American men and the state itself. Anxiety around communism, modern ideas about sexual freedom, and destabilized masculinity in the home and workplace caused the “othering” and persecution of women’s bodies and queer bodies. Together, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (1956) and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) can be analyzed to illustrate how model citizenship was and is constructed as a national strategy to perform masculine power. This paper will analyze The Left Hand of Darkness by first unpacking K. A. Cuordileone’s analysis of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s influential book, The Vital Center, which helps to frame America’s obsession with symbolic dualisms during the time of the Cold War. The second half of this paper will place Cuordileone’s analysis of Schlesinger’s ideas in con-

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versation with Judith Butler’s and Louis Althusser’s performance and identity theories as a lens to analyze each protagonist’s fleeing and othering in both novels, focusing more heavily on Giovanni’s Room. 1. Softness, misogyny, and political perversion Fear can alter and dissolve reality, and is often amplified by leaders or governments seeking to control and unify their citizens. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness exemplifies how political agendas may utilize fear as a way of controlling citizens, whether it be for their own benefit or not. The novel allegorizes the Cold War, as shown by protagonist Genly Ai’s tense political surroundings on the planet of Gethen, where the nations of Karhide (feudal and monarchical) and Orgoreyn (organized and bureaucratic) lie on the brink of conflict. Protagonist Genly Ai is sent from the Ekumen confederacy, whose mission is to connect planets through the exchange of knowledge and goods for the betterment of humankind. The xenophobic and nationalist attitudes many native Gethenians have towards Ai, and one another, oppose this goal. The leaders of Orgoreyn and Karhide use fear to deepen the divisions between their people and maintain political power (Le Guin 142). In an exchange with Ai, the Karhidish leader Argaven says explicitly: “I do fear you, envoy. I fear those who sent you. I fear liars, and I fear tricksters, and worst I fear the bitter truth. And so I rule my country well. Because only fear rules men” (Le Guin 39). This exchange not only illustrates fear of

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the unfamiliar, but also narrates a ruler’s admittance that such fear can be weaponized for a political agenda. The use of fear to “other” can be traced throughout American history by studying broadening gaps between nations and political parties. In “Politics in an Age of Anxiety: Cold War Political Culture and the Crisis in American Masculinity, 1949-1960,” K. A. Cuordileone analyzes influential theorist Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s The Vital Center, which characterizes the radical right as hard and liberal Democrats with the softness of communism, suggesting that this softness compromises national security (3). Propaganda often uses binaries to more easily virtue-signal and portray political communities as monstrous, inhuman, and “other” by using fear, shock value, and spectacle as a method of influencing political and cultural anxiety. In his analysis of The Vital Center, Cuordileone quotes Schlesinger’s political agenda, which sought to “restore order” and unify a softening and increasingly “fat” and “complacent” liberalism with hard American conservatism so that both parties could “oppose its totalitarian enemy” together (1). He additionally quotes Schlesinger’s assertions that wartime encounters with USSR totalitarianism had “proven the centrality of man’s deeper, darker passions” and that vulnerable Americans were being attracted to an inherently feminine totalitarian desire to be conquered or “disciplined” (6). That is, Americans and Soviet communists had a perverse desire for, in Schlesinger’s words, “the whole thrust of totalitari-

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an indoctrination…to destroy the boundaries of individual personality” (qtd. in Cuordileone 4). Here, Schlesinger connects those attracted to totalitarianism with the sexually receptive qualities associated with women; at the time, gender complementarity was a widely accepted interpretation of natural law, despite shifting ideas about sex as something more than a procreative good. He also urges Americans to be wary of Communist propaganda, implying that it exploits American citizens’ softness and femininity, causing susceptibility to communist ideology and totalitarian aspirations. At the same time, Schlesinger portrays the USSR as a tempting siren: the sexist and age-old symbol of dark femininity who leads wayward voyagers to their demise through sung promises. In this case, the USSR seduces those Americans who are, as he describes, vulnerably “lonely” or “frustrated,” and who crave “social, intellectual, and even sexual fulfillment they cannot obtain in existing society” (qtd. in Cuordileone 5). The attribution of feminine qualities to a feared national enemy upheld misogynistic depiction of women and androcentric values in American politics and broader culture. Many of Genly Ai’s attitudes exemplify misogynistic values and reflect how femininity and moral weakness were associated in the United States during the Cold War period. For example, Ai associates femininity with untrustworthiness. At the beginning of The Left Hand of Darkness, the narrator reveals that Ai has been living under Estraven’s roof for two years. Estraven, the Karhidish Prime Minister, offers

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more than a home and friendship to Ai; he believes in Ai’s mission and prioritizes it when no one else does. Despite this, Ai remains suspicious of Estraven and refuses his friendship until the end of the novel. In the novel’s first chapter, Ai reflects while conversing with him: “I thought…Estraven’s performance had been womanly, all charm and tact and lack of substance, specious and adroit. Was it in fact perhaps this supple femininity that I disliked and distrusted in him?” (Le Guin 12). Ai is aware of this misogynistic leaning, but his negative association between femininity and dishonesty continues until a moment in Chapter 18, directly before he accepts Estraven’s sexual androgyny. Ai describes Estraven’s face “as soft, as vulnerable, as remote as the face of a woman who looks at you out of her thoughts and does not speak” (248, italics added). Even when Ai realizes the harm in having rejected Estraven’s reality, he still relies on language reminiscent of Schlesinger’s description of American liberalism––proving just how deep-seated these associations are. At the same time, Ai views women as “other,” shown when he tries to describe what the performance of a woman looks like in his society back home on Earth: “I can’t tell you what women are like,” he tells Estraven. “I never thought about it much in the abstract, you know, and––God!––by now I’ve practically forgotten...In a sense, women are more alien to me than you are” (Le Guin 234). Commenting on the novel, Suzana Haji Muhammada and Sujuan Li point to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s desire triangle theory: that male homosocial desire, homophobia, and

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misogyny are a “three-dimensional integration” (2). In their words, you cannot preserve the “subjectivity and superiority of men” without “reduc[ing] women to the other…and avoid[ing] being regarded as an object of desire by male homosexuality” (Muhammada, Li 2). Ai’s misogyny is directly tied to how he views himself as a true, heterosexual man. Ai is also initially suspicious of his own confusing feelings towards Estraven due to his androgynous sexuality. Indeed, Schlesinger goes a step further to condemn not only those with the feminine and soft characteristics of communism, but also the innate “perversions” that come with it––specifically, homosexuality. Cuordileone quotes Schlesinger, who states that communism “perverts politics into something secret, sweaty and furtive like nothing so much, in the phrase of one wise observer of modern Russia, as homosexuality in a boys’ school; many practicing it, but all those caught to be caned by the headmaster” (5). These details further reveal America’s obsession with a dualistic image concerning the masculinity or femininity of its state and people. But it also shows how homosexuality was framed as a personal and political perversion, representing all that citizens should defy (both internallyand externally) in order to successfully resist communist ideology. Thus, the “other”––a malleable construction that could be applied to anyone threatening the state––came to encompass all who were in any way queer. “Queerness” constitutes a sexual “other.” Throughout The Left Hand of Darkness, the foreignness and queerness of Ai’s sexual identity and

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cultural background are exacerbated to spread fear among Gethenian civilians by their leaders. In Ai’s case, spatial foreignness––being from an alien planet––directly influences the difference between his and Gethenians’ cultural and biologically-driven understanding of how sexuality and gender operate. Gethenians live in a genderless and asexual state, except for a monthly “kemmer” period where they feel desire and their bodies morph to allow for sexual activity. Gethenians stuck in kemmer resemble Genly Ai’s living state as a human and are viewed as sexual outsiders, called “perverts.” Karhide’s ruler, Argaven, characterizes Ai’s home on Earth as “a society of perverts,” adding that “it’s a disgusting idea… I don’t see why human beings here on earth should want or tolerate any dealings with creatures so monstrously different” (Le Guin 36). Conversely, Ai is unwilling to accept the unfamiliar androgynous gender of Gethenians, even after more than two years of living among them: “I tried to,” he thinks, “but my efforts took the form of self-consciously seeing a Gethenian first as a man, then as a woman, forcing him into those categories…’ (Le Guin 12). Ai’s uncertainty of Estraven’s gender and sexuality keeps him from accepting Estraven’s friendship for much of the novel, demonstrating how othering can cause isolation. By situating Ai in an environment where sexual androgyny is the norm, Le Guin reframes the way readers think not only about gender, but also prescribed heterosexual hegemony: the monstrous is typically attributed to those who exist against the grain of hegemonic ideology and beliefs, and mani-

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fest as fringe identities, including queer ones. In the case of Ai, the Gethenians’ xenophobia manifests against his constant heterosexuality and maleness. Theorist Meg Wesling states that homophobia was specifically used during the Cold War to help the US perform as a decidedly masculine and hegemonic power that “targeted homosexuals as subversive and criminal agents” (Wesling 8). This historical reality overlaps with Le Guin’s fictional one: in The Left Hand of Darkness, Ai is suspected by the Orgoreyn government of being a Karhidean spy and is ultimately captured and sent to a labor camp. David C. Jones’ essay on James Baldwin and American power likens the Cold War’s Red Scare to a “Lavender Scare,” which, he writes, saw “hundreds of suspected homosexuals losing federal jobs on account of their supposed vulnerability to blackmail by Soviet agents” (5). During the Cold War, the United States’ political “other” was the USSR. But this fear quickly grew to contain all those within US borders who were drawn to communist ideology or suspected to be political spies. 2. Self-knowledge and performance In an essay on Giovanni’s Room, David C. Jones analyzes two quotes from James Baldwin. “The American vision of the world,” Baldwin wrote, “tends…to paint moral issues in glaring black and white” (qtd. in Jones 5). James Baldwin wrote Giovanni’s Room against the backdrop of the Cold War, and as American culture became a cesspool of “binary thinking”

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(Jones 5), exemplified by Schlesinger’s use of the hard/soft, hetero/homo, masculine/feminine binaries. Jones also focuses on a conversation Baldwin had with Malcolm X while on the American radio: “No one in this country really knows any longer what it means to be an American…You cannot live…with something in your closet, which you know is there and pretend it is not there without something terrible happening to you” (qtd. in Jones 3). Here, Baldwin implores Americans to introspect and choose self-awareness at a time when they were simultaneously being pressured by critics like Schlesinger to emulate strength and masculinity. Understanding Baldwin’s belief about the importance of introspection also helps frame Giovanni’s Room as a novel that examines what happens to citizens and an America who is without a clear sense of self. National identities are defined by negation—that is, nationalism imagines community by defining who lies outside of it. In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Judith Butler draws from Georg Hegel’s “model of self-recognition” that she argues necessitates an “‘I’ that confronts the world” (183). As previously stated, fear can be used to unify a nation against a dangerous “other.” But national fear as a method of unifying requires a level of anxiety and self-consciousness, and especially when the dangerous “other” is believed to exist within one’s own borders. Khanh Trinh explains Hegel’s theory of self-consciousness in an article, writing that it comes about from being perceived and recognized by another; self-consciousness is predicated on an obser-

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vational exchange or relationship (1). These ideas are similar to those in “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation),” where Louis Althusser writes of “interpellation,” using everyday exchanges between people to illustrate the imposition of identity on subjecthood. To interpellate is to name––hey you!––or otherwise implicate someone through recognition and expect a certain response or reaction (Althusser 84). Althusser also maintained that ideology is “only made possible by the subject” (84). Thus, ideology depends on many “I’s” who must first be interpellated. A collective model citizenry is made up of individually constructed identities. This is true in the case of the United States during the Cold War: homophobic and nationalist ideology was facilitated by the state’s pressuring of subjects to present themselves as hard and masculine. “The key to the recovery of masculinity lies...in the problem of identity,” Schlesinger said. “When a person begins to find out who he is, he is likely to find out rather soon what sex he is” (qtd. in Cuordileone 10). In other words, Schlesinger believed that self-recognition was necessary for an individual’s journey in suppressing their softness. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler states that “the language of…distanciation…also belong[s] to a strategy of domination that pits the “I” against the “Other…” (Butler 183, italics added). In the context of the Cold War, there was one “I” against thousands of “Others” that made up an entire nation’s ideological belief system. But what happens if the “I” suspects itself ? The desire to defend against, flee from,

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or repress one’s identity made up the backbone of America’s anxious, masculine performance during the Cold War period. “Anticommunism,” Cuordileone wrote, “was a defense against America itself––its self-indulgence, its godlessness, its laxity and apathy, its lack of boundaries, [and] its creeping sexual modernism…” (24). This underlying national self-disgust reflects how individuals worked to “defend” against their own “soft” or homosexual identities whether subconscious or not. Throughout Giovanni’s Room, American protagonist David seeks to escape the harrowing process of self-recognition that would reveal him as a queer “other” in a homophobic context. Butler states that gender is a “force of a radical will, and because gender is a project which has cultural survival at its end…the term strategy better suggests the situation of duress under which gender performance…occurs” (177, italics added). The word “strategy” brings to mind the aforementioned idea that fear is utilized by political leaders to unify a nation or construct an ideal model citizenry. Butler explains that she uses this term because society “regularly punish[es] those who fail to do their gender right,” as shown by the intensity of queer fearmongering and persecution that defined the Lavender Scare (177). The Lavender Scare pinned anxieties about a softening national citizenry on a newly visible gay population. By the time of the Cold War, the US had just experienced what Cuordileone calls a “nationwide coming out experience” for men who served (16). As Cuordileone aptly notes, “The war brought

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[men] together in sex-segregated units and provided a space in which to pursue same-sex relationships” (15). In Giovanni’s Room’s David flees to France after a sexual encounter with a fellow comrade in the army. As the novel’s first chapter comes to a close, David identifies flight as a strategy for self-deception: “I succeeded very well––by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion” (18). David remains in “constant motion” to avoid acknowledging himself as queer. Cuordileone’s analysis of The Vital Center can be used to understand David’s gay identity as one that not only jeopardizes his own personhood, but also that of the nation he represents. In “American Exceptionalism and National Identity,” Peter Onuf wrote that nationalism is inextricably tied up with the construction of identity because each citizen desires to perform characteristics of the model citizen in order to belong (Onuf 7). In Giovanni’s Room, David is naturally positioned as a model citizen. He is a white male who served in the army, brandishing the patriotic ideal wrapped up in having served his America, and has enough money to travel Europe without working a job. He describes himself as “tall” with blonde hair that “gleams” (Baldwin 3). Meg Wesling’s “Sexuality and statelessness: Queer migrations and national identity in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room” directly connects Onuf ’s assertion about national identity to David’s flight. She writes that “David’s fascination with movement, with flight…turn[s] our attention to the ways that sexuality is constructed through histories of nation-building and global dis-

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placement” (4). Indeed, David describes his face as “a face you have seen many times” throughout history: David’s physiognomy is symbolic of power and his ancestors who “conquered a continent” (Baldwin 3). These characteristics position David as an apex citizen who embodies the nationalist ideal of what it means to be American, one constructed through race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. They are also reminiscent of the United States’ values as a colonial nation. David’s flight as a model citizen suggests his implicit understanding that any deviation from the white, cisgender male is in danger of being othered. The impulse to flee from self-knowledge and cultural homophobia is illustrated in David’s flight from the States, bringing him not only to the unfamiliar city of Paris, but also into the very space that endangers him most: Giovanni’s room. Repression is key when flight is impossible. David’s ability to repress love in his relationship with Giovanni was learned through the relationship he had with his father, showing how masculinity is learned and passed down through generations. In the novel, David’s father shows extreme discomfort with expressing himself after David’s near-death experience upon being involved in a car accident. While being visited by his father at the hospital, David recalls that he “wanted to cry” and that speaking was “agony.” The agony David experiences can be attributed to the physical pain he feels post-accident, but also to the effort it takes to speak to his disappointed and emotionally distant father. In the scene, David’s father speaks in a “low voice” with “a pained,

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marvelous intensity” (Baldwin 16). But his father’s discomfort becomes clear when David begins to cry: instead of comforting David, his father purses his lips and pats a handkerchief between his palms (16). David recalls that his father “was almost weeping himself,” but tried to smile instead, in an effort to repress the conflicting feelings of love and concern he had for his son (16). The father’s emotional distress could be attributed to seeing his son in pain. But it is ultimately a sign that David and his father do not know how to communicate. When the father promises that they will eventually talk, David recalls: “...I understood, at the bottom of my heart, that we had never talked, that now we never would.” (Baldwin 16-17). This memory leaves David with the belief that his breakdown and the emotional intensity of their exchange compromised their relationship, teaching him the value of suppressing emotional pain in the future. This memory is reminiscent of a scene in The Left Hand of Darkness, when Ai refuses to cry. Estraven says, “[Ai] looked ready to cry, but did not. I believe he considered crying either evil or shameful” (Le Guin 229). These two exchanges most obviously exemplify the way in which masculinity performance condemns crying. More importantly, they can help define why crying is considered emasculating. Any form of emotional release compromises the hyper-vigilant, constant modes of being that come with performing identity on a personal level, and strength as a national front. In Gender Trouble, Butler quotes Monique Wittig’s understanding of sex, which is a “cultural sign”

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and “obedience to a historically delimited possibility…as a sustained and repeated corporeal project” (qtd. in Butler 177, italics added). In other words, Schlesinger’s described national softness must be constantly acknowledged and repressed in order to successfully show masculine power. This sustained “project” is illustrated through the ways in which David inherits myths of masculinity from his father through modeling and how the father defines manhood in a conversation with David’s aunt. “All I want for David is that he grow up to be a man,” the father says. “And when I say man, Ellen, I don’t mean a Sunday school teacher” (Baldwin 14). The father’s investment in David’s “becoming” of a true man also illustrates just how relational the issue of identity and gender expression is, proving family to be a powerful means of passing on ideology or binary thinking. According to Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” to be a good subject is to not only be implicated in an ideological system, but also to uphold it (46). To uphold nationalist or homophobic ideology, then, necessitates what Butler describes as a public action of performance. She writes that gender performance’s specifically public nature is “not inconsequential; indeed, the performance is effected with the strategic aim of maintaining gender…” which can manifest as othering (Butler 178179). In Giovanni’s Room, David’s desire to assimilate into an American culture associated with power and belonging causes him to engage with the othering of gay communities apart from his own. David is homophobic towards characters expressive of their

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queer identities. In one passage, David compares gay men, or “les folles,” to a slew of animals: parrots, a peacock garden, a barnyard, and monkeys “eating their own excrement” that “grotesquely” resemble human beings (Baldwin 24). In the same thought, David adds that “[he] always found it difficult to believe that they ever went to bed with anybody, for a man who wanted a woman would certainly have rather had a real one…” (Baldwin 24). This harsh judgment, similar to Argaven’s description of the sexual “other” as monstrous in The Left Hand of Darkness, resembles how David dehumanizes those who exist outside of typical gender norms. This leads him to “other” Giovanni as well. David describes Giovanni’s room as “dirty” ––a reflection of his deeper belief that queer identities are inherently perverse (Baldwin 55). In her article, Wesling uses quotes from the novel to direct attention to David’s desire to “‘become [himself] again’… through the ‘hard strength’ required to destroy his connection to Giovanni––or perhaps to destroy Giovanni himself ” (Wesling 10, italics added). Yet again, the hard and soft binary associated with power and weakness connects back to Schlesinger’s proposed strategy of performing national strength and proves David’s desire to “become himself ” by rejecting himself. In his inability to be vulnerable, David successfully “others” not only queer individuals such as Giovanni, but love itself; despite staying in his room for several months, David never becomes accustomed to it. Just as the room stays unfamiliar, love stays unfamiliar. David also fails to have genuine connection in

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his relationship with Hella and in the sexual encounters he has with Sue and the sailor. David’s homosexuality compromises his standing as representative of the American nationalist ideal, but the vulnerability necessary to love without abandon does too. This is also true of Genly Ai. In their article on the novel, Mahammada and Li point out that Ai’s fear of befriending Gethenian androgynes ultimately shows his fear of experiencing love with or for them (Mahammada and Li 9). David and Genly Ai, obsessed with performing masculinity properly and who refuse to acknowledge the centrality of the “other” in the self, emulate the ways in which the United States became trapped in performance, and in a reality where no one is a positive sign of themselves. This leads to the isolation and estrangement of both characters, as any identity becomes an act of delineation and inscribing boundaries between us. The malleable nature of what constitutes an “other” makes it incredibly easy to leverage the construction of individual identities towards creating a national identity. These constructions all deal in difference and are often simplified into binaries, as shown by Cuordileone’s analysis of Schlesinger’s The Vital Center. Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room looks in on these pressures at a psychological and internal level; David’s perspective is provided as a singular account and one constructed from the relationship he has with his father. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, on the other hand, brings into consideration how gender norms and performance affect planets––billions––of

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people; that masculinity is a phenomenon which affects entire cultures, rather than just David and his father. Indeed, myths of masculinity and homophobic ideology can be upheld for personal reasons. But they are ultimately constructed as a national and cultural force––inextricable alongside relationality and publicness, all the more potent and secure (or insecure) for its power to exacerbate feelings of fear and separation.

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Works Cited Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, translated by Ben Brewster, Monthly Review Press, 1971, pp. 127-186. Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. Penguin Modern Classics, 1956. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge, 2006. Cuordileone, K. A. “‘Politics in an Age of Anxiety’: Cold War Political Culture and the Crisis in American Masculinity, 19491960.” The Journal of American History, vol. 87, no. 2, 2000, pp. 515–45. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2568762. Haji Muhammad, Suzana, and Sujuan Li. “‘Fear, Good Servants, Bad Lords’: Fear of the Other in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.” Cogent Arts & Humanities, vol. 11, no. 1, 2024, doi:10.1080/23311983.2024.2355773. Jones, David C. “‘Something Unspeakable’: James Baldwin and the ‘Closeted-Ness’ of American Power.” James Baldwin Review, vol. 3, 2017, pp. 46–64. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/48664500. Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. Ace Books, 1969. Onuf, Peter S. “American Exceptionalism and National Identity.” American Political Thought, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 77–100. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/664594. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Vital Center. Houghton Mifflin, 1949.

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Trinh, Khanh. “Self-Consciousness Leads to Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology.” 2024, doi:10.31124/advance.171155282.25492247/v1. Wesling, Meg. “Sexuality and Statelessness: Queer Migrations and National Identity in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 55, no. 3, 2019, pp. 323– 336, doi:10.1080/17449855.2019.1617974.

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“There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate. Yet the rich world is wide enough for all, wants all, needs all. So slight a gesture, a word, might set the strife in order, not with full content, but with growing dawn of fulfillment.” – W.E.B. Du Bois

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The MAGA Machine By Sydney Severo At the end of Donald Trump’s first presidency, it appeared as though his political career was over. In the last months of his term, Trump took drastic measures to overturn the 2020 election, incited a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol, and faced impeachment proceedings. Nevertheless, only four years later, Donald Trump regained the presidency, won the popular vote, and gained support from a diverse coalition of voters that included previously unaffiliated constituencies. How did Donald Trump and the Republican Party at large emerge stronger from the brink of political suicide? Additionally, this research seeks to uncover how Trump and the Republican Party gained widespread popular support while proposing policies that would inevitably harm their strongest supporters. Ultimately, the Republican Party’s astounding success throughout the 2024 election cycle can be attributed to Donald Trump’s deliberate exploitation of voters’ electoral blind spot and the deployment of symbolic and oppositional identity politics, and Trump’s three-pronged approach to transforming presidential party leadership. Trump utilized a vertical base-mobilization strategy, domination over other Republican politicians, and heavy investment in the Party’s organizational capacity to secure the Republican Party’s 2024 electoral success. First, several key terms and concepts whose definitions are central to understanding the arguments

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that follow will be clarified. A voting coalition refers to the portion of the electorate that votes for a specific candidate or party. The electoral blind spot describes the political phenomenon in which, because voters lack political fluency, political parties and politicians can obscure the policy choices they make to advance their Party’s agenda at the expense of voters’ interests (Bawn et al. 571). Symbolic politics references a specific style of politics that relies heavily on “emotion-laden enduring predispositions such as partisanship, ideology, and racial attitudes” (Reny and Sears 2). Oppositional identity politics refers to a brand of politics that utilizes an us versus them narrative to unite a group of people against a common outgroup or enemy (Dhabhai). Vertical base mobilization is an approach to coalition building that prioritizes deepening and strengthening relations with a base already sympathetic to one’s political cause rather than building a larger, more diverse voting coalition (Galvin 135). Lastly, organizational capacity refers to the internal functioning of a political party, including its communication systems, data infrastructure, voter registration systems, fundraising capacities, and more (143). Republican Voting Coalition When discussing Trump’s success in the 2024 election cycle, it is necessary to analyze the coalition that voted Republican. As in 2016 and 2020, Trump maintained a substantial majority among non-college-educated, rural, and Protestant/Christian/ Catholic voters in 2024 (Hartig et al. 8, 44). However,

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significant gains were made among Hispanic voters, with nearly half voting for Trump (7). Additionally, between 2020 and 2024, Trump doubled his support among Black voters, with 15% supporting the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 (7). Trump also won the support of men under 50, who had previously supported Biden by 10 percentage points (12). Despite Trump’s anti-immigration stance along the campaign trail, nearly half of voters born outside of the U.S. supported Trump in 2024 (12). Pew Research Center suggests that these shifts in voter behavior can partly explain the vastly different outcomes between the 2020 and 2024 election cycles (Hartig et al.). Together, these demographic shifts reveal the expansion of Trump’s traditional base across racial and generational lines. The Electoral Blind Spot Trump’s campaign strategy capitalized on the electoral blind spot, whereby voters’ limited awareness of policy implications allowed Trump to appeal to a broader constituency while obscuring the harmful undertones of his policy proposals. Factors that contribute to the electoral blind spot include voters’ superficial understanding of public policy, their inability to examine the facts presented by politicians, or their inability to distinguish between credible evidence, propaganda, and blatant falsehoods (Peris 1). Within the electoral blind spot, voters rely on less relevant information to make their electoral decisions, such as a politician’s personality or the persuasiveness of their arguments (1). Voters’ lack of politi-

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cal fluency opens the door for “interest groups and activists [who] are the dominant players in political parties, [to insist] on the nomination of candidates who will exploit the limitations of voter monitoring to advance party programs” (Bawn et al. 589). Consequently, parties and politicians operating within the electoral blind spot are less incentivized to pursue policy outcomes desired by their base electorate (572). Instead, they remain more responsive to the policy agendas of interest groups and activists, who have gained significant influence over American politics (591). Examining how Donald Trump and the Republican Party manipulated the electoral blind spot provides critical insight into their success in the 2024 election cycle. Along the campaign trail, Trump told prospective voters that he would impose sweeping tariffs to reinvigorate the economy, lower taxes, end inflation, make America more affordable, and decrease federal spending (Republican National Committee Platform 4-11). According to Chief Economist at the Economic Policy Institute, Josh Bivens, Donald Trump was set to inherit the strongest economy since George W. Bush in 2025, featuring the lowest unemployment rate, highest growth in gross domestic product (GDP), and highest prime-age employment-to-population (EPOP) ratio since 2000. Trump’s commitment to overhauling the economy, despite its historic strength, is particularly problematic when considering his proposals, which often contradicted and counteracted one another. Trump promised Americans that “his plans would

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rebuild the U.S. manufacturing base, grow U.S. jobs and incomes and earn trillions of dollars in federal revenues over 10 years” (Lawder). These promises directly appealed to the grievances and struggles of one of Trump’s strongest constituencies: less educated, White, working-class voters from rural communities. Many of these voters have been directly impacted by globalization and the loss of industrial manufacturing jobs, making these policy proposals extremely appealing. Economists warned that the real impact of Trump’s economic policies on Americans would be inflation, retaliatory tariffs, and supply chain reordering (Lawder). Whether these voters were unaware of the economic impacts of tariffs or trusted that they would affect the economy as Trump described, the impact on Americans has been devastating. Yale’s Budget Lab found that Trump’s tariffs have amounted to an $1,800 loss in average yearly household income due to higher prices of everyday goods (The Budget Lab at Yale). Additionally, by the end of 2025, the unemployment rate was set to rise by 0.3 percentage points and projected to rise further by 0.7 percentage points in 2026. In the long run, tariffs are expected to cause a decline in American construction contracts (4.0%), agricultural output (0.7%), and mining and extraction (2.1%) (The Budget Lab at Yale). Thus, by exploiting voters’ electoral blind spot, Trump redirected voters’ attention away from the substantive consequences of his policies. Since the start of Trump’s second presidency, nothing illustrates the consequences of voting within the electoral blind spot more clearly than the One

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Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA. The sweeping legislation is set to impose $900 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next 10 years, $197 billion in cuts to food assistance, and total healthcare cuts of over $1 trillion (Howren and Hansen 1). As rural hospitals, clinics, providers, and patients rely more heavily on Medicaid than their urban counterparts, OBBBA is set to cause catastrophic damage to rural healthcare (1). Rural healthcare systems are already fragile because they see fewer patients and, therefore, must operate within tighter financial margins (1). Without funds to offset this financial strain, rural healthcare systems and vital departments within them such as emergency departments, maternity units, and mental health resources are set to lose funding and face closure (1). Two million rural residents are set to lose healthcare coverage because of OBBBA’s new Medicaid provisions, and 4.2 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage when premium tax credits expire at the end of the year (1-2). A report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that OBBBA will result in 10 million additional uninsured Americans (Kirzinger et al.). Like the harmful implications of tariffs, these changes will hit less educated, working-class Americans living in rural areas the hardest. This is particularly tragic, considering that significant percentages of Republicans (45%) and Republican-leaning independents (27%) rely on Medicaid coverage (Kirzinger et al.) The Republican Party’s ability to sign a bill into law that will increase hardship for many Americans, including one of their most loyal constituencies, points to the Republican

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Party’s successful manipulation of voters’ electoral blind spot. Polling has revealed that many Americans have little understanding of how OBBBA will affect those who rely on Medicaid, Medicare, and ACA marketplaces for health insurance, or on programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for food assistance (Kirzinger et al.). After learning that OBBBA is set to decrease funding for local hospitals, public support for OBBBA decreased by 14 percentage points to 21% approval. When Americans learned that OBBBA would increase the number of uninsured Americans by 10 million, 74% of Americans viewed the legislation unfavorably (Kirzinger et al.). The public’s dramatic shift in opinion after being informed about OBBBA’s consequences reveals that the electoral blind spot enabled Republicans to enact a harmful policy at voters’ expense. Symbolic and Oppositional Identity Politics For MAGA, symbolic, oppositional identity politics and culture war issues have mobilized popular support more effectively than specific policy proposals. This brand of politics can, and should, be understood as the uniting ethos of the MAGA movement, both within the Republican Party and among MAGA’s most fervent supporters. It is a carefully calculated formula, “the product of a structured, sustained effort to map his target market” (Smith 817). In 2014, as Trump began to coordinate his bid for the presidency, his staffers identified immigration as an issue Americans were growing increasingly concerned

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about as a result of listening to thousands of hours of talk radio (817). Further, the Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica, a British political intelligence firm, to “identify other exploitable themes” (817). Many of these themes, such as ‘draining the swamp’ of government officials disloyal to MAGA’s political goals, conspiracies about an American deep state, and rampant government surveillance, became trademarks of Trump’s 2016 campaign. He based his appeal on hot-button issues that sections of the American public were already concerned about. Smith and political marketing scholar Brian Conley suggest that “Trump brought something new to the table. He embarked, Conley says, on ‘a bald attempt to formulate policy, and communicate those policies, based solely on mimicking what specific voters thought about selected issues, without any effort to interact with or shape those opinions’” (qtd. in Smith 817-818). Even though Trump and the Republican Party largely failed to focus on policy proposals that would improve the lives of their strongest supporters, their success in the 2024 election cycle indicates that voters were drawn to support the party in response to targeted, rhetorical appeals to symbolic, oppositional identity politics. Along the campaign trail, Trump made an immense effort to ingratiate himself with his base by demonstrating his loyalty to their worldview. He widely espoused traditional and conservative values, xenophobia, racism, sexism, white nationalism, and religious fundamentalism. Political support for Trump has been strongly linked to hostility toward less priv-

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ileged groups in society, such as Black, Hispanic, Muslim, or LGBTQIA+ Americans (Whitehead and Perry 2-3). Take, for example, Trump’s claim along the campaign trail that Christianity in the U.S. is under attack and his promise to restore conservative Christians’ to a position of cultural dominance (1). Trump has been able to create a voting coalition that otherwise might have little in common through his efforts to confirm and amplify their existing prejudices, fears, and frustrations (Smith 814). In this way, MAGA can be understood as a cross-class alliance in which those of lower socioeconomic status are willing to overlook their own material interests in pursuit of social and cultural conformity (Parker and Blum 202). Trump’s symbolic, identity-driven politics appealed directly to those who had already begun to fear losing their position of privilege in American society. Vertical Base-Mobilization Strategy Trump fundamentally redefined Republican Party leadership by replacing traditional, horizontal coalition-building with a vertical base-mobilization strategy. Horizontal coalition-building refers to outreach across demographic and ideological lines to expand a party’s base and increase its majority (Galvin 135). Previous Republican presidents, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush, consistently adopted a horizontal base-mobilization strategy to diversify and widen the Republican base while building a new Republican majority (135). Unlike previous Republican presidents, Trump has implemented a vertical

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base mobilization strategy that seeks to deepen and strengthen his appeal among those sympathetic to conservative Republican ideology (135). Trump’s 2024 strategy relied heavily on the fervent support of his MAGA faithful, involving targeted efforts to encourage active involvement in party-building. Trump’s campaign rallies served as “carefully orchestrated party-building events designed for ‘massive data capturing,’ new donor recruitment, volunteer outreach, activist training, message testing, and base-building” (136). These outreach opportunities encouraged Trump’s most loyal supporters to participate by volunteering, campaigning, and voting for Republican candidates, as well as convincing other like-minded individuals to do the same (137). This break from the coalition-building attempts of previous Republican presidents, characterized by mobilizing and strengthening the membership of those already sympathetic to Republican ideology, is a defining feature of Donald Trump’s Republican Party leadership. Dominance Over Republican Politicians Trump’s dominance over the Republican Party extended beyond voter influence to include stringent control over Republican politicians through an aggressive campaign to enforce loyalty and stifle dissent. Trump has utilized intimidation tactics, wielded his endorsement power, and used social media to shame Republicans who expressed disapproval of MAGA publicly (Galvin 151). There have been “at least 39 cases of elected national and state Republican of-

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ficials who have been threatened or harassed since 2021 for taking actions or expressing views seen as contradicting Trump and the MAGA agenda” (Eisler and Parker). Trump’s immense control over Republican Party politicians was highlighted at the end of his first term, as he underwent impeachment proceedings for his role in inciting a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, endangering the lives of congresspeople and staffers trapped inside the building. In the following days and weeks, five police officers who defended the Capitol died; four officers committed suicide, while another officer died from suffering several strokes hours after being attacked by the mob (Cameron). Only 10 Republican congresspeople in the House of Representatives broke with the party and joined Democrats in voting to impeach Trump (Eisler and Parker). As of August 2024, of these 10 congresspeople, only two remained in office (Eisler and Parker). Although four congresspeople chose not to run for another term, the four representatives who sought reelection were defeated in the primary by Trump-backed challengers (Eisler and Parker). Trump’s endorsement power has proven to be an extremely effective political tool whereby, “Since the start of 2022, he has endorsed Republican challengers against at least 13 members of his own Party in Congress whom he has accused of betrayal… All but three of the 13 lost their seats or quit the race” (Eisler and Parker). However, Trump’s control extends well beyond Republicans at the federal level. In 2023, Glenn Rogers, a member of Texas’ House of Representatives, faced Trump’s fury after voting

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to impeach the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, a Trump ally who had been accused of corruption (Eisler and Parker). Trump blasted Rogers across social media and endorsed his opponent while MAGA supporters defaced posters for Rogers’ reelection campaign with the derogatory MAGA acronym: RINO, meaning Republican In Name Only (Eisler and Parker). Like many others who have broken with Trump’s MAGA, Rogers lost his reelection campaign (Eisler and Parker). Trump’s consolidation of power over the Republican Party has culminated in a political environment that demands complete loyalty and allegiance to MAGA. For those who dissent by critiquing MAGA policies, positions, or politicians, the likely result is the end of one’s political career. In response, the Republican Party, and the politicians who seek reelection within it, have uniformly fallen in line with Trump’s vision. Investment in Organizational Capacity Alongside his vertical base mobilization strategy and near-total control over Republican politicians, Trump invested heavily in personalizing and expanding the Republican Party’s organizational capacity. Trump has filled positions at the Republican National Committee (RNC) with his campaign personnel and loyalists, ensuring that the organization serves his own interests (Galvin 154). Moreover, Trump and his team ordered a small group of staffers to travel across the country to monitor and intervene in state party chair elections, thereby securing positions for Trump loyalists (153). Like Trump’s ousting

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of Congressional Republicans who don’t align with his vision, Trump’s team interfered with state party chair elections by “muscling out those cool to him” (Swan and Talev). These efforts were so successful that, by the end of 2019, Trump’s preferred candidates were appointed as state party chairs in 42 out of 50 states (Galvin 154). Trump’s interference in the nomination of state party chairs can be attributed to his aims for reelection. State party chairs play a critical role in the presidential nomination process while ensuring “that only vocal, committed Trump supporters are recruited to run for office and receive the state party’s valuable services and support” (154). By embedding loyalists at every level of the party’s infrastructure, Trump ensured that the Republican Party functioned as a single, unified extension of his personal political preferences. Trump bolstered the party’s organizational capacity by investing in the development of an advanced digital fundraising tool called WinRed, strengthening data-collection software, and running negative ads against Democratic candidates (156). Additionally, Trump’s campaign trained two million volunteers to “undertake grassroots voter registration, activist recruitment, and getout-the-vote activities, using both social media and door-to-door canvassing to mobilize Trump’s base” (156). These organizational investments contributed directly to the success of both Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and the election campaigns of Republican politicians loyal to Trump and the MAGA movement. Ultimately, Trump’s organizational investment helped to transform the Republican Party

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from a decentralized political organization into a cohesive machine built to advance his personal agenda. The resurgence of Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the 2024 election cycle was the direct result of a deliberate strategy to exploit Americans’ electoral blind spots, promote symbolic, oppositional identity politics, and remake the Republican Party in Donald Trump’s image. This approach reveals that political parties and politicians operating within America’s electoral system can secure votes even while advancing policies that harm even their strongest supporters. Inevitably, voters will come to realize that Trump’s campaign promises to create a healthy, robust economy, increase affordability, and raise Americans’ quality of life are just that: campaign promises. Only time will reveal the full extent of damage that Trump’s electoral strategy will have on American democracy.

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Works Cited Bawn, Kathleen, et al. “A Theory of Political Parties: Groups, Policy Demands and Nominations in American Politics.” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 10, no. 3, Aug. 2012, pp. 571–97, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592712001624. JSTOR; American Political Science Association. Bivens, Josh. “President-Elect Trump Is Inheriting a Historically Strong Economy.” Economic Policy Institute, 2025, www. epi.org/blog/president-elect-trump-is-inheriting-a-historically-strong-economy/. Bradner, Eric. “Trump Says ‘War Hawk’ Liz Cheney Should Be Fired upon in Escalation of Violent Rhetoric against His Opponents.” CNN, Nov. 2024, www.cnn.com/2024/11/01/ politics/donald-trump-liz-cheney-war-hawk-battle. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025. Cameron, Chris. “These Are the People Who Died in Connection with the Capitol Riot.” The New York Times, 5 Jan. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/us/politics/jan-6capitol-deaths.html. Dhabhai, Khushmita. “Understanding Identity Politics: Strategies for Party Formation and Growth.” Stanford.edu, Stanford Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, 10 Dec. 2024, cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/news/understanding-identity-politics-strategies-party-formation-and-growth. Accessed 7 Dec. 2025. Eisler, Peter, and Ned Parker. “How Trump’s Intimidation Tactics Have Reshaped the Republican Party.” Reuters, 16 Aug. 2024, www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usaelection-trump-purge/. Accessed 6 Dec. 2025.

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Galvin, Daniel J. “Party Domination and Base Mobilization: Donald Trump and Republican Party Building in a Polarized Era.” The Forum, vol. 18, no. 2, Sept. 2020, pp. 135–68, https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2020-2003. Hartig, Hannah, et al. “Behind Trump’s 2024 Victory, a More Racially and Ethnically Diverse Voter Coalition.” Pew Research, Pew Research Center, 26 June 2025, www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/06/PP2025.6.26_validated-voters_report.pdf. Accessed 26 Oct. 2025. Hartig, Hannah, et al. “How Changes in Turnout and Vote Choice Powered Trump’s Victory in 2024.” Pew Research Center, 26 June 2025, www.pewresearch.org/politics/feature/how-changes-in-turnout-and-vote-choice-poweredtrumps-victory-in-2024/. Howren, M. Bryant, and Jed R. Hansen. “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act—Implications for Rural Health Care.” JAMA, American Medical Association, Sept. 2025, https://doi. org/10.1001/jama.2025.13518. Kirzinger, Ashley, et al. “KFF Health Tracking Poll: Views of the One Big Beautiful Bill | KFF.” KFF, KFF, 17 June 2025, www.kff.org/medicaid/kff-health-tracking-poll-views-of-theone-big-beautiful-bill/. Accessed 26 Oct. 2025. Lawder, David. “Trump’s Tariffs Would Reorder Trade Flows, Raise Costs, Draw Retaliation.” Reuters, 4 Nov. 2024, www. reuters.com/markets/trumps-tariffs-would-reorder-tradeflows-raise-costs-draw-retaliation-2024-11-04/. Parker, Christopher Sebastian, and Rachel M. Blum. “Exploring the Motivations of the MAGA Movement.” Oxford University Press EBooks, Oxford University Press, June 2025, pp. 191–206, https://doi.org/10.1093/ oso/9780197794937.003.0008.

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Peris, William. Looking for an Electoral Blind Spot: The Effects of Information and Partisanship on Perceptions of Candidates’ Ideology and on Electoral Outcomes. 2018. University of California Los Angeles. PhD Dissertation. EScholarship (California Digital Library), California Digital Library, Jan. 2018. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026. Petry, Eric. “Uncovering Conflicts of Interest and Self-Dealing in the Executive Branch.” Brennan Center for Justice, 24 Feb. 2025, www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/uncovering-conflicts-interest-and-self-dealing-executive-branch. Reny, Tyler T., and David O. Sears. “Symbolic Politics and Self-Interest in Post-Affordable Care Act Health Insurance Coverage.” Research & Politics, vol. 7, no. 3, July 2020, p. 205316802095510, https://doi. org/10.1177/2053168020955108. Republican National Committee Platform. “2024 GOP Platform Make America Great Again!” DonaldJTrump.com, 8 July 2024, rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026. Smith, David Norman. “The Agitator Supplies What the Base Demands: Trumpism before and after Donald Trump.” Critical Sociology, SAGE Publishing, Nov. 2023, https://doi. org/10.1177/08969205231208921. Swan, Jonathan, and Margaret Talev. “How Trump Wins in 2020.” Axios.com, 14 Dec. 2019, www.axios. com/2019/12/14/how-trump-wins-in-2020. Accessed 14 Jan. 2026. The Budget Lab at Yale. “State of U.S. Tariffs: October 30, 2025.” The Budget Lab at Yale, 30 Oct. 2025, budgetlab. yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-october-30-2025. Whitehead, Andrew L, and Samuel L Perry. “Christian Nationalism and the Vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 Presiden-

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tial Election: A State‐Level Analysis.” Nations and Nationalism, Wiley, June 2025, https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.13135.

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Androcentrism in the Catholic Church: An Interview with Dr. Megan McCabe Interview by Jolene Hendrikson H: What is your area or field of study, and what do you focus on in particular in your work? M: I’m an associate professor in the Religious Studies Department, and I specialize in Christian ethics. We could call it moral theology. I tend to focus on patterns of suffering that are caused by other humans. So, at the social level with a strong emphasis on feminist analysis. I pay a lot of attention to misogyny and gender-based and sexual violence, and kind of what our moral responsibilities are in light of those issues. H: You frequently call yourself a moral theologian. What is that, and what does that work look like? M: The questions that get asked in moral theology start with “what is the human condition,” and then we think about what it means to be human, and how that shapes our human behavior. It’s a lot of asking how we make judgments about what is good behavior and bad behavior. A more optimistic way of saying this, coming from a Christian theological background, would be “what does it mean to live as God’s people?” “What does it mean to live as a disciple of Jesus?” I think about that more in terms of what kinds of

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Vol. 63 responsibilities we have toward one another in a positive way. In an optimistic way that says we’re bound up with one another, we should care for one another, rather than saying what kinds of things you should avoid so that you don’t experience eternal damnation. I don’t really think like that. H: What is androcentrism, and how would you define it, particularly in the context of the Catholic Church? M: Androcentrism quite literally means male-centered. Another way of thinking about it is that androcentrism takes the male experience, or male way of being in the world, as the normal human experience. In the Catholic Church, the vast majority of the tradition has been written from the perspective of male scholars who tend to universalize their own perspectives. From a moral theologian perspective, the issues men struggled with were assumed to be the same issues that everybody struggled with. And so, if you’re thinking about men historically with particular status and particular kinds of power, to think that what they struggled with morally was the same thing that everybody struggled with morally might be a big stretch. H: Do you view androcentrism as a personal failure, or more of a systematic issue embedded within Christianity or the Catholic Church? M: I would say that it’s both. Individuals certainly carry it on, but it’s definitely part of the Catholic

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Church. We’re talking about a very institutionalized and centralized religious structure that is quite distinctive in the way that it is institutionalized. And authority in the Catholic Church is exclusively male. The entire system and way of thinking, at all levels of teaching, at the legal structure within the church, all of that is going to be marked in an androcentric way. A classic feminist critique, in fact, the first feminist theological critique came in 1960 by a scholar named Valerie Saving. She talked about how the Christian tradition defines sin is based on male experience. The Christian tradition, very much in the 20th century and all the way back to Augustine in the fourth century, talks about sin as pride, being puffed up in yourself, or the desire to dominate. This woman scholar, Valerie Saving, says that it is a thing that human beings struggle with. Women, not so much. Women are not struggling as much with dominating other people. People who have power dominate and overpower other people, and take unhealthy, sinful pride in themselves. Pride is classically thought of as trying to be like God and not accepting your humanity. So, she says women actually experience more of a diffuseness of self. Not really having a full self, being too built around existing for others. After 1960, we can certainly say we want to add an intersectional lens onto this and say some women have positions of power where they very easily dominate other women or other people. The patterns of white supremacy in the United States are a really good example of that, where women are certainly complicit in and partici-

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pating in pride against people of color. But it’s a good example of saying some people struggle with pride. Not all people struggle with that in the same way. People who don’t have power are told to behave in certain kinds of ways. When you think about gendered expectations, about what it means to be taught to be a good girl, for example, that’s going to run counter to being puffed up in yourself. You actually are told and taught to make yourself smaller. Maybe the things that people who are pushed to make themselves smaller struggle with morally is something along those lines, making yourself too small rather than making yourself too big. H: How have you personally experienced androcentrism in your work as a moral theologian, perhaps in conferences, trying to get work published, or reactions to your work? M: One time, I was in a conversation at a lunch for people who were contributing to a book, and I said I could contribute on a particular topic if that was interesting to people. A more conservative male scholar in the room said, from a kind of angry perspective, that it was a contentious topic, and if somebody was going to contribute to it on that issue, you needed someone who was a very careful theologian. And then he said, “no offense” to me. I have kind of experienced it because so much of my published work and research is very directly feminist, that it gets put in the box of being feminist work. Rather than saying this has something to say to the tradition as a whole

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and is written from a feminist angle. That’s a very common pattern. Male work or non-feminist work that just acts like it’s neutral and doesn’t pay attention to race and gender in class in any direct way gets seen as neutral and relevant for everybody. The other kinds of work, addressing these issues, get shrugged off as if they’re these separate conversations. But when I was in grad school, I had to learn all the same stuff. And then I had to learn all the feminist stuff on top of it. So, I still had to learn all the Christian tradition. Whereas if you don’t do the feminist stuff, you just have to learn the Christian tradition. H: Have you felt like the Catholic Church, or studying theology in academic spaces, has gotten any better regarding uplifting nonmale voices? M: Yeah, absolutely. Historically, the Catholic Theological Society of America, into the mid 20th century, was all men, was all ordained priests. And now, I think it’s at least 40% women, and a lot of the women are young, and it’s also really racially diverse. Men who are there are not only priests, either; they’re also laymen. We see people who are couples, who are both theologians, and they bring their babies because what else are they going to do? You see a wide variety of experiences there. I think that indicates that it is improving. I studied with a lot of women as my professors, and that wasn’t the experience of the people who came before me. Realizing that there is sexism and androcentrism in the church, having access to

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the tradition theologically and not just what’s being offered by the institution gives me access to a lot of material that is more hopeful. H: What would successful efforts by the Catholic Church or Magisterium to challenge systems of androcentrism look like? And what sources could they use: scripture, tradition, secular disciplines, or human experience? M: I think the first thing, probably the most obvious thing, is that women need to be ordained. In the past several years, there was a lot of energy from people trying to make the case that women should at least be ordained as deacons in the Catholic Church. In the last week or so, a statement just came out that said no, that’s not going to happen. There have been changes to include women in particular kinds of leadership at the Vatican. Until you have women who are ordained, who can be leading in the sacraments, and then can be bishops who become the Magisterium (the official teaching body of the church), who can then become Cardinals, and can then become Pope. Until that happens, you’re not going to see any meaningful change. That is also not enough on its own because it can’t be certain kinds of women. It can’t be only the women who won’t rock the boat or anything like that. It needs to be an expansive model that has a broader openness for who can become a leader in the Catholic Church in a way that is attentive to all of their gifts and not disproportionately attentive to reinforcing the systems that are already in place.

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H: Do you think that androcentrism influences Catholicism, or rather the opposite where it’s justified by Catholic scripture and tradition? M: I think it’s both. I think it’s 100 percent both. The Christian tradition emerges from within patriarchal, sexist, and androcentric contexts, and that leads to the way that scripture or tradition gets interpreted early on. Then all of that continues to be interpreted through ways of justifying those same exact systems. For example, one of the reasons that women are excluded from the priesthood is it is traditionally said that Jesus didn’t pick women to be priests. Actually, Jesus didn’t pick anybody to be priests. Jesus didn’t ordain anybody. People will say Jesus chose the 12 apostles. There’s really interesting feminist biblical scholarship that says the word apostle is applied to women all over the New Testament. Yet we exclude those examples. We don’t think about women like Junia and Phoebe and Mary Magdalene as counting as apostles. We only think of Peter and Paul. But actually, the category of the 12 is a different category from the apostles. There’s this interpretation of who counts, and the interpretation itself is shaped by an androcentric reading, and then that androcentric reading is used to keep women out of leadership. Which certainly is bad for women, but I would say is bad for the church as a whole, and ultimately society. Feminist scholars argue that androcentric ways of talking about God lead to supporting patriarchy in

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society. If we only think that it’s appropriate to call God “Father” or say God is male, that has implications for suggesting that men are more like God. Mary Daly is a very early feminist scholar, and she said, if God is male, then the male is God. The idea being that thinking of God as exclusively male justifies patriarchal systems within society. There are female ways of thinking about God in the Bible, and there are female ways of talking about God in the Christian tradition. Julian of Norwich talks about menstrual blood and pregnancy in relation to God. God is talked about in the Book of Wisdom as “She”, as wisdom herself named “She”. There is a disproportionate use of male pronouns for God, but not exclusively. What happens more is that people focus on the male pronouns. A lot of times, people will say Jesus calls God “Father”, and that means something about the maleness of God or that male pronouns are more appropriate somehow. But maybe Jesus wasn’t talking about maleness, maybe Jesus was saying that to state God is Father, means we are all children of God. There is mothering language for God as well in the bible, yet a lot of the time we ignore that stuff. This is an androcentric mindset. What parts do we pick that we think about and talk about more? In the Book of Genesis, we often think of it saying God creates the first man, Adam. But that’s not how the text reads. It says God creates the first person. The word is “adam,” and it means a person made from the earth or human-being, and it’s not a gendered term. In English, it often gets translated into “man”, but that’s not what the Hebrew says. The feminist scholar

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who talks about women as apostles will say that in the New Testament, it just says Jesus was talking to his disciples. We assume that those disciples are men, but that’s not what it says; it just says disciples. So, she wants us to be able to imagine that it might be women because we do have evidence that Jesus was surrounded by women in his ministry. We don’t have any evidence to suggest that it’s men; we don’t have evidence that those people are women either, but it’s non-gendered. However, we usually see pictures of Jesus surrounded by only other men. I’m seeing in the United States right now, we are continuing culture wars around gender. People sometimes get really upset when more progressive, usually protestant ministers call God non-binary. That is just a new way of naming the thing that has always been taught, that God is not gendered. It’s not going to apply to people who identify as non-binary in the same way that it applies to God. The theology is that no word that we apply to God applies to human beings the same way. H: This year, Charter’s theme is systems. How else do you see this theme of systems manifest in your studies or work? M: I think that we should name, especially within the Catholic Church, the patriarchy. Which is the institutionalization of sexism as a system. If we’re talking about male authority structures, that’s what exists in the Catholic Church. There’s also androcentrism

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built into the system of not only what counts as valid theology in the present, but what counts as a valid source for us to use. Augustine and Aquinas count as authorities for me to turn to. Women figures, not as much. And there aren’t as many of them. I love working on sin, that’s part of why I named it, but doing sin from only an exclusively feminist perspective that only pays attention to gender will be inadequate. So, we have to pay attention to interlocking systems. In particular, race is distinctive in the United States, as particularly pressing, but we should also be attentive to class and issues of disability. I do specific work on thinking about categories of sin in light of patterns of sexual violence, and what we know about sexual violence is that all of those other systems are very much part of who is victimized, who is believed, etc. H: What advice do you have to give to those who are not men and interested in studying theology, working in ministry, or just wanting to be more involved in their faith? I think that anyone who wants to pursue any of those things should fight as hard as they can to not allow themselves to be discouraged. It can be really painful. It can be very painful, but truly allow yourself to be pulled toward the things that interest you and trust that your views are valid and that your insights are valid. Your insights and your gifts will make a contribution. One of my very good friends says, and I want to hand this on, that one of her professors in grad school said that you have to get angry and that you

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feel angry in your belly, and let that carry you forward. When I think about the kinds of questions that I feel really drawn to, it’s the stuff that I feel angry about, and what I am really bothered by. Just really tap into your own desires and allow yourself to feel angry, and don’t let people put you in a box, let yourself do your thing One of the people I went to graduate school with actually did some work on anger as a virtue, and how righteous anger is a good thing. When we tell people not to be angry, we’re telling people not to be angry at injustice. We’re telling people to put up with the situation in the way that it is, and that’s wrong. Too often we’re turned off by stuff in a tradition, and feminist theologians are going to say how a lot of the stuff that people are going to be turned off by are perhaps distortions of the way that things ought to be. We should be angry because of the distortions, and that they’re not what God wants. That would be the theological claim.

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Leave the Light On: Exploring Memory as a Site of Resistance By Kira 森 Bifone “In Italian, you don’t turn off the light. You close it, only to open the light again in the morning.” (Petrosino 65) To be president of the Italian American club is to feel the need to justify my presence. A 23&Me test doesn’t show the whole picture; it doesn’t show the push and pull of identity. I am 100% Chinese and standing in front of a room of people to talk about Italian American identity and culture. My presence is dependent on my relationship to my grandmother and the culture that shapes her world. This relationship with my grandma is far from easy, made complicated by the conservative ideologies that she ties back to her Catholic faith. As I read Kiki Petrosino’s Bright and Kym Ragusa’s The Skin Between Us, I found myself reflecting on my own multicultural identity as these authors reflected on their experiences being Black and Italian American. Both memoirs use the metaphor of light and darkness to make sense of a complex history and identity; the color of their skin is a central part of how they have come to understand themselves. They use their memoirs as spaces to explore memory and identity. As Petrosino writes in Bright, “[in] Italian you don’t turn off the light. You close it, only to open the light again in the morning” (Petrosino 65). For most of my life, I have tried to turn off the lights, to detach myself from the core identities that I feel trapped in. Despite my

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best efforts, as Petrosino writes, the lights open again in the morning; the lights are memories. Bright and The Skin Between Us beautifully reflect the struggle of identity and belonging through a consideration of history, religion, and family. They embrace the light and use it to explore their own experiences. Through a personal and reflective reading of Petrosino’s and Ragusa’s memoirs, I argue that memory acts as a space to reclaim identity and resist narratives of exclusion from dominant culture. As an adoptee, my Chinese identity is visible first; it is part of who I am and how people see me. I am culturally connected to my Italian heritage, a dominant identity among a multicultural family. Navigating a predominantly Polish mother and Italian father, I became someone who felt connected to the multiplicity of cultures that shaped my world. I was raised with the values of learning ancestral history, where memories live and teach us who we are. I found myself within the pages of these memoirs, as Petrosino and Ragusa challenged their memories in hopes of building their own unique sense of self within a history of struggle. As traumatic histories are remembered and stored in our bodies, the practice of sharing memories reveals itself to be a practice where stories can be reclaimed to bring healing. In Bright, Kiki Petrosino reflects on Thomas Jefferson’s writing during a trip to his home in Monticello. As an African American woman and descendant of slaves, she shows how memory is an embodied experience. She draws quotes from Jefferson’s writing before reflecting on her own

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experience interacting with these texts. Longing for a connection but also searching for validation, she is drawn close with fascination while simultaneously being pushed away by the history that is rooted in harm. Petrosino then reflects on her trip to Thomas Jefferson’s home in Monticello, writing, “I stood at the door of a replica slave cabin & looked up & down the slope” (Petrosino 35). As she thinks about her ancestors who lived in these cabins and could not read or write, she embodies a memory of these people, writing “their collective presence is very close to me, nearly palpable” (Petrosino 35). Returning to a place where memory has been passed down brings about these intense feelings of familiarity, despite the lack of personal experience. I am immediately reminded of the moment I stepped off the plane in Poland, and memories rush over me. These memories were not my own, but the ones passed down through my mother: a barn, a fire, an extermination of people. Whether the story is true or not, it lives with me. The memory brings unsettling feelings and connections to history without genetic ties. As demonstrated in Kiki Petrosino’s writing about memories from her African American ancestors and my own reflection on my distant Polish Jewish ancestors, a memory becomes an embodied experience. Upon arrival at a location that is part of the community’s cultural memory, someone might feel a sense of returning or familiarity. Traumatic memories, like the Holocaust or slavery, are passed down through generations and are often associated with feelings of

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belonging but also feelings of in-betweenness (Wydra 8). These feelings continue to complicate the relationship between memory and healing. I hold pain for a generation of people I never got to meet, and wrestle with the way my body holds these memories. Petrosino works through this feeling by reflecting on the writing of Jefferson, but more importantly, through her work writing about the experience of visiting his home. The section on Thomas Jefferson concludes with a quote from his notes: Going out into the open air, in the temperate, and warm months of the year, we often meet with bodies of warm air, which passing by us in two or three seconds, do not afford time to the most sensible thermometer to seize their temperature. Judging from my feelings only, I think they approach the ordinary heat of the human body. Some of them perhaps go a little beyond it (Petrosino 35). Her ability to write about this experience of reading Thomas Jefferson’s work and visiting his home allows her to push against the memories that are dominated by exclusion. Rather than air passing through as described by Jefferson, what passes is the memories. In my own life, it has become clear that writing about moments and experiences is an incredibly effective way to navigate challenging situations and work through the embodied memories of being identified as something “other.” For Kym Ragusa, traumatic history is mentally consuming. It builds distance in her relationship with her mother. For example, after recalling a traumatic moment where Ragusa’s grandmother and moth-

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er found a man stabbed to death in his apartment, Ragusa reflects on her mother’s approach to certain traumatic memories and histories. She writes, “Memory for her is an irritation, a waste of time… my mother can’t imagine why I would want to root into all those murky places in our history. To her, pain is a fixed and finite thing in time, without amplification or repercussions in the present and beyond” (Ragusa 61). Yet, Ragusa continues to remember stories from her past. She writes about them from her own memory, trying to piece together a multigenerational history of the women who have shaped who she has become. Ragusa writes her memoir, not as a space to state fact, but as a place to explore her own history. These contrasting ways of remembering create tension between Ragusa and her mother, as she finds both a sense of comfort and solitude in her exploration of memory. Ragusa’s choice to put these memories into writing and share them with the world changes the way this story gets told and diminishes the tension between herself and her mother. This act of putting words to paper allows memory to transform from something kept to oneself, preserved only within the person, to something that lives beyond the individual. In an analysis of memoirs and memories, Shirley Lim writes, “If memory speaks in the memoir, then memory lives outside of the individual skull case, and it lives in language. That is the difference between memory and memoir, the difference between what must die and what may live” (Lim 444). This memory is not something Ragusa can let die, and she does

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not understand why her mother separates herself from these memories, ignoring them entirely. As Ragusa struggles with the sense that she cannot shake these memories, she brings them outside of herself in a way that feels meaningful through her writing. Each memoir invites a new way of approaching the complex embodiment of history and memory. In Petrosino’s memoir, the passing of memories frames the rest of the book. In Ragusa’s, it is the wrestling with the different approaches that sow division between mother and daughter. While there is a difference between history and memory, each work together to build a personal and societal understanding. As navigators of generational trauma, it is through writing and reflecting that these stories are transformed into moments of resistance and reclamation of a history. Memoirs, like Bright, serve as a place for that transformation because it is “through memoir, stories of trauma are transformed into something new and shared” (Hagi-Mohamed 43). Similarly, Ragusa takes these memories, despite the pain and confusion they bring up, to tell a story that feels authentic to her experiences. The shift of these stories from personal ones to ones that now belong to the readers changes the way the stories are told and how the memory continues. It is through an examination of history that memory is seen as a way to reclaim a narrative. The memory that once belonged to Petrosino is blown away in the wind and becomes something that belongs to a community. Ragusa reclaims a narrative hidden by her mother in order to continue to heal from the memories of encountering the man stabbed

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to death. She translates this difference onto paper in hopes of writing a memory that her mother refuses to acknowledge. Through the process of writing these memoirs, Petrosino and Ragusa reclaim the narratives that were once controlled by the dominant narrative, instead turning them into collective memories, ones that turn trauma into community healing. Memories are also explored in Bright and The Skin Between Us through stories of religion and family. For Petrosino, as someone who grew up attending Catholic school, she reflects on moments when identity was shaped within the church community. She writes about religion in the context of her grandfather’s suicide, an event in her life she avoided talking about for many years (Petrosino 44). To Petrosino, her negotiation with identity strongly ties back to the many losses she experienced in her life. It is this sense of loss and mistrust that brings her away from the faith she was raised in. After reflecting on a passage in the Bible, Petrosino draws parallels between her own sense of unknowing and Abraham and his family finding the unknown promised land (Petrosino 59). She writes, “To live in faith means being a stranger to many of this world’s concerns, particularly its material encumbrances. / To write a poem is to assert one’s attachment to the materiality of language, but it also requires the poet to assume the openhanded posture of a questioner” (Petrosino 59). It is through this reflection that Petrosino reclaims her faith on her own terms, not one controlled by what was “expected” of her. As Petrosino negotiates her identity within religion and spirituality, I think back to the most forma-

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tive moment in my faith journey. I was about thirteen years old when my grandma pulled me aside shortly after my mom had run to the grocery store. The routine we had established when visiting my grandma was simple, or at least I thought—no mention of religion or politics, leave by Saturday, so Mass is not a possibility. Despite my best efforts, my grandma sat me down to talk about religion anyway. She went on about how my father and I wouldn’t exist if she had not turned to faith and listened to Jesus that day she stood painting on the ladder. She pushed for attendance at Saturday mass, never taking “no” for an answer. Eventually, my mom came home, and I started crying, feeling manipulated and cornered by a woman who claimed to know God’s love but struggled to show it through the acceptance of those with different values. I didn’t associate myself with a sense of spirituality until I was eighteen, when I had an opportunity to talk about my experience knowing myself, and therefore, knowing God. In the act of putting ideas to paper and sharing them with a wider audience, memories of religion and the struggles of finding faith can become sites of resistance and reclamation of values. For Petrosino, a sense of reclamation of religious identity comes through the process of asking questions and approaching the world with openness. She describes this feeling of being more aware of her racial and religious identity in moments of loss and hardship. In her work as a poet, she stands strong in her identity as someone who asks questions of the world. Through the memoir, she is reclaiming her identity and sep-

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arating herself from the memories. When revisiting repressed memories with a new perspective, they can become less painful. Compared to the popping of a blister, Shirley Lim writes, “the flood of that life event leaked out. That notion arrived in the form of an actual sensation; I saw and felt this memory… vanish at that moment of narrative composition” (443). In other words, the ability to tell these stories invites a welcome release from the tension built in the body. Ragusa navigates the questions about her faith through the memories of her grandmothers, much like I have throughout my own life. Both grandmothers, Miriam, Ragusa’s African American grandmother, and Gilda, her Italian American grandmother, possess a strong sense of faith that they pass on to Ragusa. With these positive associations, Ragusa uses her memoir to explore religion as a place that brought family together through strong women and their faith. She writes, “It was my grandmother who had given me a sense of the mystery, the magic behind religious faith” (Ragusa 164). Ragusa’s religious identity was grounded in the faith of the women she most looked up to. She writes, “I grew up with a vision of her faith as primordial, sorcerous…ultimately, it was female power itself that was sacred. It didn’t really matter if you prayed to God or to his Mother, if your Jesus was bloody or clean” (Ragusa 167). A formative memory of Ragusa’s experience with religion was when she was barred from taking First Communion because she was not baptized. This moment brought her grandmothers together despite Gilda’s expressed disapproval of Ragusa’s father marrying a

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Black woman (Ragusa 168). Through a retelling of this story, Ragusa explores her own racialized place within her family. In an exploration of religion and memory, Ragusa illuminates the importance of sharing memories. I used to hold memories of my grandmother close, but as I began sharing these memories, they became something that I could understand better. It is this moment of writing about this that I understand the difference between how these moments are shared with the community. Feeling unaccepted in a traditional Italian American family and community, and not finding religion, was part of my reality. For Ragusa, the tension between her two faithful grandmothers builds a sense of tension for her. Like how religion and social memory depend on methods of oral and written storytelling, these memories transform as we write about the experiences. As Tuula Sakaranaho writes, transfers of religious knowledge, either written or oral, are “entangled in each religious tradition in many ways” (143). She writes about verbal structures in religion, such as the practice of confession, while also highlighting the essential written practices. In distinguishing between the two, she states, “Written communication represents continuity and security, the will to and the authority of truth, as well as distance between people, whereas oral communication is ever-changing and hence insecure, involving negotiation and proximity between people” (144). This concept highlights the importance of written communication to understanding complex histories and family dynamics. Religion invites complication

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that can be best explored through writing, in Ragusa’s case through her memoir, in my case through this analysis. It is through my own experiences and reading Kiki Petrosino’s memoir, Bright, and Kym Ragusa’s memoir, The Skin Between Us, that I have learned how memoirs can be a tool to reclaim narratives intended to exclude certain identities. It is in my own writing about personal experiences that I have found healing, and in the same way, Petrosino and Ragusa show us their own healing throughout their memoirs. Through an examination of my own memories and Petrosino’s and Ragusa’s, it is clear that memory plays an active role in providing space for the reclamation of stories. Today, I write as someone who has negotiated various parts of my identity. In many instances, I might have found it easier to dim the light, to repress the challenging memories of history, race, and religion that creep into my brain when I least expect them. Instead, I sit with them. I invite them and let them move on. I learn that I am in charge of the light. I close the lights only to reopen them in the morning—perhaps they will be less bright. To reopen the lights is to revisit the memories by writing, reviewing, and bringing stories back to the community.

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Works Cited Blair, Carole. “Communication as Collective Memory.” Communication as…: Perspectives on Theory. Edited by Gregory J Shepherd, Jeffrey St. John and Ted Striphas, Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2006, pp. 51-59. Sage Knowledge, doi: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483329055.n6. Hagi-Mohamed, Fartoon, and Stephanie Jed. Memoir and Writing and Intergenerational Trauma: The Reparative Power of Personal Narrative, UC San Diego, 2022, escholarship. org/uc/item/5wp8b3jj. Lim, Shirley. “Embodied memory and memoir.” Biography 26.3, 2003, pp. 442-444. Petrosino, Kiki. Bright. Sarabande Books, 2022. Ragusa, Kym. The Skin Between Us. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2006. Sakaranaho, Tuula. “Religion and the study of social memory.” Temenos-Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion 47.2,2011. Wydra, Harald. “Generations of Memory: Elements of a Conceptual Framework.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 60.1,2018, pp 5-34

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The Myth of Neutrality: Constiutional Evolution By Jack Kashork The development of the American Constitution has long been viewed through the lenses that change is either motivated by neutral legal principles or the whims of political motivation. Many scholars and political pundits across time—notably Herbert Wechsler in Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law—have insisted that the work of the judicial branch is entirely legal, driven only by the interpretation of doctrine and neutral principles, and thus entirely separate from the partisanship of elected politics (Wechsler 1-35). The text of the U.S. constitution would certainly lend itself well to that argument. Judges enjoy lifetime appointments and a consistent salary; both designed to insulate judges from political pressure. On the other hand, notable sources have argued that constitutional changes are inherently political, inseparable from the motions of contemporary politics (Dahl 279). While both sides of this binary may have strong arguments, it is fundamentally unhelpful to consider this question as solely binary. In their textbook, American Constitutionalism, authors Howard Gillman, Mark A. Graber, and Keith E. Whittington state from as early as the preface, “The path of constitutional law continues to be determined by the complex interaction of law and politics that cannot be completely disaggregated” (xxii). As now-Chief Justice John Roberts famously said during his 2005 confirmation hearing, a judge’s

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role is to ‘call balls and strikes’. Despite such a claim, the path of American history, as will be explored through later examples, suggests that the judiciary has rarely acted as such a limited and neutral arbiter (Roberts 56). Instead, the development of the American Constitution has occurred at times of political struggle, social movements, and outright war. The reality of constitutional change at the intersection of law and politics becomes abundantly clear at three key periods of American history: Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the contemporary era of polarization and conflict. Thus, this paper will argue that shifts in the constitutional order almost always involve both law and politics. First, the Reconstruction era of the United States provides a prime example of the inseparable relationship between the meaning of laws and the political changes of the time. Post-Civil War, the United States was in a deep state of political strife with secession, slavery, and economic issues at the fore. The effort to rebuild the country through compromise sets out the foundation of the Reconstruction Amendments. Scholars recognize that the Civil War created a significant rift in trust between the north and south. Sheryllin Ifill, a preeminent 14th Amendment scholar, explains that that section five of the 14th Amendment, which provides Congress the authority to enforce all provisions of the amendment is, “...explicit recognition by the framers of the 14th Amendment—that we cannot trust the states to protect certain kinds of rights” (Ifill). In that, she is referring to equal protection among other rights.

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Thus, Reconstruction, and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments worked to institutionalize this change. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, while the 14th granted citizenship, ensuring equal protection under the law, and required due process. Finally, the 15th Amendment prohibits discrimination on the basis of race (‘The Reconstruction Amendments’). Although the amendments themselves occurred quite quickly in modern understanding, the meaning of the amendments’ texts was far from resolved. Taking the Fourteenth Amendment as an example, one can see exactly how politics and the law intersect. Despite the principle being settled through ratification, there have still been drastic shifts in judicial understanding since its ratification. One of the major landmark cases implicating the 14th Amendment was Plessy v. Ferguson. Over the question of segregated lunch counters violating the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendment, the court decided that separate but equal accommodations did not make African Americans inherently inferior to white Americans. The decision stood for nearly 50 years until another case came before the court: Brown v. Board of Education. In 1954, the court did an about-face. Deciding in favor of the African American schoolgirl, they ruled that separate but equal accommodations were inherently unequal because of a variety of factors that made them inferior (National Constitution Center). In the time between Plessy and Brown, there were no constitutional amendments ratified that altered the way a principled jurist would view the meaning of the 14th Amendment’s equal protec-

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tion clause. It is thus fair to conclude that the political pressure of the civil rights movement had some influence on the decision-making of the high court. If the decisions were solely about legal precedent, Brown, in all likelihood, would have been decided in the others’ favor. Reconstruction provides an evergreen example; political transformation generates new legal interpretation, and simultaneously, new law changes with political sentiment. This loop of change in law and politics reiterates that a binary is ineffective at explaining constitutional change. The pattern of differing constitutional interpretations repeated itself in the New Deal era. As economic upheaval forced the federal government’s hand into creating a new role for federal power, constitutional interpretation changed alongside it. Initially resistant to the changes promulgated by the Roosevelt administration, the Supreme Court later shifted toward a more expansive view of federal powers and authorities. Although not exactly a ‘switch in time’, as many history books describe it, the changes came during an incredibly politically charged time (Cushman 203-207). The tension between constitutional text and doctrine during this period further supports the argument that, although the text of the constitution may not change, the doctrines that are applied to the document vary widely with political pressures. As the Supreme Court expanded its interpretation of the Commerce Clause to permit federal regulation of more local economic activity that exerted substantial effect on interstate commerce, an issue at the heart of the Great Depression, the actual

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text of the Constitution did not change. Eventually, the Supreme Court accepted the changes made by the president’s administration in the realm of expansive federal programs because returning to earlier political doctrines was simply untenable. The New Deal is one of the clearest examples of this binary breaking down under scrutiny. As the federal government sought to create sweeping laws and programs to address issues such as unemployment, poverty, and outright economic collapse, it utilized an expanded interpretation of the Commerce Clause, the clause that permits the federal government the ability to regulate commerce, to justify increased those laws and programs. Although the court was initially resistant and disallowed some of the many changes created by the administration, it ultimately relented, modifying its understanding and interpretation of the constitutional text due to the political pressures of the time and the failing economy. Through each case in this era, it becomes increasingly clear that the Supreme Court did not simply apply neutral rules to decide right from wrong, or legal from illegal. Instead, the entire constitutional understanding evolved through political conflict in conversation with legal judgments. The articles that were implicated in the many policies created under the administration did not change textually. The New Deal serves as yet another example of how constitutional interpretation does not abide by neutral principles. In the modern era of polarization and partisan constitutional visions, it becomes clear that constitutional change is deeply intertwined with law and politics. In American Constitutionalism, the authors

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say about recent judicial appointments, “…[they] highlight the role elections and politics play in determining the composition of Supreme Court majorities” (xxii). From the stalled nomination of former US Attorney General Merrick Garland to the midnight-hour installation of now-Supreme Court Justice Barrett, the composition of the Supreme Court is frequently altered and determined by the political party in power due to the process of vacancy, nomination, and appointment employed at the Supreme Court. Take the case of Shelby County v. Holder, that began when Shelby County, Alabama, sought to change its election procedures. After the Attorney General denied preclearance for the changes under section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act, Shelby County filed a suit, arguing that the Voting Rights Act coverage formula, which determined which areas of the country needed preclearance from the federal government, was unconstitutional because it exceeded Congress’s enforcement authority under the 14th Amendment. Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided in favor of the county. This case demonstrates how the changes in policies and partisanship influence the interpretation of the constitution. The Supreme Court stepped into the middle of a legislative decision to overrule the will of Congress. It is once again clear that despite the absence of constitutional changes to the text, constitutional interpretation can absolutely change with the different politics of the time. The relationship between law and politics is even more visible in contemporary debates over impeachment, abortion, religious freedoms, voting rights,

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and executive powers, among others. In American Constitutionalism, the authors explain that politics and law affect the way the Constitution is interpreted in a variety of matters. To take impeachments as an example, the understanding of high crimes and misdemeanors changes in lockstep with political attitudes and differences. The fact that a president is impeached or not is quite literally determined by the political whims of those holding seats in Congress. In legal challenges surrounding specific executive actions taken by President Trump, the Supreme Court granted sweeping immunity writing that a former president shall receive, “...absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And...at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts...” a privilege not written anywhere in the Constitution (Trump v. United States). Despite this, the political attitudes of the moment certainly influenced the decisions of the high court. These examples continue to underscore the point that it is not solely the law guiding these decisions of constitutional interpretation. Taken together, Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the contemporary era paint a clear picture that the judicial branch, and the Supreme Court in particular, have never applied neutral principles immune from the political changes of the time. Rather, it is clear that constitutional law evolves through the interaction and dialogue between law and politics. This dialogue is evident in constitutional changes from the separate but equal accommodations to voting maps

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in Alabama. Political changes foster new public understanding, and legal doctrine follows suit to match that understanding. The enduring pattern of constitutional change makes painfully clear that, despite the belief that the high court is insulated from the whims of partisanship and political bartering, their work has never been neutral.

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Works Cited Cushman, Barry. “Rethinking the New Deal Court.” Virginia Law Review, vol. 80, no. 1, 1994, pp. 201–261. JSTOR, www. jstor.org/stable/1073597. Dahl, Robert A. “Decision-Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker.” Journal of Public Law, vol. 6, 1957, pp. 279–295. Gillman, Howard, Mark A. Graber, and Keith E. Whittington. American Constitutionalism: Volume I: Structures of Government. 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2022. Ifill, Sherrilyn. “The Fourteenth Amendment and the Power of Congress.” Legal Analysis Series, Brennan Center for Justice, 2023. National Constitution Center. “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).” The National Constitution Center, 17 May 2023, constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-the-supremecourt-rules-against-segregation. “The Reconstruction Amendments.” The National Constitution Center, 2024, constitutioncenter.org/education/ classroom-resource-library/classroom/the-reconstruction-amendments. “The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.” The National Constitution Center, 2024, constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments. Roberts, John G., Jr. Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of John G. Roberts, Jr. to Be Chief Justice of the United States. U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005.

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Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013). Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. ___ (2024). Wechsler, Herbert. “Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law.” Harvard Law Review, vol. 73, no. 1, 1959, pp. 1–35.)

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Ecosystems: An Interview with Dr. Annika Rose-Person Interview by Ashlyn Brown B: Tell us a little bit about your educational background and how you became interested in your field of study and research. R: For context, I’m a community ecologist. So, I think a lot about organisms and how they interact with each other and how they live in communities of multiple interacting species. In my field, I think a lot about mutualisms, specifically plant-pollinator interactions, and competition. In that sphere, I’m now mostly thinking about amphibians. I started out at Santa Rosa Junior College, where I got involved in ecology in this project at a local reserve, where we looked at an invasive grass species and how it was being affected by a new fungal pathogen. That’s what got me excited about ecology! Through an internship at Point Reyes National Seashore, I got to actually get outside and do ecology, which was super influential. I received my bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where I spent a lot of time doing research. I did my thesis on an invasive grass species, how it was affecting soil, and how that soil affects native plants. I got excited about below ground fungal pathogens that live with plant roots and help them pick up nutrients. After working for the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada, I went to Florida, where I worked with plants, pollinators, and fire. Florida is a very pyrogenic ecosystem, so we

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did a lot of prescribed burning to impact those ecosystems. Then I went to UC Riverside for graduate school. While I was there, I got into pollination and climate change and started thinking a lot about how climate change affects communities of plants and the pollinators that they interact with. Now I’m doing a post-doctorate here at Gonzaga, where I work in Dr. Betsy Bancroft’s lab, which focuses on freshwater ecosystems. In my research, I’m mostly diving into ideas about amphibians and how they’re impacted by climate change, specifically water temperature, and how individual organisms, but also their interactions with others, are being impacted. B: That’s very interesting! So, our theme for this year’s edition of Charter is ‘Systems.’ What does ‘Systems’ mean to you, either as it relates to your field or more broadly? R: I think most ecologists think about our work as a system, as the study of these ecosystems. Ecosystems are groups of organisms that interact with other organisms and with nonliving components of the ecosystem. An ecologist might think about two interacting species and the dynamics between them. So, for example, you might have a tadpole and a snail, and you consider the ecosystem that they live in and how the temperature in the pond that they’re living in affects how this tadpole and the snail compete for food, for example. Or, you might scale all the way out

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and think about systems at the biosphere level, which includes everything living on the planet and the abiotic components that they interact with. On that scale, you might think about changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and how that impacts individual organisms and the interactions among them. I guess in my field specifically, I think a lot about fairly small-scale systems. I spend a lot of time thinking about one-on-one interactions between two different species, or even between two organisms of the same species. B: Let’s discuss the function of these systems that you’re talking about, and we can get more specific. How and why are these systems developed? How are they sustained? R: Ecosystems have evolved over eons. Ecosystems started when life started on the planet, with microbial life. Even from the beginning, those were fairly complex systems that included feedback loops that were important in maintaining survivable conditions on the planet. One process that’s really interesting on the planetary level that helps us understand how life can regulate itself is the storage of carbon dioxide. Carbon in the oceans is mediated by microbial life, like tiny algae that help fix carbon dioxide into sugars, which can then be turned into things like animal shells, which then drop to the base of the ocean and are stored as carbon sediments. Eventually, that carbon sediment through subduction gets put into what will eventually become a volcanic eruption, causing

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carbon to be rereleased into the atmosphere. It’s interesting to think about how those tiny little algal microorganisms influence this global-level process of carbon cycling. I’m increasingly interested in these global feedback loops that help these planetary-level processes maintain temperature and other important global processes. B: Where do you see systematic thinking being crucial for addressing global challenges, such as climate change or biodiversity loss? R: That’s the crux of why systems-level thinking is important, because of the global nature of these systems. In my work, I think about systems on a small scale, but these systems scale up all the way to the biosphere. To understand how global change is affecting the planet, primarily global warming, it’s important to look at all levels of those systems. To understand the impact of the emission of fossil fuels, we have to think on the atmospheric level, looking at the entire planet. To understand the impacts, we have to zoom in to think about what happens at an organismal level. It’s important for us to develop an understanding of how the choices we make at the level of human interactions impact larger-scale systems. I mentioned negative feedback loops in these self-regulatory systems. Humans are amplifying positive feedback loops. One really interesting example is that as the planet warms because of human emissions of greenhouse gases, the polar ice caps are melting. Polar ice caps not only act as habitat, but they also

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reflect heat and light energy out of the atmosphere. When those ice caps start melting, instead of ice, we get this darker, more heat-absorbent ocean water. This increases the temperature of the planet, leading to more melting of the caps...a positive feedback loop humans induced. B: You’re mentioning two ends of the spectrum: individual interactions between two organisms or species and then the global scale. Do you work in population-level ecology? R: My dissertation was focused on the community level, about how advancement in snowmelt timing is impacting plant-pollinator interactions. Snowmelt timing has already advanced by around 10 days since the Industrial Revolution, but it’s predicted to advance by two weeks by 2100 from the year 2000. In my dissertation, one of the big impacts that I was interested in is how it affects the timing of greenup—when plants can leaf out, and then the timing of flowering. We were then interested in how that change impacts those plants’ interactions with pollinators, which sometimes respond to different cues. So, they might not necessarily respond to the timing of snow melt; maybe they respond to air temperature or soil temperature. What we found is that with an artificially advanced snowmelt there was a large shift in what dynamics were driving plant pollinator interactions. We saw a disappearance of predictors that we expected to impact pollinator visitations. Under normal conditions, the timing of snowmelt impacted the timing of flowering, which then impacted the

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number of flowers, which then impacted the rate of pollinator visitation. But with artificially advanced snowmelt timing, we did not see this cascade happen on that biological level. We still saw the snowmelt timing impact lowering timing, but after that, the interactions stopped being significant. So, there’s something else driving insect visitation, and that’s not something we would expect from the literature. So ultimately, what we found is that those dynamics are shifting in some way because of advanced snowmelt timing. B: Is there a system in nature that you find especially beautiful or awe-inspiring? Can you expand on an organism and why you love it, or perhaps why it’s important in a broader biological or ecological context? R: Yeah, I would love to talk about the blue Orchard bee! So, the blue Orchard bee, or Osmia lignaria is a solitary species. Importantly, they’re native to the United States, right here in Spokane. They’re a beautiful, shiny blue color. They’re really good at pollinating native plants, so you’ll see them landing on mint flowers and anything in the Rosaceae family. To that point, they’re also really good pollinators of agricultural crops like apples, pears, nectarines, and cherries. You can actually just buy little cocoons of the bees; they’re farmed by bee farmers who essentially cultivate them. You buy them cold, and they get shipped to you on ice, and then you keep them in your fridge until you need them.

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B: Do you have any? R: I don’t have any right now, but the dream is to have a lot all the time, because I’d like to keep doing research with them. The cool thing about that is, since they’re not colonial, meaning they don’t live in big groups, like the European honeybee, you can buy as many as you need each year and use them to pollinate your crops. They actually can be better pollinators of some crops in inclement weather, which we’re seeing more of with climate change. B: What does it mean that they’re a better pollinator? R: One of the big things is how much pollen they’ll carry. If you’ve ever looked at a honeybee up close, they have these sacks of pollen on their legs called a corbicula, the pollen basket. So, honeybees store a lot of pollen in those sacks, and you can imagine it makes it hard for that pollen to get moved off that bee onto the flower, because it’s compressed. A lot of the pollen ends up on the hairs all over the bee’s body. Whereas when Osmia lignaria forages for pollen, it scoops the pollen onto hairs that are on the underside of the bee, and then eventually creates a little ball of pollen that is used to feed its offspring. Because of where the pollen is stored, in some cases, those Osmia bees can transfer more pollen between male and female flower parts. They also tend to move between plants more readily, and a lot of plant species have better seed output and fruit production when they’re

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getting pollen from a different plant, rather than from the same plant. European honeybees are non-native, and our reliance on them for agriculture is problematic in a number of ways. They outcompete native bees, which are already having a hard time. B: Is there a push to reduce the population of non-native bees? R: Yeah, and specifically to start using alternative pollinators, like Osmia. There are other species of megachilid bee that are great pollinators of crops, but I think the movement is more to find a replacement, or at least companion, for honeybees. B: That’s fascinating! Finally, how does collaboration across disciplines, such as chemistry, ecology, and physiology, shape your understanding of systems? So, talking more about the systems of different sciences rather than organisms. One thing I didn’t talk about was the impact of topography on all those dynamics that we were studying during my dissertation work. When I was out in the tundra above tree line, I noticed there were dips in the landscape, and that these were one of the big drivers of where snow was. I got really interested in this idea about topography affecting snow and found out through the literature that it was really important.

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Then I found some digital elevation models created by people doing geology-level work and was able to use that to tie topography to the timing of snow melt. For me, that was a really big wake-up call that I can’t just ignore these geological processes because I’m not a geologist. Ecosystems exist with geology, topography, and hydrology as the atmosphere of their foundation. They’re not separated from those things in any way. It is integral to think about other fields at that larger scale to understand how these systems work. One of the things I like most about this field is the dynamic where you get to temporarily become a mini-expert in something you never expected to get to learn about in order to understand how specific systems work.

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Charter An Eye for an Eye: Sytems of Discrimination Inflicted upon The Tejano Community as “deserved punishment” for Santa Anna’s 1836 Invasion By Nicholas Hylen In the year 1836, the Mexican province of Texas had been home to two distinct demographics for some fifteen years. During that period, thirty thousand white Americans had immigrated to Texas, drawn by the cheap land and existing Anglo-Texan (Texian) community originally established by Stephen F. Austin in 1821. On the whole, this group resided north of the Colorado River, where they lived on cotton plantations along the Gulf Coast or corn and wheat farms farther inland. Texians were American Southerners, loyal to their Anglo-Protestant roots through and through (Carroll 106). Meanwhile, residing south of the Colorado River, especially around the city of San Antonio, lived the Tejanos. Numbering five thousand in 1836, the Tejanos were Mexicans who had lived in Texas (north of the Rio Grande) since the founding of San Antonio, which had come a century and a half earlier. The Tejanos were Catholics and had long survived on the hostile Texan plain without support from Mexico City, the capital of a nation few of them identified with following centuries of neglect (Anderson 5). What these two distinct groups had in common was their shared political tradition, one of self-governance and provincial autonomy. In the United States, southerners were highly suspicious of the “Yankees’” attempts to ban slavery and overrule state’s rights. They came to Texas suspicious of Mexico City, which was as abo-

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litionist as Washington. Tejanos, on the other hand, had survived relentless nomadic Indian attacks for centuries without the support of Mexico City, which was often unable to fund the defense of its northern frontier. The Mexican Constitution of 1824 guaranteed provincial autonomy, a right Tejanos utilized and relied upon to organize militias to defend against nomadic Indian raids. Both Tejanos and Texians were adamant of their shared province’s right to govern itself. So, both communities were horrified by the rise of General Santa Anna, who styled himself, “The Napoleon of the West.” Santa Anna scrapped the Constitution of 1824 and attempted to centralize the nation. The Tejanos and Texians, not willing to give up their political autonomy, declared the independence of their province, now the Texas Republic. The young republic was subsequently subjected to a brutal invasion, halted only due to Santa Anna’s unlikely capture. While the Texas Revolution began as a means to preserve Texans’ political autonomy, be they Anglo or Mexican, Texians’ experience of Santa Anna’s 1836 invasion led the majority-Texian republic to adopt both political and societal systems of oppression, which denied Tejanos their political and economic rights due to racial suspicions. Before independence, Texians and Tejanos lived in the same province. However, they engaged with one another infrequently. Texian settlements sprung up north of where Tejanos lived, with there rarely being overlap between the Texians of “American Texas” and the Tejanos of “Mexican Texas.” Yet, the two people groups were quite similar in how they

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adapted to survive the Texan environment. Tejano historian Jesús F. de la Teja explains, “there existed between [Texians] and Tejanos much common ground. In what they ate, how they lived, what they enjoyed, and what they suffered [they] had more in common than they realized,” (76). Not only did they share customs, but they shared a legislative body, sending representatives to the same provincial congress in Monclova. While no towns hosted an evensplit of Tejanos and Texians, individuals from both communities did occasionally settle in a town of the others (Ibid 97). There was little conflict between the communities, because indeed there was little contact between them. Before 1836, there was no need for either. Of the traits these communities shared, none would bring them closer together than their love of political autonomy. Both considered it an essential right—granted to the Tejanos by the Constitution of 1824 and to the Texians by their colonization contracts (Streeter 4). Therefore, Santa Anna’s centralization efforts proved incredibly worrying. Provinces across Mexico rebelled and Texas was no different. The Texan Declaration of Independence, which is practically a verbatim reproduction of the American version, casts Santa Anna as a hated tyrant in the same way the American version portrayed King George III. It states, “[Texans] have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as … late changes made in the Government by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana (sic), who, having overturned the Constitution of his country, now offers us the cruel alternative, ei-

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ther to abandon our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny.” While most other breakaway republics were swiftly crushed by Santa Anna’s army (which he personally led), Texas remained a holdout (Scheina 26). In Texas, the Texian and Tejano communities united to resist Santa Anna’s centralization efforts. The first government of Texas was to be led by President David G. Barnett, a Texian, and Vice-President Lorenzo de Zavala, a Tejano (Montejano 26). Zavala and two other Tejanos were signatories to the Texan Declaration of Independence. Stephen F. Austin roused his people to arms. “War is our only resource,” he declared, “There is no other remedy but to defend our rights[,] our country & our selves by force of arms,” (Austin 2). As Santa Anna’s massive army gathered on the southern Texan border, all in Texas recognized a defense would require Texian-Tejano cooperation if the rebel alliance was to survive Santa Anna’s onslaught. That cooperation indeed existed at the beginning of the revolution. Tejanos and Texians formed militias under the authority of the Texan congress. Juan Seguín, a Tejano elite from San Antonio, described in his memoirs the military cooperation which occurred between the Texians and Tejanos. “On the 13th of October I met Austin on the Salado,” Seguín recalls, “and joined my forces with his small army. Upon this occasion I had the honor to become acquainted with General Sam Houston… Austin, as commander-in-chief of the army, gave me the appointment of captain,” (77-78). The value of Tejano leaders was

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indeed recognized by Texian commanders, as Seguín would be assigned numerous important commands throughout the revolution; assisting in a defense of the Alamo, covering the retreat of Texian families fleeing Santa Anna’s army, and leading cavalry at the battle of San Jacinto. Tejanos who sided with the Texians like Seguín, as well as Zavala and others, were resisting Santa Anna and his centralization attempts (Montejano 26). Unfortunately for them, Santa Anna’s unexpected defeat and capture at San Jacinto would destroy Texians need for cooperation with the Tejano community. It would allow Texians’ racial hatred towards Mexicans, amplified due to Santa Anna’s vicious campaign, to manifest in discriminatory practices aimed not towards the foreign Mexicans, but towards the domestic Tejanos. The Tejanos would be unfairly punished for the “sins of the father,” as it were, by the very nation they fought for the independence of. When Santa Anna descended upon Texas, he so shocked the Texians with his ruthlessness that pre-existing racial suspicions were fanned into a wildfire. Santa Anna’s invasion of Texas, beginning in early 1836 and going on for several months, devastated the Texian heartland and displaced thousands. More shocking was his summary executions of captured Texian soldiers. Santa Anna strictly enforced the Tornell Decree, a policy which allowed the execution of all people captured while fighting for Texan independence, with no avenue for due process (Winders 425). At the infamous Alamo and the lesser-known Goliad, hundreds of captured Texan forces were

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massacred. These events shocked the Texan nation. The Alamo and Goliad became rallying cries for the Texan cause. The Texians demanded retribution. One soldier wrote, “No doubt our men were justifiable [in our campaigns], as the Mexican nation deserved punishment for its perfidy,” (ibid 437). While there had existed a state of racial suspicion between the Texians and Mexicans, there now existed a state of racial hatred. Texians quickly recast the purpose of the independence war. No longer was it a struggle for rights and self-government. Rather, the conflict quickly morphed into a moral clash between racially superior white Texians and barbaric Mexicans. William Barrett Travis, colonel in charge of the defense of the Alamo, wrote in a document calling for reinforcements, “I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & every thing (sic) dear to the American character, to come to our aid,” (Travis 1). A Texian journalist, far more colorful in his description of what the Texians were fighting for, wrote, “Will you [people of Texas]… suffer the colored hirelings of a cruel and faithless despot, to feast and revel, in your dearly purchased and cherished home?” (Lack 188). This was the narrative that quickly arose among Texians, a narrative that the independence war was a moralistic, racial struggle, pitting white, virtuous Texians against non-white, despotic Mexicans. Tejanos did not fit into that narrative. Santa Anna was captured by Sam Houston at the battle of San Jacinto. When his invasion ended, so too ended the existence of a common enemy the Tejanos and Texians could unite against. Very quickly following Texas’s victory over

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Mexico, a spirit of revenge descended upon the Texians, which for the next decade of the republic’s rule would work to the extreme detriment of the Tejano community (Montejano 26). The Texas Republic ruled from independence in 1836 until American annexation in 1846. In that ten-year period, Mexico never renounced her claims on the province. Several times, small invasion forces were launched into Texas. However, they never regained control of the region. While Texas launched retributive expeditions back into Mexico, the small country could never exact vengeance upon its larger Latin neighbor. While it couldn’t punish Mexicans abroad, it could punish domestic Tejanos—no different from Mexicans, in the minds of Texians. Despite the Tejanos joining the Texians in fighting Mexico, the Texians nevertheless rejected the idea the two groups were equal. Texians saw Tejanos as inferior, not fully white like Texians due to their racial, religious, and linguistic ancestry (Pierce 217). Tejanos were suspected of loyalty to Mexico solely due to their skin color, and “laid upon the Tejanos an onus of guilt for the Alamo and the Goliad,” (Carroll 41). The Texians conjured up an imagined conflict between themselves and the Tejanos, which would influence the development of the Texan legal system to the disadvantage of the Tejano community during the republic’s tenure. That imagined conflict devastated the Tejano community each time tensions between Mexico and Texas flared. Earlier, it was mentioned Mexico relaunched several invasions of Texas following the

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1836 failure. During each of those, loyal Tejano citizens were immediately suspected of collaboration. When Santa Anna returned from exile to lead Mexico in 1841 (and to begin what would be his sixth of eleven presidencies), he ordered the Mexican army to harass the Texan border (Scheina 42-43). The subsequent invasions, though not intended to completely reconquer the republic, terrified Texians. Sam Houston, now president, declared a national emergency. Tejanos living in San Antonio, which was captured by the Mexicans, were seen as collaborators. As the Texan militia approached the city, rumors swirled that the mayor of San Antonio had betrayed Texas and handed his city to the invaders. This mayor was Juan Seguín, who had served Texas in the independence war just five years earlier. That did not matter to the Texians. The accusation spread like wildfire. In his memoirs, Seguín writes, “All the parties of volunteers en route to San Antonio declared ‘they wanted to kill Seguín’… Hardly a day elapsed without receiving notice that a party was preparing to attack me,” (95). Seguín fled Texas in 1842 due to the prolific threats against him and his family (Montejano 27). Violence against Tejanos was endemic in the republic. “Burglary and violent theft,” wrote a Texan observer, “happen most frequently to the unfortunate Mexicans,” (De la Teja 88). “At every hour of the day and night my countrymen ran to me for protection against the assaults or exactions of those [American] adventurers,” Seguín wrote while still mayor of San Antonio, “Could I leave them defenseless, exposed to the assaults of foreigners who, on the pretext

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that they were Mexicans, treated them worse than brutes?” (90). Violence against Tejanos was prevalent and often went unpunished. There existed in the republic an open secret: Tejanos were second-class citizens, deserving of abuse and attack. Among the Texians, vicious and racist rhetoric towards their Tejano neighbors only hardened with each year following the revolution. In a guidebook written for prospective American immigrants to Texas, the prevalent opinion of Texians is spelled out crystal clear. In a chapter entitled, “Mexicans in Texas—character, habits, etc,” the author tirades, “In point of character, for intelligence, vigor, and enterprise, the Mexicans are far inferior to Anglo-Americans, or any class of Europeans,” (Emigrant’s Guide 226-228). The author continues, “In many respects they seem to resemble the savages, from whom most of them are descendants, and the changes are not always in their favor.” Tejano contributions to Texan independence are completely overlooked, with the author saying, “As soldiers they are regarded as the Texians as being cowardly and incompetent, beyond any other professedly civilized people.” These racist attitudes were widespread among Texians. A Texian soldier, patrolling the Rio Grande, wrote in his diary, “This river once settled with the enterprise and intelligence of the English race, will yearly send forth an export… [which] may be increased to an estimate which now would appear chimerical,” (Montejano 17). This idea that Tejanos had squandered the opportunity the Texan landscape provided is seen again in a pamphlet distributed popular among Texians

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following the independence war. The author writes, “[The Mexicans] were accustomed to a lazy pastoral or mining life, in a healthy country. Texas was emphatically a land of agriculture… [home to] fevers, mosquitoes &c., (sic) which the Mexicans hated with a more than natural or reasonable hatred,” (Wharton 3). The author concludes, “Mexicans are wholly incapable of self-government, and … our liberties, our fortunes and our lives are insecure so long as we are connected with them,” (6). This environment, one of suspicion, hatred, and violence, all stemming from Texians and Tejanos racial differences, meant the law developed to suppress the political and economic rights of Tejanos. The first major obstacle for Tejano’s ability to access the privileges of citizenship was the very definition of citizenship as outlined by the Texan constitution. It denied citizenship to all people who were, “the descendants of Africans, and Indians,” (Streeter 18). This could be selectively applied to Tejanos, seen by Texians as mixed-race (Carroll 43). The constitution further outlined how, “All people who shall leave the country for the purpose of evading a participation in the present struggle, or shall refuse to participate in it, or shall give aid or assistance to the present enemy, shall forfeit all rights of citizenship and such lands as they may hold in the Republic,” (Ibid). This provision was used exclusively to deny citizenship to Tejanos, and to seize their lands under the pretext they provided aid to Mexico. Following the independence war, mass seizures of Tejano lands occurred. A. B. J. Hammett, observing the situation in the ma-

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jority-Tejano town of Victoria, wrote, “[Even] loyal Mexican families were driven from their homes, their treasures, their cattle and horses and their lands, by an army of reckless, war-crazy people, who overran the town of Victoria. These new people distrusted and hated the Mexicans, simply because they were Mexicans, regardless of the fact they were both on the same side of the fighting during the war,” (Montejano 27). The constitution empowered Texians to deny citizenship to Tejanos and to seize their lands. Not only were Tejanos stripped of their lands and denied citizenship, but the few who were citizens and thus qualified for the republic’s headright land grants were viewed with extreme suspicion. Texians frowned upon Tejano’s exercising their rights as citizens when applying for land grants. An observer decried how at the San Antonio land grant office, “a silversmith of this town, who was acting political chief under Santa Ana (sic), and everybody knows it - has [received] his lg [league]… I know many [M]exicans (3 in one hour) who ran away as enemies… who have [received] certificates for the Lg.,” (Montejano 36). Those who did secure land grants were pressured into turning those lands over to Texian settlers, often under threat of violence. The government did little to stop destructive nomadic Indian Comanche raids around San Antonio, and Texian vagabonds also harassed Tejanos without fear of prosecution (Seguin 36). A Texian merchant in San Antonio advocated for the military to be used to pressure Tejanos to agree to favorable land transfers. He wrote, “[Tejanos here] are not sufficiently scared to make an advantageous

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sale of their lands. In case two or three hundred of our troops should be stationed there, I have no doubt but a [Texian] could make some good speculations,” (Montejano 28-29). Texians considered Tejanos suspect when the latter exercised their rights, rights they had fought for during the independence war, solely because of their Mexican heritage. Through rhetoric, violence, and the law, Tejanos were delegated to second class citizens. Their contributions to the revolution were ignored due to their shared racial heritage with the enemy. The Texians imposed systems of oppression due to the imagined conflict they had with the Tejanos, ultimately leading to the latter, as historian David J. Weber termed, becoming like “foreigners in their native land.” Through systems of oppression, Tejanos were denied the benefits of the republic’s independence, which they had fought and died for. Through a racial recasting of the war, Texians were able to cast Tejanos as the enemy, based solely due to their skin color. In his last speech to the Texan Congress before being forced to flee to Mexico, Juan Seguín said, “The Mexico-Texians were among the first who sacrificed their all in our glorious Revolution… to achieve those blessings which, it appears, [they] are destined to be the last to enjoy,” (34). This sad prophecy was unfortunately proved correct due to the racial biases of the majority towards the minority.

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Works Cited Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875. University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. Austin, Stephen F. “Circular of the Committee of Safety at San Felipe, September 19, 1835.” Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Accessed January 30, 2026, https:// www.tsl.texas.gov/exhibits/texas175/circular.html Carrol, Mark M. Homesteads Ungovernable: Families, Sex, Race, and the Law in Frontier Texas, 1823-1860. University of Texas Press, 2001. Costeloe, Michael P. The Central Republic in Mexico, 1835– 1846: ‘Hombres de Bien’ in the Age of Santa Anna. Cambridge University Press, 1993. De la Teja, Jesús F. “Discovering the Tejano Community in ‘Early’ Texas.” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 1, no. 18, 1998, pp. 73-98. https://doi.org/10.2307/3124734 Emigrant’s Guide to the New Republic. Published by William W. Allen, 1840. Foreigners in their Native Land: Historical roots of the Mexican Americans. Edited by David J. Weber. University of New Mexico Press, 1973. Lack, Paul D. “Slavery and the Texas Revolution.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol 89, no. 2, 1985, pp. 181202. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30239908 Montejano, David. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986. University of Texas Press, 1987.

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Pierce, Jason E. Making the White Man’s West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West. University Press of Colorado, 2016. Scheina, Robert L. Santa Anna: A Curse Upon Mexico. Brassey’s, 2002. Seguín, Juan N. A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguín. Edited by Jesús F. de la Teja. Texas State Historical Association, 2002. Streeter, Thomas W. Constitution of the Republic of Texas. Gales & Seaton, 1836. Travis, William Barret. “Letter from the Alamo, February 24, 1836.” Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Accessed January 30, 2026, https://www.tsl.texas.gov/exhibits/ texas175/travisletter.html Wharton, William H. Texas. a Brief Account of the Origin, Progress and Present State of the Colonial Settlements of Texas; Together with an Exposition of the Causes which have induced the Existing War with Mexico. 1836. Winders, Richard Bruce. “‘This is a Cruel Truth, But I cannot Omit it’: The Origin and Effect of Mexico’s No Quarter Policy in the Texas Revolution.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 120, 2017, pp. 413-439. https://www. jstor.org/stable/44647153

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Author Biographies Grace Applegate

Grace Applegate is a Senior and poet studying English Writing with a minor in Music. Originally from rainy Oregon, she loves to paint, listen to jazz, watch movies, and spend time on her best friend’s farm.

Sequoia Barger

Sequoia Barger is a Senior from Spokane, WA and is majoring in History with a minor in Art History.

Kira 森 Bifone

Kira 森 Bifone is a senior with majors in Communication Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and minors in English, History, and Sociology. She was born in China but has called Seattle home since she was adopted as a baby. When not going to classes, you can find Kira reading, crafting, or attending spin classes.

Kayla May Chongco

Kayla May Chongco is a Senior from San Francisco, CA and is majoring in Biology with a Concentration in Physiology.

Carmela Martucci Coseo

Carmela Martucci Coseo is a Senior from Valley Center, CA and is majoring in Psychology with a minor in Art.

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Dr. Sara Diaz

Dr. Sara P. Díaz teaches courses on gender, race, and sexuality in the US, feminism and science, and women and the environment. Her research focuses on the complex relationships between science, gender, race, and the politics of human difference. Dr. Díaz’ scholarship builds on U.S. third world feminist theories and employs feminist cultural studies methods to examine the intellectual survival strategies used by women of color scientists. Her other scholarly interests include gender, race and twentieth-century science; 20th Century US history, feminist research ethics; feminist epistemologies; feminist environmental justice; feminist pedagogy, and mixed race studies.

Blake Anthony Edwards, M.F.A

Blake Anthony Edwards is a Lecturer in Theatre Arts at Gonzaga University. He teaches acting, playwriting, theatre for young audiences, and a First-Year Seminar that utilizes the Hunter Heartbeat Method as a theatrical bridge to connect students. He is the proud owner of Emilia, a cat who hates all systems.

Mia Fraley

Mia Fraley is a Senior from Vancouver, WA and is majoring in Political Science with minors in History and Women and Gender Studies. She hopes to attend law school after undergraduate.

Nicholas Hylen

Nicholas Hylen is a Junior from Sammamish, WA, and is majoring in History with minors in Political Science and English.

Jack Kashork

Jack Kashork is a Senior from Spokane, Washington, and is studying Political Science. He is a campus leader serving in student government and housing and residence life. His interests lie in law, politics, and business, and he has experience in political campaigns, non-profits, and public corporations.

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Dr. Megan McCabe

Dr. McCabe works in the areas of Catholic moral theology, theological ethics, and feminist theologies. Her research and teaching respond to questions of human responsibility for suffering and the correlative duties to work for social transformation. She engages questions at the intersection of moral theology, social ethics, liberation and political theologies, feminist theologies and ethics, and issues of gender and sexuality. Her current research develops an understanding of “cultures of sin,” specifically in the context of an examination of the problem of the cultural foundation of sexual violence. Her work has been published in the Journal of Religious Ethics and America Magazine and is forthcoming in the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. She is an active member of Catholic Theological Ethics in a World Church (CTEWC), the College Theology Society (CTS), the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the Society of Christian Ethics (SCE), and the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA). She is currently co-chairing a five-year seminar at AAR, “Contextualizing the Catholic Sexual Abuse Crisis,” and co-founded and co-chaired for three years an interest group at the CTSA, “Theology, Sexuality, and Justice: New Frontiers.”

Caleb McCullough is a junior at Gonzaga University majoring in Psychology and Philosophy. His work explores the intersection of consciousness, phenomenology, mysticism, and selfhood, asking how our lived experience reveals the boundary between illusion and reality. He is currently developing several papers examining awareness and the nature of the self, with a particular interest in how artistic mediums like music and film can destabilize identity and open us to deeper dimensions of being. Caleb approaches these questions not only through theory but through direct experience, treating philosophy as a practice of seeing rather than a system of thought

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Jamieson McHenry

Jamieson McHenry is a junior majoring in political science. With a minor in writing, she’s also passionate about uplifting the creative, writerly voices of Gonzaga’s student body. She currently serves as the Prose Editor of Gonzaga’s Reflection journal.

Erin Roney

Erin Roney is a Junior from Salt Lake City, Utah and is majoring in English Literature and Writing.

Dr. Annika Rose-Person

Dr. Annika Rose-Person is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Dr. Betsy Bancroft’s lab at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. She is primarily a teacher and an ecologist, and focuses on the impacts of global, anthropogenic climate change on species interactions

Sydney Severo

Sydney Severo is a Junior from Los Angeles, California, double-majoring in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations, and International Studies, with regional concentrations in the Middle East and a thematic concentration in War and Peace. Sydney is also minoring in sociology.

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Staff Biographies Ashlyn Brown - Scientific Writing Editor

Ashlyn is a junior majoring in Human Physiology from Boulder, Colorado. Naturally, she loves the outdoors and spends her free time skiing, reading, painting, running, cooking, and playing cards. She is incredibly grateful for her friends and the Gonzaga community who support her every day.

Jack Champlin - Assistant Editor

Jack is a sophomore majoring in English and is pursuing secondary education credentials. He is from Palo Alto, California. He is also a member of Gonzaga Theatre, and has been published in Reflection. He loves fish and Phish, but not fishing.

Jolene Hendrikson - Assistant Editor

Jolene is a Senior from Camano Island, Washington, majoring in International Studies. After graduating, she plans on taking a year off to travel before she attends graduate school for Anthropology.

Eloise Medberry - Copy Editor

Eloise is a Senior with a major in Political Science, and minors in Philosophy and History. She’s from Kansas City, Missouri. She loves her friends, family, and cat.

Audrey O’Donnell - Graphic Designer

Audrey is a sophomore majoring in English with a minor in Promotions. She is from Las Vegas, Nevada. She loves having a minimum of three jobs, crocheting, and Jane Austen.

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Liz Padrnos - Copy Editor

Liz is a senior majoring in English Literature, French, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and minoring in Religious Studies. She is especially interested in literary and cultural theory and finding avenues to bridge the gap between academia and activism. After graduation, Liz plans to take a gap year to work and travel before applying for joint JD and Masters in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies programs.

Morgan Perron - Assistant Editor

Morgan is majoring in English, writing concentration, along with a minor in art. She is a second-year transfer student whose activities on campus this year involve creative writing club, country swing club, and spikeball club. She lives in Walla Walla, WA and her hobbies are a wide-range including writing, reading, music, sports, etc.

Kevin Pinkelman - Editor-In-Chief

Kevin is a Senior majoring in Sociology, Political Science, and Criminology with minors in Leadership Studies and Solidarity & Social Justice. Kevin serves as the President of Gonzaga Mock Trial and as the Off-Campus Senator in the GSBA Senate. He loves music festivals, his friends, and homemade Caesar salads.

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Acknowledgements As I try to express the immense gratitude I hold for everyone who helped with the publication of Charter, words seem to fail me. This book truly would not exist without the incredible collective effort of so many fantastic individuals. Thank you to my wonderful supervisors, Morgan Scheerer and Dana Parsons, for the continued guidance, perspective, and support. Thank you to my wonderful editorial and design staff—Ashlyn Brown, Jack Champlin, Jolene Henrikson Eloise Medbery, Audrey O’Donnell, Liz Padrnos, and Morgan Perron—for your commitment, understanding, and unique perspectives. Thank you to my friends, family, and Leila Cali for your undying support. And of course, thank you, dear reader, for taking time to explore this journal. I would be remiss if I did not extend my gratitude to my friend, Sean Ahearn. While Sean was never directly involved with Charter, he taught me so much about the importance of community, diverse perspectives, commitment, and love. I miss Sean every day, but I feel forever blessed to have experienced his spirit, presence, and friendship.

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“All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.” – The Buddha

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