Mentor & Mentee Interview

Dr. Clarissa Hayward in Conversation with Lucas Veloria

What are some things you like most about academia and being a professor?

I like the fact that I get to learn all of the time. That’s not the case for most people in most jobs, and it’s really wonderful. I like the fact that, within some fairly broad parameters, I am able to decide what I want to research and teach. And I like the community. I have very interesting colleagues, both here at Wash U and also in other universities—people I’ve gotten to know over the years at seminars and conferences and through various kinds of collaboration. And of course the students!

As you have progressed as an academic and scholar, how have your research interests changed over time?

My research interests have not changed dramatically over time. I have a core set of questions I’m interested in, and each new project has grown out of the last. I started out, early in my career, making the case for theorizing and studying power as a structural phenomenon. I then focused on structural racial power in the US, looking in particular at the period around the time of the US. Currently interested in the question of structural change: why and how it is that people sometimes succeed in enacting significant and lasting change to unequal power relationships.

What, in your opinion, are the most pressing issues in either political science as a field or academia as a whole?

I can’t imagine a more pressing issue than climate change. Scholars are prioritizing it across many disciplines. Political science is no exception since so many of the major obstacles to addressing it are political.

With the increasing polarization of the political climate and landscape, how do you think political science as a discipline will respond and adapt to addressing these divisions in our political culture?

Empirical political scientists study the causes and effects of polarization, and political theorists (my specialty, which tends to focus not only on explanation but also normative analysis and critique) study the harms of the division of political society into factions with an “us vs. them” identity. However, no academic can address, in the sense of solving or beginning to solve, this problem. Political actors, including but not limited to elected officials, party and media elites, and voters have to make choices and take political actions that reduce polarization. Political scientists can help people understand this problem and why we should address it, but they can’t address it for the democratic public.

What do you believe the future of your discipline(s)/ interdisciplinary field to be?

What do you theorize will be the future of this academic field(s) and their real-life implications/importance?

Ad’mirel Durden:

Sociology, as a discipline, focuses on trying to understand and conceptualize the social world. Thus, I believe the future of sociology will focus more on transformation as opposed to critiquing systems. I think it is vital to discuss transformation within Sociology because at times, it can be frustrating to read about these inequalities, especially if you are someone who has experienced these inequalities fi rst-hand, and it can feel hopeless. However, Sociology focusing on the ability to transform society and recognize that inequalities are not inherent to any society can provide a sense of optimism for people, which is crucial in addressing social inequalities and improving the material conditions of all people.

Savannah Henderson:

Combining my studies in Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, African & African American Studies, and Sociology, I consider myself a Black Feminist Sociologist. The reality of sitting within and between multiple different fields is that they are constantly evolving and therefore the definition of what it means to be a scholar in said fields is also always changing. I am not entirely sure what the future holds (I am currently trying to live in the present more instead of always trying to predict the future), but my hope would be that Black Feminist Sociology continues to defy the standards of traditional knowledge production by valuing anecdotal evidence as worthy of academic acceptance and analysis. I hope that Black Feminist Sociology continues to center the experiences of Black women, not just nationally but globally. I remain optimistic about the continued growth of the field. In the expansion, I foresee greater representation of Black women in the academy that destabilizes pre-existing notions of which knowledge production is considered valuable.

What do you believe the future of your discipline(s)/ interdisciplinary field to be?

What do you theorize will be the future of this academic field(s) and their real-life implications/importance?

Sarah Del Carmen Camacho:

My research lies in an interdisciplinary space between China Studies, Latin American Studies, and International Affairs in general. As a Global Studies major, this mixture of content areas and disciplines is necessary. From a China Studies perspective, I predict that the field will produce work on the relationships that China has to develop regions and nations, especially as strategic competition between the U.S. and China intensifies over the next decade. From a Latin American Studies perspective, I am not sure if understanding China will be a priority, but I certainly see increased attention on contemporary engagement with global superpowers like the U.S. and China in the context of postcolonial legacies. As development, military, and trade relations evolve in the future, these fields need to work together to understand the present and record it accurately. We must increase general knowledge on several corners of what we consider “the Global South”, developing a more thorough narrative of these understudied regions that includes the voice of both governments and people in the process.

Tori Harwell:

The path I see for African &African American Studies and Environmental Studies are a slow death due to an unwillingness to shift current exclusionary practices. Or for a radical re-imagination of who and why information is produced. I am cautiously hopeful of the second option, as both these fields and their intersection help protect and theorize things that are deeply important to me personally and professionally. The most intriguing possibility is a widely accessible Black lens on climate change. The emergence of a field of study in the marriages of the two disciplines could help rectify the exclusionary practice inherent to both of them. Currently, in Black studies, the theory is inaccessible and inapplicable to the average reader. Since the tradition’s advent, there has been a shift away from accessibility– articles and books are increasingly riddled with hard-to-parse-apart academic jargon. Mainstream environmental studies struggle to address and conceptualize the link between colonization, white supremacy, extractism, and climate change, thus limiting solutions. Both disciplines must work to bridge the silos imposed on them.