The most difficult class I took last year was Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies 200: Gender, Sexuality & the Pursuit of Knowledge. I found out after enrolling (and after the deadline to drop classes passed) that it was a discipline-specific methods course that assumed some prior knowledge of philosophy. I didn’t let that deter me, though—the unfamiliar terms in readings and lectures were daunting, but I put lots of effort into understanding the content and got the same amount out of the class.
One of the most important things this class taught me was how to distance myself from the narrative being discussed. As a man, especially a middle-class white man, much of the material in classes all throughout my educational experience has been focused on people who share many of my identities. This makes content easily relatable, but it also reinforces the unconscious mindset that this is the way that education should feel—that I should never have to step into anybody else’s shoes or question my worldview. It isn’t just that this class wasn’t about people like me; an essential component of its purpose was to not focus on people like me, people who have their stories told in traditional academia. This was extremely difficult, and I am immensely thankful for it. The content of this class, especially topics like standpoint epistemology, frames of reference, and false objectivity, set me on the path toward being able to talk about issues related to gender in respectful and productive ways, understand my own place within the issues and my effects on the social landscape, and hopefully develop a more inclusive and equitable worldview.
Of all of the classes I’ve taken at Carleton, this is the one that has had the most implications for my other classes. It seems that I bring in a concept from GWSS 200 when thinking about any new literary work in a Spanish class (in fact, I used two of my GWSS readings in my final paper on a feminist retelling of the Martín Fierro, a classic Argentinian epic poem) or to understand concepts like systems of domination and the long-term effects of hegemony on development in any Educational Studies class. The philosophizing related to the production and control of knowledge is also ubiquitous in my reference internship, especially in studying bias in cataloging and practicing critical engagement with sources or decolonization of traditional research practices. It’s hard to imagine a future that doesn’t necessarily incorporate this type of thinking, whether I go into librarianship or a different field. It will always be important to question dominant structures and systems of knowledge. I owe most of my foundation in that field to GWSS 200.