I got the opportunity to speak with Dr. Liam Lair of the Women and Gender Studies department at West Chester University. He has been at West Chester for about three years and teaches feminist studies with a specific focus on sexuality, disability, race, trans subjectivities and citizenship.
Dr. Lair had a lot to share about the courses he teaches and gave me an insight to important issues surrounding the LGBTQ community, as well as the education that is necessary to understand LGBTQ issues,
Q: What is your area of expertise?
A: I teach Intro to Women and Gender Studies as a course, but my area of expertise, and part of the reason I was hired to teach at West Chester is to teach about sexuality studies, queer studies, [and] trans studies as well. The first special topics course I was able to teach here was trans-feminist theory. The next semester I taught, LBGTQ+ sexualities and politics. It was more of a survey course where we looked at different sorts of identity categories, how those identity categories have come to be and what are the political movements within those communities.I teach Feminist Activism. But I’m looking at historically at feminist activism. A lot of that activism has emerged from the Queer community under sort of the Feminist rubric, whether it was Black feminists like the Combahee River Collective that were explicitly inclusive of Queer women or lesbian feminists or trans-feminist activists. So even though that’s not explicitly a queer class in terms of title, I always incorporate Queer identity of the intersection of disability, race, citizenship and all those other aspects of being queer.
Q: What topics do you talk about in Feminist theory?
A: Feminist theory is an upper-level course, so we go through different approaches to feminist theory, but ultimately, it’s how do we as feminists create effective knowledge, where do we see knowledge emerging from in ways that are useful for creating a more just world. For example, we talk about different approaches, like post-structuralist approaches to feminist theory, standpoint theory … different ways feminists have talked about how we can say “yes, this is feminist theory, this useful knowledge for change.” But also what has been historically left out from what we can consider to be knowledge, so its effect is one of the things that we talk about.
Q: Are you part of any activist groups? Do you educate your students about activism?
A: Yes, absolutely. I want to shout out divisions on campus that are doing work like the Center for Trans and Queer Advocacy, the Center for Women and Gender Equity [and] the Dowdy Multicultural Center. I feel like those are really concrete ways for students to be activists on campus and I work closely with those divisions and doing some work with the peace and conflict studies. I’m part of a group that Dean Johnson, who’s faculty in the peace and conflict studies department. We’re calling it Rapid Response and I think we’re going to be calling it WCUStands [in the future] to create activists on campus to respond when folks like Matthew 24 come to campus. How do we disrupt what they’re doing, how do we distract from what they’re doing, how do we document what they’re doing on campus.
Historically, I’ve been in involved off campus in different groups. I volunteered briefly with Trans Life Line, which is a hotline for bi and for trans people who are experiencing suicidal thoughts or just need someone to talk to. I’ve been a volunteer with the National Lawyers Guild as a legal observer. I was living in Baton Rouge at the time, and so after Alton Sterling was murdered by the police, we were involved in just documenting and supporting activists and protesters in response to that murder. I worked in domestic violence shelters, an indirect service creating protocol for making the shelter and the administrative office more queer and trans friendly. I independently speak around the country on how to be more thoughtful about being inclusive of trans and queer people, particularly at the intersection of race and disability.
Q: What knowledge, career skills can you gain from having a Women and Gender Studies major?
A: I think the critical thinking and the understanding and negotiating of diversity are skill sets, if I had to pick two because we really challenge students to become comfortable with talking about navigating differences. That serves them very well, no matter what profession they go into … The stereotypes are like Planned Parenthood or non-profits—and a lot of our folks who graduate with the major do go into work like that. Some folks go into graduate school to get PHDs, whether it’s academic PHDs or applied PHDs-social work and psychology We have folks go into marketing, into government work, and work on political campaigns. We have folks working in healthcare professions, [and] I had students become lawyers. I had students who work in becoming community organizers, social justice work, start their own businesses [and] journalism. So I think that there are so many opportunities and possibilities for folks in Women and Gender Studies.
Q: What would you tell someone who is considering taking a Women and Genders Studies Course?
A: That’ll be the best day of their life. We are offering not just content, but a skill set that is invaluable. If you talk to anyone who’s taking courses in our department, they will tell you that they seem to understand things that they didn’t seem to understand before, things that are happening all around us. And what we try and do is give students a framework to see and understand why things are the way they are and how gender and sexuality and race and disability and citizenship shape every single one of our lives, whether we know it or not. I think that’s an invaluable skill set. That would be useful no matter what profession someone goes into.
Hania Jones is a fourth-year student majoring in English and minoring in journalism. HJ902644@wcupa.edu