Why hello there!
Since this is my first
blog post, I figure somewhat of an introduction is in order. My name is Katelyn
Pierce and I am a fourth-year student at Brock University in St. Catharines,
Ontario. My program is “technically” concurrent education (BA/BEd) and I am “technically”
supposed to be going into fifth year to start my teaching practicum in the fall,
but I’m trying really hard to get out of it.
For the past four
years, I have been studying English as my major and geography as my minor,
which also means that I am being trained to teach both of these subjects. As
much as I can say that the passion has not died with either (rather, I must say
it has grown significantly in both), my passion for teaching (if I ever did have a passion) has been dead and
buried since third year.
It’s one of those
things where I know I’d be good at it, but I’d be miserable at the same time.
As great at it is to find something you can excel in, I have come to realize
that a level of prowess in a particular subject area or field does not necessarily
equate to happiness.
And, well: ideally I
would like to be happy.
But anyway! This blog,
thank goodness, has absolutely nothing to do with teaching! Surprisingly (and I
will explain why it is surprising) this blog is rooted in research that I have
taken on in my minor subject and new-found love: geography.
Geography has become a
passion that I never believed I would have. My initial experience with geography
was in the ninth grade when my teacher told us on the first day of school that
we would have a quiz the next day and we would all fail. I wish this was just a
quirky made-up anecdote for the purpose of entertaining, but alas it is not! So
I took the quiz the next day, which consisted of questions like: “what is the
longest river in the world?”, “name three countries that are islands” (the only
island I could think of was Hawaii), etc. I was able to figure out a few
answers but of course I failed just as my teacher had predicted.
He actually counted the
mark toward our final grade (which made me really angry because I was and still
am uptight about grades) and I ended up finishing the course with an 86.
That sounds like a
great mark, right? It is a great mark. But compared to all of the 90s I had
received in my other subjects, my geography mark was the eyesore of my report
card and a source of profound shame!
Ha…ha. Gotta love the
high school marking system.
And after that class I
had absolutely no intention of ever taking it again. Until, of course, my first
year of university came along.
Initially when I got
into the concurrent education program, I had decided that English would be my
first teachable and I would keep French as my second teachable (thanks, in
part, to all of the threats I received telling me that if I didn’t have French
I wouldn’t get a job). After my very first day of French class, which was an
hour and a half of feeling like my French education had failed me completely as
well as being acutely aware that I was going to be one of the poorest
performers in the class compared to all of the French immersion kids, I went
home and cried.
Maybe it was because I
had too much pride to struggle through it, I’m not sure, but without any
hesitation I dropped French and picked up human geography so I could be with my
best friend, Christina.
And honestly: being
with my best friend was the only reason behind my decision.
However! As it turned
out, the geography I knew from ninth grade had virtually nothing in common with what I had learned in 1F90. This geography
was all about how people experience, interact with, negotiate, connect and
emotionally respond to the spaces and places around them. In human geography,
no one cared if I knew all of the provinces and capitals and where they go on a
map (although…being a Canadian citizen, it’s probably important to be able to
do that…). Human geography wanted me to think critically about how people shape
places, places shape people, and why studying society in the context of
different scales (the home, work, the city, etc.) is important to our
understanding of the world around us.
After my first-year
introductory course succeeded to spark my interest, I ended up taking courses
in Cultural and Historical Geography, Urban Geography, and, most significantly,
Social Geography. My Social Geography course was a game-changer for me, and was
where I first began considering a career in geography. My TA had taken me aside
at the end of seminar one day and asked me about my career plans. When I told
her about teaching, she encouraged me to look into careers in geography because
she could see how interested and passionate I was in what we were learning.
Enter fourth year, and
this passion has only grown as a result of my Gender and Geography course, which
explored and expanded on many of the feminist issues that had been touched upon
in Social Geography.
Throughout that course,
I felt as though I had found my calling: being a woman who has been not only
interested in but also personally affected by the gendering of the spaces and
places I must navigate in my everyday life, I was eager to learn even more.
And now I have that
opportunity!
For the next four
months, I have been given the incredible opportunity to work with Professor
Ebru Ustundag, who instructed me in my Gender and Geography course, in The Match
of Minds Program at Brock.
This program is used to
provide students with employment opportunities that allow them to offer
research assistance to a professor. Out of the five different streams (which
includes opportunities for high school and graduate students), I have been
selected to participate in the Inquiring Minds program, which is for
undergraduate students.
When I was first told
that I had been approved for a “research assistantship,” I of course assumed
that my job would be…well…to assist my professor! However, amazingly enough,
Ebru has decided to do things a little differently and has offered me the
opportunity to explore topics of my choosing.
My first topic of
interest is feminist marriage, which I explored in my final project in my
Gender and Geography course. I want to know if it is possible to still be a
feminist and execute feminist ideals in an institution that is fundamentally
oppressive for women. If I want my two kids and a golden retriever (the classic
example Ebru gave our class), is it possible to change the way the family
performs their genders to promote an equal sharing of responsibilities? For
example: instead of the father taking out the garbage and fixing the car and
the mother cooking dinner and doing the laundry, can these roles be reversed?
In a similar vein, I’m
also interested in the possibility of feminist relationships and dating: is it
possible for the dating process to be feminist? For example, when a couple goes
out on a date, will the woman hold the door for the man? Will they split the
bill? I’m also curious about how young adult men perceive women who identify as
feminists. There seems to be a stigma attached to feminists that makes them out
to be man-haters and lesbians. But, of course, for educated individuals who
understand what feminism really is (in the simplest terms, equality between the
sexes …not to be confused with women attempting to dominate men), these
stereotypes simply do not fly.
I don’t hate men, and I’m
not a lesbian. But I’m a feminist, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
If I were to tell a guy
that I’m a feminist on the first date, should I be worried that he’s going to
run for the door?
Last but not least, as
a result of the Animals in Literature course that changed my life (especially after
reading the book Eating Animals by
Jonathan Safran Foer), I have become increasingly interested in vegetarianism as a gendered practice. A few months ago after reading Foer’s
book I completely gave up meat and haven’t looked back since. From my personal
experience and through the scholarly texts we explored in that course, I have
learned that even what we put in our bodies everyday are connected to gender:
historically and even today, meat-eating is associated with masculinity, while
vegetarianism (for a woman) has been associated with over-sentimentality and an
emotional response that women are frequently discouraged for. I am particularly
interested in how women specifically are treated in various social spaces
(especially the home, out in public at restaurants, at a friend’s house, on
dates, etc.) when they are vegetarians.
Through our meeting,
Ebru was able to connect all of these aforementioned topics to “the social
reproduction of everyday life,” which in the simplest of terms, refers to how
the functions of our everyday life (especially in this case, how we perform our
genders) are ingrained into how we navigate and interact with our environments
to the point where they are taken for granted and perceived as “natural.” On
the contrary, however, these functions are, in fact, socially constructed.
This is how I
understand it, anyway…please correct me if I am wrong, Ebru!
I have yet to decide if I am going to focus
more on feminist marriage and relationships, or on the gendering of
vegetarianism, so I will just have to see where my research takes me! In each
of my coming blogs, I will be documenting my thoughts on the books and scholarly
articles I am researching. By the end, I will have twenty sources that will
provide the foundation of my research (or rather, the background information)
and ten that will be specific to my topic.
When I am done, I will
have one big beautiful cohesive project that I can be proud of and maybe even
show my dad…maybe.
So without further ado…
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| Here is the background collage I created for this blog. Some of the pictures are hidden behind the text, so I figured I would include them here so you can appreciate just how awesome they are. |
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