David Powers Corwin has joined our faculty and we are thrilled to have added one more core faculty member to our team. In this role, David will teach courses in LGBTQ Studies, feminist theory, and media studies. They will also serve as the undergrad advisor and the associate director for academic affairs. If you have any questions about our undergraduate programs, they will be your point of contact. Please see their interview below.
- What made you want to work or continue working in Women and Gender Studies?
As I often say, I have professionally “grown up” here. I started as a graduate student in 2013 and since then I haven’t been able to get enough. I am always in awe of the amount of support and opportunity I have been given from my colleagues in all of my roles at Mason. I also get the opportunity to do the EXACT work that I was trained to do, which is so often taken for granted. I have the opportunity to teach amazing students in a wide variety of courses while also getting to know them through advising, event planning, and just random interactions in the center. WGST is also one of the only workplaces I have been part of where every day I am genuinely excited about going to work.
2) What are you most passionate about in this area of study?
Since I took my first course as an undergrad (Introduction to Women’s Studies, Spring 2011,) I have never been able to get enough of women and gender studies. My areas have been literature, popular culture, and writing studies, but I am able to teach all of these in my interdisciplinary courses which becomes a dessert bar of academic conversations. This field is one of the few that from its inception has been rooted in activism. Often, more traditional academic disciplines have to be rerouted to places of activism, but women and gender studies starts from the voices of marginalized identities. The interdisciplinarity of the field also makes for a really generative classroom space with students from a variety of different cultural backgrounds, experiences, and academic programs. I never feel that I teach the same course twice.
3) What do you hope to accomplish in your position here?
I had the privilege of leading the effort in creating a standalone minor in LGBTQ Studies. We currently have 6 declared minor students prior to the program’s official pilot (Fall 2019). I would like to see 25 consistent minors moving through the program each year. I would also like to develop a stand alone graduate certificate in LGBTQ studies that could also be completed in conjunction with a variety of Mason programs. I also hope to continue to improve courses I have created such as our Gender and Social Justice Living Learning Community course, WMST 375: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and TV, and WMST 208: Introduction to LGBTQ Studies. I would also like to offer a graduate seminar in feminist and queer pedagogies at some point in the future. Lastly, we have many talented undergraduate students whom for a variety of reasons do not take advantage of the many on and off campus opportunities to present their research. I want to work on ways for students from all of our classes to be regularly presenting in conferences in the area and I would like to see at least 20% of our students completing OSCAR projects each year. We have to give our time and energy to undergraduate mentoring in order to transform the community of scholars of tomorrow.
4) What excites you most about working here?
I am most excited about having my very first faculty appointment in the program in which I was trained. Teaching with the people that taught me is such a gift because I can now put into practice everything they have taught me as they continue to mentor me as a teacher and scholar. My colleagues are also so supportive and are genuinely excited that I am joining their faculty, which makes the work so much easier. I am also excited about continuing our co-curricular model through this position. Even though my primary appointment is faculty, I have the opportunity to work with the center mentor student team who manage the space, develop curriculum, coordinate our Living Learning Community, and be part of a variety of University Life Initiatives. I really do get the best of all worlds through this new role.
5) How does working here contribute to your life/career goals?
When I first came to Mason as a graduate student, I wanted to be a tenure-track faculty member. However, after seeing the co-curricular structure and work that WGST does I moved my career aspirations more toward student affairs work. Upon accepting the program coordinator role, Dr. Hattery gave me the opportunity to teach and I immediately fell in love and knew that I needed to be teaching regularly, which made me more confused than ever. My question to myself has always been: How can I merge all of my passions into one position? This new role moves me in the right direction of making my dreams become realities through teaching, administration, and student development work.
6) What unique experience can you contribute to WGST?
Moving from student to staff and now to faculty, I think I bring a variety of unique experiences to my new faculty role. Many faculty members are never students in the institutions they serve in or have staff roles prior to their faculty appointments. I can bring lots of institutional knowledge to our faculty just because I have been in so many different roles here at Mason. You aren’t getting rid of me that fast. J