Needs assesment

There are multiple forms of media dangled in front of our faces everyday, from newspapers to magazines, and TVs to computers. Every where ones looks there are images for things we “need”, we must have. People we should know, admire and aspire to be. There is no way for people to not look at the images that mainstream media plasters all over our lives. Images of woman are common for selling a multitude of products but what are the images really telling society. Do these images effect societies views of women? These images are mostly of white, skinny models selling sex as a phone or jeans or car. However, these images are also selling an unrealistic and sometimes unhealthy ideal women. My question is how do these media images effect the social and gender roles of minority women?

Any women and look around and see what the media has deemed a desirable woman. And most women well tell about their struggle to conform to this ideal. But how does this really effect a minority woman. I can to this question by thinking of my own experiences with society and media images. I am a white woman but I am also a minority because of my sexuality. I struggled much of my teen years with not working into the media and societal norms of a woman and what to see how other minority women are affected.

This is a significant topic because there are constant images of ideal woman that girls are exposed to that have serious effects on their self image. Even adult women still deal with image and self esteem issues because of the continued pressure for normalcy. Really, when was the last time we heard of a celebrity not losing weight and being praised? These are ideals that are constantly plaguing women.

With my studies in sociology I have an understand of social ideals and influences that effect peoples lives and point of view. With my studies in Women’s Studies I have learned how to understand these social ideals and influences for their patriarchal roots. There is no way to discuss social and gender roles in society and their effects with out discussing women and the lack of a woman view in societal norms.

Personal Narrative

Interdisciplinary studies appealed to me as a major because I naturally have interdisciplinary traits. I have reliability in that I am always there for my wife, friends, teammates, classmates and co-workers. My rugby coach was giving out awards at the end of the season and gave me an award for reliability, saying I was always at practices, games and fundraisers, was right there for the plays, that I was there for the team. I am resilient because when faced with obstacles I have worked to overcome them. When I did not finish college in the timeframe my parents wanted and would fund, I dropped out for a year to get my finances in order. I got a job and worked with my advisor, financial aid and wife to work on how to finish college and finance it. I love diversity. I enjoy meeting new people and learning new things. Being one of the few white children in my elementary school in Washington, DC, I learned to respect and admire everyone’s differences and understand that they make us better people. I enjoy being in new social roles, especially ones that let me flex my initiative and be assertive. I was Virginia Tech’s LGBTA president for a year and part of the Executive Board for a few years before that and was able to be part of the launch team for the Safe Watch program and to help revamp the Safe Zone program. I have a broad education from being raised in Southeast DC, going to twelve years of Catholic school (was baptized Methodist but am a self declared agnostic), spending time in the Corps of Cadets, having two and a half years of Animal and Poultry Sciences and almost two years of art classes on top of my minors and major of Interdisciplinary Studies, as well as being newly married. That also means my interests are all over the place. I have had twelve years of soccer and eight years of band. Five year of rugby, countless art classes and sketch books, all my college year, and that is six and counting, of LGBTA support group. I have CD’s of Enya and Yanni right next to my Melissa Etheridge collection. I have Women, Creativity and the Arts next to Social Stratification and Inequality. However, of all these interdisciplinarian traits the one that started my path to interdisciplinary studies is my dissatisfaction with monodisciplinary constraints.

Since I was seven, I wanted to be a veterinarian, I could not even spell that until I was, well twenty. I wanted to work with animals and have a farm, then I got to college. Through my education I have found that is was hard for me to stay on one topic, one interest. I wanted to know everything and in college I found that I wanted to take some English classes on top of my Animal and Poultry Sciences classes, I actually enjoyed freshman English. So I took Topics of Literature by Women and Modern British Literature (loved Virginia Woolf but hated James Joyce). It was my Women’s Literature class that really got my attention, I was taught by a professor that also was part of the Women’s Studies department and was forever changed. She brought this whole different perspective to literature that my British Lit teacher did not. Reading the books not just for the topics, settings and characters but also for the slight shift in emphasis, Jane Eyre became so much more than a story about a governess and man but about the struggles of a woman in that era, of a strong-headed woman. I was hooked on readjusting my view of the world and ready to face society as a feminist.

Now to face society with my new view point I needed to understand society more. I needed to understand how people become what they are. So I decided to take a baby step and took gender relations, which went quite well with my feminist mindset. Sociology brought home a lot of my experiences and help me understand more about the interactions in society that I saw. It gave me the perspective of minority groups that I am not a part of but also a look into how roles in our society bring about and oppress these minorities. Sociology also helped me better understand things I wanted to do with my future and goals.

Taking juvenile delinquency and criminology along with all my classes focusing on inequality and minority relations helped bring me to the understand that I want to work either in a social worker or counselor role, hopefully focusing on youth and more personal to me, LGBTQ youth or HIV/AIDS cases. I have years of listening to friends and acquaintances work through their problems from romantic to coming out to figuring out how to pay the bills. So I feel that I can eventually fulfill the role as a counselor there to listen and help work through problems with juveniles and for some I will be able to relate. There is also my passion of HIV/ AIDS. I have been in charge of Virginia Tech’s LGBTA’s AIDS Awareness Week and helped expand it to dealing with not just education about protection but also about ways to help other countries like Africa and India with their epidemics, which brings in my minors of sociology and women’s studies. These countries have areas still set in the traditional gender roles that help spread the virus.

I feel that really I am supposed to be an interdisciplinarian. I have nothing but hungry for learning new ideas and perspective.

What is IDST?

Virginia Tech describes Interdisciplinary Studies as a field that “explores how the natural, artificial, and cultural dimensions of our world fit together. They take perspectives of many disciplines, in order to define new objects of study, and thus search for new ways to surmount obstacles and achieve our goals.” My personal thoughts on this major differ somewhat. I see it as giving me multiple “eyes,” “glasses” or “hats” of perception. It is looking at a problem and seeing it from widely different perspectives, say sociological over mechanical. I would describe it as my two minors coming together to refine my ability to look at a problem or issue and figure out a solution that I might not otherwise have come to if I had merely studied it from a one dimensional perspective.

The two minors that comprise my degree are Women’s Studies and Sociology. Women’s studies seeks to critique our world and society from a female centered perspective. I chose this major because I am avidly interested in studying the world from a non-patriarchal viewpoint. WorldWideLearn.com describes sociology as “Sociologists study human behavior as it pertains to human interaction within the guidelines of an organizational structure. The interaction between humans is more complex than the interactions between other animal species. Human behavior is greatly influenced and governed by social, religious, and legal guidelines. A sociologist studies these behaviors and the influences that preserve certain behaviors and change others. Sociology is a broad science, covering many different disciplines the social sciences. Anthropology, archeology, and linguistics are the few disciplines that surpass what sociology readily encompasses. Sociology also studies more tangible measures of human behavior such as class or social status, social movements, criminal deviance, and even revolution.” I chose this part of my degree because I wanted to study how people interact within society and how social factors affect their lives and those behaviors. My life and the experiences I have directly influence my desire to study in these fields.

Interdisciplinary studies appealed to me as a major because I am naturally an interdisciplinary person. I have a woman’s view on the world and problems. I have the added view of also being a lesbian. Those are two different perspectives that have the link of being minority standings. Another perspective is that I grow up in Washington, DC. I have the life experience of growing up in a metropolitan environment. I also have both firsthand and secondhand perspective, from what I have lived and experienced as an individual and from the enlightenment my formal education has provided. All these things put together gives be an interdisciplinary perspective on life, society and most importantly, situations.

The complex problems I wish to study and essentially build a career and life around are those of HIV/AIDS, underprivileged and displaced youth, and LGBT folk. I know that I want to tackle these problems in an educational capacity, although I’m not sure exactly what this would entail. I have begun with my experience as LGBTA President and as its support group leader. I will be applying for jobs with the Whitman Walker AIDS Clinic and hopefully that experience could tie me into my other goals of working with youth and the LGBT community.

In conclusion, someone with a background in Interdisciplinary Studies has the ability to empathize with multiple people in multiple environments, whether that be work, educational, community, or at home. This is an incredibly important talent in a modern world, where interconnectedness can make or break you in both a career and personal life. Without this ability, one might never know what opportunities they have overlooked. I know that because of my studies, I will recognize these opportunities and seize them.

Terms

Disciplinarity – Using one perspective to explain, teach and work from.

Interdisciplinarity – using more than one way of thinking to look or solve a problem.

Multidisciplinarity – using multiple perspectives to explain something without them being interactive.

Transdisciplinarity – Explaining or looking at a subject by using disciplines as more of jumping off points, of places to veer from, of ideals to break than as laws.

Cross-disciplinarity – to view something from another perspective.

· Answer the following questions:

1. What does it mean that the terms above are “essentially contested concepts?”

With interdisciplinary such an evolving concept all words associated with it will themselves continue to evolve and be disputed. So the terms are essential to understanding and explaining interdisciplinary studies, yet they are still being refined and as our world changes so will these concepts. They will forever be contested among interdisciplinary scholars.

2. When and why did interdisciplinary studies programs emerge in American universities?

The programs came about in the 30’s with a class on American literature and history called American Studies. Then came about more classes using the same concept on other cultures bringing about Area studies classes.

3. What criticisms do interdisciplinarians have of disciplines?

Disciplines only work with certain “world views” and experiences. There is no wiggle room, there is no place for new questions, there is no place for new learning.

4. How does the framework of interdisciplinary studies seek to overcome limitations of disciplinary practice?

Interdisciplinary studies framework allows multiple perspectives to be learned and used. There is not limitation on what a student can learn and use to solve and explain a problem. There is no one way of learning.

5. Create an original metaphor for interdisciplinary studies.

Interdisciplinary study is like taking pictures to make a collage.