The WGW Board of Advocates is excited to welcome Dr. Traci Brynne Voyles as an associate professor and the new chair of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. Voyles, who most recently served on the faculty of Loyola Marymount University, is an award-winning teacher and researcher in the fields of environmental history, environmental justice, indigenous studies, feminist theory, and critical race studies.
She is the author of Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country, published by the University of Minnesota Press. Her forthcoming monograph, The Settler Sea: California’s Salton Sea and the Consequences of Colonialism, has won the support of multiple prestigious fellowships and will be published in the University of Nebraska Press’s Many Wests series.
Voyles, who joined the WGS Department in July, shared reflections on passion for WGS, her goals as the new department chair and what it’s like to move across the country in the midst of a pandemic. Here’s our Q&A introducing Traci Brynne Voyles:
Q: What excited you about the opportunity to come to Oklahoma? Is this your first time to live here?
A: I lived in Oklahoma City for a few years as a child and have wonderful memories of my time here. When this opportunity came up, I knew it was a dream job in a place my family and I could really enjoy. It seemed like a surprisingly perfect fit.
Q: What are your immediate goals as you begin your role as WGS Director?
A: I want to build on the thriving community of scholars, students, and supporters that drew me to this position in the first place. There is so much good work and exciting energy around WGS at OU. I have four immediate goals. First, to amplify the transformative work happening in the undergraduate curriculum to increase our numbers of majors and minors. Second, to build our core faculty, especially in tenure-line positions. Third, to continue the tradition of excellence in programming already in place in WGS and through the Center for Social Justice. My fourth goal is to support our faculty, staff, and students through the extraordinary changes happening due to the COVID-19 pandemic; it has been an unprecedented time of upheaval for everyone, and I want the WGS community at OU to always feel supported and encouraged that we can pursue our work even in these difficult conditions.
Q: What would you like WGS supporters to know about you?
A: WGS is my passion! I have been in WGS departments and programs since the beginning of my undergraduate education, and the kind of work happening in Women’s and Gender Studies inspires, challenges, and drives me every single day. I feel very lucky to be part of this community and I welcome questions and conversations from WGS supporters. I’m particularly passionate about teaching and public speaking, because I feel strongly that everyone has stakes in the issues WGS scholars and students care most about. I feel fortunate to have been able to build a career around advocating for WGS and social justice.
Q: Share a little about what drew you to your own interest in WGS and your areas of research.
A: Five minutes into my first WGS course as an undergraduate, I was hooked. I didn’t know there was a field of study dedicated to exploring gender, race, sexuality, and the social injustices that I observed and experienced in the world around me. I immediately declared a double major in Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies, and have been in these interdisciplinary, justice-oriented departments and programs ever since. I came to choose environmental justice and environmental history as my primary research fields in graduate school; these fields perfectly matched my concerns for deeply unjust patterns of environmental pollution in communities of color and Indigenous nations, and the historical forces that had produced those patterns over time in the U.S.
Q: What courses are you teaching at OU?
A: I’m very excited to teach the upper division capstone course, Contemporary Feminist Thought, which is also open to graduate students pursuing a certificate in WGS. I’ve taught this kind of content in a number of different classes and at different universities, and I look forward to seeing how OU students approach the material. In the future, I will also teach the Introduction to WGS course and an upper division course called Environmental Justice + Reproductive Justice.
Q: What’s it like starting a new job in the midst of COVID-19
A: It’s been very exciting and more than a little bit stressful. Moving across the country in the middle of a pandemic brought up any number of concerns, from being able to sell our house to keeping our kids as safe as possible on a long cross-country road trip. We made it here safely and have been enjoying our new home in Norman. And, to add to the excitement of having kids at home full time, working from home, and moving to a new state, we decided it was a great time to get a puppy!
Q: Anything else you would like to share?
A: Please feel free to get in touch with me! I look forward to meeting each and every one of you when it’s safe to do so. In the meantime, you can find me at voyles@ou.edu.
