Voxygen
… a compilation of interests in feminist cultural politics. Voxygen focuses on issues relating to feminism, popular culture, virtual culture, politics, pedagogy, generations X and Y, and a host of other things. It is based on the premise that power is everywhere and nowhere, that the codes that have defined our voices and identities can be identified and rewritten, and that critical voices and fresh perspectives are as necessary as the air we breathe.
As a college teacher, I don’t pretend that the professorial class is the vanguard leading the way to revolution. I do believe, however, that educators play a tiny but important part in teaching students to think past easy answers. Unfortunately, my website also demonstrates how easily I succumb to the pleasures of popular culture. There is no unencumbered position, and reworking social relations is never ending and never easy. But, to quote Gandolf, “All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given you.”
About Voxygen
The Vox part of Voxygen comes from Latin for “voice,” as in vox populi. I combined that with my interest in Gen X and Gen Y and that’s how I got this title. I’ve called my website Voxygen since I first put it on the web in 1996.
In my first version, the splash page had pictures of Ursula all over it and I quoted a line from The Little Mermaid: “What I want from you is … your voice.” That’s because at the time I was writing my dissertation on “woman’s voice,” whatever that is. The site is in its fifth version. I have saved images of the splash pages for v2.0, v3.0, and v4.0.
About me
Currently I am an assistant professor at Baton Rouge Community College where I teach classes in communication studies. For a long time in my adult life I was “theory hungry” and academically driven. I thought my destiny was to be a scholar, writing for an academic audience on disciplinary issues that “mattered.” I left that path after growing jaded and disaffected. Although I’ve always had writing blocks, I grew less and less motivated to overcome them. My struggles with writing wore me out emotionally and spiritually, and teaching at BRCC provides a good compromise between my desires and failings as an academic. Teaching at a community college was initially an adjustment for me after being so programmed to believe that only research counted. Even though the academy holds teaching careers in disdain, I’ve always been passionate about teaching. Working at BRCC provides me with a strong sense that I’m “giving to the community,” trite though that may sound.
My areas of scholarly and pedagogical interest in rhetorical studies include feminism, rhetorical theory, public address, cultural studies, and cybercultural studies. Though I don’t talk frequently about high theory to my current students, this work still informs everything I do.
Prior to BRCC, I was an assistant professor in the Communication Studies department at Louisiana State University, where I taught several fun and interesting things, some of which I talk about on my classes page. I taught at LSU from 2000 – 2006.
I earned an MA and a PhD in Communication from the University of South Florida, Tampa, in 1997. When I started at USF, the department was a terminal master’s program. Now, when I go back, I don’t even recognize it anymore. So many people there taught me so many cool things that I can’t even begin to recount them.
I taught as an instructor in Women’s Studies at South Florida for three years while I was finishing my PhD. The Women’s Studies department at USF is one of the oldest in the country. It was a good intellectual home for me for a while. While there, I worked on a feminist philosophy journal called Hypatia, so I learned about feminist theory at a very exciting time when feminism was stuck in the essentialism debates and third wave feminism was first breaking ground. As an instructor I got to do many neat things, like take my students to Disney for field trips. The students that I had in my women’s studies classes -rocked-. They taught me a lot about feminism and teaching.
My totem
My favorite Disney character is Heimlich from A Bug’s Life. Heimlich spends the entire movie eagerly anticipating the day he will get his wings and turn from a caterpillar to a butterfly. On the day he actually chrysalises, his wings are tiny and he is too fat to get off the ground. So his friends lift him up while he flaps his pitiful wings and he proudly proclaims: “My wings. Oh, they’re beautiful. I am flying!” There’s something about spirit and attitude in this image that I need to learn, I just know it.
I waited a long time to be a butterfly. And now that I have wings, I’m just too fat and my wings are pretty small, but I have some very cool people who help me to fly, so I count myself very lucky.