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Hi, Mary, I'm gonna kind of kick us off officially. So, today is March 13th, 2025, and I'm Doctor Katie Fry, director of the Women's and Gender Studies Program, and this conversation, our conversation is part of a larger project in which uh we're interviewing for like alumni

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from the Pepperdine University, what was formerly called when you were here, the Women's studies Program. So, could you start our conversation by just introducing yourself, telling us when you graduated from Pepperdine, um, your major. So, name, graduation date, major, and then maybe just start the conversation

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with talking a little bit about what you're doing now. Uh, yeah. So, I'm, sorry, I was just making sure. OK, sorry. Uh, my name is Mary Buffalo. I graduated in 2021, and at the time, my major was creative writing, uh, with minors in French and then

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the gender studies program. And right now, um, I'm a bit in between things. Eventually, I am hoping, I'm just kind of saving up money to pursue my PhD. In sociology with a focus on disability studies, um, currently I am working as a paraeducator in a special

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needs classroom. OK. So, I wanna talk more about just what you're, you know, what you're doing now and how kind of your time in the program, what you took away from it, but maybe let's just go back to the beginning and talk about you as a

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student. I remember you, I think I was maybe just beginning um my stint as director when you were, so you said you graduated in 2019. And I, I, I think I started in 20, uh, sorry, you graduated in 2021. I started in 2019, but then there

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was a year where there wasn't a lot going on because of COVID. So, I remember you and I crossing paths like once or twice. You were always around Dr. Smith's office. Yes, I think the way I joined gender studies, originally, I actually had a history minor,

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but I wasn't terribly passionate about it. And I talked to Dr. Smith about this, and she really was the person that kind of pushed me towards this direction of academia. Um, and I remember the meeting with her. I'd presented to her my essay topic for the

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class I was in with Shakespeare and literature. And she said, Oh, you know, you might really like the gender studies program. You know, I think Doctor Fry's in her office right now. Let's go talk to her. And she kind of walked me down to your office

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and introduced me as the student that would be joining your program. So I didn't really know how to get out of it, and I was happy to do it. Um, it sounded more interesting to me than history, and I was. I was excited about it. It

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felt like a really fun opportunity and so I changed my minor that day. OK, so you double minored then in, uh, women's studies and French, correct? That's right, yeah. So I miss, you did the Lausanne program, I think. And so, just a quick detour, but were

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you already fluent in French, or was the Lausanne experience kind of what got you plugged into that? Uh, Lausanne kind of pushed me over the edge, but I already had a pretty decent skill set in French. I've been taking it at that point for like 5

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years. So it just made it so I could have conversational. It pushed me from like a knowledge of it to fluent at that point. So then you're a history minor, which you then dropped. So what do you remember about what year you were? Like, were you

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a junior? Were you a sophomore when you picked up women's studies? I believe it was that 2019, it was right when it was starting. OK. Um, so then maybe, OK, so thank you, Doctor Smith, for introducing you to the program. I rem I do remember all

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of that. I remember her saying, this student, you need her on your radar, she would be a great fit for the program. Maybe talk to me about how you remember this, the program being perceived on campus when you were a student there, you know, did it

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Was it well known that this was offered? This is, I don't know, what were your memories of the program before you um added the minor? I don't think many people knew about it. I remember all the classes I was in for it, um, they were obviously

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offered as a part of other majors. And so those majors would just be doing the classes. It was part of their requirements, but there weren't many of us that were in those classes for being with the gender studies program. And I think it was just, it

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wasn't well known. And if people had opinions on it, it's the opinion I think that everyone seems to have about gender and women's studies programs, which is that they're like, what's the point of that? We already know everything we need to know about that. There's only

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2 of them, etc. and so on, um, that I find a bit silly, but Yeah, just not a lack of understanding or it not even being on the radar. So then, do you feel like And I feel like I can anticipate your answer, but I, I

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certainly don't want to assume. Did you feel like any of that shifted during your time at Pepperdine, or do you feel like it was kind of the same narrative? Obviously, your experience was different, right, from not being in the program to then participating in the program,

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but do you feel like any of that shifted while you're at Pepperdine, or did it kind of stay the same? I think within the classes themselves, I remember talking to other students about it and explaining like, well, this is why I'm in the history of like

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women's history class. This is why I'm in the sociology of gender, because this is available. And I, some people were excited about that. They want, they were disappointed at that at that late in their. Uh I guess university education. They weren't able to do it. And

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others kind of still kept their same opinion of Why do you, why do you need to do that? That's not gonna make a job. That's not. Useful. Mhm. Useful, that word useful. Um, OK, can you maybe then speak to, are there particular professors in the program

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or classes that had a significant impact on you? I mean, like I said earlier, Doctor Smith, um, she wasn't necessarily in the program, but I remember I really appreciated to be able to do the program. Um, I wasn't going to be able to meet one of

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the requirements, but I think it was with her and your help, I was able to make my Shakespeare class, uh, count because all of my work I was doing in the class just happened to be about gender. Um, Which is why she pointed me in that

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direction in the first place. And then the sociology of gender class. I don't remember her last name, but it was Anna, uh, straight hair, glasses. Yes, she was wonderful. And then, um, the women in film class, which was, I can picture her face, uh. No, it

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wasn't Doctor Carr. It was a blonde. Oh, yeah, Doctor Kriner Wilson. No, OK, and maybe it could have been so, oh, you know what, we had someone for a while who was part time. I think she kind of taught in the program. OK. And it, she

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really introduced us to a lot of, I don't know, niche ideas, and it was things I just had never considered before. It was a great introduction. And Dr. Penner's class was, and that really kind of set me on the path I'm still on, because I just

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really enjoyed sociology, and I never really like my first introduction to it, the intro to sociology class, I didn't like it. Um, I think the professor just didn't make it very interesting. And she really turned me around on it and. Made it something that is now

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my passion, so I'm really grateful to her for that. I wonder, and this is not to put you on the spot, but when you say like niche ideas in the film class, I wonder if you, if anything specific comes to mind. My favorite thing we talked

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about, uh, we watched the film, uh, Dance Girl Dance by Dorothy Arzner, um, who was a lesbian director in, I believe, the 1920s. It's a film that stars, I forget the other actress, but Lucille Ball, and it deals with kind of sexualization, voyeurism. And I didn't

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know that movies like that existed at that time period. Um, it was one of the, like, it like the women had such great dialogue with each other. It was interesting. It was beautiful to look at, and I didn't know that existed. And being able to talk

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about something like that, and Talk about like the Hayes code. I remember that being. So interesting, just something that had never been on my radar because I'd just never gotten a chance to look at something like that and Being introduced to it just helped really broaden

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my perspectives. OK, and then thinking about, OK, professors, classes, I wonder if you have specific memories from, and that's broadly defined, like I, you know, it, my sense of our students is It's um It's a a cohort that, you know, they stick together. I think one

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of the, you know, interdisciplinary is has strengths and weaknesses. I think sometimes it feels frustrating because you're not housed within one discipline or one division, so it can make socialization challenging. But I'm, I'm wondering if you have like specific memories about your peers or about the

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program, just kind of more broadly defined. I think unfortunately, because of COVID, um, I didn't really know who the other students. I think I only got to do women's history, and there was only a couple of us in it that were. Minoring. Um, and so there

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wasn't really at that point, I guess, because it was so new, we'd already kind of filtered into our socializations of majors. So, I think that first year or so, there wasn't really this identity as a gender studies program. Because we'd only see each other in a

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couple classes a week. And then we were already pretty filtered into our major groups. And even beyond that, the abroad groups and so. But I always remember that it was kind of, especially the women's history class, it was a class of peace. It was knowing that

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there was a class a week. There were, I mean, it is the unfortunate truth. There was no men in this class, and that made it a lot more pleasant, um, that we could kind of just share whatever we were thinking. Talk about things that actually mattered

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to us and not have to deal with kind of that jerk buck reaction of like, well, not all men, or Any kind of just. I guess the the natural defensive reactions, we could kind of just get out frustration and then sort it into actual academic categories

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that were useful. Mm. And that was such a nice experience to have in my week. After dealing with men, but So yeah, you felt like you didn't have to contextualize every response, every, I'm assuming this is probably History 435 with um Doctor Laurie Honeycutt. Does that

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sound right? Yeah. Um, OK. All right, so then let's talk about now. So I'm curious, you know, you can run with us any number of ways, but. Your time in the program, I mean, it sounds like you wanna go on and do a PhD in sociology

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and disability studies, right? Sounds like your time in the program certainly has shaped where you wanna go professionally. So do you wanna talk more about that? Because we can talk about other ways that the time in your program has kind of shaped your trajectory. You know,

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that's perfect. So actually there was a middle step here, um, leaving Pepperdine. I just wanted to get out, see the world after COVID. Um, so I actually did a master's in gender studies, um, in the UK. Um, and within that program, I ended up pursuing a

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topic I actually ended up first discussing with Dr. Smith. What pushed me in that direction, I looked at, um, rape in Roman mythology and how it's used to construct empire and nationalism. And I ended up doing a lot of work. With sexual assaults and looking at

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how it's not only just an individualized action, but a larger social mechanism of control. And I wouldn't have gotten onto that without the gender studies program. And it was really that further from the gender studies program, I got into educating. And what ended up fascinating me

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in education, um, I worked with a student who, unfortunately was going through a very difficult safeguarding issue. I was her main point of her main trusted staff member, and I was watching just the system fail her. And it was specifically the intersection of gender and disability,

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how when one gets caught at that, that we don't really. Care about individuals who've been sexually assaulted already. And then further on it, this young woman was close to nonverbal and Just seeing how she was treated by these systems that they didn't take her seriously, even

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though she was communicating the only way she could. And it just built this kind of fascination with that and is what I would like to move forward to study, Specifically looking at education, children's rights. I mean, I guess my perspective after doing gender studies at the

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master's level was that Everything is so interconnected and related that really with sociology, you kind of have your entry point into it, but then it's all the same. To study gender is to study disability, is to study race. They all have different presentations in the social

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sphere, but they're all informed by the same. Desire to control and to oppress to an extent. And once you know that they, you need to have one to have the other, I wouldn't be able to. Study disability without having done gender first, because gender informed the

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way I can understand how social control works on such a micro level, how we police each other, how it matters so much to us, what other people are doing, how they present for no real reason. And even working in the schools, I I always thought that

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my background in gender theory was more helpful than I think other people would assume because I would see two students having an issue. And I could easily identify no, this is a gendered issue. The the root of this is a frustration with gender. I think working

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especially with teenage girls who are just so angry all the time and knowing, having been a teenage girl, that it's the worst thing that can happen to a person in some ways, because you're suddenly understanding yourself as an object within the world. You're kind of suddenly

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losing access to your personhood of girl childhood. And in that transition to womanhood. Suddenly you have to cover yourself up more. You're not allowed to do certain things. You have to speak a certain way. And being able to identify, that's what they were really angry about.

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Helped me to connect with them a lot easier. And I think they were happy to have someone around who took that so seriously, that just being a, like that experience of transitional womanhood is so difficult because of the way our society constructs it. That's not what

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I was saying to them, but because I knew it, it helped me a lot. And even With the safeguarding issue, I was able to catch a lot of things everyone else had missed because of my background in gender theory, rape theory. I knew what a lot

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more of the signs were, the social signs, how the family spoke to this young woman, things that she would do, how she would present. The social environment around her. I understood that, and so it was, it made me able to help a lot better. Um, so

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the these students. Felt seen essentially and they felt validated and they maybe could you give me if you feel comfortable sharing, I'm not asking for you to get into specifics, but what would be an example of like a perspective that you feel like you would maybe

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able to offer a student in that capacity that whether it just gives them clarity, gives them perspective, helps to diffuse the situation. I think of one young woman who was suffering with an eating disorder and I was hearing how other staff were speaking to her, which

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was that they were telling her, like, Don't worry about it. You're beautiful. Like, don't, it's not, don't do that. Like it's, there's nothing wrong with you. You don't have to do that. But she came to me one day just in tears because I think she was

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She was really fed up. She needed just someone to listen to her, and I ended up taking the approach of, you're not unique in this. This is something that most women go through at some point in their life to have a very strange relationship with food

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and eating. And it's because of how we care so much what girls' bodies look like. And I tailored it to this student. I didn't explain it on such an academic level, but I kind of took her through because I could tell she was really concerned specifically

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with how grotesque she individually felt that she was particular, that everyone thought of her as uniquely bad for this, and that this was her burden alone. And through the course of this conversation, I could see her starting to understand that. She's very much not alone in

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this issue, and that it's part of a larger problem that it's not unique to her. And I could see that that was just a moment where some of the anxiety, not all of it, went away, that she was able to understand, I am not uniquely bad

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for this. Mm. This is something a little bit beyond my control. Mhm. Hm. That's a great example, right? Just kind of that the validation that um someone, it's more than just that you're not alone. In a way, it's just that it's liberating to realize that you're

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not, this isn't unique to you. Yeah, I even think about, um, I had a lot of convers like listening to the staff in Um, because I think sometimes one of the big issues of gender studies and feminism in general is it's not terribly accessible for the

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general population. They don't really know. They know on top like they imagine feminism as just. A bunch of man hating lesbians. It's, it's been the stereotype since the 60s. It's all, I think it's always going to be the stereotype. Um, but I remember one day they

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were all complaining in the lunchroom about how their husbands purposely don't do tasks correctly, so then they have to do them. And I piped up. Well, actually, that's something that's been recorded as a phenomenon. It's called weaponized incompetence. It's something that a lot of feminists think

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about and have noted many, many times. It's not just you. And I could see that it, it kind of, it made them feel validated. Like they were suddenly like, Oh, I'm not crazy. And I think just overall every time I brought would bring up like a

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little feminist. theory, I could see that these women would suddenly have this moment of Oh, I'm not being mean for this. I'm not being difficult. This is something that a lot of people experience, not just me. And then also that this is something that's being done

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specifically to keep our workload hard, like, more difficult. And to see it as a broader inequality, not just as a personal issue. Mm. Yeah, that's, these are, you said these were like lunch conversations, yeah, with different coworkers and OK, little light, light lunch conversations, yeah. It's

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what we do. It's what we do. OK. All right, so then, uh, I'm gonna throw one question, um, in here just to kind of round this out about. Where, where you would like to be going. I'd just like to hear you talk more about what you

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wanna do with a PhD in sociology. Like, what's the, what's the vision for this? What would you like to be doing next? I really would love to, after getting that degree. I'd love to be, I'd love to teach. I'd love to teach at an academic level,

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research. I heard like Jennifer Smith admits this kind of suggestion when she kind of started suggesting gender studies to me and graduate programs, she said that she had, like, that she had an advice for me that was going to ruin my life. And I think it

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was both true and false. It's made it more difficult, but it's introduced to me a passion that I didn't have before and a real drive to Achieve this. I love writing academically. It's my favorite thing to do. Um it's Oh, I think you, you cut out

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there just at the end. You said that you love writing academically and what? And just that I, I know it's a very difficult career path, but it's still the only thing that's really incited. Such passion in me, so. I think, you know, I didn't do, um,

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my, my PhD was all inclusive, but what I hear from students and colleagues that did a master's and then maybe took a break or It really does clarify for you that this is what you want to do, right? And you see it happen in the master's

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program, the people that realize they don't really want that life, they don't really want to be an academic, they don't really, you know, they get the master's and they're able to move on. But if, if that is for you, it very much whets your appetite, and

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you realize, right, the life of the mind, how fun, how dynamic, how invigorating it is, cause it's not for everyone. Dr. Smith is right. Um, OK, last question. So today, 2025, we, you know, as, as it has always been, we're a small but mighty program, but

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we do actually have, I think we're up to 13 students now, we have a large graduating class. So what advice or perspectives would you want to share if you could be sitting in a room with all of the current students in the program? Think a few

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things. One is don't listen to anyone that detracts it or tries to belittle it, because that's a part of a larger social system. No one wants you to understand gender, because once you understand gender, you can see. How artificial it is, how constructed it is. And

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I think once you can see that, you begin to see how many other systems are artificial and constructed and thus breakable, um, that systems of control are not inevitable, that these were deliberate projects by people. I even think of the invention of gender itself was done

00:25:18.300 - 00:25:36.000

because Um, scientists figured out that sex was not two definite categories, that there was a lot of in between. So they pretended that there was this innate calling to one or the other that made you gendered and that you are either a man or a woman.

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And I think to know that. That's a myth. Helps you really to build. A much more critical way of looking at the world that I think despite of anything you are studying is very helpful. It introduces a kind of critical thinking to you that is new.

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And then I would say it really pairs well with any major. Obviously, I was doing creative writing, and it helped me. I think it gave me that academic outlet. It introduced me to academia, but I think especially if you were doing psychology, sociology, even business, to

00:26:15.119 - 00:26:35.060

understand one of the most fundamental dynamics of our social world, gender, the relationship between Not to simplify it, but just men and women, how we interact with one another, the history of that interaction. It helps you to Get perspective on the world and to keep things

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grounded and in mind. And then I think further in this political climate. I think if you have an inclination towards gender theory and specifically feminism, you almost do have a responsibility to be a feminist if you are capable of doing so, because we surely need them

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now. OK, yeah, and I've got just kind of mulling that over, um. Yeah, I, I guess I'll just, I'll make an open mic now. Do you have anything else that you would wanna say just about your time in the program and your time, um, since kind

00:27:15.380 - 00:27:44.859

of reflecting back on it? the best thing. And Get It be. You're sort of cutting out again. I think you're frozen. Oh, there you go. OK, so I didn't hear anything you said. But yeah, um, just that I think it was one of the fonder times

00:27:44.859 - 00:28:04.109

of my experience at Pepperdine. To be introduced to these new ideas and be set down the path. Yeah, I love learning new things. I love getting to read books by people who are smarter than me, and suddenly have my perspective changed because they've introduced me to

00:28:04.109 - 00:28:20.859

an idea I never thought was possible. And I think that's the core of academia and Also, I just, I love gender. I think gender theory is so cool and interesting. There's so many facets to it, and I like being a feminist. I think everyone ought to

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be really, but I think having that background in feminist theory, not just. The platitudes of wearing a T-shirt that says like I'm a feminist and. Listening to like feminist music to actually have grounding behind it means the world to me. I think it just rounds me

00:28:41.420 - 00:28:59.729

out as a person. Well, I wish you the best of luck with what comes next. And I'll definitely tell Doctor Smith that you said hello. I saw her just yesterday, so I'll tell her that you said hello, and that you spoke very fondly of her, and

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that it's all her fault. And all her influence as well in the most positive way. Yeah, no, she's, she's a wonderful colleague. Yeah. Um, OK, Bailey, I'll pass the mic back to you.