1. What are the main academic and experiential objectives you plan to accomplish
through this program?
The Comparative Women’s and Gender Studies Program fulfills my goals for study abroad
programs on multiple levels. “The feminist summer camp (NOISE Summer School) was a
challenging and rewarding start that built the foundation for the rest of the program,” said Robin
Wonsley, a WGSE and Carleton College alumnus, who recommended the program to me. Indeed,
I was immediately drawn into both the curriculum and the trip. Traveling around Europe while
situating knowledge in each site, the program truly offers a unique perspective to unpack “the
western gaze” by looking at the differentiated conditions of feminist movements under various
national contexts and shedding light on immigrant experiences, sex work, LGBT and queer
politics, and trafficking.
My positionality as a Chinese student studying in a private institution in the United States
allows a double vision that deeply interests me in exploring marginalized experiences and
narratives, both personally and academically. The objectives of the program thoroughly align
with my personal goals, with the NOISE program at the beginning, a rich and challenging
curriculum, hands-on site visiting experiences, and an opportunity for independent field research.
For my independent research, I am hoping to focus on the topic of Chinese (PRC or mainland
Chinese) migrant workers in Europe, and their experiences under different national frameworks,
as a continuation of my final research project for my SOAN 110, Sociology of Family class last
term.
2. How do these objectives relate to your degree program and your life aims?
As a perspective Women’s and Gender Studies major at Carleton, I strongly look forward to
this program for several reasons. Despite having a strong Women’s and Gender Studies program,
Carleton, a very small liberal arts college, does not allow much maneuverability and multitude in
its curriculum. The Comparative Women’s and Gender Studies program will not only fill in the
blank spots of Carleton’s feminist education, such as its lack of focus on LGBT studies, but also
offer me a chance to apply the theories into practice by conducting field research across Europe.
As a transnational feminist researcher, I will also learn how to pay more attention to my social
locations in my future research and other non-academic work. The experience of learning and
researching in Europe will teach me valuable lessons in balancing and reconciling the power
hierarchy between the researcher and the subject of research.
After my undergraduate degree program, I aspire to continue my research interest in issues of
gender and sexuality in historical and contemporary China. Critically examining the applicability
and incompatibility of feminist and queer concepts across language and culture, this program
will further complicate and interrogate my current experiences in analyzing gendered processes
and issues in the Global South using borrowed frameworks that mainly originated in the Global
North.
3. What preparations – academic and other experiences – have you completed or will
you complete prior to the program? (This may include relevant course work, travel,
and work experiences.)
Among my academic experiences, three courses are especially relevant to this program.
To begin with, WGST 200, Gender, Power, and the Pursuit of Knowledge, a course that I took in
the fall of 2014, reshaped the concept of strong objectivity in feminist research through critiques
of positivism and of disembodied scholarship. Emphasizing the researcher’s positionality and
emotional investment, the class introduced me to feminist methods and problematized the topdown knowledge production in the academy, which is extremely interconnected with the classes
that the WGSE program offers, such as WGS 250, Issues in Feminist Methodologies, and WGS
350, Comparative Feminist Theories. Last term, the class WGST 396, Transnational Feminist
Activism, further explained to me how feminisms travel across borders through close
examinations of the ethnocentric or Western arrogant approach, militarism, right-wing
movements, transnational feminist networks, NGOs, and feminist movements. The objective of
this course echoes that of the program, achieving objectivity in knowledge production through
constantly contextualizing and comparing. Finally, WGST 240 Gender, Globalization, and War,
a class that I am taking next term, will specifically focus on the relationship between
globalization, gender, and militarism in order to understand how globalization is gendered and
how gender has been globalized and militarized. These classes set a solid academic foundation
and a curious mind for me in preparation for this program.