“A Conversation with Lindsey Carman Williams: Firsts, Florida, and Future Directions”
Dr. Lindsey Carman Williams is a recent PhD graduate and recipient of a Blackburn Postdoctoral Fellowship in Washington State University’s English Department. In 2022-2023, Dr. Carman Williams served as the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies’ first Assistant Director. She did not have a formal background in women’s or gender studies when she began the PhD program in English in 2018 but took the feminist theory seminar (WGSS 481) with Dr. Thoma and then had an opportunity to serve as a grader for WGSS when a faculty member needed to take medical leave. One thing led to another and Carman Williams became a WGSS graduate teaching instructor. Loving the experience with WGSS teaching and becoming
more involved with the WGSS program, Carman Williams realized she wanted to be involved in administrative work within academia. She reached out to the Director of WGSS to see if there were any service opportunities related to WGSS administration that she could do (along with teaching as a postdoctoral fellow) and that aligned with Carman Williams’ career goals and ambitions post-WSU. Through initiative and hard work, Dr. Carman Williams thus landed the opportunity to be WGSS’s first Assistant Director.
Being a trailblazer of sorts, Carman Williams faced obstacles that she’s never encountered before. The greatest challenges were, in her own words, “as the first person to be the assistant director, there was a lot of guess work.” She said, “I spent a lot of time figuring out how to best assist Dr. Thoma. There was also a lot of self-reflection. Constantly asking myself, ‘am I doing enough to recruit students?’ So, overall, figuring out how I could be of most help and service to the program and making sure that I was doing enough to help were the biggest challenges.” With a focus on women’s gothic literature (both in the Victorian and contemporary eras), feminist science and technology studies, and disability theory, Carman Williams’ research helped her approach all challenges with a feminist anti-racist and accessibility framework. During her time as AD, highlights were working with and mentoring students, as well as developing and teaching WGSS 338: Horror and Neo Gothic Popular Culture, in which she was able to encourage all of her students to contribute to class discussion and to begin to really understand and apply ideas of intersectionality to things like true crime and horror films. For Carman Williams, working with the students feels like “where I belong.”
As Carman Williams’ postdoctoral fellowship winds down, she is transitioning to a new position as Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida in their WGSS department, which is one of the biggest and oldest in the country. For Carman Williams the driving force to move to Florida was family. “My partner and I want to start a family, and I want to be close to my family.” Even though she has been light-heartedly teased about teaching in Florida, for Carman Williams “that is where the work needs to be done.” With the desire to move more into activism, she knows Florida is where she needs to be.
Since Florida is one of the strictest states with respect to regulating what can and cannot be discussed in classrooms and workplaces, given recent passage of HB7 and HB1557, Carman Williams will be trailblazing yet again when it comes to finding ways to effectively discuss so-called “woke” topics such as Queer Theory, which is the focus of one of the courses she’ll be teaching in fall 2023. In preparation, she has already received email guidance from the school emphasizing to teach it as “only” theory; “I am focusing on ‘keeping it clinical’,” she says. Overall, and despite concerns, Carman Williams is going into the position with a realistic mindset, because ultimately, she stresses, “these topics are important.” “They are impacting each person a certain way every day, and everyone is going to take it how they take it. And that all depends on the mindset and positionality of that student, of which I have no control. I might find resistance, but at the end of the day those are the people who need to be in the class. All I can do is share the information, and it is my privilege as an educator to do so.”
As parting words of inspiration and action, Carman Williams encourages everyone to continue “Reading and educating yourself. The biggest critique I have for people is that they need to read [more], and to read more broadly. We need to be informed about controversies and rhetoric from both sides. We need to listen to others from different positions and engage in conversation with them. Most importantly, [we need] to communicate peacefully, because understanding is not going to happen if we are not going to converse.” WGSS thanks Dr. Carman Williams for all that she’s done for WGSS and wishes her good luck with endeavors to come!