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[Ann Asher] This is July 9th. I'm interviewing Marie Laberge. Are we ready? [Marie Laberge] We are ready. I want to thank you Ann Asher for doing this interview and get your name on tape.

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[AA] So tell me a little bit about yourself, your background, and eventually how you got to Delaware. [ML] I am one of six kids,

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the oldest female in the family so lots of social responsibility and also fairly in growing up years, kind of conservative family.

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So we had very particular gender roles of what the boys, my brothers were supposed to be doing and what the girls were supposed to be doing.

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And so I don't necessarily think I grew up with a whole lot of consciousness about gender issues until I saw

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the injustices of it when it was not fair that my brothers didn't have to do the housework and we had to do it all the time and stuff like that.

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And we grew up in, I grew up in New England and when I was sort of thinking about sort of what I want to be when I grew up,

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all I knew is that I wanted to read books. Because I just loved studying and reading. And but I had no sense of what that would be or what that would look like.

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And I lived in Vermont at the time and decided I wanted to go away to college. Most people in my small Vermont town

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went to University of Vermont. And I decided I wanted to go elsewhere. My mother nixed the idea of me going to California.

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Which would have been ideal for me, but because that was way too far away and we didn't have money. So I went to Boston, the big city,

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and studied at Simmons College, which is a women's college, near Fenway Park. I started out as a Communications major,

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working in sort of the field of, you know, sort of communications. And as sort of my evolution there, started taking History classes

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for my, you know, sort of optional classes and realized I loved history and really thrived in History.

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So when I graduated, it was a double-major in Communications and History, the practical major, the Communications major

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was where I started working. And I did a lot of, while I was in college doing some editing and proofreading for the

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Secretary of State's office in Massachusetts. And then after that, I started working at a printing company and doing a lot of editing and publishing with them.

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And I lasted for that job about two weeks. What I discovered was I did not like the scheduling. In that kind of field,

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there's so many deadlines and deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. And we had this workplace where there was a bell that went off when the day started.

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There was a bell for coffee hour. There's a bell when coffee hour was over. There was bell... so it just, it just sort of blew my mind.

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I did not thrive and that it was very, very stressful to me. So I reluctantly but intelligently quit that job after

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about two or three weeks and started selling bagels at Faneuil Hall which was not exactly what my degree led me to, but

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while I was selling bagels at Faneuil Hall, it was was in 1980, I graduated from college. And that was the year

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that the Equal Rights Amendment was given a two-year extension, to ratify the Constitution. It was the only constitutional amendment

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that ever had a deadline added to it. And it was about to become, the deadline was about to pass,

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so Congress gave it a two-year extension. So during that time period in that two-year extension, there was a campaign to try and ratify

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the last three states for the Equal Rights Amendment. And so I thought, "Hmm, sell bagels at Faneuil Hall or

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ratify the Constitution to include women." So I quit my very high-powered job selling bagels and went off to Florida,

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no pay to work for six months on the Equal Rights Amendment campaign. And while we were down in Florida trying to sort of

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keep moving and in the face of what was ultimately going to lose. We read a lot of stories about the Suffrage Movement,

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the history of women's struggle to get the right to vote. And it took women 72 years to get the right to vote in this country.

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And we were approaching the 72nd year of the Equal Rights Amendment campaign, or actually it was about

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the 60 something we were heading there. Similar sort of sensibility of, you know, they had to persist that long in order to get the vote.

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Now we're going to have to go this long, obviously in order to get equality. And as I was reading those history books,

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I was like, wait a minute, I was a History major and I didn't know any of this stuff, that doesn't make any sense to me.

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So when the Equal Rights Amendment went down to defeat in 1982, I returned to Boston, got some, you know, temporary job.

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I was working, actually, in trademarks. Trying to figure out patents of trademarks, patenting. And I decided that

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I needed to go back to graduate school. So I, my roommate pointed out that I read history books for fun,

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so maybe I should do something with that. And so I ended up going to graduate school in Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin

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in Madison was starting a first sort of official graduate program in women's history. And that just seemed perfect for me.

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So I was, I went to Wisconsin, got my degree, my Ph.D. in History with a focus on American women's political activism.

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And so I really looked at sort of women's social movements and the politics of the women's movement

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and how we've they sort of come together and what obstacles they have since I felt like I had been living it as well.

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So I have sort of continued to be sort of politically active in a number of different ways around women's issues at

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the same time that I do the academic work. I came to Wisconsin, excuse me, Delaware while I was still a graduate student.

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My then partner, soon-to-be husband, got a three-year appointment here at the University in History.

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And at the time I was pregnant with my son. So we thought it'd be a good idea if I joined him.

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And so we moved here to Delaware when I was seven-months pregnant with my son. So I know that I've been here 21 years

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because I can count it by his age. And I worked to finish my dissertation while I was here, which wasn't that easy because

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he kept getting kicked out of daycares. But I finally defended my dissertation in 1995. And in 1996,

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I started teaching for the History department. I taught a couple of their sort of Intro to American History classes.

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And then also I taught the Women in American History class, HIST300, which is cross-listed with Women's Studies.

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And so that was sort of the way in which I began to get more engaged with Women's Studies here at UD and begin to sort of

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interact with folks. Very welcoming. And so I began to teach one class here and then one class there,

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and then started teaching the Intro to Women's Studies class which was very different from the History classes. And then it just rolled out.

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I was teaching as an adjunct for a couple of years and then I got a one-year contract in I believe 2000.

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A renewal for one year in 2001, then a three-year contract, and then another one-year contract. And then finally, I was put on the continuing,

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on tenure-track line. So it was a full-time position in Women's Studies. So it's been a sort

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of evolution in different locations here. [AA] What do you teach now? [ML] I teach a variety of our courses. So I teach the Intro to Women's Studies courses,

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I teach Women in Religion, Women and Violence, Intro to Feminist Theory, Women in Work. A lot of our sort of

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introductory base courses that sort of get at a variety of different areas of interest. And then I also will teach

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every other year The Women's History film series course. And usually some years I'll be the facilitator for either Research on Women

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or Research on Race Ethnic and Culture, which is a lecture series. So I get to teach a variety of different areas and interests.

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It's very fun. [AA] How many different courses do we have in Women's Studies? [ML] Oh my. I was looking at our list and there's several hundred. What we do is actually cross-list

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our courses with Women's Studies, excuse me, with other departments. So our cross-listed courses include courses that are

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cross-listed with English, with Criminal Justice, with Psychology, with Foreign Languages, with Philosophy, History,

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Economics, Nursing, Fashion, Linguistics, Black American Studies. And so we have faculty across the university who have made

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a commitment to teach courses that fit with the concerns and issues of Women's Studies and really try to bring

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the Women's Studies perspective into their own disciplines from their commitment to the perspective.

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So Women's Studies is very much interdisciplinary. And therefore we're able to really encompass all of these different types of

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classes in a variety of ways. So I am trained as a historian. The classes that I teach, cross-list with Sociology and

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with Philosophy. Feminist Theory is Philosophy. Women in Religion is in Philosophy, Women in Work is with Sociology. So personally, myself,

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I even teach a lot of cross-listed courses. So I think it sort of helps to sort of spread the impact and the sort of

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influence of Women's Studies across the University. Because we have faculty in all these different disciplines that are committed to it.

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[AA] What is your main goal, as teacher of Women's Studies specifically? [ML] Well, I think what I want my students to come away with,

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I mean, when students come to my classes, it's often possibly the first time they've ever taken a Women's Studies class. And since it's the first time

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they've taken a Women's Studies class, I want them to be able to think about the world from a gendered perspective,

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and to be able to understand how the Women's Studies lens is a way of looking at the world that includes and is critical

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of what's going on around us. So that it's not something that you just read about in a book, but that you can actually apply

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it to your day-to-day life. And to be able to do that, I ask my students to sort of think about their own sort of upbringing.

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They're sort of gender experience as children, not necessarily in a way that says "That's the wrong way to be it."

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But just as a way that says, "You have to be conscious of it." I mean, I am very clear to my students

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there's no right or wrong way about how we think about this. We just need to be aware of it. And so that the hardest thing

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that I want my students to do is to actually go internal to themselves and say, "How did that affect me?"

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"What does it mean that my brother only took out the garbage and my sisters and I were always the ones doing the dishes every single night?"

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Which was my gender experience and I wasn't conscious of it. I just knew it wasn't right. But I mean, what was what is that

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that says, you know, who does what in the household labor and how does that impact us? There's not a value judgment about it.

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For me it was, "Was it right?" But for other people they might say that that fits. But you need to be conscious of

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how it's happening or, you know, the pink and blue phenomena or how we sort of talk to our children. So I think that there's ways in

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which I want students to start to see the world through a lens that is critical of what's around them. And not necessarily just

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take things at face value. Because as human beings, we create our world and we've created systems and

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structures that sort of set this up. And so as long as they're able to stop and evaluate and then say, 'Okay, this is what I understand."

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Given these questions, then I think that we're sort of moving forward. I mean, the hardest class

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for students to do that in is my Women and Religion class. And students come to it really eager to understand different religions.

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But the very first day of class, I have to tell them, you know, you have to not just be critical of these other religions, but your own.

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Like, you know, I know how profoundly people believe their religions. I mean, it's something that humans sort of really take to heart strongly

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and feel very obviously faithful about. But what I want my students to be able to say is my religion has certain messages as well.

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Because we're very good at "othering" other people "Oh, they shouldn't be doing that." But, no, you know what?

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There's a lot of consistencies and inconsistencies in every single religion. And so not only are we going to open up the door

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to what are these other religions that you're not familiar with? But also what is it about my religion that, what messages does that have for me,

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and my brother, and my mother, and my father, and women in general? And so I like to see how students explore that.

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I remember one conversation with students in which several students were in a discussion group, and most of them,

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or all of them were Catholic and they were comparing notes and they just all of a sudden realized even within the Catholic Church they had all these different practices.

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Like in one Catholic Church the women did this, and in another Catholic Church the women did that. And they're like, "Wait a minute, you can't do that

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in my church." And they're like, "Why not?" And so just the, you know, sort of the diversity of that experience is really important.

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So trying to get students to engage with the questions that we raise in our classes and understand how it impacts them,

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I think is the most important for me. If they go out of my class thinking about things in a questioning

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sort of way then I guess I've accomplished something. [AA] How are you affected as a teacher in teaching Women's Studies? [ML] I think what Women's Studies does for me

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is constantly make me have to do the same thing I ask my students, which is question, what's happening. Because in Women's Studies

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every semester I have to update my class, and include new information, and change the way we think about things, and be conscious of

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the way language is changing. You know, once upon a time I used the terminology sexual preference, and a student said to me at one point,

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"Actually, that's not the language we use anymore." It's sexual orientation. I was like, "Oh, good point."

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Just having this sort of light bulb go on for me. Of course, that would be the language change. So we have to constantly be conscious of,

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of how as a society we have changed our thinking on these issues. And I find that fascinating, sometimes anxiety-provoking.

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"Holy cow, I have to revise my syllabus yet again!" But, but we do because it is a type field that's

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very current and contemporary. Even as we sort of look at the historical underpinnings of where these systems are.

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And we still need to think about how, "Where are we now?" And so I find that very exciting and challenging, but I think it's

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sort of interesting. [AA] We're going to move to the other side of the department. So how have you seen the Women's Studies department change as you've been here? [ML] So when I started in the late 1990s, since I was doing just a class here or there,

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I don't think I was really conscious of what the program sort of was, but that was when we had sort of recently gotten the major.

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And so I think that that actually helped facilitate my becoming more full-time because we then had more students engaged with that.

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Although we've always had a lot of student enrollments. Since that time, we have really expanded the number

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of faculty we have on staff. So we've been able to get sort of Margaret Stetz hired as our first in-house named faculty,

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named professorship, tenured in Women's Studies. We've had now the addition of Alvina Quintana and Pascha Bueno-Hansen

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as tenured faculty. With Pascha's hiring being our first in-house hire as tenure. So the expansion of the number of

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lines in teaching has been very important to really enable us to cover a variety of different topics and a variety different areas.

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International, global, transnational Women's Studies, as well as the Sexualities and Genders minor. We also have moved into

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this lovely building of our own home, which I was, I've been here now long enough that I've been in three different offices.

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And when we moved to this, our own building, we were very excited about it. I discovered when I went through the archives to do

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this oral history project that this is one of Women's Studies actually earliest offices in

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the 1970s Women's Studies were in a, quote, "decrepit old building off campus on the second floor." And that we are now in that building.

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They fortunately repainted it and it's not decrepit anymore, but I find that fascinating. So the location has

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sort of solidified us as well. Having a house. I think that we've also been able to the last 5 years,

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the move to departmental status has been signifigant. And I know from studying the history of the program that it's been

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an ongoing battle for almost 20 plus years to be established as a department. So Women's Studies was an

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interdisciplinary program for, since it started 40 years ago until very recently. And I think a lot of that argument

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against becoming a department from administration was, "Well, you won't get the same cooperation you will from other departments."

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We haven't found that yet. We'll see. I don't think it will be a problem because we have people who are committed to Women's Studies.

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But it's definitely been a significant factor for us in terms of recognition of this University, by this University. So those have certainly been

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some important changes. More recently, the creation of the Domestic Violence Prevention and Advocacy I never know the full name of it.

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Concentration in Domestic Violence Prevention and Services has been very important for us in terms of creating

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a very particular focus for our students to have sort of concrete training and experience in the field. And I think it's really important

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the way it combines the sort of advocacy as well as preventive services. So we have students working across the state in,

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in the area and hope, are hoping to find ways to get funding to sustain that and also potentially expand, expanded to address rape or

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sexual assault prevention in other sort of fields in a similar way. So I think there's been a lot of structural changes that have been very

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important for Women's Studies that really have solidified it as a department. [AA] As you were going through all the history,

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did anything really shock you about our main history about how we developed everything like that? Like Mae Carter, and everything like that. Did anything shock you, or

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surprise you, or impress you about the way they went about things to become a department? [ML] Well, one of the questions that I've had, as I go through this,

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and I don't actually have an answer. But I ask everyone is, "How do we explain how University of Delaware Women's Studies program

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became a department at the same time that other universities were actually shutting down their Women's Studies departments or programs?"

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And what I understand about those other departments and programs being shut down is it has a lot to do

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with finances and funding. I mean, you know, sort of when there's an economic squeeze, the universities will shut down

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the so-called more peripheral locations. And so in thinking about Women's Studies here at UD, I find it fascinating

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and encouraging that that didn't happen. Instead, we went the other way and we are in fact more solid. And I think it's because we've always

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done things on a nickel and a dime. People have had from Mae Carter on, the early Chairs, the early faculty have had

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a real commitment to Women's Studies, to teaching the courses, to doing the voluntary service, to the committee work and the sort of

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brainstorming about the program and ideas about it. And so there's a lot of energy that's been put into it

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by people who are spread out across the University and who are now in positions of power in some locations in the University.

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And so their, that commitment has really been effective in terms of helping us sort of lay the groundwork

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and to really sort of be able to sustain ourselves even when there's funding cutbacks.

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And so I think that our ability to persist over those 40 years has very much been about the people and their commitment to it,

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and their passion for it. I think that's what students are so fascinated by when they take our classes. I know I get it in my evaluations,

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"They're so passionate about the subject." You know, when you get a class where the faculty are like, "Oh, let's talk about this!"

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It's really exciting. And I think some of that comes over certainly for some students, they'll pick up on that and get excited as well,

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and start to think differently. So I think that that has been very helpful for us in terms of our history and why

00:24:29.860 - 00:24:39.460

we are still here and growing, and sort of doing really exciting stuff at a time when others have actually been shut down.

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[AA] Why is the University of Delaware's Women's Studies program here different or how is it different than other programs elsewhere at different universities that are still thriving?

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[ML] I don't know that we're that different. I think the field as a whole has gone through a lot of growing pains at different moments.

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So sort of different, you know, over the 40 years addressing the needs of women of color, of working-class women,

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has been a sort of struggle and growing pains in the field. The whole movement towards transnational research

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and trying to make sure we incorporate a transnational critique in our classes is one that I think we all struggle with.

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I think we at Delaware... I don't know how we're different. I haven't figured that one out yet. If we're different. [AA] It may be good that we're not different.

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[ML] Oh, I don't know, you may want to... I guess you want to sometimes have some sort of thing. There is, you know how in Delaware politics there's

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a sort of a "Delaware" way because we're such a small state. You know, everybody... You know, you go grocery shopping, and you could run into Joe Biden, or Tom Carper.

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And there is a sort of reputation in Delaware politics that you at least try to have those conversations across party lines.

00:26:06.680 - 00:26:15.770

Because it's such a small state. I think you actually see something similar to that at the University. And, you know,

00:26:15.770 - 00:26:23.480

it's a sizeable University, but it's also a university where there's a lot of conversations. And what Women's Studies

00:26:23.480 - 00:26:30.200

is really good at is the interdisciplinary work. So we do have faculty that are, you know,

00:26:30.200 - 00:26:35.360

sort of bumping into each other across disciplines and working together collaboratively in a number different ways.

00:26:35.360 - 00:26:46.580

And, I'm sure that's replicated in other locations, but I think it helps here at the University because we have that connections with others.

00:26:46.580 - 00:26:57.110

And so people understand what it is we do and how we do it. And so we're not seen as an isolated entity. Our faculty are really

00:26:57.110 - 00:27:04.260

committed to service. So that we're represented in the Faculty Senate and all sorts of committees on campus.

00:27:04.260 - 00:27:11.280

And so again, we have that presence out in the University community that I think shows that

00:27:11.280 - 00:27:19.480

we're engaged, committed to this University and sort of, you know, working in whatever it is we do to sort of move it forward

00:27:19.480 - 00:27:29.530

and do better for our students. So I do think that that's helpful. The other thing that I also think just is a real marker is students' involvement.

00:27:29.530 - 00:27:38.840

And students fill our courses and they come potentially for a variety of different reasons. Some because it's a requirement

00:27:38.840 - 00:27:45.340

and they just want to get the requirement out of the way, but also of curiosity. And when they get

00:27:45.340 - 00:27:52.930

there and they find that they really like it, then they come back. And so I think the engagement with students and

00:27:52.930 - 00:28:00.330

having providing students with a different way of thinking about the world really sort of helps.

00:28:00.330 - 00:28:12.620

[AA] What is Women's Studies to you? If someone were to ask you what Women's Studies is, how would you answer them? [ML] Well, the one question I always get is, "Well, what about the men?"

00:28:12.620 - 00:28:21.670

It's like, "Well, we study men and besides, so does the rest of the University." Women's Studies is a field

00:28:21.670 - 00:28:38.180

and a lens of looking at the world that tries to understand what is happening in women's lives from a gendered perspective.

00:28:38.180 - 00:28:52.410

And how different social structures and institutions have shaped our experiences in the world from the perspective of women. So we place the lens of

00:28:52.410 - 00:29:03.500

the study from a woman's perspective, place women at the center of analysis, and then look at the world from that lens and see how we will

00:29:03.500 - 00:29:12.600

think about things differently from looking at it from a woman's perspective. And so what you have is a new way

00:29:12.600 - 00:29:23.130

of doing research or a new way of asking questions because they haven't traditionally been the lens from which you study it.

00:29:23.130 - 00:29:28.130

Certainly in the field of History, if you look at sort of the documentation on the field, you know, a lot of

00:29:28.130 - 00:29:34.670

it's from professional men, back in the day, who were the only ones who had education. And so to do it from a woman's perspective,

00:29:34.670 - 00:29:42.780

you have to find where the women were, what they were doing. So how do we understand the world from their perspective and lens of women?

00:29:42.780 - 00:29:51.860

And how have women and men been gendered in their lives in ways that shape who they become and what opportunities

00:29:51.860 - 00:30:03.140

they have in the world. So where, once you start from that angle and then are conscious of having a critique

00:30:03.140 - 00:30:13.390

about race and class and sexual orientation and other social status structures, then it becomes a sort of

00:30:13.390 - 00:30:23.480

kaleidoscope of experiences that we need to be conscious of. So whether it's family issues or work issues,

00:30:23.480 - 00:30:32.630

or questions about sexuality. All of these are shaped by who we are as women and men. And we need

00:30:32.630 - 00:30:48.640

to sort of think about what that means today and historically, as well as going forward. [AA] Okay. You pretty much covered everything I needed to cover. Do you have anything else you want to say?

00:30:48.640 - 00:30:59.630

[ML] Well, one of the questions you had asked me yesterday was about oral history. Sort of, why the oral history project? Because for last two years I've been doing

00:30:59.630 - 00:31:09.470

this oral history project to record the history of Women's Studies. And I was trained as an oral historian in graduate school when I was looking at

00:31:09.470 - 00:31:16.900

the early histories of the founders of the National Organization for Women. Because we discovered that

00:31:16.900 - 00:31:23.030

a significant portion of those women, those founders of NOW, are actually from the Midwest, not from the East Coast,

00:31:23.030 - 00:31:29.420

which is what the history has been. And so we did an extensive oral history project at that time on those women.

00:31:29.420 - 00:31:37.250

And when we were sort of moving a couple of years ago towards thinking about our 40th anniversary and also

00:31:37.250 - 00:31:44.090

realizing that our founding mothers were aging. It was mentioned, we should record their histories.

00:31:44.090 - 00:31:51.200

And so the historian in the room was recruited. And what has been important about this sort of video,

00:31:51.200 - 00:31:58.880

oral history project has been, sort of, to think about asking people to think about sort of these questions about,

00:31:58.880 - 00:32:06.230

Why Women's Studies? Why here? What's the importance of it? And, and also sort of, you know. How did it happen?

00:32:06.230 - 00:32:14.820

How did it come about? And I think what oral history does is really allows us to get people's stories.

00:32:14.820 - 00:32:24.500

Their... the material that doesn't show up in the documentation, in the notes and the minutes and also need to be

00:32:24.500 - 00:32:31.200

conscious in oral history of how it is a sort of reflecting back. So it's an encapsulation of a particular moment

00:32:31.200 - 00:32:41.480

of a person's understanding of their history. But I think it's really important for history to have those voices present,

00:32:41.480 - 00:32:51.740

especially women's voices, which have not necessarily been recorded and to be able to sort of have them

00:32:51.740 - 00:32:59.840

tell us their stories and not have it sort of be pieced together from document, document, document, but really sort of have,

00:32:59.840 - 00:33:07.910

give voice to those voices that haven't necessarily been recorded. Women are really good at doing lots of organizing behind the scenes and

00:33:07.910 - 00:33:15.620

then something happens and you don't necessarily know what was going on. Well, what was that behind the scenes? So it's interesting, I've had

00:33:15.620 - 00:33:22.310

several people in the interview say, "Well, we just were going about doing it, that we didn't really think it was anything significant."

00:33:22.310 - 00:33:29.750

Like, "Oh, there you go." That's what we do and that's what history is, you go about your day-to-day life. nd then you look back

00:33:29.750 - 00:33:35.630

10 years later and go, "Oh wow, that was historic." So I think that what's important about the oral history project

00:33:35.630 - 00:33:44.520

is really recording that and those recollections and sort of giving face to some of those actors.

00:33:45.100 - 00:33:48.270

[AA] Okay. [ML] Thank you. [AA] Thank you.