Amelia Teske is double-majoring in Philosophy (honors) and GWS (honors). She will graduate in spring 2024.
1. 
Why did you choose GWS?
I chose GWS after taking Dr. Kate Phelps’ Framing Fatness course in the summer after my freshman year. I knew instantly that I wanted to continue to look at everything I studied through intersectional frameworks and learn about how structures like colonialism and racism perpetuate and maintain systems of oppression, and from there I just couldn’t stop taking GWS courses. I felt like I was finally gaining access to knowledge and tools that were going to help me engage in meaningful liberatory work both in my academic career and in my everyday practices.
2. Has GWS changed your approach to your involvement (on or off campus) during college? If so, how?
GWS has majorly changed the way I take in information, both in and outside of the classroom. My GWS courses have always encouraged me to consider whose voices and experiences are being left out of the syllabi for my classes, the academic texts I’m reading, the news I’m listening to, etc. This has really enriched the way I engage in my philosophy courses especially, and I have felt increasingly empowered to change the ways in which philosophy as a discipline so often revolves around the ideas of cis white men. Before GWS, I always thought of theorizing and philosophizing as things that existed kind of separately from my activism and that didn’t necessarily have any real-world impact, but I have since learned that these things don’t need to exist separately from one another, and that I can use philosophy and theory as tools for meaningful praxis.
3. How has GWS shaped your future plans?
Being in GWS introduced me to the Office of the Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian, where I’ve worked since January 2022! My involvement in the office of the GWSL has given me the space to employ my passion for knowledge sharing and information accessibility, which is something I want to continue doing once I graduate, and now feel like I have the tools and experience to do so. There are so many different career paths that I want to explore, from biomedical ethics to feminist publishing, so even though I’m not sure exactly what my post-grad life will look like, I know that I will always carry with me the frameworks and values that I have learned throughout my time here into whatever it is I end up doing.