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Happy and Smart Students (And Faculty!): Dr. Marla Jaksch

Dr. Marla Jaksch, assistant professor of women’s and gender studies
Dr. Marla Jaksch, assistant professor of women’s and gender studies

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“Why are you pursuing this career?”

“It happened for two reasons.”

Dr. Jaksch explained that the first reason comes out of her home city: Detroit. Her father was “heavily involved” in the labor movement, particularly where it related the to burdened automobile manufacturing industry.

“Watching working class jobs disappear and then the sort of activism that was involved there was very inspiring to me. Just seeing that you had to … take a principled stand.”

Dr. Jaksch further developed her interest in women’s and gender studies while she was an undergraduate student at an art school.

“I went into the stall in the ladies’ room and I saw this poster. And it shocked me. It was a ‘guerrilla girls’ poster and it said ‘The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist and it … outlined in these sort of ironic ways really the disadvantages of being a woman artist.

It hadn’t occurred to me that some of the things I had been experiencing personally were sort of systemic.”

“[Those two things] got me thinking about race, class and gender. And I didn’t know you could study it. And here I am, after getting a Ph.D in a Women and Gender’s Studies program.”

“Do you have any role models in your life? How does their advice affect you in your daily life?”

Dr. Jaksch describes a professor at her art school named Lily Yeh, who had escaped from communist China during Mao’s cultural revolution.

“[She] used her art as a form of healing and social justice.”

According to Dr. Jaksch, Lily spearheaded a movement to transform the communities in North Philly that were devastated by outsourced manufacturing jobs. Lily has used this attitude in communities to help people live through trauma all over the world—including deeply injured countries such as Rwanda.

“For me it was a really interesting moment to see that arts didn’t need to be something that you just did alone in a studio, that very few people understood—that it actually could be a catalyst to make change.”

Lily’s movement stays with Dr. Jaksch in her courses at TCNJ even today.

“Even though I’ve moved further away from art-centered work, the lessons that I learned there about the power of arts as a transformative force have never left.

I think that a lot of the work that I do in the classroom always encourages students to think of art as … a mode of self-expression that can be really radical.”

There’s another mentor Dr. Jaksch has been influenced by and it’s one of her peers: Dr. Crystal Leigh Endlsey.

“She told me once that no one pats you on the back when you do the right thing. She said that at a really critical moment that sometimes when you raise your voice when it’s really important to do so, that you may meet a lot of resistance.

Doing the right thing doesn’t always feel good.”

“I think with Crystal … she doesn’t shy away from criticizing me and reminding me to stay truthful to myself. We need those type of people in our life; who will tell us the truth, who will push us to be the very best that we can be.”

Story and Interview by Jack Meyers

Photography by Jaryd Frankel

Contact

School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Social Sciences Building, Room 302
The College of New Jersey
P.O. Box 7718
2000 Pennington Rd.
Ewing, NJ 08628

609.771.3434
hss@tcnj.edu

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