Dr. Leland G Spencer has a BA in Communication Studies from Mount Union College (now
known as University of Mount Union, 2007), an MA in Communication from the University
of Cincinnati and a PhD from the University of Georgia with a graduate certificate
in Women’s Studies from UGA as well. Leland's research interests are in feminist rhetoric,
gender, sexuality, gender identity, and religious communication.
Women’s and Gender Studies major Emma Galluccio sat down with new faculty member and chair, Dr. Leland Spencer, for an interview regarding his research areas and hopes for the Women’s and Gender Studies Department.
Dr. Spencer, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me today. To begin, how did you get your start in Women’s and Gender Studies? Where did that initial passion come from, and why was it something you chose to pursue?
“I have been interested in gender for a long time. I first became aware of gender when I was a teenager, when I noticed adults in my life who were treated differently just because of their gender, which I knew was unfair. Without really understanding what it meant, I started calling myself a feminist. Then I went off to college, and I majored in communication. Some of my favorite professors were teaching Gender Studies electives, and I thought they sounded interesting, so I started taking elective Gender Studies courses. There was not a Gender Studies major available, but there was a minor. So, I said, let me add a minor. Then, I wrote my undergraduate senior thesis on gendered images for God, so I got really interested in feminist theology.”
Over the course of your studies, you’ve focused on communication in the context of gender, queer studies, and sexuality. How are theories of gender and sexuality intertwined within the realm of communication and communication studies? What importance does gender and sexuality play in mass media communication and within interpersonal communications?
“I'll just say that when you think about communication or the way communication is often understood, it is the transmission of information. I say something and send it to you, and then you hear it, decode it, and receive it, which is one way to think about communication. It's also an incomplete way to imagine communication because it’s much more powerful than that. I often introduce to my students the idea of communication by talking about that transmission model, but then immediately complicating it. At the most complex level, we start to think about communication as the social construction of reality. When we talk about gender and sexuality, we must remember that we've made it up— we've constructed these categories. Whenever a norm has been created, there's also then room to challenge it, to recreate it, to create it differently, so we're not stuck with what we have. We can imagine individually, collectively, politically, culturally, different ways, more life-giving ways, of doing gender together and doing life together.”
You are the author of Women Bishops and Rhetorics of Shalom— could you tell me more about your research regarding religious rhetoric and how gender and sexuality theories correlated with that? While studying communication and gender, where did the interest of religious rhetoric, ideals, and women’s roles in the church start to manifest for you?
“A lot of my early work focused on women in leadership in the church. If you had to summarize all my work on gender, sexuality and religion, it comes down to this question: how do people who have been excluded by their religious tradition find or create ways to thrive in those spaces? I've asked that question about queer and trans people. I've asked that question about women in leadership. My question was, really, how do these women work in patriarchal institutions, who are part of a class that's only had the right to work in that space as an ordained clergy person for a few decades? How do they rise to the top of the profession, and then, how do they navigate the leadership challenges that anyone in those positions faces? What I found in studying the sermons, speeches, and writings, but mostly sermons, of these three women, was, across the board, they focused on justice. They had different emphases relevant to their personal lives, the context of their work, etc. I summarized all of that in this concept of shalom. Of course, one way of thinking about this concept from the Jewish tradition is that it means peace. It's not just an absence of violence, but it's a positive presence of peace. Shalom refers to the completeness and wholeness of creation, and that's the concept that I found that united the rhetorical work of these three women bishops.”
From your studies, to research, to educating and advising, what are some aspects of your career that make you the proudest, and what do you hope students and others have been able to learn through your dedication to this field?
“I'm probably the proudest of my work with students who succeed in ways that they didn't imagine. When I was at Miami [University], I taught a First Year Seminar in civil rights rhetoric, and I had some people in that class who were first generation college students who weren't even sure they were going to stay in school. They said, “We'll just try this for a semester and see how it goes” and couple of people from that class declared me as their advisor, stuck with me for the whole time, finished a degree, and became the first people in their families to have a four-year degree. I'm most proud of the student successes that I've been privileged to walk alongside. I certainly don't take credit for those situations— I'm lucky to be involved. I'm happy to be a participant in the journey, a co-creator of the experience for people, and that's been exciting and fulfilling for me.”
As the new chair of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies here at USC, what are your hopes for this Department? How does your area of study and research continue to pose importance for Women’s and Gender Studies and our Department?
“One of my goals for the department includes growing the major — we have a fantastic major, we have wonderful students in the major, and we want more students. We want more people to know that Women's and Gender Studies is an exciting, growing, dynamic field. We want more people to know that you can get a job with a Women's and Gender Studies degree. Yes, you can get a job with this degree, and it also makes you a better person. It makes you a better family member, it makes you a better partner, it makes you a better parent, it makes you a better citizen, a better community member. I want people to be thoughtful about their work, their involvement, and their existence. I want people to go into all those spaces, because gender happens in all of them, and say, how do we make this space more inclusive? How do we expand who is involved here and included here? How do we how do we make this context better than what it is? This is an important question for people to ask in their jobs and in all those other places. I want more people to know that this is a useful degree and that it makes you a better human being.”
This interview provided an intriguing glimpse into Dr. Spencer’s origins in the field and we are so excited to see the positive direction our department will be taken in under his leadership!