Mina Carson Interview on the History of HST 368, January 29, 2020

NATALIA FERNANDEZ: Today's date is January 29th, 2020. And my name is Natalia Fernández. This is an oral history interview with Professor Mina Carson in Corvallis, Oregon, for the OSU History 368 Lesbian and Gay Movements in Modern American oral history project. Now, the focus of this interview would be to explore the history of the Oregon State University course, History 368 Lesbian and Gay Movements in Modern American, which you currently teach. So to begin the interview, could you please state your name, and spell it out loud?

MINA CARSON: Mina Carson, M-I-N-A C-A-R-S-O-N.

NF: And please share which pronouns you use.

MC: She and her.

NF: Wonderful. So, to get started, can we talk about the current course, the course as it is? Could you please describe the course as you currently teach it?

MC: I teach it as -and I know we'll circle back to this-queer history and the 00:01:00history of self-identified queer people, queer movements in the United States. Again, we'll talk about this, but it's changed enormously over time. So that when I named it with a colleague 25 years ago, we thought "Lesbian and Gay Movements in the United States" was pretty up to date. At the time-and still-my focus is on talking about LGBTQ+ subjects as having agency as being the commanders of their own fate. As we-and I said this to the class the first day-look at oppression, we look at pain, we look at solitude and tragedy, but this is part of many lives and we really look at movements, at 00:02:00self-identification, at pushbacks and reactions to other people's identification of queer subjects, and so on. Really, I think that the emphasis is really on self-identified queer persons as subjects and as agents, and as communities.

NF: What types of readings do you assign?

MC: That's changed a lot over the years too. And now, trying to respect the financial challenges of being a college student, at this point I'm not requiring the purchase of any books. And because the library has digitized so effectively, I can share book chapters and articles, and newspaper reports, magazine articles, things like that. I pull some scholarly articles. I also pull some 00:03:00book chapters from the whole of which I've used in the past. Then I try to pull newspaper and magazine articles. I kind of slot them in as they become relevant. If I see something in the news, I'll pull that and put a link in an announcement.

NF: Is the course structured chronologically or thematically?

MC: That's a really good question. It's more or less chronological. But the other thing that's happened, in terms of the material, is there's been an explosion of available video materials. And now the videos are available to students and faculty with an OSU ID card. So, we use Kanopy almost exclusively. When I have a movie to show that's not in Kanopy, I'll generally show it in class. And we show significant pieces of videos in class. I've had some pushback in the past, maybe too much time. But I love it as material. And then we can talk about the videos.

In class, I don't use many fiction films. I make them available to students to choose in some of their free-choice stuff. But I generally don't use fiction films in this class because the documentaries are so great. So really, I would say that the materials that students use now are divided almost half-half between readings and videos, because the video library now is so huge and accessible.

NF: And currently, what types of in-class activities and discussions do you have?

MC: What I try to do is start with a question that they've had for discussion, the previous week for a written discussion, or try to connect a question I come in with to a question that we closed with the time before. The particular class I'm teaching right now is full of people who are very willing to share and I'm 00:05:00very grateful. I've had them break up in groups just once, maybe twice, but they're so willing to share in a group with each other. And the size of the course is so moderate-we're 18 or 19 people at most-that we've had free-for-alls. And I try to make sure that everyone gets heard in a free-for-all. I'm not always successful. And I try to leave-because the videos are now so available now on Kanopy-a few minutes at the end so we can touch back on what we've seen in class. I don't always succeed in doing that. We often have to carry over to the next session.

In this class, I lecture very little, because the materials are so rich and I love the life perspectives that people bring. And also in this topic, as in 00:06:00another course I teach, students bring as much as experiential knowledge of the culture as I have, more usually. So, I like to access that.

NF: And what types of course assignments do you have the students work on?

MC: Short readings and videos, and then multiple written discussions. And then since you and I have been working together, many of their written assignments, or their experiential assignments, have to do with accommodating a project of the oral history.

NF: How long have you been teaching the course?

MC: About 25 years, I think. This a classic example of what I say to the students and they're discovering-is that people have memories that're sometimes nonlinear, a little bit flawed, perhaps they have holes in them. This is a great 00:07:00example of my going through all of the materials that I can access, going through all my files-I have no paper files, going through all my Google Drive, Box, etc. and finding exactly one document that relates to the past of the course. So, I'm relying on my memory and my bookshelf, because I was able to pull some books that we used to use. And that has prompted in some of my memories about what we do in the course.

Craig Machado was an instructor in English in the 90s here at OSU. We had met, probably-I'm not sure how, but I think-either through After 8, the political 00:08:00organization here locally working on what we then called lesbian and gay issues, or through a campus student group, through being in an event or as advisors to the campus student group. And that's changed names a lot of times over the 25 years-over the 30 years I've been here and 25 years since I've been teaching the course.

It was Craig's idea that we should create a course and now, I cannot remember if we cross-listed it. I know we made it a special-topics in history initially. And it was only several years later that I did the curricular application to have a regular number. But when Craig and I first taught it, I can't even remember if we had one class. I think we did have one class that was solely on campus OSU 00:09:00students. But the one that I remember which was a circus-not in a very bad way, but in a crazy way-was in the early years of what we now call Ecampus, very early years of what we now call Ecampus. We had a cameraman who was handling all the video stuff. And we had students who were in Newport. I don't even know if they were in Bend. They were in several pods, little campuses, around the state. And we had a video feed from each classroom, plus the classroom at OSU. This was an evening class so we had three hours. It was crazy. It was just crazy. And I just think we were very energetic to attempt such a thing in the days of-what we 00:10:00now would think of as-fairly primitive video equipment. Oh my gosh.

And that was wild. But we had participations from all these different classrooms and we'd say, "Newport, Newport, what do you think about this?" And they would speak up. And there would be a sound delay. But we could see this sort of video image. Again, then it was difficult to get good video. We're talking mid-90s. So, it was difficult to get good video, good movies to show. But we did. We showed a few films, and pieces of films. And we'd have discussions about those. But, wow. That was wild.

And then by 2000, I think, Craig had gotten a job in Connecticut. So, he left campus. And I carried on the course by myself. I'm not sure when it was that I was able to put it through the curricular process and rename it History 368.

NF: With Craig, you were co-teaching those early years?

MC: Yeah, we were co-teaching, absolutely. There was a gay man and a lesbian woman, and we were co-teaching lesbian and gay movements in the United States. It was like, "Well, we've got the ground covered." And of course, it shows you how things have changed over the years.

NF: Going back a little bit to the beginnings, in terms of the course development, was there pushback or support from your colleagues and administration at the time?

MC: There was support. These characters are going to hear this from me a lot, the people in the class now. As far as I remember, there was only support. And we developed this course during the years of the ballot measures, during the years of the Oregon Citizens Alliance and their fervid campaigns to oppress 00:12:00people who they identify as lesbian and gay, queer. And of course, we were teaching in the College of Liberal Arts. But I don't remember particular pushback from anywhere on campus. I don't know why there would have been from other colleges. But no, it was full steam ahead basically, as far as I remember. I'm maybe cleaning up my memory, but that's what I remember.

NF: So the sociopolitical climate at the time in Oregon was very anti-LGBT in some cases. But at the university, people were trying to fight back?

MC: Yeah. And in Corvallis, in Eugene, in Portland, you can gas up and down in the Willamette Valley, with some exceptions. But we had strong advocates for civil rights in Albany as well. I learned a lot about not characterizing smaller 00:13:00towns or towns around. Yeah, opposition to gay civil rights tended to be in Springfield rather than Eugene, and Albany rather than Corvallis. But those generalizations, by and large or not, are not fair to the climate.

It was interesting that, I think, when we tallied up, you could imagine that election night those years was pretty exciting. The After 8 people had teamed up with the Democratic Party. They were very strongly anti-ballot measure. So, we teamed up with them, and then much of our election night celebration. I remember one year, we were down in the Old World Deli which is down on 2nd St. And we had 00:14:00the TV on. And we were just waiting for the returns to come in. It was quite clear early on that the measures have been defeated. But we were interested to know, I believe, that the "no" votes that is against the measures were higher in Corvallis, percentage wise, than they were in Portland. I mean, Corvallis has been, for some decades, a fairly strong pro-civil-rights town with significant lesbian population, smaller population of gay men, for various reasons that we don't have to go in to.

NF: In the early years of the course, you were not only talking about the history, but you were incorporating contemporary events? You were discussing that with the students?

MC: Absolutely. It was challenging for me because-people may not believe-I tend 00:15:00to either be very, very private, or overshared. I don't tend to be in a happy medium very easily. [Laughs] And it's always been. And I grew up in a time when this was a difficult identity to own. So, it took me several decades to come out, less to myself than to others. I mean, I came out to myself and it was like "Uh-oh."

So, I continue to be anxious about coming out, today, in 2020. So it was, to me, always quite challenging to teach this course because, as I said to the current class, nobody is required to own or present an identity in this class. All identities are welcomed. All self-disclosure is welcomed and certainly not 00:16:00required. I've tried to conduct the course that way over the decades. But that meant that I've made varying decisions, I think, in varying instances of the course, whether I came out or not. I think usually I have come out, partly because we originated the course in the years of the ballot measures, which lasted all the way from '92 through 2001-I think was the most recent one. That was a long decade. And of course, I've been somewhat active in town. So, I felt awkward in outing myself to students, and yet, feeling that it was simply wrong not to-that culturally, that personally, that emotionally, psychologically, it was important for students to know that there were queer faculty people who're willing to be out. At that time, I was partnered. And my partner and I were 00:17:00raising children. And at one point, we were on the front page of the GT. So, we couldn't have been closeted, you know. [Laughs]

NF: Is this something that you and Craig discussed in those early years?

MC: I can't remember. But I think Craig was out. This is my memory-I think that with Craig out, and with my being one of the advisors to the LGBT group at that time on campus, how would I not have been out? But it still was always psychologically difficult for me, just saying. And as part of the history of this course, it's part of the history of this culture on campus. I think it would be incorrect, and somewhat wrong, of me not to acknowledge the difficulty 00:18:00for me as now a mid-60-year-old person, not to acknowledge how hard it has been for me to be out.

Note, a lot of my peers don't have that same problem. But at the same time, some of my peers who are my age or a little older still don't own the queer label, because we grew up with that as the thing that was flung at us in a nasty way. Of course, we've appropriated it as a movement. We've appropriated that in a way, to speak politely, thumb our noses at people who were nasty to us. But it's still difficult for some of my friends to use it, to own it. That's fine.

NF: You've shared your reaction, how you felt. Do you recall the initial student reaction to the course, especially in those early years?

MC: That's a really good question. I had a lot of fear about whether there would be students coming into the class who wanted nothing more than to shut us down, to interfere, to bully. And that did not happen. That has not happened over the 25 years I've taught this course. I've just been stunned and, of course, delighted. I think it is accurate to say-this is impressionistic, but I think accurate to say-that over the years, even though the percentage of 00:20:00self-identified queer people in the class versus, pretty much, self-identified straight people has varied a lot. I had a few years quite recently where it was mostly-not just mostly, but MOSTLY-straight people in the class.

But I think that what has happened-it's been so thrilling to teach this class over the last 25 years because the culture has moved so rapidly. The queer culture has moved so rapidly. And the surrounding culture has had so many blips. It's fascinating. The sociology of all this is fascinating. But it's been so much fun to teach. And in the classroom, students have been more and more relaxed. I just don't walk in anymore, fearing that there's gonna be people in 00:21:00the class who just want to destroy the class. I mean, it could still happen. We're in a very interesting, strange political moment. And that could still happen, but it's been less and less. The first day, it becomes clear that that's just not gonna happen.

NF: Going back just a little bit to the development of the course, in the early years when you were developing the course and teaching it, were there other courses like this at other state or national universities? Were you inspired or influenced by others when you and Craig were developing? Do you remember that?

MC: I think we were pretty early on. I should have gone back onto the web to see what I can find about that. Craig had come from the Bay Area. And I would be 00:22:00shocked if there weren't already courses in the San Francisco Bay Area on queer history. But I really think, as a regular thing we were-not so much in the vanguard-but we were pretty early. And then, of course, by 2000 it would have been unusual for the largest university that wasn't self-identified as conservative Christian not to have such a course. It just has become very common. We academics trailed women's history a little bit with queer history. But still, the burgeoning of those programs in the early 2000s-really, late 90s to early 2000s-were really remarkable.

NF: In the early 90s, mid 90s, something else that was happening on campus was 00:23:00the establishment of the Difference, Power and Discrimination program. Can you talk about that program briefly and its connection, specifically, to this course?

MC: One of my motivations for making 368 a regularly numbered course was to get it into the DPD program, because it was so obviously a Different, Power and Discrimination topic. The beauty of the DPD program is that it's allowed a number of students to take courses like this where they wouldn't go out of their way to seek it out as an elective because OSU students' programs are so ridiculously packed with requirements. But because that's become an option in a requirement, I think a lot of students have found their way into the course. More students have found their way into the course, I think, through DPD than 00:24:00through the History major or minor, although it's obviously also an elective in those categories.

And then we have the further expansion-I'm jumping the gun a little-but we have the further expansion of the course onto our flourishing Ecampus program. And History now has a full major available online, as well a minor available online. So, 368, sometimes I teach it twice a year online-always once, sometimes twice. Again, it's a great DPD option for people who're taking a degree through Ecampus. But also because it's a regular history course, it's one that they can grab and maybe even transfer back to another campus that they might be taking 00:25:00their main requirements on.

NF: You mentioned this briefly-over the 25 years, were you typically teaching this course once an academic year? And how about in-person versus online?

MC: Since you and I have been working together in the oral history thing, I think we've taught this annually, right, for the last four years? Is that correct?

NF: I think we skipped a year, but yes.

MC: Oh yeah, that's right. I was away. [Laughs] But I think before that, it was usually once every other year on campus because of the rotation of courses that most of us do as faculty members. And I'm the only one who teaches that course right now. So, it was once other year, probably from about 2000 through 2014 or 2015. But as soon as it was on Ecampus, I think I have taught it every year on 00:26:00Ecampus, I think so.

NF: And the class size tends to be in the 20-student range, you mentioned early?

MC: Yeah. Online now it tends to fill up and equal out at about 20, I think. In the class, it could be anywhere from 15 to 30. So, it's a reasonably sized course. I don't think it's dipped too much, before, below 15 in the classroom.

NF: Is this the type of course that benefits from a class size that ranges a little towards the smaller than the 40, or 50 or 80+ students?

MC: Absolutely. I think we have a limit. I think we limit at 30 or 35 in the classroom. And that's pretty common. We're very lucky and, frankly, smart in the History Department to do that with our upper-level courses. We're lucky to be able to do that with most of them. This course benefits so much from discussion 00:27:00in the classroom. That is really the heart of the course.

My students learn pretty quickly that I'm not much of a linear thinker, should we say. So I've had a little pushback over the years- "well, you really should lecture more. You should give us more material, etc." And while I respect that, I really value the give-and-take of classroom discussion. Always I could structure it better. It's not one of my strengths as an instructor. But in this course, it's so valuable.

NF: You've touched on a lot of things that have changed over time. But over the years, can you share a little bit more about how the sociopolitical climate of 00:28:00the time period, for example, the 90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, have affected what you teach and how you teach?

MC: There is such a strong interaction, as a teacher-. We're so lucky in the university, those of us who do have this luck-those of us who are on tenure streams or have good instructor relationships with their units to teach for decades. I've been here for 30 years. I can't imagine anything luckier than that. So, when I talk about the sociopolitical climate and cultural climate, and how that has affected my teaching, it's hard to separate that from the changes 00:29:00that take place in one's life between one's mid-30s and one's mid-60s. So, as I hit my mid-40s and got into my 50s, a lot of things that used to make me nervous kind of fell away. It was like, "Ok, if I haven't got this by now, oh well." So, you begin to understand yourself, to know your strengths and weaknesses. I'd like to think that I'm open to change. But I also have had to understand that I need to pull from my own strengths in the classroom, in order to teach effectively. It doesn't always work, but it's a nice philosophy.

Yeah, in terms of the sociopolitical climate, we had the years of the ballot measures, and we had the years of the Lesbian Avengers. Oh man, and I know that 00:30:00we'll talk with this class much more about those wonderful years. We had Laramie, and the murder of-and of course I blocked him because it was so horrifying, I was teaching at that time. We had Ellen DeGeneres coming out on television. We had Oregon's-this was wonderful and horrifying-brief dip into creating a gay marriage, and then their retreat from gay marriage. Wow. And then, of course, we had the federal decision that led to the right to marry.

We've had this explosion, as I said, of scholarship, of popular literature, of 00:31:00videos, of fiction movies and the changes in student culture which have dragged me along very happily. They've dragged me along. Non-binary identities, trans identities. It's so embarrassing to say-but it's really important of the sake of the historical record-that it took me ages to understand that transgender was not just some kind of casual thing that I can drop into the course in half an hour and then move on. That as that identity grew and became more complex and full in our culture, that it had to grow and become more complex and full in the course as well. As I say, the course has really had to tumble forward with the 00:32:00culture. And that's been thrilling, and sometimes really embarrassing for me-how slow I've been.

And again, it's great to grow old. No one would believe that, but it's great to grow old. But it's also really stunning to realize how your own cultural, the stuff that you grew up with, is hard to shed-that your assumptions, that your politics, that everything you grew up with is sort of gone in the culture, and yet hard to shed inside and in the person that you project to the world. That's a long answer!

NF: Could you share a little bit more about, over the years, how the students have changed, how they've impacted you, and how they've pushed you to adapt?

MC: Yeah. The Lesbian Avengers were great. And I never did any fire-eating or 00:33:00fire-breathing. I just realized at that point that the culture had definitely passed me by in great ways. Let's see-I always get my timeframes wrong, but I think it's really been the last five years when I've been most challenged and shaken up by my students' openness, by their challenges to me, which have been compassionate and good, by their willingness to talk with each other. And again, it's so fun to teach this course online because even more than in the classroom, people write about their lives. They write back and forth to each other about their lives. It's so cool to learn from that, to learn how complicated people's 00:34:00lives have been.

Let me give you some examples. I've had several people, over the years, who've been in the military. One guy told me-and this was, woah, at least ten years ago, but it stays in my mind, feels like yesterday-they have, I guess, uniform day, is it Thursday when ROTC candidates wear their uniforms to class? It's one of the days of the week. And of course, he would do that. He was very, very identified with the military. And he told me at one point that he could not talk at all about any of his opinions in class that differed from military policy. And I thought, I'm not sure that's accurate. I did not say to him "I'm not sure that's accurate" because that would not have been-. [Laughs]

So, we had to negotiate that relationship in class. And I had to be aware that I needed to help other students negotiate their relationship with this young man. Yet at the same time, he did not come into the course to challenge it. He did not come into the course to destroy it. He just believed what he believed and told me that he couldn't really talk about or say any opinions that differed from the military. And of course, this was-I believe-probably in the Clinton years, so the "Don't ask. Don't tell" years.

Then another year, much more recently, I had a veteran, I think identified with she/her pronouns, of the military who talked with me extensively about her family situation and shared with the class the experiences that she and her 00:36:00partner had had in the military and how challenging it had been to get services afterward and so on. The military people who have owned their relationship with the military in class because I'm sure that people have come through and not said, "oh by the way, I'm a veteran", or "by the way, I'm an active military member." But those who have shared have really added a great deal to the class, in terms of our being aware of the complexities of that relationship.

NF: Have you experienced, in some cases, students having transformative experiences in the class, can you recall bad or-not that that's the point of the course necessarily-in some cases they learning about these people's lives and the community history? Has that occurred?

MC: I think so. And I think I've gotten those statements much more often from 00:37:00Ecampus, although now I've incorporated the farewell as well as the introduction in class as well. And there's where I tend to get those statements. It was like, "Wow, I didn't know this." And often-I would say 10 to 20 percent, that may be a little high-people will take the class, who don't necessarily identify as queer but they'll have family members or best friends, or knew people in high school, or rooming with someone who identifies as queer. And they want to understand it more.

I think there have been kind of transformative experiences. I think that mainly what's happened, especially in earlier years, is people have come away not just 00:38:00with more knowledge of the history, but maybe less anxious about how do I understand LGBTQ people if I'm straight, or if I think of myself as straight. And then they're questioning people who have taken it over the years. And I can't recall enough like, "Oh phew, now I know that I'm queer." [Laughs] But I think that's been another part of the population.

NF: You've talked a lot about your teaching philosophy already, but can you share a little bit more how your personal experiences and identities have shaped the way you teach, and how the course has impacted your life personally?

MC: Yeah, and I hope I'm representing what my students have experienced. But I 00:39:00want to be, I strive to be, I have to be-and when I fail, I feel miserable-as inclusive as possible, as open as possible, make people comfortable in talking with me and with each other. There've been awkward moments over the years but that's how teaching goes. People will kind of come into a little conflict with each other and then I have to calm it down and handle it. And I'm as conflict-averse a person as you will ever meet, I'm afraid. So that's challenging.

But my aim is to create a course where, to be honest-and I guess it's good for my students to know this-if you complete the assignments with as much honesty and openness, and seriousness as you can, you can get an A. If you come to 00:40:00class, if you participate in the class by being here, if you do the assignments, and if you're open and honest in your interaction with the material, you'll walk out with an A, and hopefully with a few other things as well. And I teach courses in which-because I'm passionate about these courses and the material-that's usually the case, that if students interact with the course on a consistent basis, they get an A. [Laughs]

Some people may experience the course as not sufficiently rigorous. But it's been my aim to open dialogue and to allow people to ask questions of themselves 00:41:00as well as each other. And now that I'm working with you, they also walk out with mad skills in conducting interviews and thinking about what they got.

NF: And your teaching philosophy-especially this is a history course, but because a wide range of students in different majors can take it-do you also find that you have to slightly adapt? If it were just a course specifically for History majors, make it more open and more about discussion?

MC: Oh that's a good question! Not very much. Those students who are WGSS, for example, or sociology or anthropology, will find really there's a paucity of theory in my class. I'm not very theory oriented. So, I rarely add that in. I'd try to give them a little bit of historiography, you know, who's written about this and when and why, and how that's changed. But no, this tends to be 00:42:00interdisciplinary only in its openness to the different kinds of materials.

Maybe if I were teaching it as a graduate course, it would be very different because we would use more written material. We would look at more of the historiography. We would examine the scholarly sources. Because it's an undergraduate course-not because I think that these students are not capable of that, but because there is such a rich universe of multiple kinds of material-I don't find that the best use of our time.

So, I've had them examine several-. One ongoing theme is the sources, partly because we get to work with you. And they're creating, now, primary sources, which is awesome. So we look at sources. We look at problematic sources in this history. And I have them analyze those problematic sources. And frankly, mostly they do a better job than I do, which is partly why I make them do it. I get the benefit.

But no, I don't think I would teach it differently if it were mostly history students. No.

NF: Over the years talking about the sources that you've picked, because you've expressed that there has been such an explosion of scholarship and so many more people sharing their stories. Over the years, have you had to adapt and choose different sources for the students-

MC: Yeah.

NF: How has that worked? Because I'm sure you can't include everything.

MC: No. I don't want to say I've given up, but the pressure of the sources, combined with the pressure of student finances, has really pushed me in the direction of using excerpts. I used to make people read entire books, and I suspect they didn't do it. But I had, for example-and they're older sources-I used Eric Marcus's Making Gay History for a long time. It's a wonderful book that is largely oral histories transcribed. Fabulous stuff. And in fact, what I 00:44:00need to do is make a bibliography of the stuff I used to use. But you can see it's an older-Making Gay History. Eric Marcus is a wonderful scholar. The subtitle's The Half Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights. I used to make them read the whole thing. Then I made them read excerpts. Now it's like, "Well I've move onto different sources."

Another fabulous source that I used for a while-again, it was an amazing collection of primary sources-was an exhibit catalog that was put together at the Boston Public Library, foreword by Barney Frank, oh my heavens. Complied by the history project, Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland, and it's called Improper Bostonians. It went out of print. It went out of print! I would still use it today! Fabulous photographs. In fact, I need to keep it. I 00:45:00have three copies and I need to bring them to class one time and just let people play around with them and pass them around, and so on. I used to use that.

So, some stuff has gone out of print. For years, I used Leila Rupp. And I still use Leila Rupp in the Ecampus course because they don't do the oral histories. So, the materials I use in Ecampus are a little bit fuller. And they don't have the classroom time. So, I make them read more. But they also watch lots of video. A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America-this is getting a little long in the tooth. This is 1999. This is 20 years old. The landscape has changed. She writes for undergraduates which means for a smart 00:46:00general readership. And that's what I loved. And she uses "I". She uses her own voice in here. So, I love it. It's a very good introduction to a periodization of queer history in the United States.

And then finally, I used to make people read the entire book of Wide-Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco. And again, before you and I started working together and the oral history project became so major, this is a book that I assigned because San Francisco was a big thread running through the course for good reason. Because San Francisco was really a mega-and we will still talk about San Francisco in this course-place for gay history in the United States. So that's just some of the stuff. I used to use whole books. The primary source 00:47:00stuff that we would use was in books. So that's sort of an answer to that.

NF: You've touched upon this already several times, but can you describe a little bit more about how teaching the course online differs from teaching it in person?

MC: Right. The materials are different, the activities are different because of our strong dedication to the oral history project in the campus course. So, the materials are different. The structure is not very different, actually. They do, as I say, more reading. Because it's so easy to do this, I do require more Kanopy viewing. And I give some free-choice assignments in the Kanopy viewing.

The discussion segment is at least weekly. And they have a requirement to respond to each other. It's something that I should always do on campus too and 00:48:00I sometimes just don't write that in. Especially for Ecampus, this is really important because they don't have any other way to interact with each other. Once they start interacting, wow, the whole universe opens up. So that's a little different.

And again, I teach several courses. I teach a course in history of psychotherapy and I teach a course in popular music which is very much geared to individual's interaction with popular music. I teach a lot of what I should call "confessional courses" where individual experience really enters into the course. And that is really effective online. I think it's effective online partly because people are pretty safe, they are online, and Canvas builds pretty good walls around the outside world and the Canvas courses. So, they can say 00:49:00things that they might not say to each other face to face. And again, I always say "we're all gonna be nice to each other!". And I don't have to say that. People are always generous with each other. It's nice.

NF: So you found that, both in class and online, people have been able to discuss challenging topics, talk about themselves if they so choose. In both cases that's been the same?

MC: Yeah. It's been extraordinary. I will add in that I trained as a clinical social worker and in the '90s as well, as I was here at the university. And I was working on the history of psychotherapy and I thought, "Need a clinical credential." And while I do not act as a clinician with my students because that would be wildly inappropriate, I think that my awareness of PTSD and identity 00:50:00challenges and all those kinds of things may also inform the way that I teach. And again, I want to emphasize I do not do clinical work on campus or with my students. Woah, that would not be ok.

NF: But you've mentioned that your style is less lecture-based and more a facilitator of conversation which you could characterize yourself that way.

MC: Yeah.

NF: That's always been the case in your teaching?

MC: Not when I began. When I began 35 years ago in Missouri, I was very lecture based because I had come out of graduate school and we heard lectures and we had seminars. So, I had lectures and I had seminars. That's what I started out with. And over the years it's like, "well, throw those notes out". Then we had PowerPoint. This is so embarrassing to say, but PowerPoint has emerged, like the Internet, during my career. [Laughs] People of my generation, all of our 00:51:00teaching has changed in response to these wonderful technologies. I've done much more interaction and gotten much looser in my presentation of material over the years.

NF: Talking a little bit about overall impressions, you've shared some of your memories, but are there any experiences that you had that you were called being challenging both personally or professionally for you?

MC: It remains the case that every time I walk into a classroom, at least the first week, I have stage fright. That is always challenging. Handling things like the ballot measures, the lynchings, the murders, and disappointment about 00:52:00Oregon's retreat from gay marriage which affected me personally, dramatically. That's been difficult. I'm not always sure when I'm going to become emotional in class. I'm not always sure it's a bad idea but it makes you feel awkward. I don't have specific memories. I just know that teaching is like walking a tightrope for me. I don't think I give off that impression, but truthfully it is. That's what I remember as being challenging teaching.

NF: What about some of your fondest memories teaching the course?

MC: My current class will be among my fondest memories. I don't just say that because they're sitting here with us. But wow. And you and I have had some really great groups over the few years that we've taught the course. Yeah, I think doing oral history project will be my fondest memory, really.

[Laughs] Okay, this is a little geeky, but when OSU subscribed to Kanopy and I started going through the list of stuff, and it's like, "Oh my god, it's Christmas morning!"-to be a little inappropriate- "Oh my god, this is great!" 00:54:00The wildly explosive availability of stuff that we could use, that's just been great. The Supreme Court decision that allowed gay marriage, Ellen DeGeneres coming out of the closet on TV, those moments that you walk back into the class and you say, "Wow! Look what happened!"

NF: Thinking about plans for the future, you briefly talked about this at the beginning. The name of the course, Lesbian and Gay Movements in Modern America, would you like to see the name changed, and if so, to what?

MC: Yes. And I think as you asked that and as I looked at the question, I thought what I'll do is make these guys that I'm teaching right now write down their favorite names for the class. Then I have more material to work from. My notion is to make it match the queer archive, say, queer history of the United States. And that would be fun too, isn't it, queer history?

Well, we could do LGBTQ, but then it'll be LGBTQ+++, LGBTQQ+. I mean, that would change all the time anyway. So, I've come to love the term queers, embracing this huge spectrum, or universe, of identities and thoughts. That's what I would probably rename it to. I have to rename it because it's just long in the tooth. Oh my gosh, it's just wrong. "No, we're talking about trans people. We're not 00:56:00talking about non-binary. Because it says lesbian and gay movements." It's just wrong. So that's what I was-something queer.

NF: What happens when you retire? What are your hopes for the future of the course?

MC: Well, I'll keep teaching online as long as my unit hires me to do that. And that's once or twice a year. The Ecampus is responsive to enrollment. So as long as we can fill up the class so that-frankly, it's a financial thing-we can break even in teaching it. And then they're paying for instruction and support and so on. Then it'll continue to be taught.

I feel sad about leaving behind the oral history part. As we speak to each other 00:57:00in early 2020, we're concluding a search among the History faculty for a public historian. It's very likely that person will be working with you. It's a little less likely that they'll be working on queer oral history, although they may well. I have no idea if one of the candidates, or a candidate in the future, will teach the course in the classroom. The beauty of the way that OSU does things-and I think this is true pretty much among all universities-is we individual instructors don't own the course. The university owns the course. So, another instructor can be assigned to do the course. I hope it persists. I just don't know.

NF: So as long as you're able, you hope to keep teaching it online if you're not physically in Corvallis?

MC: Yeah, that's my hope.

NF: And changing the course name, could that happen within the next couple of years?

MC: I should do that now. I'll see what the immediate future of the course-I have written the course recently. So, it has been redeveloped. I mean I've offered it on campus for years, but I did redevelop it formally and technically with Ecampus for continued delivery. And I didn't change the name at that time. So, I need to do the paperwork. Well, that too boring but there's reasons. There's things going on. But-

NF: But that's your hope.

MC: Yeah, that's the hope.

NF: Great. Is there anything that we haven't discussed that you'd like to share? Or anything that we did discuss that you'd like to circle back and talk a little bit more about?

MC: I can't think of anything. Again, I tend to overshare. I think I've pretty much shared all that I wanted to share and a good deal more. So, no I don't 00:59:00think of anything.

NF: Ok great. Thank you so much!