Pacheco-Muñoz.J.2548_8.5.2025_Transcript

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0:04
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: All right. Could you state your name, age, association with the Department at UW-Madison, and how long you've been here?

0:08
Joneil Pacheco-Muñoz: Okay, so my name is Joneil Pacheco-Muñoz. I am a graduate student
here at UW. You say age, right? I am 24 years old, and in less than three weeks I will be 25. and I have been here officially more than a year, because I came here last August 18, 2024. No, wait. Today's 15. So in three days, I will be here a full year, which is amazing. Interesting.

0:45
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: All right. Let's try to trace your experience with a few introductory
questions first. What drew you to gender and women's studies? What was happening in
your life, your community, or the world at large that made it feel important to you?

1:00
Joneil Pacheco-Muñoz: That's an interesting question. So, I think, I mean, this is going
to be an archive, so I will give the longer answer. I was doing a bachelor with three majors in La Universidad de Puerto Rico, University of Puerto Rico, Rioperas Campos. I was doing psychology, Puerto Rican studies, and gender and women's studies at the same time. And I was interested in community psychology, so specifically how psychological factors and identity process making is built, destroyed, and taken within individuals in community. And I was also being part of el Departamento de Afrodescendencia y Racialización, which means the Department
of Afrodescendencia and Racialization, or Black Studies in Puerto Rico, which is the first and only Department of Black Studies in the region or in the Spanish Caribbean, if I'm not mistaken. And I decided because pressure from my best friend, a mentor, and my current advisor or boss at the moment, Mara Santa Feores, I decided that I wanted to apply to a Mellon Mason undergraduate
fellowship scholars. I already knew that I wanted to do community psychology within gender and race studies or focus on race and gender makings. And when I decided to, apply to this fellowship they told me like, okay, you are a great fit for the fellowship, the only problem is that one of the requirements is that you need to study or need to want to apply for a PhD in specific disciplines, and psychology was not there. I was like, dang it. And a professor, her
name is Varima Rosa, she told me, okay, so I did my PhD in clinical psychology, but I only work with gender studies and I work with gender counseling. The only reason why I decided to do a PhD in psychology is because that was the only opportunity that I had, and there was no gender studies PhD at the moment. So she asked me, do you want to be or study psychology because that is actually what do you want, or is it because due to your life experiences and limitations, that is the only thing you can afford to aspire to? I was like, damn, I haven't think about that. So I decided that I was going to change and try to look for PhDs that were joint program between psychology and gender studies. But then I was like, why? I don't want to do singular counseling with people. I don't want to be all my life in an office or a lab. And what I want to do, which is I work with communities and activism, I can do it if I find myself in any PhD. It doesn't matter the name of the PhD. What matters the most is the methodologies, the courses, and the advisors that you have. So I was like, okay, I'm going to apply for GWS and Black Studies PhDs. And at the moment, I was taking a course of queer theory with a professor, [name], who actually did their master's here at UW. And they told me, I think you will be a great fit for UW-Madison. And actually, there is a new Puerto Rican professor there. And I was like, okay, I had to see this. and I mean do I keep saying more? Okay, actually, UW Madison was at the bottom of my list. When I was applying, I was like this is in the midwest, it's really cold, I didn't want to go there. It was literally, I applied to six PhD programs and it was my number six. Yeah, sorry. But when I was, when I visited and I think first when I met my advisor, Aurora, I was so able to go with the flow of the conversation, and I think being from Puerto Rico even though we are a colony or part of the United States, however do you want to code it, people don't know about us, and I had to over-explain myself. And sometimes I found myself in a position which I am teaching and not learning. So when I met her, I was like, I can learn with her because she already knows the things I want to do. She already knows the people I want to work with. So I was like, okay, this is a game changer. And then she took me to the lake and water for me is really important. I cannot be in a place where I don't have a body of water. So from, bottom six, it went to actually my first option, and then I got accepted, and I was like, I don't have anything else, so that is the reason why I chose GWS, and that is the reason
why I chose UW Madison.

6:14
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: So what does it feel like to be part of an established field of gender and women's studies? Were there professional or academic risks?

6:23
Joneil Pacheco-Muñoz: I will start by saying, I think first it was scary. I think I have this universal conspiracy in which i'm always introducing myself in places that are information. It's actually during the last two years, the third place where I come as a new person or someone who
has to be involved in the creation and formalization of things. And I think this is great because I get to be part of it, but also bad because I don't get to enjoy certain things. So I was like, first, GWS is a new discipline feel, interdisciplinary feel as we want to call it. But two, I didn't get into a new PhD program. Third, I think there is certain risk for example being told that I don't have academic curiosity because it is a subfield or concentration, rather than actually a traditional field and I think that it's something that can impact how I move academia if I actually can get into academia or not. But it's also scary because we got here in 2024, we got an election, there is certain risk not only of GWS as a department, as a new department, but also individual risk of the people who are moving in academia, graduate students, where it's a stake for us. We also have international students. We have people who are citizens but have international family. So it is not only hard being a GWS scholar, but it's also hard being
a human being in these times, in academia and in the United States. So, for example, I've been
joking this whole time of like, if this department disappears, I will get back to my country. I will start selling sunshells on the beach and I will be happy. But of course that is not the reality. There are risks and there are promises to us, promises that we have within ourselves. So it's scary it's scary and it's risky but I think it's a risk worth taking and if we didn't believe that we would not be here. So yes.

8:53
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: Speaking of the scary times, what does it mean to study GWS in scary times?

8:58
Joneil Pacheco-Muñoz: Wow. What does it mean to study GWS in scary times? You got me thinking. I'm thinking in Spanish. I actually don't have a formalized answer to that. But I think my short answer, and then I'll give my long answer, will be revisioning what GWS means. And it will mean for us to come back to our roots or disappear. I think it's known within the field that GWS emerged as an activist field in academia between the '60s and the '70s. Then we got co-opted then we got institutionalized and we got funding, which is great because we need to eat in
this world, but at the same time, many people question why GWS institutionalized and became a department and became a bachelor's, then a master's, then a PhD. A lot of people were not happy about it and many people leave because of that and because, even though there are some benefits, there's also some dangers. And I think right now we are in a moment in which I can say UW-Madison has the privilege of having academic commodification. I think that is the right word? We have a good place or a secure space in academia, but it might not be like that for every department across the United States, and it might not be a reality in 10 days, example. It can be as hard and dramatical as that. So I think it will mean to go back to what, what GWS means for us in the beginning, but also what GWS, and I will say feminist studies, means for us outside of academia. I think it is important to be in the classroom, but I think it's also important to open our doors and our windows to hear what people are saying or doing in the streets. So I will say that this would be a full circle moment in which we will find ourselves in the 16th, 17th, 18th, thinking about what is our role in academia, what is our role in engaging with activism, what is important for the classroom and what is not, and also what
will count as a GWS or feminist work for itself and for others. So, yes, I think this
is a call to action for us to go back to those roots and revision ourselves or be ready to disappear. That sounds harsh, but yeah.

12:08
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: Take us through what the main conversations and debates that were unfolding within the department when you joined in 2024. What was happening in the wider community? How was that playing about in the department here? What were the internal debates?

12:30
Joneil Pacheco-Muñoz: Yeah, I guess within the internal debates, we are a new PhD. So we are having conversations really general and really transparent, such as, what does a PhD mean? What rigorosity means for a PhD. Do we need to have a disciplinary spine for students in which, despite being GWS, our students do a concentration in anthropology, history, quantitative methods, anthropology, or do we have a free-for-all PhD? But also there were another risky or more under-the-table conversations of, like, what is the state for graduate students? How do we live well doing a lot of labor, but also educating ourselves? For example, a conversation that I have with other students and with other professors is, why do we have LGBTQ, public health,
history, anthropology, psychology, individualized concentrations, but we don't have black studies concentrations, we don't have race, ethnicity, nationality studies concentration. I think another conversation that we are having, I'm talking like, I'm assuming this will be
gone in 50 years, so I will be either dead or we will not have electricity for you to communicate with me, so I'm going with that. We're also having the conversation of how to take care of our international students. I think us as students are also questioning ourselves how important is it is for us to have a GWS PhD, not in the sense that we don't think it's important or that we don't think that the discipline has rigor, but in the sense of, what else can we do with what we're learning? Not just going to conferences, not just writing papers for peer-reviewed articles, but how do we implement these things outside of academia? At least one of the questions that I've been having myself is also, I know that GWS and UW-Madison has a long history of collaborating with communities, but coming from a colonized island, I question myself, what the department is doing with the Ho-Chunk Nation? Why, and this might be simplicity, but I ask myself why we don't have open doors for Ho-Chunk Nations to come here, to gather here, not just inviting the people for an activity about doing ceremonial tea and learning about Ho-Chunk culture, but why these spaces are not willingly open for when these people need it. And I'm trying to think, for example, how Silvia Rivera, a trans Puerto Rican
activist in New York in the '60s, I think is the right word, used to fight about how universities in New York were open for activists and they were closed. Other conversations... I think within the graduate students, we're talking about how to take better care of ourselves. As you may know, UW-Madison doesn't have the best stipends. So it can be hard to be a graduate student with no time, with a lot of labor to take care of ourselves, both mentally, physically, in terms of food, in terms of free time. So, yeah, I think those are the questions. Oh, I will say I think one hidden conversation during our political times is who is the better fit person to take leadership with this department and how do we decentralize whiteness but also not put people of color in the front, knowing they will take the more fire under these next elections, right? So these are harder questions and conversations to have, but they are necessary. I guess other-- I'm going to keep talking. I think other questions that, as a graduate student, we've been having is, how can we diversify curriculum? For example, I study Latin America. How many people study Latin America in the Caribbean or department? I can only think about three people,
and I can name them. Do I name them? Yes. Aurora Santiago, Ruth Goldkins, and Keisha Linsley. So I don't, there's not enough class about race and ethnicity in our department. There's none class about Latin America in the Caribbean in our department. I think there's only one or two. So that can be an opportunity for a department to grow. That is an opportunity I lose as a student that needs to be prepared in those fields and in those regions. So, I think us graduate students have been talking about a lot of things, departmental-wise, institutionalized-wise, outside of academia-wise, that can further enhance our opportunity and experience here. Because we came to learn, but we also came to feel secure. So, yeah.

18:15
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: How do you feel about the department's diversity?

18:26
Joneil Pacheco-Muñoz: I think, okay, I will say this. When we were taking the course about debates in the gender and women's field, we did a reading about the history of GWS in UW-Madison. I remember that in that reading, I remember the author, but the author was talking about how they identified the need of diversifying in relation of race, because there were not enough black people in the department, so one action that they decided to take was trying to diversify the pictures, the paintings, the wallpapers, and try to include other bodies in the department in terms of, like, visual culture. But there was still lack of people of color present in flesh and bones, in the flesh, as Horton Spillers will say. And, I mean, I'm looking
at the room, and I see a lot of pictures of people of color, but I still need to see more
people of color present. I think within the cohort, that is really great. We have a lot of people, international students. I will say we have a great amount of black people within the students. We have a lot of Asian students, but, I'm from the Caribbean, I speak Spanish. I don't see a lot of engaging with Latin America and the Caribbean. I'm the only Spanish-speaking student. I will also say there isn't a lot of Latine, Latino, Latina, Latine, Latinx faculty. There's only one, which is my advisor. And that creates an academic poorness, not only in the intellectual production that is being thought in the department, but the access that we have to courses, the representation that we have as a department in our meetings, and also the security that students need and students want when they come to a department. Right now, I'm pretty
sure many Latin American and Caribbean students, if they want Latin American and Caribbean
professors, they go to Chicla or they go to Lassie's, they don't go to GWS. So I think we definitely, the department has done a lot of growth. If we compare it to the '60s, there has been 60 years to put the work, there has been some work done, but we need more work. I don't
want to feel alone in this apartment, and I don't want to feel like... and I appreciate that my folks, for example, have made for me this space comfortable, and they have created a cultural, sensible place for me because I know I'm the only person from my region, so they have really put a work done that and I appreciate that, I owe you. But it's also another work to be done and, for example, I think they have community within, for example, Asian community, Asian community in our department. There's a lot of Asian students. But if I don't have my own community, and even though I recognize the importance of breaking those barriers and create solidarity between national race ethnicity boundaries, I also need my people. So I think there's more work to be
done and there's more people to be included and if we are hiring more professors and more staff and more shares, I can meet a lot of Latina people who are looking for jobs, so keep that in mind.

22:33
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: How do you think that we happen now that there seems to be a university-wide budget cut? How do you think that might impact some diversity?

22:51
Joneil Pacheco-Muñoz: I think it should not impact. And this is why I believe it should not impact. The department is still hiring people. The department is still offering jobs, it's still offering positions, it's still offering fellowships, it's still offering visiting professors. So who are we giving these opportunities? I understand there are constraints, and maybe we cannot hire five professors in two years. But the department will hire two professors in three years. So I think we should be cognizant about who are we providing these opportunities in the department. And not only in identity politics direction, because I think that can be harmful for the department. I think current conversations in GWS are aiming to dismantle identity politics. But also, when we talk about meritocracy, when we talk about rigorosity, why are we always aiming for the white people? What does that say about GWS as a department? And what does that say about our notions of who counts as a great scholar and who doesn't? So I think it should not
impact. Yeah.

24:14
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: I wanted to follow up on one thing you said much earlier. Which was that, and
it was very interesting, it's something I've also been thinking about, which is that GWS is at a
crossroads where it has to examine itself internally and that could sometimes even mean dismantling GWS as a whole. What does that mean?

24:34
Joneil Pacheco-Muñoz: I don't think GWS need dismantling, I think we live in a world of contradiction. And I remember I was one talking with one of my best friends, I will say, [name], and I was talking to him about the contradiction that I had trying to be an activist with also being academia, and I remember he told me that is one of the most beautiful contradictions to have. And I agree. I don't think we need to dismantle GWS, but GWS needs to revisit the way
we structurize ourselves. Maybe we need a PhD. Maybe we don't. Here we are in the PhD. But if that is a contradiction, how do we letter that contradiction, right? We talk a lot about feminist ethics, about feminist politics, then we should have higher stipends for our students. We should have better disposition to take care of our international students. We need to have more space for activists and to engage, not force, because force is a bad use of power, but to encourage our students to go outside academia. We talk a lot about pleasure activism and about, how do I say osseo in English? It's not free time, but the time we secure for pleasure and time. What? No, not leisure. I don't know the specific word, but like, oh, do you remember the
reading we did for, about Sami and Audre Lorde, in which we talk about the time Audre Lorde took for herself to take care of herself? Yeah, okay, so that type of time, we say that feminism is also taking care of yourself, to not put yourself in a precarious position, to not overwork, because we cannot fall into capitalism, but yet students don't find that time because we are over labor. Right now, for example, we're having conversations about what will happen if
budget cuts are being done, and what would that mean for graduate students. So, I think that those are the ways in which GWS can work with those contradictions of being academia but not falling into institutional forces of powers that we have criticized in traditional disciplines. Because, yeah, I mean the GWS department will not go anywhere. I think, even though I criticize coloniality of knowledge, I criticize academia, I know there's also a political reason why GWS go into academia. But the main point of that was trying to dismantle how we teach, how we produce knowledge, and not get in the same route as these other traditional disciplines has been done. So I think we talk a lot, we write a lot but in the practice, there are things to be done. And it is not the same to get inside academia to dismantle academia, or to contaminate academias, as [name] which is a Cuban feminist will say when she does her academic work, to
say we're now in academia, we don't care about what is going on. And I think what we read should
translate to the way we do GWS. And I don't think it's the same way of teaching GWS and doing GWS. So yeah, the contradiction will be there. I think the final point is what do we do with that contradiction and how do we manage it.

28:27
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: My final question here, actually not my final question. What is the relationship
of GWS today, and GWS at UW-Madison today, to social movements? What do you think the relevance is, if at all?

28:46
Joneil Pacheco-Muñoz: Hmm. I will say, I will probably talk a lot of gibberish because I am not from Wisconsin, so there are some things I know I don't know. So, but thinking in
relation to Puerto Rico, I think there are general things, right? GWS started as an academic activist space. We did not necessarily care about academic meritocracy. We cared about giving space for students to think about what they have nothing and to put it into practice outside. I think GWS has a commitment of putting students out there, for students to build connection, relationships, and commitment with the things that are building outside. I don't, for what it matters if a student learn about the Ho-Chunk Nation and how UW-Madison displaced this whole community, if after reading this they will say, oh, damn, sad that happened, I will keep my courses. No, like the idea is that students read that so they can say, okay, this land
still belongs to someone. I have to go there and see how I can collaborate with. And even if the institution will not allow to provide this land, I can provide these spaces for them. I don't know why I keep going to the Ho-Chunk Nation example. I think it's the one that I have more recently because of Annie's class, and I keep thinking about that. But yeah, I think there's a lot of things that are happening in Madison. Right now, for example, Madison has a lot of Latin American migrant communities. There's a lot of Venezuelans, there's a lot of Peruvians, there's a lot of Colombians here. And I'm talking about the experience of the region. I know there are many other migrants, but talking outside of the university, and those people who came because
of work, because they came with their families, what are we as a department doing to protect
migrant communities? For example, I think UW-Madison had ties with Israel, or we in some kind of way continue to provide space for these people. Recently, there was a company who was hired to do some things, and there were people who were funding. What has been GWS saying about Palestinian genocide? I do understand we have certain constraints as an institution, but there are things we can do in our classrooms. And for example, this is something I really love
about GWS in Puerto Rico. The professor had a course, and actually I think I have, like, three examples. I took a class about laziness, queerness, and work in Puerto Rico. The professor was a
historian trained with a PhD. This was not in her contract, but she decided to contract someone who I think they did their master's in sociology, but this person was a sexual worker, and her full-time job was a sexual worker. This was not in her contract, but the professor decided that if we were going to talk about work and sexual work, the best person to talk about that was a sexual worker, and the professor, with her own income, decided to pay this person, for this person to be there and be the person who centralized knowledge. Sometime, I had a professor who was an active member of La Coletiva Feminista y Construcción, and one day she said we're
not going to class. The classroom will be in [Spanish], like the day of the working woman. And we as a course that we're talking about feminist activism will engage with feminist organizations. So we will go to the march and will collaborate and help this organization. After that, if you want to continue collaborating with them or not, that's on you. But today, because I am the professor, we will do that. In the sense that you are also able to do that, for example. So why are we not engaging more with activist organizations? Why are we not taking courses in the street? Why is there a march, or department isn't doing statement or inviting students to that? I understand there are risks and there are fears, and there's people we need to protect. But there's also people who have a lot of privilege in this institution and in our department. There's people who have huge academic platforms who can't be doing more for activism and for the protections of our students if something happened. For example, the university march, not the university, students organized a march in solidarity with students who were being arrested. And many of our students went to that. What is the support of GWS about that? And I think there are things who are negotiable. There are things that are not. There are things that we need to maybe water down, there is things that are not. And for example in the case of a genocide, there is no time to be, we say in Spanish, tibia, which is like light warm. Like, there is no space for that. For example, I am from Puerto Rico. There has been a lot of things
happening in Puerto Rico. The department know there are Puerto Rican people in the department, what is the department doing about that? I think there are ways in which we can show support and we can extend the head of GWS outside academia to provide practical ways of doing and practicing GWS that we are not doing. And yeah, I mean, I know that there is a risk. But there is a risk I'm willing to take. I would not like for the university to keep me out. But if that is what needs to be done, I will not put some morals or some activism or some things sugar-coated because I want to protect myself. Because sometimes when I'm protecting myself, I'm not protecting the person right beside me. And I think that's something we need to have more clear in this department. And I think people need to be more willing to risk their privilege. not in the benefit, but in the life and death of others, because people are literally dying because of us not being clear. So yeah. I hope I answered. I took a lot of things.

35:57
Edwin Elizabeth Thomas: All right. Is there anything else you wanted to add?

36:01
Joneil Pacheco-Muñoz: After that question? No.