Oral history interview with Rachel E. Adams, 2015

Biographical Note

Rachel Adams is a professor of English and Comparative Literature. She received her B.A from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990, M.A. from the University of Michigan in 1992, and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1997. Adams specializes in 19th- and 20th-century literatures of the United States and the Americas, media studies, theories of race, gender, and sexuality, food studies, medical humanities and disability studies. She is the director of "The Future of Disability Studies" Project, and also holds an appointment in the American Studies Program. Her most recent book is Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, and Discovery, published by Yale University Press in 2013. She is also the author of Continental Divides: Remapping the Cultures of North America (University of Chicago Press, 2009) and Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination (University of Chicago Press, 2001). She is co-editor (with David Savran) of The Masculinity Studies Reader (Blackwell Press, 2001) and (with Sarah Casteel) a special issue of Comparative American Literature on "Canada and the Americas." She is editor of a critical edition of Kate Chopin's The Awakening (Fine Publications, 2002). Her articles have appeared in journals such as American Literature,American Literary History, American Quarterly, Minnesota Review, Camera Obscura, GLQ, Signs, Yale Journal of Criticism and Twentieth-Century Literature. She has also written forThe New York Times, Salon, Chronicle of Higher Education the, Gastronomica, and the Times of London and blogs for The Huffington Post. In 2010 she was the recipient of the Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award

Scope and Contents

Rachel Adams begins this interview with a recollection of her arrival at Columbia in 1997. She describes the interviewing and vetting process, the completion of her dissertation, and her experience settling into New York City. Adams characterizes IRWGS at that time as a center of leaders. She discusses the feminist pedagogy course she co-taught with Julie Crawford. Adams reflects on the students of IRWGS, the institute's hierarchy, and Columbia's institutional environment. She gives examples of academic support within IRWGS, including her first presentation in the Feminist Interventions Series and the formation of a faculty writing group which included Kristina Milnor, Sandhya Shukla, and Julie Crawford. Adams chronicles her interest in masculinity studies, her co-authorship of the Masculine Studies Reader with David Safran, and the limitations of the field. Adams concludes the interview with a discussion of her tenure process. She elaborates on the financial and temporal challenges facing faculty with children. Adam cites her position as a disabilities scholar and advocate as a product of her scholarship regarding freak shows and the historicization of disability as well as her role as the mother of a disabled child. Her book Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, and Discovery, chronicles her experiences as a parent of a child with Down Syndrome. Adams concludes this interview with her hopes for the future, including wider support for service learning and increased accessibility

Subjects

• Adams, Rachel, 1968---Interviews.
• College teachers--Interviews.
• Columbia University. Institute for Research on Women and Gender.
• Disability studies.
• Dziedzic, Sarah, interviewer.
• Feminism and higher education--United States.
• Feminist theory.
• Interviews.
• Motherhood.
• Oral histories (literary works)

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, 2015