Cool Cat: M. Eliatamby-O'Brien

story by Morgana Carroll

M. Eliatamby-O'Brien, they/them, associate professor of English director of the Gender and Sexuality Studies program

What is the importance of WGSS and English to you personally?

So in English, I mostly work with narratives from minoritized or underrepresented people, especially forced migrants and refugees and queer and trans people. So it's atypical English in that I'm not studying literature so much but more how do people express in narratives, their identities when just other forms of research alone can't do that and I think that's some of the most, I'm biased, but some of the most important work that someone can do when it comes to different forms of expression, how people are actually representing the wealth of their experiences, and whether it's through comics or through zines or through films or through art, or through books, and then Gender Sexuality Studies, again, highly biased, but I think we've seen nationally internationally, it's one of the most urgent issues and topics when it comes to exclusion and not only of reproductive rights but also trans people's rights. It’s all connected to anyone who has a gender and sexuality and that's all of us. So I think that gender and sexuality studies can offer students in particular a way to think about not only their own experiences and who they are on campus, but also how to get involved with social activism, how to think differently about biases, how to engage more deeply with gender and sexuality intersects with race, class, religion, nationality, and also just to have really fun with a difficult topic because of the way our faculty invites students to make their work their own.

You once mentioned to me the importance of you being a small minority of being a non binary person of color and a doctor. How has that shaped your experience and how you approach a university setting?

Yeah, I try to be pretty loud and proud about that. As much as I can be. Yeah, being both a racial minority and a gender minority and a sexual minority when it comes to my sexuality and then also to be lucky enough to have a PhD and to work at an institution. I think I want to make it clear to students that there are many different paths to engaging with academic work. And so if someone is whether they're in community with me or not, that it's important for students to see themselves reflected not only in the work, but when it comes to professors too. So I try to just be open about my identity but also the barriers I face as someone who is a multiple minoritized person.

One of your interests is collecting bones. What drew you to that?

I started doing sort of alternative jewelry making as a side hobby. I found that I was buying a lot of amazing artisans work and wanting to learn more about it. I'm not terribly artistic in a lot of ways. And I think jewelry making is fantastic. I'm also definitely of the 80s and definitely had a life as a goth kid. So working with bones and animal remains I find absolutely fascinating. I love seeing this resurgence of my students’ generations like bringing back cool bone earrings and necklaces. So even though I don't wear a lot of them professionally, I do find sort of avant garde and freaky niche art really interesting.