Jennifer Waldron (OC ’91) has recently returned as a visiting professor in the English department. Waldron graduated a comparative literature major with three required languages. She got her PhD from Princeton University this fall and next year plans to teach at the University of Pittsburgh.

What does it feel like to be back in Oberlin after some time? How has it changed and how has it stayed the same?
It feels great to be back. I love the courses I’m teaching. The students are very creative and have strong personal interests, which makes it a lot more fun for me. I made my friends at other colleges jealous when I told them that two Oberlin students, Meghan Brooks and Charlie Gill, performed Desdemona’s death scene from Verdi’s Otello as part of their final project for the Shakespeare class I taught last term. Oberlin is very much the same in many ways: politically active students, great music, lots of fashions and piercings, but things have changed as well. One thing I noticed, which seemed to be confirmed by last week’s “Off the Cuff” interview with Professor James Millette, is that race is no longer as central an issue on campus as it was when I was here. One of the most valuable things I learned at Oberlin, mainly from fellow students, was how many privileges I had taken for granted as a white person. It’s disappointing to see that so many of the problems we were discussing when I was here 15 years ago haven’t changed — for instance the need for more Black tenured faculty.

What does it feel like to see life on campus from the other perspective, not as a student but as a part of the faculty?
People ask me if it’s weird to teach where I was a student, but I think because I graduated so long ago and I’ve changed a lot, it’s less weird than if I’d gone straight to graduate school and come back. I’ve been a teacher for a long time, been married for 10 years, and have a three-year-old daughter, so my preoccupations and my self-image are very different than they were 15 years ago. Believe it or not, I was pretty intimidated by my professors, not because of anything they did but because I wasn’t proactive enough about my own education. I still felt like I was jumping through hoops to a certain extent, trying to satisfy someone else’s requirements. That really changed when I went to graduate school after being a teacher myself.

What do you think about Oberlin’s grad program in education? Do you think it’s a good idea and do you think that what has been done in order to launch the program is enough?
I definitely think it’s a good idea to have a program where students can get teacher certification and/or do student teaching during college, but I’m afraid I don’t know enough about Oberlin’s program to comment on it. I did take the practicum in teaching while I was here, and the tutoring experience I got was quite useful later on.

Some things never change. When you went to Oberlin you had classes with professor Ron DiCenzo, who is retiring this year. What are your memories of him and what would you like to tell him and his students?
I loved his course on modern Japanese history partly because we read a lot of Japanese literature. I ended up teaching a high school course on Asian literature, in translation, and I used some of the books we had read in DiCenzo’s course with my own students. They loved Kobo Abe. So I would just reflect on how wonderful it is that Professor DiCenzo has made Japanese history accessible and enjoyable for so many generations of students. I would hardly know anything about the subject if it hadn’t been for his course, and I certainly wouldn’t have introduced my high school students to Japanese literature. 

A bit on the lighter side, what permanent changes did Oberlin leave on you? For example, many students now are compelled to show they belong to the Oberlin campus through various piercings, especially since the tattoo parlor opened downtown. Did something like this happen to you as well?
I had my piercings done in high school, but I guess the biggest thing I’ve realized being back here is how much my personal choices about family and parenthood were influenced by my time at Oberlin. One of the permanent changes you can see is that my daughter has my name as her last name and my husband’s name as her middle name. Oberlin made me think, “Well, I can keep my name when I get married but what’s the next step? Why shouldn’t I give it to my daughter?” Also my husband, Benoni Outerbridge, has been her primary parent while I finished my PhD and got a job as a professor. I’ve been lucky to have such a great partner, but in general I don’t think women should be the only ones to have to balance work and family. Our range of choices is a lot wider when male partners are willing to spend time raising children, which I hope is happening more and more.