I first met Jennifer Miller last year in the faculty parking lot behind the Humanities Building. She accompanied Professor Susan Seizer and our “Field Methods in Anthropology” class for an exciting trip to observe the 5-C Quiz Bowl team at their weekly practice session—an event that only a lucky few are privy. As we all sat around the room mesmerized by the Quiz Bowl team’s superhuman ability to remember the most trivial facts (name the famous homosexual gunrunner in World War II), I remember thinking I would love to get to know Jennifer better—anyone who can appreciate Quiz Bowl is all right with me. Since then, I have come to learn that her virtues are far greater than her patient appreciation of useless information.
Jennifer Miller, Scripps’ visiting professor in women’s studies, is better known as the founder of New York’s Circus Amok. Circus Amok is a free, traveling one-ring circus that engages its viewers in the world of politics. Each performance invites its audience into a world where, according to the Circus Amok website, “the rope walker is carefully balanced between dream and reality, stripping down to his tutu and finishing the number prancing the rope on flashy 2-inch heels. The knife-throwers are reciting statistics of the AIDS crisis, the stilters are dancing through the minefields of gentrification, the women are lifting the men into the final Amok pyramid.” Key issues are brought to light in a spectacular performance, and, perhaps more important, a diverse audience is brought together by their common laughter and engagement with political issues that affect us all.
Having just wrapped up Circus Amok’s 15th season, Jennifer joins the Scripps community to teach a course titled “Practicum in Feminist Activism: Critical Spectatorship, Live Performance, and the Politics of Identity.” In this course, students will attend an array of live performances in the Los Angeles area in hopes of observing and understanding the culture of feminism today. Performances so far have ranged from Peter Sellar’s modern adaptation of Artaud to the Hollywood Halloween parade. As one of her students has told me, Jennifer is “challenging and innovative in her approach to analyzing performance. It is pretty cool!”
Before meeting Jennifer, I had never met a woman with a beard. Sure, many of the women I have known in my life have had facial hair, but none embrace it quite the way that Jennifer does. She wears her beard proudly, gracefully challenging the category of “woman.” Any woman who owns a pair of tweezers knows that women aren’t supposed to have facial hair. But why not? Women come in all shapes and sizes, with a variety of talents, with a range of opinions. Size may vary, eye-color may vary, skin-colors vary, and so does hairiness. Perhaps it is time to step away from the mirror and realize that we are all different and we are all beautiful.
When I talked to Jennifer last week, she seemed excited about the course and the Scripps students who, as she puts it, are “articulate and vocal” about their opinions. As she talked to me about her life, her circus, and her students, I can’t help but hope that she will enjoy spending time in the Scripps community as much as we enjoy her being here.
Jennifer Miller will be being giving a presentation and performance for the Scripps community in Balch Auditorium at 4:00 p.m. on December 10th.