Scripps College faculty inspired Antoinette Myers ’12 to pick her course of study: a dual major in Latin American studies and politics/international relations (PIR).
When she met PIR professor Mark Golub, Antoinette decided she needed to be a politics major so she “could take all of the courses he offered and have them count.” She had a similar experience after spending class time and having conversations with PIR professor Nancy Neiman Auerbach and history professor Cindy Forster.
Antoinette made a great choice.
“I have so many favorite memories of my Scripps education, from spending Thanksgiving at professor Auerbach’s house to traveling to Livingston, Guatemala as part of an independent research project with Professor Forster and Jeanette Charles ’10.”
After changing her thesis topic twice—something she’d advise avoiding, if possible—Antoinette decided to explore the representation of queer Xicana women in Showtime Network’s hit television show The L Word, Aurora Guerrero’s film Mosquita y Mari, and CherrÃe Moraga’s play The Hungry Woman. She was inspired by her own experience of figuring out her identity as a queer woman of color.
“I wanted to explore the ways that these specific media productions highlighted the tensions that women who self-identify as queer and Xicana experience with respect to cultural/national identity and sexual orientation,” Antoinette says.
She argued in her thesis that, while portrayals of family, nationhood, citizenship, and gender in all three productions rely on stereotypes, those written, directed, and produced by queer Xicanas navigate this burden of representation less problematically than mainstream productions like The L Word, which are marketed largely to a white, heterosexual audience.
When not working on thesis, Antoinette stayed busy throughout the Scripps community, working with Wanawake Weusi, the New Student Program, Claremont Queer People of Color, Scripps College Academy, and Scripps Associated Students, where she served as student body president.
“Scripps is the first place that I’ve ever lived at for more than three years, and it definitely became my home,” Antoinette says. “I defend this campus and community, challenge it, critique it, love it, and dislike it in all the same ways I do for my ‘real’ home because I’m truly invested in Scripps as a place of learning, living, loving, and growing.”
Antoinette’s new home is in Hawaii, where she now serves Teach for America Corps as one of its educators. In the future, she plans to get a doctoral degree in education leadership with the assistance of a Gates Millennium Scholarship. Although Antoinette is “absolutely ecstatic” about these opportunities, she misses the Scripps community.
“Scripps really helped to shape me during my formative years and I am thankful for the experience. It takes a community to shape a person, a village to raise a child. I did not do this alone, by any means.”