Marcia Chatelain

Faculty

Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies

Age: 34

Hometown: Chicago, Ill.

Education: B.J. University of Missouri-Columbia, Magazine Journalism; A.B. University of Missouri-Columbia, Religious Studies; A.M. Brown University, American Civilization; Ph.D. Brown University, American Civilization

Area of Research: African American History

Time at Georgetown: 3 years

Courses Taught: “African American Women’s History,” “History of the Civil Rights Movement,” “African American Food Culture”

What led you to become a professor?
What led me to teaching was student activism. In college, I organized some campaigns around various justice issues, hate crimes, equity and access. What I learned from that experience is that I loved the teaching part of organizing, helping people how to figure out how to better navigate their communities, how to become part of the political process. And so, I discovered my passion for teaching and joined it with a love for history and research and made the choice to study how everyday people make a difference in their world.

What is the greatest challenge in your field?
I think the greatest challenge for any historian of any type of group that has been traditionally marginalized is sources, and how to make sure you include their voices in their research. So, my last book that I just finished was about African American girls in the early 20th century, which is really hard to research. And so, you spend a lot of time being really clever about thinking about who would have had interactions with these girls, you think about people who were influential and who were in power, and then you think of the different interactions they had with different communities to try and find those voices.

What is the most fascinating question in your field?
What is power? What are the different ways that we can think how people are powerful? And it’s not just about physical strength, or military strength, or the vote, or access to wealth. It’s about collective power, it’s about organizing, it’s about the ability to disrupt processes and reshape ideas. I think that what African American studies has done really effectively is to change the discourse on who is powerful and the different ways people can exercise power.

How do you approach teaching and the balance between teaching and research?
I approach teaching as this chance for a bunch of people, who, at the beginning of the semester, may or may not know each other, to find out more about each other and more about me. I like that history lends itself to telling really fascinating stories about the past. I like characters and twists and turns. I really do see the classroom as an opportunity to model civil discourse. I like to say in class, “We’re not the comments section of YouTube, so we treat each other with respect.” We really try to engage each other with people. In terms of balancing my teaching and research, I’m really fortunate that they are one and the same. In a semester that I was finishing up my book on African American girls, I’m teaching an African American childhood class. So that, I can always engage in whatever I’m working on. My food class definitely ties into my next book.

What would be your ideal course to teach?
I would love to teach a course about contemporary political, racial and psychological issues using only reality television as the texts. Because, as the spouse of a psychologist and as someone who is always thinking critically about racial and political discourses, I think that reality television is always in conversation with the ways people present themselves and how they see the world.

What drew you to Georgetown?
I think that I have always been a Hoya, because I went to a Jesuit high school in Chicago and Catholic school was my life for the first 14 years of my education. And so, I think that before I even applied for this job at Georgetown, I had already bought into Georgetown values. These values are my values, and I love to be part of it. What I like about Georgetown students is that Georgetown is an elite school that always reminds you not to be an elitist. And that’s my favorite thing about Georgetown. A tone is set that you should be very proud of your accomplishments, but we don’t use that to harm anyone, we use that to make the world better. And I think that’s why I can work at a place like this and fit in. I think everyone approaches it with a good spirit and a good heart.

Has Georgetown’s Jesuit identity affected how you teach?
I think that my teaching is informed by Jesuit ideals and feminist principles. So, it’s this idea that everyone has something to offer for the greater good, and so my goal is to make sure that everything we’re learning in the classroom is an opportunity to not only love learning more, but to love each other as a community more.

What would you be doing if you weren’t in academia?
I would love to believe that I would be a political strategist. I think that I would be very good at organizing voters and helping campaigns reach people.

Interview by Sheena Karkal