Q: Where are you from?
C: That’s a complicated question. My father was in the air force, so I grew up all over the world as a child. So, when people ask me the question “Where are you from?” I resist answering it because I don’t really have a singular 'I’m from this place' - and people get very uneasy by that... When you say 'I’m not really from anywhere' it kinda puts people off. They say, 'Well, where were you born?' and I say, 'Well, I was born in the Philippines, but I’m not
from the Philippines.' And then they’re stumped yet again.
When people ask me nowadays, I mostly say from Bloomsburg - although, of course, I did not grow up here; I came here for the job. In terms of where I have lived, I have lived in Guam, while I was in elementary school… I have lived in Turkey, and in Germany when I was in high school… and because of those locations have traveled to many other places. And then, as an adult, I went to college in California for a little while; I finished my Bachelor’s and Master’s in Hawaii, and did my PhD in Arizona.
Q: Where did you graduate from?
C: I finished my Bachelor’s Degree and my Master’s Degree at the University of Hawaii. The campus is on Oahu, which is the main island. I thoroughly loved Hawaii; if I could live there and work there if it were viable to do so. And then I took a little time off kind of figuring out what school was next and landed at Arizona State… for my PhD and spent a good amount of time there. Very different locales! I think Pennsylvania’s a nice sort of in-between of those two in terms of greenery in particular… I was really done with the desert by the time I was finished. I was ready to be out of 100 degree temperatures.
Q: What kind of publications have you written or worked for?
C: I have participated in book collection. One of my mentors - my biggest mentor, I guess you could say, at Arizona State - retired not very long after I completed my PhD. One of the things that happens sometimes for retired faculty… is that someone might develop what’s called a festschrift, a collection of scholarly work that people have put together in honor of that person. One of my articles is in that festschrift, and that was an article about Chaucer and song. I have another article that I published with Arthurian Literature that I published with
Arthuriana. [I’ve also done] quite a few book reviews for the journal
Teaching Medieval and Renaissance. So, a couple of things here and there. I have long been working on a book about the show
Merlin that I need to find more time and energy to dedicate to.
Q: How long have you taught at Bloomsburg?
C: I came to Bloomsburg in 2005. So, I have taught for thirteen years, and this is the beginning of the fourteenth.
Q: What kind of classes do you teach?
C: Gosh. I teach way more classes across a wide swath… perhaps than some of my colleagues. My specialty is medieval literature. Because of the number of students we have within the department, we don’t get to teach our specialty very frequently… and the other piece of the puzzle are what are the demands of the requirements of the various majors. So, because of my specialty, I teach anything that is sort of ‘Medieval.’ I teach Chaucer, I teach Medieval Literature Survey, and when I get to I teach a special topics on Arthurian Literature… which is really fun. I am also very interested in teach topic boundaries - rather, not topic boundaries but timeline boundaries and geographical boundaries.
So, I’m a big fan of coming up with special topics courses... And, because of my interest in gender - I do a lot of sort of work with gender within my own time period - I became interested in teaching gender studies and Feminist Reading of Culture. It kind of started… because I was going to teach that Queen’s Body class. It had low enrollment at the upper level, so I made the argument to shift the class to the 288 Feminist Reading of Culture because of the way the class fit on a broader level. It was a great class, and after that I decided I wanted to venture out into other interests which are pop culture driven. I’ve done the Feminist Reading class many times now with four different topics.
Q: I know that you are involved with the English Honors Society, Sigma Tau Delta, and you are the director for the Gender Studies minor.
C: I am. Essentially, what that means is that I act as the primary advisor for students who are interested in the minor and look for ways to potentially expand the opportunities within the minor. We do have a Gender Studies minor board of faculty across campus to consult on that project.
The English Honors Society... I’ve been doing for at least half of the time I’ve been here. Dr. Entzminger was a previous advisor for that group and she had too much on her plate, so she passed it on to me. I enjoy doing both of those sort of things; they are part of what they might call my ‘service load’ here on campus.
Q: Are you part of any other groups?
C: Those are two of my ‘ongoing’ tasks. Another big one - it’s related in terms of its interests, but it’s not technically connected to the Gender Studies minor - that I have for quite a number of years now been both on the committee and now I’m the chair for the High School Conference on Diversity. Every fall we bring between 100 and 150 high school students from the region to campus for a day of diversity workshops. Right now - or at least for the last couple of years - I’ve been the sole person on campus responsible for this. There are some other committee members who are part of the community system. So that’s a pretty big item for my fall workload, doing all of the coordinating for that. It’s a good and rewarding sort of thing.
Q: I know you have taught a lot of special topics courses, but if you could create your own class without restriction about anything you wanted, what would it be?
C: Well, I have other topics-driven ideas for courses. A new class that I developed the syllabus for and I’m actually going to be teaching for the first time this coming spring is a bit of a spin-off on my interest in Medieval Literature. I’m going to be teaching a genre course on Romance. That was long one I was interested in doing, especially once the department shifted to requiring all of our Lit majors to take a genre course. The medieval period is when romance was born, so I’m uniquely situated. A guilty pleasure admittance: I am a long-time reader of romances. I read them as a teenager and my mom read them, so it was one of those things that bonded us. I’ve always thought it would be interesting to explore the origins of romance.
In terms of a brand-new idea, I have long thought it might be interesting to do a class just on Harry Potter. That would be fun to explore. I have also thought it would be very interesting to do a course just on the works of Joss Whedon. I think just doing all of his shows and his work could be helpful to focus on one individual in film. We don’t often do that in relation to television, and he’s carved out a very specific niche for himself.
Another more sort of literature-driven topic that I thought could have been fun - I thought it would be interesting to explore a course that explored the notion of “into the woods,” of the woods as this kind of dark space where we go to confront things and piece together all of the texts. It could cross a lot of boundaries and we could see the way people use the woods as a metaphor for confronting the devil, for exploring psychological trauma, for transformation, and so on.
Q: Another fun question - create the title of a book you’d like to write?
C: [laughs] You know, it’s funny - I have not really ever been driven to want to write a book, which is maybe sort of weird for a literature professor. I’ve never had that creative sort of drive. I do write a Christmas letter every year, and it has the fun title of “Christina’s Capers.” [laughs] So, maybe it would be fun to draw on “Christina’s Capers” to do a bit of a memoir on some of my travels and experiences over time.
Q: What is the best advice someone has ever given you about English and Literature?
C: I think some of the advice I’ve gotten has been through emulation, of watching and observing how previous teachers and people have exposed what their passions are in the classes I’ve taken. I’m trying to think: have I had some kind of ‘nugget’ I had to repeat? I don’t really think I do. What I do think is valuable… and I’m sad when students can’t do this, although I think it’s driven by practical concerns, which I completely respect - is when students can’t take the course that speaks to them or they’re passionate about because they’re concerned by all these other requirements. Or they can’t go and study abroad because the cost just seems to great. Those moments where a student stops themselves from exploring that slightly risky path - those moments make me sad, and when I have the opportunity one of the things I always try to encourage is a little bit of that risk and that exploration. If you don’t do it when you’re younger, it just becomes that much more difficult to do when you’re older. There’s a greater sort of ability to adapt when you’re younger. I don’t see it as a risk; I see it as growth…. Those things are going to shape you in fantastic ways.
… There’s another point: I get sad when I hear “my parents want this.” I don’t want to undermine parents, and I’m not a parent myself, so I can’t even speak to the reality of being a parent versus the ideal. My parents were encouraging of breaking out. When I was an undergraduate I was studying accounting - for three years. Then, when I transferred to the University of Hawaii, I had kind of an awakening. I had this wonderful professor who I went to talk to because I was taking her class, and she was like, [slaps desk] “You should be an English major! I thought you were - Why aren’t you an English Major?!” I’m a very detail-oriented person; I’m very organized, and when I was in high school I did some business labs that were independent studies. That was fun… but then I got into the classroom and it was dry and I didn’t enjoy it. It seemed the practical course of action. Thankfully I transferred schools and had that class and met that teacher who [slaps desk] was like “I thought you - what are you doing?”
Talking to my parents afterwards, they said “Oh, thank goodness, we thought you should have been doing that in the first place!” ... Here I am, many years later, and it all worked out.
Q: What do you want to see for the English Department? For this blog, or for the English Department as a whole?
C: I’ve always sort of wanted the department and the students in the department to feel more bonded - for students to feel proud to be part of the department, to feel connected to the faculty and what happens here. We’ve tried different things over the years to make that happen, but you cannot force it. I’m hoping that the blog will - if not bond the students together - provide us with a more public face. There are things that we are doing, things people are involved in, and excitement for the accomplishments of the people here, and there’s no dissemination of that information collectively that can reach a different swath of the population - that can potentially reach the students or the alumni.
The liberal arts are in trouble because people don’t perceive, in the larger world, that they have value. They are mistaken, and we will be poorer for those perceptions until the pendulum swings back again. I think if we can show the ways people are being successful, we can show the study of English has immense value.
Thank to Dr. Francis for the interview!
