Evan graduated with a BA in Women’s Studies in 2009. He is now an Assistant Instructional Professor of Sociology at the University of Florida, having earned his PhD from the University of California-Davis in 2023.
When I arrived at UF in 2005, I knew I wanted to be a researcher, but my understanding of what constituted research was shaped heavily by media representation. I selected a laboratory-heavy science field as my major, expecting to spend my workdays dressed in a lab coat and peering through a microscope. I was committed to doing good in the world, but I had not developed or honed my passions.
I was lucky enough to take an introductory sociology course in my first-year with a recent graduate of the Women’s Studies program. Exposure to the social sciences broadly, and more specifically offerings through the Department—then a Center—such as the emphasis in Theories and Politics of Sexuality, opened up a new world of academic possibilities. I took innovative and enlightening courses with Dr. Angel Kwolek-Folland, Dr. K.L. Broad, Dr. Trysh Travis, Dr. Anita Anantharam, and Dr. Stephanie Evans; under their tutelage, I learned about global human rights, gender inequality and oppression, LGBTQ social movements, intersectional feminism, postcolonial resistance, queer theory, and feminist pedagogy.
I was encouraged to pursue an academic interest in video game studies, with a focus on gender and sexuality, during my time at UF, which has since blossomed into my full research platform. I co-edited Rated M forMature: Sex and Sexuality in Video Games (2015) with Dr. Matthew Wysocki at Flagler College and published articles on LGBTQ representation and inclusion in video games throughout my graduate studies. I found academic community with other scholars, and the multidisciplinary academic foundation I received through Women’s Studies enabled me to communicate easily across lines of disciplinary difference. I often now arrive in spaces as one of the few sociologists, but I rarely lack the vocabulary, theoretical knowledge, or methodological training to engage with scholars in literary studies, anthropology, communications, film and media studies, and the like.
I just completed my first year as a member of the faculty at the University of Florida, and my Women’s IMAGE CAPTION Studies background continues to inform my work. I find myself more empathetic, more understanding, more self-reflexive, and more willing to learn from my students, in no small part thanks to my undergraduate experience in Women’s Studies. I am extremely grateful to have been mentored by such stellar faculty, and I try to“pay it forward”now by encouraging my students to pursue their own curiosities and interests through UF’s dynamic majors and programs.