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• Maria Elena Buszek

The authors of Girldrive, the subject of this week's book review, decided to make Kansas City a stop on their cross-country tour primarily because of Maria Elena Buszek, a published feminist scholar and professor at the Kansas City Art Institute. Buszek was acquainted with the mothers of both authors, Nona Willis Aronowitz and Emma Bee Bernstein, because of their mutual presence in the realm of art and feminism.

The following is an excerpt from a chat with the charming and candid Buszek, who spoke about the Girldrive experience, her new class on feminism at KCAI, and her upcoming book, Extra/ordinary: Craft and contemporary art.

The Pitch: What was it like to have Aronowitz and Bernstein visit you on their road trip?

Maria Elena Buszek: You know, they really didn't stay very long. I think they were only in town for two days or so. They both went to school in Chicago, and they both really seemed to like the ways in which Kansas City, as a city, functioned a lot like their favorite parts of Chicago. Like, when they drove out to my neighborhood, I live in north Waldo where there's a lot of older houses, and they were blown away by the historical aspects of the city that they weren't expecting. They were running really late when they got to my house, and had to hit the road. I don't think they stayed longer than an hour and a half. I pretty much fed them breakfast, we chatted, we took a picture, they split. They were apologetic that they couldn't stay and talk for longer. 

Do you end up talking about gender a lot in your classes at the Art Institute?

Oh yeah, in both positive and negative ways. Since my first book got published, I have students who haven't read it but think they know what it's about, and they're very enthusiastic about conversations where they'll say, "I think stripping is really feminist!" or "Sex and the City is really feminist!" I'm not saying those things aren't, but they obviously have a half-formed idea of what feminism means. It leads me to guess that they haven't actually read my book and the complex ways that I talk about sex and feminism in pop culture. So it's difficult for me to take lightly when a young woman says, "Oh yeah, Girls Gone Wild is really empowering." OK, well, maybe you feel empowered, sexually, in that moment, but why don't you carry that sense of empowerment to demanding public childcare, or all the other many things that involve more women than just you?

Do you also point out, "Hey, did you notice that those things that you say make you feel empowered just happen to be the ones that men really like?"

Right. Heterosexual men. So those are the kind of conversations I have anyway, all the time, that wind up to leading me to those sorts of realizations.

Tell us about your new class.

This was the first semester I ever taught a feminist art and theory class there, at the insistence of the students. I never thought to teach one when I first got to the Art Institute in the fall of 2002. Because I do scholarship that is rooted in feminist theory, and I identify as a feminist, I felt my students somehow thought they were going to be propagandized to in my classes. So it was really surprising when, a year ago, a bunch of students came to me and said, "We've all been talking about this. Why don't you teach this class?" 

We started with Mary Wollstonecraft and brought it up to now. I can't believe it took me this long to do it, because everyone was so game. No one had the same ideas, and no one came to it with the same expectations, and I still feel like we all learned a lot, and learned from each other. None of us walked out with any uniform sense of how we're all supposed to think about feminism or behave as feminists. I don't even think everyone walked out of there feeling like they are feminists, either. In a way, I wish they would, but at the same time I don't want to feel like any of my classes are there to convince anyone to be anything. It's about understanding something on its own terms.

I really liked the part of Girldrive where the authors' concept backfires on them, when they meet the academic-type feminists who can't give straight answers to any of their questions.

It's something I complained a lot about in my own research: The frequent inability in academics to make connections between what they do and the real world. I think that was the choice they (Aronowitz and Bernstein) had to make. They had to make something accessible that was about action, so they had to talk to people that maybe weren't "their" people, who weren't prepared to even have those conversations, to get that ball rolling. I get the feeling that a lot of the people who pick up this book haven't had those conversations, and this is going to be the beginning of that conversation for them.

There were lots of feminist terms in the book that

Waver." 

It's OK. A lot of really, really well-respected feminists don't know that. As long as gender inequality exists, feminism will exist, but because it's something that thrives as a result of a new generation picking it up, young women and young activists always feel like they're discovering or inventing it for the first time, and oftentimes don't go back to try and understand how long it's been happening. So trust me, you're not alone. I've had to correct really famous art historians who came up in the 1960s and '70s, when they talk about themselves as First Wave feminists. I'm like, "Oh really? Because Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan didn't exist before you?"

It's been reignited on blogs like Feministing.com, the argument of whether we're in the Third Wave or whether young women even feel comfortable using the "wave" terminology anymore. I find that really interesting because, again, I have ideas about it, but I don't have a say. The ones naming themselves are the ones who get to name themselves. I follow those things with great interest.

I was pissed off when I read about Bernstein's suicide in the book. I felt like it overshadowed the whole concept.

I think so too, and I think Nona is really sensitive about it. Talk about a hard position to be in, where you've worked with your best girlfriend on this book, it's in production, and then your partner dies in this really tragic way. On the one hand, you want to honor her contributions, and to honor your partnership, but how do you do that in a way that doesn't overshadow the positive proposal for this book?

I'm going through it again right now, because I was a really close friend of Anne Winter's, who just committed suicide before Christmas. I understand the anger and the frustration, and just being appalled, in a way. But you also forget that people who aren't suicidal, people who don't have mental health issues, couldn't possibly understand the despair or the illogic that drives these people's lives, and to be sensitive to that.

Your next book is about craft culture. Is it out yet?

No, not till later this year. It's in production right now. In academia, because university presses are peer-reviewed, it's such a long process to get things from manuscript to print. It's just unbelievable.

You had great timing with Pin-Up Grrrls (2006), which came out at the height of the whole Suicide Girls thing.  And now you have great timing with this book on crafting, what with Etsy.com and the attention it's getting.

I'm lucky that so far everything I've wanted to do has had legs and wound up being kind of timely. Although I was bummed that I wasn't able to talk about Suicide Girls in my book because it was pretty much done in 2004-05. But it could have gone on and on. I had this meeting with my editor where he was like, "Sooo, the manuscript's almost done," and I kinda looked at my shoes, and looked back up at him and was like, "But there's this and this and all this other stuff!" And he just put his hand up and said, "Maria -- you must end it." So that was it.

I just finished Chuck Klosterman's latest book and I couldn't believe it -- he had a reference to Michael Jackson's death in it. I was like, How'd he manage that?

Yeah, well, when you're Chuck Klosterman, I'm sure they'll stop the presses for you.