Krystka Bugajski
Blog Post #1
Hello everyone! My name is Krystka Bugajski; I am from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and during the semester, I live in Edgewater, just south of Loyola’s Lakeshore Campus. Currently, I am a senior undergraduate student majoring in Women’s Studies and Gender Studies and minoring in Psychology. I chose to major in WSGS because I was interested in the subject matter, and I wanted to learn how to effectively communicate with others about the social justice issues that I am passionate about. I also love that I am able to integrate what I have learned from WSGS into the work that I do for my other classes. In addition to my classes, I also work at the ticket office on campus, so if you come to any Loyola sporting events, you might see me there!
This semester, I am working as the undergraduate intern with the WSGS office here at Loyola. I learned about this opportunity last spring from one of my classmates, who was interning at the time. They explained the basic responsibilities of the role, and it sounded like a good fit for me. After meeting with Dr. Jones Hemenway, I got the job! I was very excited because I knew it would be a great way to apply what I have learned in my WSGS classes in a work environment, and I would be able to develop my collaborative skills in a new setting. Now that I have started this position, I am most interested in how the values of a feminist office influence the work that we do and in how these values differentiate such an office from other workplace environments. Additionally, I have a number of goals that I aim to achieve over the course of the semester. First, I want to become adept at the various software programs that we use in the office, including the website building program, T4, and the site that we build newsletters with, Mailchimp. I am also responsible for our Alumni Newsletters, and I look forward to gaining a better understanding of what is most interesting to the subscribers. Another goal that I have is to develop my ability to be a productive collaborator in an environment where there are many people working on different projects. This is a new experience for me, and I want to be the best I can be for the office. Finally, I hope to grow my self-confidence as an effective member of a team. I anticipate that working toward these ends will be useful for any job that I might have in the future and also push me out of my comfort zone in a good way.
In the first three weeks of this internship, the environment of the WSGS office has been lovely. At the beginning, I was fairly nervous because this is a new experience, but unsurprisingly, everyone has been incredibly kind, which eased my anxiety quickly. I knew from the previous intern that the website software could be troublesome, but so far, I feel that I have a good handle on the most basic functions, and I am excited to continue to get better at making site updates. Additionally, I will be sending out my first newsletter in the coming weeks, and I am looking forward to seeing how the alumni engage with that. Overall, my experience has been overwhelmingly positive, and I can’t wait for the rest of the semester!
Blog Post #2
Hello again everyone! My name is Krystka Bugajski, and I am almost done with my undergraduate degree. I am in my final year of the Women’s Studies and Gender Studies program; I also have a minor in Psychology. I am currently working as an intern in the WSGS office here on campus. I just finished my seventh week of work, which means that my internship is almost half over. It feels like the time has passed very quickly!
During the past several weeks, I have spent the majority of my time making updates to the program’s website. As a result, I have gotten much better at using our website software, T4, which has made it easier to make more significant changes to the website. As I grew more comfortable, I began to feel like I could contribute more to our site. With this in mind, I decided to reach out to our two newest affiliate faculty and ask if they would be willing to answer a few questions about their work and be featured on our site. This is a project that the previous undergraduate intern worked on, and I think that it is important to continue it so that our students can learn more about professors that they may have or be interested in having. I also think that this is a great way to highlight that our program is interdisciplinary and offers classes within many other majors. This was something that drew me to WSGS when I first declared my major, and I am excited to emphasize this on our website. Additionally, I am looking forward to this project because I have heard great things about both professors and their work, and I am grateful that I will get to pick their brains.
In addition to the website, I have worked on two other projects: alphabetizing the WSGS office’s lending library, which included creating a document with every title that we have and sending out my first alumni newsletter. To be honest, alphabetizing the books took a few hours longer than I anticipated, and while it felt tedious at times, I am glad that I know more about the range of books that we have in the office. It was cool to see how authors apply feminism to many different areas of study, from religion to communications. While I obviously did not read every book, just seeing the variety of titles helped me understand that a feminist perspective is always relevant, as my professors have often said. Finally, I sent out the first alumni newsletter of the new school year. I have never developed a newsletter before, so this was a very new experience. My favorite part was reaching out to an alumnus, the person who interned at the WSGS office before me and learning more about their experience with the program. It is great to hear about how this program has impacted others for the better.
While working in the WSGS office, I think that one way I am developing my own social justice skills is by making information more easily available to several groups of people. Sometimes, I think it can be difficult to find information about topics related to social justice, and by keeping our website updated and adding the perspectives of new affiliate faculty, I feel like I am helping to mitigate this problem, though it is a relatively small way. In doing so, I am also taking in information that I would likely not have seen otherwise, so I am learning and widening my own perspective as well. I feel that this can only help me be a stronger advocate in the future. Additionally, I have never been a person that is particularly social and working with the website has allowed me to develop other skills that are likely to be useful in doing social justice work.
Blog Post #3
Hello, hello! In case you’ve forgotten, my name is Krystka Bugajski, and I am a Women’s Studies and Gender Studies major at Loyola. I will be graduating in the spring. This semester, I am interning with the WSGS office in the Crown Center, and it is already week 12! I cannot believe that I am almost done with this internship; it feels like the time has flown by.
I have learned so much in my time with the WSGS office, and I think that these lessons have helped me grow as a person and prepared me for a career I will have in the not-so-distant future. Going into this internship, one of my personal goals was to grow my confidence about being a productive and useful member of an office, and I definitely feel that I have achieved this. I am lucky to have wonderful and kind coworkers, and my boss is excellent as well! They have trusted me to make good decisions about the WSGS website and have been nothing but kind about the work I have done. As a result, I feel comfortable trying new things to make our site better, and I know that I make good decisions. This confidence is beneficial in all areas of my life. Another skill that I have gained from this internship is proficiency with our website software, T4, and I think this will help with any career that I may have in the future. Even if the job I have uses a different website software, I will know the basics of website updating, which is invaluable given how important websites are for companies. Finally, I think that this internship has helped me further my activist goals. For me, I often want to do something to help, but I do not always know where to start. This semester, one of my biggest projects has been updating and expanding the website page that has resources for getting educated and getting involved. Doing this has made me aware of local organizations that I can join and that are already doing important work; I never would have known about them without this internship. I am grateful to be working in a space that encourages me to improve in many areas and helps me develop skills that I will be able to use no matter what I end up doing.
As this semester is wrapping up, I am bit bummed to be leaving the WSGS office as an intern! Everyone is so kind, and it has been a great experience. This may seem weird, but I am definitely going to miss our weekly staff meetings. Every week, we start off with an icebreaker question or activity, and it is always fun and a little silly. I really enjoy learning a little bit more about my coworkers from these ice breakers; I am so glad that I had the opportunity to work with the lovely people in the office.
Finally, not only is this semester almost over, but so is my time at Loyola overall. I am graduating in the spring, and this is actually my last semester in Chicago because I am studying abroad next spring. Because of that, this internship is my final requirement before officially completing the major, and I have gained so much from this program. If anyone reading this is considering a major or minor in WSGS, I highly recommend it. I love that WSGS has a multitude of interdisciplinary options because I feel like my education has truly been well-rounded. Additionally, I have been able to use what I have learned from the WSGS major in each of my other classes and in my life in general.
Max Pins
Blog Post #1
Hello! My name is Max Pins, I am a senior at Loyola University Chicago, and I am majoring in Women’s Studies and Gender Studies as well as History and am minoring in Spanish. I am currently enrolled in the History Department’s 4+1 program, so I am finishing my bachelor’s degree this year as well as starting my master’s degree in history with a concentration in Women/Gender History. My studies are driven by a passion for Queer History, a field I am planning on working in as a career. In my free time I am president of the history club at Loyola, I rollerblade, I cross-stitch, and I read.
I have decided to do a WSGS internship as I wanted to gain insight into what doing WSGS research can look like professionally. This search led me to apply to work with Dr. Weinreb of the History Department. Dr. Weinreb’s project: “Anorexia Nervosa and the Rise of Disordered Eating in the Postwar World” covers a lot of topics I am super interested in as a Women/Gender Historian. This project analyzes how eating disorders in the 1970s-1980s grew from an essentially unknown status to a pandemic. Through this research the goal is to understand why certain populations are diagnosed with eating disorders and how they have been treated. Additionally, this is a very intersectional project, taking on a transnational approach. We are looking at sources from the United States, West Germany, and Great Britain. Another focus of the project is how eating disorders are intertwined with race, class, gender, sexuality, and other intersectional factors. I believe that this internship will grant me a greater understanding of gender history and queer history from the 1970s-2000 and in these three locations. Through the internship I will be building on both my research skills as well as my experience working with primary sources. Thus far I have been working on cataloguing primary source materials Dr. Weinreb has gathered from the Schlesinger Archives. I will also be able to conduct my own research at Northwestern’s facilities. Finally, I will be able to focus on how queerness intersects with eating disorders, a topic I am really excited to learn about and haven’t done historical work on previously!
This internship mostly involves independent work on our own, although we also meet as a group every three weeks which I greatly appreciate. This means that the work is very much self-motivated, which can be a difficulty! Fortunately, I have developed an overall schedule approved by Dr. Hemenway and have created a weekly work schedule for myself and feel confident that I will be able to successfully work asynchronously. It will be interesting to see how this experience goes as the internship continues.
Blog Post #2
Hello again! My name is Max Pins, and I have been interning for Dr. Weinreb in the History Department throughout this fall semester. Dr. Weinreb’s project is called “Anorexia Nervosa and the Rise of Disordered Eating in the Postwar World”. The project focuses on the emergence of anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive overeating as medical diagnoses and how these diseases went from being practically unknown to widespread. Mainly my work has been cataloguing primary sources from the Schlesinger Archives into a google excel sheet, so far focusing on sources organized under activists Judith Stein and Sharonah Robinson.
Judith Stein and Sharonah Robinson both worked in the fat liberation movement, oftentimes intersecting with the fat lesbian liberation movement, during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. In the Judith Stein archival material there are articles from Fat Liberator Publications, letters regarding the organization Boston Area Fat Liberation, and letters between herself and other activists like Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran. Sharonah Robinson was involved in the organization Fat Activists Together, and her archival materials also contains articles about dieting and weight. These sources are from fat liberation news sources as well as news sources like the Boston Herald and National Enquirer. It has been really interesting to see how fat liberation groups discuss body image, dieting, etc. in comparison to popular media.
Along with cataloguing primary sources, I have been able to do some primary source gathering myself. Last Friday I went to Northwestern to use their massive ProQuest Historical Newspapers database. My instructions were to search with the keyword “anorexia” within the time frame of the 1970s-1990s, focusing mainly on earlier material. The document types I looked for were letters to the editor, features (so longer articles focusing on a specific topic/person), and advertisements. Dr. Weinreb told me to focus on more individual/specific material such as personal stories and regional news and avoid general info articles meant to educate the public. Lastly, I was told out of these criteria to download whatever I found interesting. And wow, was it interesting! I found a lot of personal stories within the features and letters to the editor, and it was touching, and honestly heavy, to read the experiences of individuals struggling with disordered eating. There was definitely a gender component to the materials I found. Most of the stories featured women, though there were some with men. The ads seemed to largely target women, one ad I found in many newspapers in the 1980s was a woman in a hunched over position with a scale towering over her. Another ad featured a large tombstone with the words, “Susan was dying to lose weight”, advertising for an eating disorders program.
Through this internship I feel as though I am better able to tackle the social justice issues of body image and disordered eating. I have been able to see firsthand how people have dealt with disordered eating and how society historically tried to treat disordered eating. In many ways I haven’t seen a stark change between the 1970s and now in how people experience disordered eating and how society has tried to address it. For this reason, I have greatly enjoyed learning about the social justice movement of fat lesbian liberation. The intersections of gender and sexuality have been really interesting to see, and it has been uplifting source material in an overall somber topic. I am really interested in seeing the connection between these movements and how we view body image today. I also wonder how or if this movement or movements like it exist today.
Blog Post #3
Hello! My name is Max Pins, and I have been interning for Dr. Weinreb in the history department this semester, aiding her in her project, “Anorexia Nervosa and the Rise of Disordered Eating in the Postwar World”. A very interdisciplinary project, my work has involved Fat Activists and discovering historical media on various eating disorders, a great opportunity for a History and Women’s Studies and Gender Studies major. I have done my own research using online primary source databases at Northwestern and have then organized that research, and other research Dr. Weinreb had from the Schlesinger Archives, into Google Excel sheets.
I have been interested in historical research as a career for years, and this internship gave me a chance to professionally do research. I have really enjoyed this internship, and it has been a great source of professional guidance. Completing online database research was very interesting, and partially inspired me to take a class next semester where I will be able to do research in physical archives, not just online ones. I now have the experience of working on a professional group research project and was able to build on the communication skills necessary for this type of work. I am planning on creating a poster for the History Grad Student Conference next semester and will be working alongside another intern from this internship. My research skills have greatly improved, I am more efficient and more organized while doing research. This internship was also a great educational experience, and I have a much greater understanding of the history of eating disorders. I feel I have a stronger capability to be involved in body acceptance activism today. I also was able to learn about the Fat Liberation Movement, and the history of this movement and how it has continued in the present is something I am interested in looking into for the final paper and possibly for the conference poster.
Being able to read the personal stories of activists, individuals struggling with eating disorders, and their friends and families has been my favorite part of this internship. It was really inspiring to see firsthand how fat activists worked to create a supportive community and their personal relationships with each other. One of my favorite interactions I witnessed through all of my research was a woman who called herself BeeBop Baby, writing in to a newspaper asking for help with her eating disorder. She writes in a couple more times after that, thanking everyone who gave her advice and resources, and it was wonderful to see. If you are considering becoming a WSGS major or minor, I would advise you to take advantage of how multidisciplinary the major can be. Through this internship I was able to combine my passion for history and women and gender studies, and other interns were psychology interns and able to combine that passion with this work. Additionally, some of my favorite women and gender studies classes have been in majors I am not in. With the variety of internship possibilities as well, this major gives you avenues to learn a lot you would not otherwise!
Women's Studies/Gender Studies Internship 