A Whole-Person Education: Karla Erickson’s American Studies Graduate Experience

Karla Erickson (PhD ‘05, American studies, minor in feminist studies) was recently installed as the Rosenfield Professor of Social Sciences at Grinnell College, one of the school’s highest honors for faculty members. 

Here, she reflects on how her graduate education at the University of Minnesota set her up for a meaningful career.

The impact of extraordinary professors

Two incredibly influential professors throughout Erickson’s graduate career were David Noble and Jennifer Pierce. Noble, an American studies professor who retired in 2009, taught for over 50 years. Erickson worked as his teaching assistant during her first year in the program and continues to integrate his teachings in her work today.

The connection between Erickson and Pierce was more of a happenstance — or as Erickson calls it: luck. Right as she was entering the program, so was Pierce, who transferred to the department from sociology. Pierce not only became Erickson’s dissertation advisor, but the director of the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies and, eventually, a pillar in Erickson’s feminist studies work.

The support Erickson received from Noble and Pierce and the many ways they went above and beyond proved to be invaluable, even 25 years later.

These are still people that I refer to as my North Star about what the Academy can be like. Pierce read every sentence of my dissertation 10 or 12 times. She was my mentor in every possible way that you can be someone’s mentor. My work is very motivated by Dr. Pierce’s work regarding feminist ethnography, and I am committed to capturing the everyday worlds of everyday people and elevating the significance of those lives. I want my students to have a piece of what I experienced in graduate school. When you’re in the hands of a powerful teacher, it feels like magic.

A devoted community

Erickson credits the close community she was a part of within the American studies department as one of the biggest reasons for her success in the program. From helpful advisors to peers who became like family, she had a wealth of positive experiences.

Nothing was too big an ask. From the first semester there, I was very confident that I could complete the PhD because of the support I received from my advisors and peers. So now when I run into them at meetings, I feel like I never left. I think when you can make people feel valued and important early in their career, it bears a lot of fruit.

The dissertation group Erickson was a part of under Pierce was another experience that left a lasting impression. Pierce had made a conscious effort to create a tight-knit community among her dissertation students, inviting all nine students over for dinner to discuss their chapters.

We called our group Piercing Insights, and there was a level of belonging in the way we were welcomed as if into a family or village. It was a whole-person education. Once a month, she and her wife would make green chili, and we would talk about somebody’s chapter for three or four hours. We broke bread together, we cried together, we played games so that we wouldn’t be too stressed out. Getting a PhD is really hard, but if you do it together, company makes a huge difference.

Past lessons reflected in present-day work

In tandem with her work at Grinnell College teaching classes such as American Whiteness, i/robot: Sociology of Machine Life, and Intimacy, Identity and the Erotic, she also dedicates her time to multiple projects focused on topics such as late-stage capitalism, the impact of artificial intelligence, and the impact the pandemic has had on students, taking a page from Pierce’s book on how to work through so many projects.

Pierce had this trajectory, and she helped us see the possibility of having three buckets. One is articles — the ideas that you like but don’t rise to book level. And then you have this monograph, the single-authored book, but then you also have the book that’s about what we’re doing. I always have a project like that. Right now, I’m working on a project called ‘Tethers and Tight Spaces’ that’s really about how we’re still affected by the pandemic.

The impact COVID-19 had on our educational systems is just one example of how Erickson is interested in the human condition and how we operate as a society.

I also have a new project about satisfaction within capitalism and the insatiability of late capitalism, and I hope to write one or two collective anthologies about what happened pedagogically during the pandemic. I want to focus on education at every level and how agile teachers had to be during that time.

When it comes to her own work outside the classroom, Erickson is very interested in where we are going next, especially in today’s day and age, when technology is constantly advancing and changing how we interact with one another.

I’m also working on a more standard academic text that’s about artificial intelligence and human relations — our relations with machines. In 2016, when I started talking to people about that, they didn’t know what I was talking about, but now it’s every headline. I think American studies gave me eyes to see where things were headed. That’s what we do. We just follow the logic, so you can see where we’re gonna go.

A solid foundation

Erickson notes how meaningful it is to have training that you continue to grow from years after graduation, and how it helps make a career you are proud of.

One of the ways that it continues to shape my work is my confidence in my training. I really would put my graduate training up against anybody. I mean, I feel that my graduate training prepared me for every aspect of my job. I’ve coached 35 people across the country — all at different universities — and mentored 77 faculty at Grinnell over the last 25 years, and no one talks about their graduate school the way that I do. I mean, obviously I knew it was special when it was happening, but over the last quarter century, I've come to learn how exquisitely rare it is to be basically proud of everything. It was exactly what I needed.

This story was written by Caroline Miltich, an undergraduate student in CLA.