(This article was originally written for the DePaul University American Studies Newsletter)
Bristol Cave-LaCoste is back at DePaul. After graduating from American Studies in 2012, Dr. Cave-LaCoste returns to the department as adjunct faculty, teaching LGBTQ+ History: World War II to Present online hybrid in Winter and Spring quarters this year. In a Zoom conversation, Cave-LaCoste reflected on her time as an undergraduate student at DePaul, a graduate student, and her return to DePaul as an instructor. Joining our discussion was Cave-LaCoste’s new baby, Eileen Cave-LaCoste, who arguably found the affair quite boring judging by how quickly she fell asleep wrapped around her mother.
Beginning her time at DePaul as a Political Science major, Cave-LaCoste enjoyed the program but was uncomfortable with the attitudes of her peers. “There were just a lot of egos in the room and I realized these would be my colleagues. If I don’t like the people I’m taking classes with now, what does that say about my career?” In 2010, Cave-LaCoste began taking AMS classes, starting with the History of Sex in America: Late Victorians to the Present. “I immediately fell in love with American Studies and I really liked that I could just take classes in what interested me and not be so tied up in which field I was in or what rules I had to follow.”
Cave-LaCoste graduated from DePaul two quarters early with AP credits, although looking back, she regrets cutting her time in American Studies short. “The classes I took were the most fun thing that I ever had done in my life and I rushed to finish it to save money but I wish looking back that I had spent even more time doing it.”
Dr. Cave-LaCoste graduated in December of 2012 from DePaul with an American Studies degree and a concentration in Politics, Institutions, and Values. Her Senior Seminar project was inspired by a subject from that first AMS class, History of Sex, “Donaldina Cameron’s Crusade: Adventure, Exoticism, and the Politics of Conversion in San Francisco’s Chinatown,” a project which would inevitably become the inspiration for her graduate dissertation, about sexually nonconforming women and immigration control at the turn of the twentieth century. How did she first become interested in this area? “Because her name was really funny, honestly, like I'm not an intellectual person. A female version of Donald is a really funny name. And so I got sucked into that.” Just before graduation, Cave-LaCoste had become engaged to her fiancé and fellow DePaul alum. “We owe it all to Corcoran Hall.”
Her post-graduation activity? Planning the wedding. “I spent a lot of time making a ridiculous wedding, which was probably not the best use of my time, but I really wanted a labor history themed wedding, and I made everything that everyone was wearing. I wanted it to be like a minimal sweatshop wedding and so I was the sweatshop for a couple of months.” The wedding was held in the Pullman neighborhood of Chicago and was inspired by a strike that took place on the site in 1894. “My partner was working with a labor union while also a student at DePaul and we just felt really connected to this place. We really wanted to make some new memories at the place that honored the workers' struggles. The teacher in me loved that people were forced into a history lesson by attending.”
Graduate school and PhD programs were a later decision. Entering DePaul, Cave-LaCoste had plans to work for the State Department but could not master Russian. “And then I was a Chicago quarter mentor and I really loved teaching and it was pretty immediate that I was like, okay, this is what I should do.” Deciding to attend a PhD program rather than a certificate teaching program, Cave-LaCoste began at the University of California Santa Cruz studying American History.
While at UC Santa Cruz, Cave-LaCoste learned about the trials of academia. “Let's see, what else do I want to say about UC Santa Cruz? I have absolutely nothing positive to say about the UC system, but I think it's also part of it. That's just how grad school is.” In the fall of 2020, the graduate students of the University of California Santa Cruz went on strike. “In week 10 of that quarter the grad students decided to go on a surprise strike and not turn in their grades. At DePaul, I think it's hard for people to realize the impact of that because the faculty at DePaul do the grading, but at UC, faculty don't interact with student work almost ever. It was huge.” Through the graduate student strike, Cave-LaCoste and her fellow students learned some tough lessons. “Seeing the degree to which a lot of really rich and powerful people truly, truly don't give a s*** about your existence and, honestly, do not care that their educators are living in cars, do not care that the police are beating up their students in front of the school - I just felt like it was such an incredible learning experience for people, even if it's a really hard lesson that you don't want to learn.”
Was Dr. Cave-LaCoste still set on teaching after this experience? “Going into the strike, I always would say that I wanted to teach college because I felt like the university was either going to get better or completely fall apart in my lifetime. And I wanted to be there to support students through whichever change happened. And after the strike, I was just like, f*** that. I'm not going to stand here teaching in the ashes and pretending that the university is okay. I don't want to fight for that and pretend that it's a good thing. It really started changing my trajectory. But I also just feel really energized and excited now to be teaching in a different capacity.”
That different capacity? High school. “I think high school admin is also going to be terrible. I don't have any false sense that it's going to be a better work environment, but I think it's going to be a work environment that I feel is worth fighting for something better, and having colleagues that fight with me, because I found so many people that wanted somebody else to fix things during the strike.”
However, since graduating with her PhD in American History with a designated emphasis in Latin American/Latino Studies in December of 2021, Cave-LaCoste is teaching at the university level at DePaul. With a global pandemic and new baby at home, she needed flexibility “and teaching high school doesn't feel like a job that has that flexibility, but teaching online for DePaul has been really great for that. So I have been really happy to be doing that this quarter.”
Dr. Cave-LaCoste first created a version of the LGBTQ+ History class she is teaching at DePaul while at UC Santa Cruz. “I was mad that they didn't have any classes about sex. It's something that literally every student has a connection to, whether they're sexually active or not, it's something everybody has some sort of personal feelings about. It's such a great way to bring people into history because it's something everyone's thinking about.” Cave-LaCoste has now taught an iteration of this class five times and each time the assigned readings have stayed the same while the order in which they are taught has drastically changed. “I don't want students to see history as this progress narrative that it was terrible to be LGBTQIA+ in the past and now everyone is liberated and it's great.” The class is also structured to support students in furthering their research abilities. “I structure my class around research skills in a way that I hope is really accessible and refreshing to students, because so often I have been in classes where we just get told ‘use this citation format’ or ‘go look this up online’ and no one ever taught me how to do anything other than google. We spend a lot of time on what research really looks like, and using actual online archives, and I try to support students through the reality that research can be really hard and annoying until it isn't.” In Dr. Cave-LaCoste’s experience, students are eager to learn the often hidden history of the queer community. “It is just the greatest honor of my life thus far to help students find this history that they've always hoped was out there but didn't know how to access.”
Dr. Cave-LaCoste is excited to be back with American Studies at DePaul. Remembering her time as a student in the program she says, “I know that I was learning a lot because I was motivated and that's something that really carries over into how I teach. When you're excited about something, you're gonna put in the work.” Welcome back Dr. Cave-LaCoste!
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